Posted on 07/24/2003 1:55:39 PM PDT by Mr.Atos
I was just lisening to Medved debating Creationism with Athiests on the air. I found it interesting that while Medved argued his side quite effectively from the standpoint of faith, his opponents resorted to condescension and beliitled him with statements like, "when it rains, is that God crying?" I was reminded of the best (at least most amusing)debate that I have ever heard on the subject of Creationism vs Evolution, albeit a fictional setting. It occurred on the show, Friends of all places between the characters Pheobe (The Hippy) and Ross (The Paleontologist). It went like this...
Pheebs: Okay...it's very faint, but I can still sense him in the building...GO INTO THE LIGHT MR. HECKLES!!
Ross: Whoa, whoa, whoa. What, uh, you don't believe in evolution? Pheebs: Nah. Not really. Ross: You don't believe in evolution? Pheebs: I don't know. It's just, ya know, monkeys, Darwin, ya know, it's a, it's a nice story. I just think it's a little too easy.
Ross: Uh, excuse me. Evolution is not for you to buy, Phoebe. Evolution is scientific fact. Like, like, the air we breathe, like gravity... Pheebs: Uh, okay, don't get me started on gravity.
Ross: You uh, you don't believe in gravity? Pheebs: Well, it's not so much that ya know, like I don't *believe* in it, ya know. It's just...I don't know. Lately I get the feeling that I'm not so much being pulled down, as I am being pushed.
Ross: How can you NOT BELIEVE in evolution? Pheebs: [shrugs] I unh-huh...Look at this funky shirt!!
Ross: Well, there ya go. Pheebs: Huh. So now, the REAL question is: who put those fossils there, and why...?
Ross: OPPOSABLE THUMBS!! Without evolution, how do YOU explain OPPOSABLE THUMBS?!? Pheebs: Maybe the overlords needed them to steer their spacecrafts!
Pheebs: Uh-oh! Scary Scientist Man!
Pheebs: Okay, Ross? Could you just open your mind like, *this* much?? Okay? Now wasn't there a time when the brightest minds in the world believed that the Earth was flat? And up until what, like, fifty years ago, you all thought the atom was the smallest thing, until you split it open, and this like, whole mess o' crap came out! Now, are you telling me that you are so unbelievably arrogant that you can't admit that there's a teeny, tiny possibility that you could be wrong about this?!?
Pheebs: I can't believe you caved. Ross: What? Pheebs: You just ABANDONED your whole belief system! I mean, before, I didn't agree with you, but at least I respected you. Ross: But uh.. Pheebs: Yeah...how...how are you gonna go in to work tomorrow? How...how are you gonna face the other science guys? How...how are you gonna face yourself? Oh! [Ross runs away dejected] Pheebs: That was fun. So who's hungry?
Wait for the the image to fully load and click anywhere in the colored protion (close to the edge of blackness) of the image for a limited sample of the infinite nature of M-sets. Increasing the number of iterations reveals more but will take longer to view. You could zoom forever if you had enough computing power.
I was just reading about this the other day in a book about the 100 most decisive battles in history. Western civilization owes a great debt to Themistocles skill during the battle of Salamis isle.
Not this one in particular, but they have always fascinated me since college. Some of the alluvial plains we studied would create erosion patterns similar to these.
http://joseph_berrigan.tripod.com/ancientbabylon/id28.html
Not with Darwinian common descent. ID which he is completely for and one of the founders of, is completely opposed to Darwinism and his words say so. As I myself have said, there can be a Christian form of evolution which states that God designed life so as to unfold in time. The key word here is designed and Darwinian evolution totally rejects design of any kind. His statement in the above "evolution occurred, but was guided by God." shows agreement with the view I have stated above and several times previously.
I am not sure what the difference is. What is ID's concept of common descent?
As I myself have said, there can be a Christian form of evolution which states that God designed life so as to unfold in time.
Isn't this what most Christians believe? I certainly do.
Yes. But Theodosius Dobzhansky was not a "supposed scientist". He was the real deal and did a lot of very good work. He believed he was seeing the origin of species in its infancy. But he did not, as far as I know, assert this as proved.
I am not sure what the difference is. What is ID's concept of common descent?
There is no 'ID concept of common descent'. ID is not an ideology, but a methodology of looking at the world and scientific questions. So there are widely different beliefs amongst its adherents, just as there are widely different beliefs amongst those who oppose evolution here on FR.
My personal view is that there is no common descent of species and I base this on what I see in organisms - tremendous specified complexity and functional purpose. These are not qualities of matter and therefore strongly imply design. The similarities are those that we would see on any set of things made by a human designer - reuse of parts, themes and ideas.
As I myself have said, there can be a Christian form of evolution which states that God designed life so as to unfold in time.-me-
Isn't this what most Christians believe? I certainly do.
I think so, and such a belief is incompatible with Darwinian evolution because it denies design at every point.
To: Right Wing Professor;
Congratulations. You are the first poster to actually meet the challenge with a good theory specification. I will attempt to roast it and believe that I have done so, but the response is a bit lengthy because you have introduced some new terms that must be defined. RightWingNilla, I will try to get to your theory specification tomorrow, but don't have time tonight.
Does the above theory specification posit a cause? Yes, “genetic mutation followed by natural selection”. The effect? That “species are derived from common ancestors”.
Is it testable? Yes, in a laboratory upon a short lived species. Or possibly in nature in ecological niches that have been opened up by environmental catastrophe. More on this later.
Is it falsifiable? Yes, if such experiments do not show the development of new species. Note that some time limit must be applied. If after some specified number of generations (10,000 perhaps) the descendent species can still interbreed with one another or the original species, then the theory must be considered falsified. One cannot simply claim “but if only we had more time”.
Finally, is it refutable? Yes, it can be shown to be wrong by evidence, if it cannot be demonstrated that descendent species cannot effectively interbreed with the ancestor species -- or one another.
But there are some further points to consider here which indicate that while this is a valid theory, it is not a particularly strong one.
1st, even while meeting these criteria, this theory is not prohibitive. To quote Karl Popper, “Every ‘good’ scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.” But this theory instead is wide open. It says given a bunch of time, that species (that cannot interbreed) may be derived from common ancestors due to genetic mutation, followed by natural selection.
2nd, there is no restriction specified as to how the genetic mutation is to take place. By only exposing a species to large amounts of hard radiation, for example, even if it demonstrated evolution, would merely show that evolution occurs under exposure to large amounts of hard radiation. Since that is not the natural environment of this planet, that approach would not show how evolution could occur here, on this planet. (However in any case, I have found no experimental example that satisifed the theory as stated by RWP where hard radiation worked.)
3rd, Darwin defined natural selection thusly in his Origin of Species in chapter 4: “This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection” (in his 1859 edition he added “or the Survival of the Fittest” to the sentence).
This is a positive attribute of this specification of the theory, as the process of the “preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations” is a restrictive attribute that must be observed for the theory to be correct. If for example a laboratory population of a short lived species were to suffer genetic mutations due to environmental conditions, and over time favorable variations were not observed, then the theory as specified would be determined to be false. If favorable variations were observed but not preserved, then the theory as specified would be determined to be false. If injurious variations were observed, but were not rejected, then the theory as specified would be determined to be false. This clause of the theory provides falsifiability.
A problem with this Darwinian definition of natural selection is that 'favorable' and 'injurious' are not defined. There is a danger of this statement being a tautology. In fact, the term “survival of the fittest” is a tautology. Of course a tautology is not necessarily false, but it is not useful as evidence. Fortunately, this is not really how natural selection is defined today. A better definition today is:
From a genetic perspective, natural selection can be defined as variation in reproductive success caused by genotypic variation (Lewontin, 1970). So here natural selection is clarified as being the “variation in reproductive success”. This is a cleaner definition, because it is quantifiable and is not a matter of opinion. This has also been defined here as: “In modern evolutionary genetics, natural selection is defined as the differential reproduction of genotypes (individuals of some genotypes have more offspring than those of others)...Thus while selection can occur because some individuals do not survive long enough to reproduce, sterile individuals also lack "fitness" in an evolutionary sense, as do individuals unable to find mates. We emphasize that fitness here refers only to the reproductive success of a kind of individual -- if big, handsome, male grouse madly displaying on a lek turn out to have fewer offspring than smaller, drab males that skulk in the bushes and waylay females, it is the wimpy males that are more fit.” (A “lek” is: an assembly area where animals (as the prairie chicken) carry on display and courtship behavior.)
A key point regarding mutations is that they must provide “adaptive advantage” to survive. From this more tightly defined definition of natural selection, the adaptive advantage must relate directly to reproductive success, which means that it relates to having more offspring, or else more offspring survive compared to the offspring of other individuals who lack this adaptive advantage.
The open question at this point is, has the theory specified as The theory of evolution states that species are derived from common ancestors by the primary means of genetic mutation followed by natural selection been verified by experiment or empirical observation? That is, have experiments been performed on short lived species such that evolution has been observed by the cause of genetic mutation and natural selection, such that at least two species of descendent generations cannot successfully interbreed with one another? (A "species" is a group of living things which are structurally similar to each other (but different from other species in some respects), and the members of a species are able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring only among themselves.)
As far as I know, no experiment has successfully done this. Dogs have been bred for thousands of years – but dog breeds can still successfully interbreed. Plant varieties such as corn have been developed for thousands of years – but the different varieties can all interbreed. I have heard that fruit flies in a laboratory somewhere have been mutated such that they cannot interbreed – but I have found no actual reference to the experiment. I did find reference to experiments in the 1930's on fruit flies by Theodosius Dobzhansky. It says: "In accumulating genetic differences, Dobzhansky saw how two populations might also accumulate differences in body size, colour, genital architecture, behavioural idiosyncrasies, and a thousand other characteristics that could eventually make them reluctant or unable to mate with one another. In these distinct genetic profiles, Dobzhansky believed he was seeing the origin of species in its infancy." But apparently he only “saw” how two populations “might” accumulate such differences such that they could “eventually” be unable to interbreed, not that he was successful in doing so.
I suspect that this theory may fail under the testability criterion. That is, it appears no laboratory experiments have actually confirmed it. And in nature it may be argued that that most species which exist at a given time represent those best suited for the environmental niches that are available. This means it is highly unlikely that any mutations will in fact be adaptive. But if there are massive changes to an environmental niche, then mutations might be adaptive. This could be observed in the vicinity of a volcanic eruption, for example. The surrounding ecosystem is destroyed, and the niches are changed. The question is, has evolution been documented in such circumstances? As far as I know it has not, yet this would be an obvious area of study.
So congratulations again, RWP, for providing a valid theory. Based on the analysis, however, the theory as stated has (as far as I can determine) not yet been supported by evidence under the testable criterion. Considering the age of the theory, that makes it questionable to be sure.
True, he may have been, however my question to him would be - why after trying so hard, did you not check if they could mate and produce offspring still? This seems a logical step and much easier than much of the work he did. In other words, why stop when the answer to the question was so close?
The angel part was sarcastic, but I didn't quote the part about angels.
I have trouble figuring out the difference between your statement on ID and my restatement. What IS the difference between ID and God tweaking the genes?
Scott refers to me as an intelligent design "creationist," even though I clearly write in my book "Darwin's Black Box" (which Scott cites) that I am not a creationist and have no reason to doubt common descent. In fact, my own views fit quite comfortably with the 40% of scientists that Scott acknowledges think "evolution occurred, but was guided by God."
The talk.origins FAQ has listed several instances of this. Ruling out cases of speciation caused by polyploidy and hybridization, there are instances cited of speciation in Stephanomeira malheurensis, Zea mays, Mimulus guttatus and several examples in the Drosophila literature.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/speciation.html
ID doesn't attribute effects to a specific cause. Who built the Sphinx? Darwinians would say the wind did it. ID'ers say otherwise.
I would sure like to know how you resolve the question of who the designer is. If you postulate aliens, you need to explain their origin. If God, then you have the same problem as Darwinians: Is the design implicit in creation (measure twice, cut once); is it ad hoc via miracles; is it indeterminate?
Ah you noticed! But some people have faith to sort out such things.
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