This might be a moment like the Fall of the Berlin Wall. It was not expected. The year before I had read some of a SF novel talking how in 2050 the US and the USSR were still struggling.
But Reagan came along and said 'dustbin of history' and 'we win, they lose'. No one else saw it coming.
It took a few years to go from the Wall to complete collapse.
A lot of brave men fought against the evil of Communism in the decades before. Answers in Genesis, Discovery Institute, Ken Ham, me, and a lot of others worked on this. And yet someone had to be the Man for the Moment.
For Communism, it was Reagan. Hopefully for Darwinism, its Vox Day.
Abortion at the national level ended, very possibly because Gen X is gaining power. Now dies Darwinism. Hopefully Usury is next. And perhaps then the Surveillance Cabal as listed by Anonymous Conservative. Not to forget Feminsim getting destroyed to boot.
Lot of trash needs to be cleared out so we can rebuild on the Truth Who Loves us.
Wistar Conference in 1966 could have started tripping this switch but biologists chose to emulate ostriches and accept the Beautiful Story rather than showing their work.
Vox doesn't argue from religion in his book. He argues from what the biologists themselves claim and the math needed for their claims to be true. Can you address his actual argument?
"then nothing that I said in yesterday’s post is an argument against your position. "
It is a little mystifying when people don't pay attention to the scope of an argument.
Even more so when they start digging in to defend a destructive cultural idea because it's related to how they think. The action speakers louder than their words about what they truly believe.
If you're talking about me, I won't argue. If you're talking about Vox Day, feel free to state your case and show how his math is wrong. You can't argue that his premises are wrong, because he's taking those straight from the biologists themselves and then testing their claims, which don't hold up.
The funny thing about your response is that I'm not talking about you.
It's directed at religious people who defend ideas they supposedly do not believe.
Your contempt for religious idiots who cannot understand science indicates you are not one of them. And here you are, sniping at someone's scientific ignorance, which has literally nothing to do with my point, except now you're one of those people who don't pay attention to the scope of an argument.
You give the Left too little credit. They are true believers in making you a better person. If Darwin falls, never fear, they will invent a new justification for their righteous project, no matter the cost to you.
If natural selection is an impossibility then explain animal husbandry, where humans apply the selective pressure. Or consider the fact that feral goats, descended from dairy breeds, revert to smaller udders within a few generations.
That said, I do agree with the criticisms of what has been called "Social Darwinism", which seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the phrase "survival of the fittest" and a failure to understand that, say, pigeons have an advantage over eagles in some habitats.
Also, while I am critical of philosophy in general, considering it to be little more than a parlor game played by academic elites to rationalize their bullshit, I think these modern attempts to reduce everything to a mathematical equation is more destructive and sterile. At least philosophers will contemplate the natural world. The mathematicians seem to only contemplate their formulas.
I am sure Vox Day believes in selective breeding. It's kind of like how Owen Benjamin critiques the story that NASA supposedly live-streamed from the moon in 1969, given the equipment and conditions they say they had, but I'm sure Benjamin still believes in jet propulsion. Vox Day is taking the timeline and facts alleged by Darwinists and saying the math doesn't work the way they need it to in order for what they claim to be true.
Yes, I understand what Vox is saying but it seems to me that his main objection is to the timeline based on assumptions regarding the speed that evolution may occur. There are biologists who have suggested that it may occur faster than previously believed and others that say it may vary depending on conditions. Perhaps the one sure thing may be that we don't know as much as we think we do regarding life on Earth.
Also, regarding those aforementioned dairy animals, humans select for larger udders. Nature selects for smaller udders for the obvious reasons (fewer injuries and therefore fewer infections).
Unfortunately, I am not competent to evaluate Vox's math. Speaking for myself, I only know *that* God, ultimately, is the Creator, but I don't know how he did it or what intermediaries he may have used. On an intuitive level, Vox's argument rings true, but I am not smart enough to discuss it substantively.
You can handle the basics. It's really only the derivations of a few things and utilization of the existing models that are tough, but you don't have to do those. Just look at the results, and if you doubt the derivations, plug them into Gemini 3 Pro or Wolfram Alpha to check them. They'll confirm they're solid.
Unless you are unfamiliar with basic algebra, you are very much equipped to evaluate Vox's math, and he has encouraged people to do so. Prove him wrong. Find an error. The errors discovered so far have only put TENS deeper in the hole.
So far, people have found two things, one was an omission and the other was a typo in an equation causing an incorrect result. Both fixed in the current ebook and coming print edition.
One made MITTENS 25 percent more effective. The other added an additional 145 years to how long it takes for deleterious mutations to render a species non-reproductive.
"There are biologists who have suggested that it may occur faster than previously believed and others that say it may vary depending on conditions. "
If you would kindly read the book, Vox does the math that checks every single suggested method by which evolutionary change can feasibly accomplish what it is claimed to do. They are all incapable. It's impossible according to the mathematical standards used by physicists.
If someone claims to run a 1 second mile, you know he's a liar. The exact same logic applies to everyone who still claims that random mutation and natural selection applied to common descent explains life as we see it.
Rejecting lies is a necessary precondition to being able to know the truth. You cannot accept both truth and lies. Accepting lies means you lose the ability to know any truth.
The mathematical impossibility of Darwinian evolution is not simply an interesting idea. It's an objective fact that captures a tiny bit of the reality we live in. All are welcome to challenge its factual status. All challenges have failed and will continue to fail because the math is correct.
I will gladly read the book as soon as I can get a copy. There is, however, a debate as to whether the mathematical standards used by physicists can be applied to the biological sciences.
That's one of the dumbest debates you can possibly imagine. Not only can mathematical standards of the type used by physicists be applied to the biological scientists, that's how all genetic science works.
If math can't be applied, it's not science. It's story-telling for children.
Selective adaptation in a few animals imposed by an intelligent agent has absolutely no relationship to the mechanisms of natural selection and genetic drift across an entire species. It's a category error because the genes for the adaptation are already present. Random mutation isn't involved.
There is nothing destructive and sterile about math. And much of the book is devoted to pointing out how the abstract models upon which the biologists rely are false, which is why their numbers are reliably wrong to several orders of magnitude.
Yes, models have limitations in no small part because one cannot factor in everything or else the models become too onerous. Perhaps the same applies to your model?
As for selective adaptation, it seems to occur in more than a few animals. Are these adaptations imposed by an intelligent agent? I've yet to see proof, one way or the other. Just speculation, albeit based on various disciplines, including genetics and mathematical models.
It's not Vox's model. He's taking the evolutionary models biologists use and plugging in the numbers. He's proving their models are mathematically impossible. Their models do not work, and have never been capable of working. No one noticed because biologists avoided the math and didn't notice when genetic science collected data that conclusively disproved their models.
There is no Vox model to find fault in. There are Vox adjustments to the existing evolutionary models to account for mathematically significant variables the base models do not consider. That math has been publicized and criticism is actively solicited.
I have an engineering degree and have read the book, I assure you that Vox's math has more than sufficient margin of error for his conclusions.
There has always been an understanding of micro-evolution; change within kinds. The objection is to macro-evolution. Monkeys don't become men and pigs don't fly.
There are 40 million differences between chimp and human; about 20 miliion for each. There is best case 9 million years to make those changes, so you have a rate problem to solve.
Vox does the set up and the math to show TENS cannot be the mechanism by which this occurs.
He does not go into the how or why, just that level of "what".
TENS cannot make the necessary changes occur -- by orders of magnitude.
Natural selection is by definition not artificial selection.
Natural selection is the belief that random "nature" (without God) can accomplish the same thing as the artificial selection of husbandry.
The appeal to husbandry as proof of evolution is an implicit acceptance that God, or a god of Nature, applies intelligent direction to evolution.
Humans as intelligent creatures take their intelligence for granted, and many do not fully understand what it means for something to be a random, unintelligent process.
You are actually arguing for Vox's Intelligent Genetic Manipulation (IGM) theory, or some form of Intelligent Design, when you make this statement about breeding.
Natural philosophers -- what we now call physicists and chemists -- don't use math to reduce things to sterility as you claim. It's a tool, as is any theory or hypothesis.
The math in PZ is accessible to the layman with the ability to manipulate exponents. That plus basic algebra. It should be easy enough for the most inumerate of Evolutionary Biologists to understand.
Those that don't understand may be Upton Sinclair enjoyers.
I'm simply making an observation. Certain traits increase the odds that an animal will survive and have multiple offspring. In regards to dairy animals, a large udder improves those odds when humans provide the selective pressure. If those animals become feral, a large udder reduces those odds and so nature selects for smaller udders. There is nothing intelligent about it. Does that mean there isn't some form of Intelligent Design? No, but then animal husbandry doesn't suggest that Creation is the result of Intelligent Design either. It may even be that both Natural Selection and Intelligent Design contributed to the development of life on Earth.
Yes, mathematics can be a tool, but the notion that everything can be reduced to an equation is not only a sterile approach, but may also fail to account for multiple factors.
"Yes, mathematics can be a tool, but the notion that everything can be reduced to an equation is not only a sterile approach, but may also fail to account for multiple factors."
By all means, explain how. Offer an example or two where this has derailed Science to such a degree that Mathematics was cautioned against lest it contaminate the ability to seek Truth.
Prove your contention.
Or as they said at the Wistar Conference in 1966: "Show your work."
That is not what Vox argues. He doesn't dispute that changes happen or have happened. He shows Natural Selection is a false hypothesis, based on the breeding time of organisms, offering explanations specifically for sexual reproduction and how it differs from the asexual.
He makes no claims on how Evolution occurs, but rather demonstrates with actual data and mathematical relationships -- developed primarily by the very biologists who claim TENS works -- that Natural Selection is wrong.
It is a disproved theory.
It is not able to achieve the changes necessary within the required time frame.
It cannot explain how it came to its own conclusions.
Yes, I understand what he is saying. As I said in a previous comment to our host, his main objection is to the timeline based on assumptions regarding the speed that evolution may occur. He may have a valid point, however, genetic evidence seems to tell a different story.
Evolution May Be Happening Up to 4 Times Faster Than We Thought, Massive Study Finds
You don't know what you're talking about. You would be well-advised to stop babbling in ignorance and just read the book.
The math is not abstract. To the contrary, it is applying real-world limitations on the abstract models utilized by the biologists. Humans have overlapping generations. A single woman cannot give birth to 15,700 children. Random fixations in parallel cannot violate the Law of Large Numbers.
Increasing the speed of evolution 4x changes nothing at all. Because to put it in analogical terms, the current case for evolution by natural selection, neutral drift, and every other mechanism they can dream up is the equivalent of telling someone that you walked from New York City to Los Angeles in less than five minutes.
Didn't happen. Couldn't happen. Never going to happen. Hence the point about mathematical impossibility.
I didn't even know that the book existed until I read this article. That said, I also acknowledged that you may have a valid point but that's not the end of the conversation. There are people with backgrounds in the biological sciences who disagree with you. Now it is up to them to consider your position and respond.
Here is my response to your link to "Genetic Evidence Supporting the Theory of Evolution"
The document you've shared is a representative example of what happens when evolutionary "evidence" is presented without engaging with the actual quantitative requirements of the proposed mechanism. It reads like a sermon rather than an argument—mutation provides variation, selection acts on variation, adaptation results. Q.E.D. The pattern is invoked but never interrogated.
The fundamental problem is what we might call the breeding reality principle: does the proposed mechanism actually have the reproductive machinery to accomplish what is claimed? When you run the numbers—as population geneticists themselves established in the early twentieth century—the answer is unambiguously no. Haldane demonstrated in 1927 that a beneficial mutation with selection coefficient s has only a 2s probability of fixation. A mutation conferring a 1% fitness advantage has a 2% chance of surviving long enough to spread; the other 98% are lost to drift in the early generations despite being beneficial. Even a mutation with a 10% advantage—enormous by evolutionary standards—faces 80% odds of extinction. Evolution is not a deterministic march from good mutations to fixed adaptations; it is a stochastic gauntlet where most beneficial mutations vanish without trace.
Now consider the scale of the problem. Human-chimpanzee divergence requires approximately 20 million fixations on the human lineage alone (per the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium's 2005 Nature paper). Given 6.5 million years of divergence, 25-year generation times, and the empirically-validated Selective Turnover Coefficient (d ≈ 0.45–0.80 depending on demographic assumptions, derived from ancient DNA time-series tracking allele frequency changes at loci like LCT, SLC24A5, and HERC2), we have roughly 200,000 effective generations available. At the Haldane limit of one substitution per 300 generations—which itself requires sustained 10% selective mortality—natural selection can accomplish approximately 700–1,000 fixations. The theory needs 20 million; the mechanism delivers fewer than 1,000. That is a shortfall exceeding four orders of magnitude.
The document's invocation of "parallel fixation"—multiple beneficial mutations fixing simultaneously—does not rescue the theory; it makes the problem worse. Selection operates through differential reproduction, and reproductive capacity is finite. If ten mutations are under simultaneous selection, the reproductive burden is ten times greater. The selection coefficients must sum to less than the maximum sustainable selection load (Σsᵢ ≤ sₘₐₓ). You cannot select for more mutations than the population's reproductive excess can support. Moreover, as the number of simultaneously segregating beneficial mutations increases, the Law of Large Numbers drives variance in beneficial allele counts toward zero, eliminating the fitness differences selection requires to operate—what we call the Averaging Problem. Parallel fixation is self-defeating: it invokes a process that destroys the variance necessary for its own operation.
The retreat to neutral theory—that most molecular evolution occurs through random drift rather than selection—is not a defense of neo-Darwinism but an abandonment of it. Kimura's models show neutral fixation requires approximately 40,000 generations, twenty times slower than beneficial fixation. Running to drift doesn't open an escape hatch; it welds the door shut. Neutral mutations cannot explain functional differences—they are, by definition, functionless. The mutations that make a human brain different from a chimpanzee brain were not drifting neutrally through the ancestral population; they required positive selection. And positive selection requires paying Haldane's cost. The standard neo-Darwinian maneuver of invoking selection for functional changes and drift for neutral ones accomplishes nothing more than combining both problems without solving either.
What the document provides is vocabulary—mutation, selection, adaptation, natural selection—wielded as if naming the mechanism constitutes explaining it. But naming is not quantifying. The mathematical framework for fixation has been established since Fisher, Wright, and Haldane; the genomic data revealing the scale of divergence has been available since 2005. What has never been performed is the audit: can the mechanism actually produce the observed result given the reproductive constraints of the organisms involved? POPULATION ZERO performs that audit, and the answer is a shortfall of five orders of magnitude. The document you've shared is rhetoric dressed as science—it tells a story about evolution without ever asking whether the story is physically possible.
You have clearly not read PZ. You clearly do not understand.
That is a lie on your part.
You do not appear to understand the argument made here or are attempting to deflect to another unrelated one.
The claim is not that change does not occur; the claim is change does not occur by TENS.
TENS cannot occur within the time envelop based on process rates known. Mathematically demonstrated.
Come with a better argument rather than unrelated data or poorly stated disagreements. Make your argument with Logic if you fear the Mathematics so greatly.
Your provided links are irrelevant to the central argument.
You will not acknowledge the central premise and its argument.
You will not consider alternatives presented.
You will not explain why Mathematics--a subset of Logic--is to be eschewed in Biology and specifically Evolutionary Biology.
I must assume you are an Upton Sinclair enjoyer or just too short for this ride.
I never claimed to have read PZ. I was responding to the article by our host. I also never said that I fear mathematics. Just pointing out the limitations. I also made it clear that I will consider alternatives. That's why I use qualifiers.
Maybe you should stop projecting and learn to use qualifiers?
And drop the Upton Sinclair bullshit. Never read him. Assumptions, my dear. You're making an ass out of you and me.
Extremely stupid and poorly informed. Read some actual evolutionary theory. Iain McGilchrist, brain scientist and evolutionary psychologist has debunked materialism, using science. Decades of research. He has openly advocated for the idea that leftism is a mental dysfunction.
The cultural-left hated E.O. Wilson and Napoleon Chagnon for showing that “Blank slate” theory was pseudo science. (1970s)
The Right always exposes its idiocy when trying to talk about evolution.
1) You are arguing against a point I didn't actually make, and in fact went out of my way to make clear that I was not making, in this post because it is orthogonal to the point I *was* making. (2) Vox Day does make an argument against evolution by natural selection that has not been addressed by Ian McGilchrist, so feel free to address it and show how Vox is wrong.
This might be a moment like the Fall of the Berlin Wall. It was not expected. The year before I had read some of a SF novel talking how in 2050 the US and the USSR were still struggling.
But Reagan came along and said 'dustbin of history' and 'we win, they lose'. No one else saw it coming.
It took a few years to go from the Wall to complete collapse.
A lot of brave men fought against the evil of Communism in the decades before. Answers in Genesis, Discovery Institute, Ken Ham, me, and a lot of others worked on this. And yet someone had to be the Man for the Moment.
For Communism, it was Reagan. Hopefully for Darwinism, its Vox Day.
Abortion at the national level ended, very possibly because Gen X is gaining power. Now dies Darwinism. Hopefully Usury is next. And perhaps then the Surveillance Cabal as listed by Anonymous Conservative. Not to forget Feminsim getting destroyed to boot.
Lot of trash needs to be cleared out so we can rebuild on the Truth Who Loves us.
Wistar Conference in 1966 could have started tripping this switch but biologists chose to emulate ostriches and accept the Beautiful Story rather than showing their work.
Religious idiots can't understand science.
Vox doesn't argue from religion in his book. He argues from what the biologists themselves claim and the math needed for their claims to be true. Can you address his actual argument?
"then nothing that I said in yesterday’s post is an argument against your position. "
It is a little mystifying when people don't pay attention to the scope of an argument.
Even more so when they start digging in to defend a destructive cultural idea because it's related to how they think. The action speakers louder than their words about what they truly believe.
He is grossly ignorant about science.
If you're talking about me, I won't argue. If you're talking about Vox Day, feel free to state your case and show how his math is wrong. You can't argue that his premises are wrong, because he's taking those straight from the biologists themselves and then testing their claims, which don't hold up.
The funny thing about your response is that I'm not talking about you.
It's directed at religious people who defend ideas they supposedly do not believe.
Your contempt for religious idiots who cannot understand science indicates you are not one of them. And here you are, sniping at someone's scientific ignorance, which has literally nothing to do with my point, except now you're one of those people who don't pay attention to the scope of an argument.
You give the Left too little credit. They are true believers in making you a better person. If Darwin falls, never fear, they will invent a new justification for their righteous project, no matter the cost to you.
More gross stupidity on the right.
What was stupid about what JasonT said? Where was he wrong?
If natural selection is an impossibility then explain animal husbandry, where humans apply the selective pressure. Or consider the fact that feral goats, descended from dairy breeds, revert to smaller udders within a few generations.
That said, I do agree with the criticisms of what has been called "Social Darwinism", which seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the phrase "survival of the fittest" and a failure to understand that, say, pigeons have an advantage over eagles in some habitats.
Also, while I am critical of philosophy in general, considering it to be little more than a parlor game played by academic elites to rationalize their bullshit, I think these modern attempts to reduce everything to a mathematical equation is more destructive and sterile. At least philosophers will contemplate the natural world. The mathematicians seem to only contemplate their formulas.
I am sure Vox Day believes in selective breeding. It's kind of like how Owen Benjamin critiques the story that NASA supposedly live-streamed from the moon in 1969, given the equipment and conditions they say they had, but I'm sure Benjamin still believes in jet propulsion. Vox Day is taking the timeline and facts alleged by Darwinists and saying the math doesn't work the way they need it to in order for what they claim to be true.
Yes, I understand what Vox is saying but it seems to me that his main objection is to the timeline based on assumptions regarding the speed that evolution may occur. There are biologists who have suggested that it may occur faster than previously believed and others that say it may vary depending on conditions. Perhaps the one sure thing may be that we don't know as much as we think we do regarding life on Earth.
Also, regarding those aforementioned dairy animals, humans select for larger udders. Nature selects for smaller udders for the obvious reasons (fewer injuries and therefore fewer infections).
Unfortunately, I am not competent to evaluate Vox's math. Speaking for myself, I only know *that* God, ultimately, is the Creator, but I don't know how he did it or what intermediaries he may have used. On an intuitive level, Vox's argument rings true, but I am not smart enough to discuss it substantively.
You can handle the basics. It's really only the derivations of a few things and utilization of the existing models that are tough, but you don't have to do those. Just look at the results, and if you doubt the derivations, plug them into Gemini 3 Pro or Wolfram Alpha to check them. They'll confirm they're solid.
Unless you are unfamiliar with basic algebra, you are very much equipped to evaluate Vox's math, and he has encouraged people to do so. Prove him wrong. Find an error. The errors discovered so far have only put TENS deeper in the hole.
So far, people have found two things, one was an omission and the other was a typo in an equation causing an incorrect result. Both fixed in the current ebook and coming print edition.
One made MITTENS 25 percent more effective. The other added an additional 145 years to how long it takes for deleterious mutations to render a species non-reproductive.
The Great Mystery.
"There are biologists who have suggested that it may occur faster than previously believed and others that say it may vary depending on conditions. "
If you would kindly read the book, Vox does the math that checks every single suggested method by which evolutionary change can feasibly accomplish what it is claimed to do. They are all incapable. It's impossible according to the mathematical standards used by physicists.
If someone claims to run a 1 second mile, you know he's a liar. The exact same logic applies to everyone who still claims that random mutation and natural selection applied to common descent explains life as we see it.
Rejecting lies is a necessary precondition to being able to know the truth. You cannot accept both truth and lies. Accepting lies means you lose the ability to know any truth.
The mathematical impossibility of Darwinian evolution is not simply an interesting idea. It's an objective fact that captures a tiny bit of the reality we live in. All are welcome to challenge its factual status. All challenges have failed and will continue to fail because the math is correct.
I will gladly read the book as soon as I can get a copy. There is, however, a debate as to whether the mathematical standards used by physicists can be applied to the biological sciences.
https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/27/3/280
That's one of the dumbest debates you can possibly imagine. Not only can mathematical standards of the type used by physicists be applied to the biological scientists, that's how all genetic science works.
If math can't be applied, it's not science. It's story-telling for children.
Selective adaptation in a few animals imposed by an intelligent agent has absolutely no relationship to the mechanisms of natural selection and genetic drift across an entire species. It's a category error because the genes for the adaptation are already present. Random mutation isn't involved.
There is nothing destructive and sterile about math. And much of the book is devoted to pointing out how the abstract models upon which the biologists rely are false, which is why their numbers are reliably wrong to several orders of magnitude.
Yes, models have limitations in no small part because one cannot factor in everything or else the models become too onerous. Perhaps the same applies to your model?
As for selective adaptation, it seems to occur in more than a few animals. Are these adaptations imposed by an intelligent agent? I've yet to see proof, one way or the other. Just speculation, albeit based on various disciplines, including genetics and mathematical models.
"Perhaps the same applies to your model?"
It's not Vox's model. He's taking the evolutionary models biologists use and plugging in the numbers. He's proving their models are mathematically impossible. Their models do not work, and have never been capable of working. No one noticed because biologists avoided the math and didn't notice when genetic science collected data that conclusively disproved their models.
There is no Vox model to find fault in. There are Vox adjustments to the existing evolutionary models to account for mathematically significant variables the base models do not consider. That math has been publicized and criticism is actively solicited.
I have an engineering degree and have read the book, I assure you that Vox's math has more than sufficient margin of error for his conclusions.
There has always been an understanding of micro-evolution; change within kinds. The objection is to macro-evolution. Monkeys don't become men and pigs don't fly.
Pigs don't fly, however...
Genetic Similarity Reveals Fascinating Parallels Between Humans and Pigs
https://scienceofbiogenetics.com/articles/genetic-similarity-reveals-fascinating-parallels-between-humans-and-pigs
Genetic similarities and phylogenetic analysis of human and farm animal species based on mitogenomic nucleotide sequences
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214540017300841
The long-lost cousin of rhinos and horses
https://eartharchives.org/articles/the-long-lost-cousin-of-rhinos-and-horses/index.html
Meet the Ancestor of Every Human, Bat, Cat, Whale and Mouse
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/meet-the-ancestor-of-every-human-bat-cat-whale-and-mouse
Evidence of Common Ancestry and Diversity
https://manoa.hawaii.edu/exploringourfluidearth/biological/mammals/evidence-common-ancestry-and-diversity
There are 40 million differences between chimp and human; about 20 miliion for each. There is best case 9 million years to make those changes, so you have a rate problem to solve.
Vox does the set up and the math to show TENS cannot be the mechanism by which this occurs.
He does not go into the how or why, just that level of "what".
TENS cannot make the necessary changes occur -- by orders of magnitude.
Natural selection is by definition not artificial selection.
Natural selection is the belief that random "nature" (without God) can accomplish the same thing as the artificial selection of husbandry.
The appeal to husbandry as proof of evolution is an implicit acceptance that God, or a god of Nature, applies intelligent direction to evolution.
Humans as intelligent creatures take their intelligence for granted, and many do not fully understand what it means for something to be a random, unintelligent process.
You are actually arguing for Vox's Intelligent Genetic Manipulation (IGM) theory, or some form of Intelligent Design, when you make this statement about breeding.
Natural philosophers -- what we now call physicists and chemists -- don't use math to reduce things to sterility as you claim. It's a tool, as is any theory or hypothesis.
The math in PZ is accessible to the layman with the ability to manipulate exponents. That plus basic algebra. It should be easy enough for the most inumerate of Evolutionary Biologists to understand.
Those that don't understand may be Upton Sinclair enjoyers.
I'm simply making an observation. Certain traits increase the odds that an animal will survive and have multiple offspring. In regards to dairy animals, a large udder improves those odds when humans provide the selective pressure. If those animals become feral, a large udder reduces those odds and so nature selects for smaller udders. There is nothing intelligent about it. Does that mean there isn't some form of Intelligent Design? No, but then animal husbandry doesn't suggest that Creation is the result of Intelligent Design either. It may even be that both Natural Selection and Intelligent Design contributed to the development of life on Earth.
Yes, mathematics can be a tool, but the notion that everything can be reduced to an equation is not only a sterile approach, but may also fail to account for multiple factors.
"Yes, mathematics can be a tool, but the notion that everything can be reduced to an equation is not only a sterile approach, but may also fail to account for multiple factors."
By all means, explain how. Offer an example or two where this has derailed Science to such a degree that Mathematics was cautioned against lest it contaminate the ability to seek Truth.
Prove your contention.
Or as they said at the Wistar Conference in 1966: "Show your work."
That is not what Vox argues. He doesn't dispute that changes happen or have happened. He shows Natural Selection is a false hypothesis, based on the breeding time of organisms, offering explanations specifically for sexual reproduction and how it differs from the asexual.
He makes no claims on how Evolution occurs, but rather demonstrates with actual data and mathematical relationships -- developed primarily by the very biologists who claim TENS works -- that Natural Selection is wrong.
It is a disproved theory.
It is not able to achieve the changes necessary within the required time frame.
It cannot explain how it came to its own conclusions.
It is a Dead Parrot.
Yes, I understand what he is saying. As I said in a previous comment to our host, his main objection is to the timeline based on assumptions regarding the speed that evolution may occur. He may have a valid point, however, genetic evidence seems to tell a different story.
Evolution May Be Happening Up to 4 Times Faster Than We Thought, Massive Study Finds
https://www.sciencealert.com/evolution-may-be-happening-up-to-four-times-faster-than-we-thought
Parts of Our DNA May Evolve Much Faster Than Previously Thought
The most comprehensive atlas of genetic change through generations shows the areas of the genome that evolve the fastest.
https://www.technologynetworks.com/genomics/news/parts-of-our-dna-may-evolve-much-faster-than-previously-thought-399051
Wild animals evolving much faster than previously thought
https://biology.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/wild-animals-evolving-much-faster-previously-thought
Genetic Evidence Supporting the Theory of Evolution – Unraveling the Fossil Record of Life’s History through the Lens of DNA
https://scienceofbiogenetics.com/articles/genetic-evidence-supporting-the-theory-of-evolution-unraveling-the-fossil-record-of-lifes-history-through-the-lens-of-dna
Natural Selection in Human Populations
https://web.stanford.edu/group/rosenberglab/papers/GoldbergEtAl2018-OxfordBiblioEvolBiol.pdf
You don't know what you're talking about. You would be well-advised to stop babbling in ignorance and just read the book.
The math is not abstract. To the contrary, it is applying real-world limitations on the abstract models utilized by the biologists. Humans have overlapping generations. A single woman cannot give birth to 15,700 children. Random fixations in parallel cannot violate the Law of Large Numbers.
Increasing the speed of evolution 4x changes nothing at all. Because to put it in analogical terms, the current case for evolution by natural selection, neutral drift, and every other mechanism they can dream up is the equivalent of telling someone that you walked from New York City to Los Angeles in less than five minutes.
Didn't happen. Couldn't happen. Never going to happen. Hence the point about mathematical impossibility.
I didn't even know that the book existed until I read this article. That said, I also acknowledged that you may have a valid point but that's not the end of the conversation. There are people with backgrounds in the biological sciences who disagree with you. Now it is up to them to consider your position and respond.
Here is my response to your link to "Genetic Evidence Supporting the Theory of Evolution"
The document you've shared is a representative example of what happens when evolutionary "evidence" is presented without engaging with the actual quantitative requirements of the proposed mechanism. It reads like a sermon rather than an argument—mutation provides variation, selection acts on variation, adaptation results. Q.E.D. The pattern is invoked but never interrogated.
The fundamental problem is what we might call the breeding reality principle: does the proposed mechanism actually have the reproductive machinery to accomplish what is claimed? When you run the numbers—as population geneticists themselves established in the early twentieth century—the answer is unambiguously no. Haldane demonstrated in 1927 that a beneficial mutation with selection coefficient s has only a 2s probability of fixation. A mutation conferring a 1% fitness advantage has a 2% chance of surviving long enough to spread; the other 98% are lost to drift in the early generations despite being beneficial. Even a mutation with a 10% advantage—enormous by evolutionary standards—faces 80% odds of extinction. Evolution is not a deterministic march from good mutations to fixed adaptations; it is a stochastic gauntlet where most beneficial mutations vanish without trace.
Now consider the scale of the problem. Human-chimpanzee divergence requires approximately 20 million fixations on the human lineage alone (per the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium's 2005 Nature paper). Given 6.5 million years of divergence, 25-year generation times, and the empirically-validated Selective Turnover Coefficient (d ≈ 0.45–0.80 depending on demographic assumptions, derived from ancient DNA time-series tracking allele frequency changes at loci like LCT, SLC24A5, and HERC2), we have roughly 200,000 effective generations available. At the Haldane limit of one substitution per 300 generations—which itself requires sustained 10% selective mortality—natural selection can accomplish approximately 700–1,000 fixations. The theory needs 20 million; the mechanism delivers fewer than 1,000. That is a shortfall exceeding four orders of magnitude.
The document's invocation of "parallel fixation"—multiple beneficial mutations fixing simultaneously—does not rescue the theory; it makes the problem worse. Selection operates through differential reproduction, and reproductive capacity is finite. If ten mutations are under simultaneous selection, the reproductive burden is ten times greater. The selection coefficients must sum to less than the maximum sustainable selection load (Σsᵢ ≤ sₘₐₓ). You cannot select for more mutations than the population's reproductive excess can support. Moreover, as the number of simultaneously segregating beneficial mutations increases, the Law of Large Numbers drives variance in beneficial allele counts toward zero, eliminating the fitness differences selection requires to operate—what we call the Averaging Problem. Parallel fixation is self-defeating: it invokes a process that destroys the variance necessary for its own operation.
The retreat to neutral theory—that most molecular evolution occurs through random drift rather than selection—is not a defense of neo-Darwinism but an abandonment of it. Kimura's models show neutral fixation requires approximately 40,000 generations, twenty times slower than beneficial fixation. Running to drift doesn't open an escape hatch; it welds the door shut. Neutral mutations cannot explain functional differences—they are, by definition, functionless. The mutations that make a human brain different from a chimpanzee brain were not drifting neutrally through the ancestral population; they required positive selection. And positive selection requires paying Haldane's cost. The standard neo-Darwinian maneuver of invoking selection for functional changes and drift for neutral ones accomplishes nothing more than combining both problems without solving either.
What the document provides is vocabulary—mutation, selection, adaptation, natural selection—wielded as if naming the mechanism constitutes explaining it. But naming is not quantifying. The mathematical framework for fixation has been established since Fisher, Wright, and Haldane; the genomic data revealing the scale of divergence has been available since 2005. What has never been performed is the audit: can the mechanism actually produce the observed result given the reproductive constraints of the organisms involved? POPULATION ZERO performs that audit, and the answer is a shortfall of five orders of magnitude. The document you've shared is rhetoric dressed as science—it tells a story about evolution without ever asking whether the story is physically possible.
I am well aware of the various debates within the field.
More deflection.
You have clearly not read PZ. You clearly do not understand.
That is a lie on your part.
You do not appear to understand the argument made here or are attempting to deflect to another unrelated one.
The claim is not that change does not occur; the claim is change does not occur by TENS.
TENS cannot occur within the time envelop based on process rates known. Mathematically demonstrated.
Come with a better argument rather than unrelated data or poorly stated disagreements. Make your argument with Logic if you fear the Mathematics so greatly.
Your provided links are irrelevant to the central argument.
You will not acknowledge the central premise and its argument.
You will not consider alternatives presented.
You will not explain why Mathematics--a subset of Logic--is to be eschewed in Biology and specifically Evolutionary Biology.
I must assume you are an Upton Sinclair enjoyer or just too short for this ride.
I never claimed to have read PZ. I was responding to the article by our host. I also never said that I fear mathematics. Just pointing out the limitations. I also made it clear that I will consider alternatives. That's why I use qualifiers.
Maybe you should stop projecting and learn to use qualifiers?
And drop the Upton Sinclair bullshit. Never read him. Assumptions, my dear. You're making an ass out of you and me.
Extremely stupid and poorly informed. Read some actual evolutionary theory. Iain McGilchrist, brain scientist and evolutionary psychologist has debunked materialism, using science. Decades of research. He has openly advocated for the idea that leftism is a mental dysfunction.
The cultural-left hated E.O. Wilson and Napoleon Chagnon for showing that “Blank slate” theory was pseudo science. (1970s)
The Right always exposes its idiocy when trying to talk about evolution.
1) You are arguing against a point I didn't actually make, and in fact went out of my way to make clear that I was not making, in this post because it is orthogonal to the point I *was* making. (2) Vox Day does make an argument against evolution by natural selection that has not been addressed by Ian McGilchrist, so feel free to address it and show how Vox is wrong.