Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article

To: dark_lord
How the heck can anyone falsify "given enough time and space, positive mutations explain natural selection"? It isn't falsifiable

This is quite garbled. Natural selection is differential survival and production of offspring.

I think what you're really trying to ask is whether

mutations + sexual recombination + neutral genetic drift + natural selection

is sufficient to account for life as we know it, given some initial bacterium to get it started. (IE whether from conventional abiogenesis or special creation or panspermia or whatever).

It could be falsified in a number of ways: finding organisms that have radically different genetic codes, or finding that biochemical analysis did not produce a tree structure, or that different analyses produced different trees.

However, the standard theory has passed all these potential falsifications.

2,047 posted on 08/09/2003 6:06:41 PM PDT by Virginia-American
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2027 | View Replies ]


To: Virginia-American
It could be falsified in a number of ways: finding organisms that have radically different genetic codes, or finding that biochemical analysis did not produce a tree structure, or that different analyses produced different trees. However, the standard theory has passed all these potential falsifications.

Simply saying a "theory" can be falsified in a number of ways is insufficient. The TOE is completely dependent upon the concept that mutation causes genetic change (affirmed), that while the vast majority (99.999%) of mutations are deletorious yet a tiny number are positive or neutral (affirmed), and therefore given a really long period of time that a sequence of neutral or positive mutations will result in new genera, families, orders, kindoms, and so forth of different species (NOT AFFIRMED). This statement is NOT falsifiable because only be observing over tens if not hundreds of thousands of years can it be affirmed. And only if it is not affirmed over that same long time period can it be falsified. This, and no other, is the key point.

And further, this concept (mutation causing a sequence of gradual changes, i.e. microevolution) is either sketchy, or not observed (depending on who is asked) in the fossil record, and I quote: "Reexamination of the fossil record led Steve Gould and Niles Eldridge to recognize that only a few examples of speciation by gradual change existed. In contrast, the fossil record documents long intervals of time during which species undergo little or no morphological change. These intervals are punctated by the sudden appearance of new species (and higher-order taxa) as a peripheral isolate.". Check out the site, it is no creationist mumbo jumbo site but rather a science page regarding plant evolution from Colby University in Maine. It is also the case that grouping the fossil record into a "tree" has come under attack from various directions. See What do terms like phylum, order and family mean?

So what say you? Classification into a "tree" or set of "trees" is under attack not by Creationists but by biologists, microevolution is only sketchy at best in the fossil record, and there is no way to refute the "give us a few tens of thousands of years and you'll see your evolution" argument (upon which the TOE hangs) -- and I say again that the TOE is no more falsifiable than astrology. And note you -- I am making no Creationist claims in my assertions!

2,060 posted on 08/09/2003 7:12:08 PM PDT by dark_lord (The Statue of Liberty now holds a baseball bat and she's yelling 'You want a piece of me?')
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2047 | View Replies ]

To: Virginia-American
It could be falsified in a number of ways: finding organisms that have radically different genetic codes, or finding that biochemical analysis did not produce a tree structure, or that different analyses produced different trees.

You do not need radically different genetic codes to show others could not have descended from it. The reason is this - to change the genetic code, one single reading, you would need to AT THE VERY SAME TIME need to change the DNA bases of all the genes using that code or the organism will not function. So what you need is a miracle or a designer and evolution says there are no miracles and no designers. So yes, that proves the theory of evolution to be false (at least in regards to the statement that each and every species descended from another species). But then if not all descended, then there must have been a Creator at work eh?

2,122 posted on 08/09/2003 9:38:06 PM PDT by gore3000 (Intelligent people do not believe in evolution.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2047 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Smoky Backroom
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson