Posted on 05/20/2006 6:24:48 PM PDT by celmak
This is Part II of 2 questions I asked my professor, a little long but worth it.
1) Do you believe that Evolution is a theory or fact?
2) Do you believe there are absolutes?
His answers are in itelic, mine are in bold. He has not yet answered some of the questions, but we are still corresponding.
We then use the law to make predictions (cannonballs, buildings, space shuttles, motions of the planets). As more and more of these are in fact shown to be true via more observations, our confidence in our idea grows, and we label it a theory (as opposed to a hypothesis). Sometimes observations come along which may contradict our theory (e.g., light seems to have a constant speed for all viewers), which means that we will need to discard or modify our theory. For example, in spite of the vast number of observations supporting Newton's law of gravity, in a few cases it didn't work: e.g., the orbit of Mercury. People nonetheless believed it was the best description and sooner or later new observations would make the Mercury observations make sense. Einstein's theory of relativity explains what is wrong: Newtonian gravity "works" so long as objects aren't moving too fast or the strength of gravity isn't too high. His corrections are now the reigning theory until new ones come along. Agreed, we cannot expect gravity to be like ours on other planets. Size, speed, content, etc. of other objects in the universe have to be considered. Err…Einstein is saying the laws of the universe ARE the same everywhere, that there is no special place. The laws are the same everywhere, it’s just the conditions (amount of mass, temperature of matter, etc…this is what I hope you’re referring to) that differ. Agreed; we’re on the same page, I think? The conditions of size, speed, content, amount of mass, temperature of matter, etc. of other objects in the universe have to be considered, correct?
Given that quantum particles are "entangled" allowing some kind of faster-than-light interactions (why don’t they lose mass at a rapid rate? I don’t understand why they should lose mass… I could be wrong, but are not protons going at the speed of light around nucleus? If so, then doesn’t it follow that the closer to light speed an object gets, the more it loses mass at a faster rate? ), it seems to me that likely that the theory of gravity will need to be modified some more: it's not perfect, but it's pretty darn good, particularly for most people's daily needs. Maybe I should have asked my question about gravity differently; tomorrow, being consistent with today on earth, southern California, Pacific Standard Time, do you think it would be factually correct to say, “If you jump off of a 70 foot cliff in Palos Verde’s, you would hit very hard on the ground? Allowing, of course, that there was nothing to slow you on the way down (a tree, parachute, etc.), and that you actually landed on the ground, and not a fluffy mattress. ;) Just a little humor. The law of gravity and Newton’s laws of motion make much more specific claims than “hard” – a direct measure of the force of the impact. How about, if you were @ 197 kilos in weight, you would “create” @ 1281.36 Kilos per square centimeter of pressure against the ground that has a tinsel strength of @ 4365 Kilos, making an impression on the good earth of @ 31.56 centimeters deep (the pliability and composition of the ground being an unknown will vary the impression).” If I don’t get at least a smile out of this, I’ll give up trying to get one ;)
In terms of the theory of biological evolution, whatever hypothesis or theory you hold to, you have to take it account "the facts," the observations. If you deny those, we cannot even start a conversation. I’m glad to see that we believe Evolution is a theory, even the possibility of a hypothesis. So many scientists, and non-scientists, believe it’s a fact, as apposed to believing “in the facts” of Evolution. I strongly agree, but note that the definition of theory is not the conventional (“everyday”) use of the word as “guess” or “idea.” The phrase used to dismiss evolution, because it is “just a theory” drives me nuts. It certainly shows a poor understanding of the claims being made. I absolutely agree. As before, “fact” and “theory” are distinct from each other, as is “hypothesis”. But as some dismiss evolution as “just a theory”, can you see the same frustration by others claiming that Evolution is a “fact”, rather than talking about “the facts” of Evolution? Besides, why do Evolutionists use the word “fact” when it is hardly used in the scientific community? Are not the words “hypothesis, theory, law” the vernacular, not “hypothesis, theory, fact”?
For example, there are fossils, remains of what look like organisms, most of which do not currently exist on the Earth. We find these remains in very specific layers of rocks (composed of sediments, grains of rock that have become stuck or glued together, each layer with its own flora and fauna. Some organisms overlay between layers, and some do not. The "deeper" layers contain only fossilized single-celled organisms, then as you go "upward" through them you find remains of ocean organisms, then land organisms. You find amphibians "below" reptiles and mammals, and feathered dinosaurs "below" birds. The reining interpretation (or "theory") of this evidence is that sediments slide downhill (often carried by running water) to the bottom of valleys and the ocean, something we see happening today (a uniformitarian interpretation = processes today were ongoing in the past). The remains of organisms become a part of them sometimes, and in some rare instances bacteria and other decomposers are unable to get at them, they become mineralized, and are not destroyed by erosion or other natural causes. Sediments lower down would have had to be laid down first, so they represent "older" organisms. Because the flora and fauna fossils in them have changed, some species have gone extinct and new species have come into existence.
The way evolutionary biologists interpret this evidence (their "theory" of these "facts") is to say that species have evolved or in the language of the 18th & 19th centuries, "transmuted." We do find sequences of fossils of a number of organisms (shelled ocean organisms are probably the best examples, because shells are preserved so easily and they are quiet abundant in the ocean, a place were sediments accumulate regularly) which suggest a process of development, something which is also suggested by fish -> lobe fish -> tetrapods -> amphibian sequences, recent finds of ancient whales (progression of the blowhole from nose to top of head, smaller rear legs), etc...natural selection is one way of explaining this, though "genetic drift" is also acknowledged by most to be an important process in some cases. Your case is for a slow, gradual transition, not made for quick changes. Slow and fast reproducing animals are found in the Cambrian period, even vertebrates. In 1977, Professor Stephen Jay Gould wrote:
‘The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. … to preserve our favored account of evolution by natural selection we view our data as so bad that we never see the very process we profess to study.” Gould, S.J., Evolution's erratic pace.Natural History 86(5):14, 1977
In 1980 Gould said:
‘The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution.” Gould, S.J., Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging? Paleobiology 6:119–130 (p.127), 1980
So what do you think of Punctuated Equilibrium (PE) negating gradualism? Like the early chemists who sought to find one magical force to explain all chemical interactions, we are setting ourselves up for failure if we expect evolution to be precisely the same in all situations. (e.g., look up genetic drift) It may proceed faster in some cases and slower in others, something Gould would be the first to acknowledge, so be extremely cautious in trying to claim that he is saying “organisms that did not evolve (please clarify, do you mean data, as Gould states?)” : you are taking him out of context. He is not suggesting that organisms could not have evolved, merely that the pace of evolution had to be enormously greater. (I highlighted [underlined] the title of his article for you: it makes my point.) The rate of evolution would depend on the changes in the environment, physical and biological. The Cambrian Explosion is a time when multicellular animals emerged, and thus is a period of unprecedented biological changes in resources and niches. Notice that this has never happened since (we have only the body types – phyla - that survived that period). It’s hard for natural selection to experiment with niches already filled. One of the things that makes this such a difficult subject is the contingent nature of the evidence: everything that happens depends crucial on what happened before. I think you missed my point. I’m not asking whether or not organisms (or data?) could not have the process of “evolving”, I’m asking, doesn’t there seem to be too small an amount of data to make the theory of Evolution’s process work? I don’t mean to be obnoxious, but what do you think of Punctuated Equilibrium (PE) negating gradualism?
It has been verified in terms of rapidly growing organisms (e.g., bacteria, fruit flies) in the lab, and even shifts in characteristics consistent with natural selection have been observed in the wild (most famously, in "Darwin's finches" during El Nino conditions). Isn’t this adaptation, not Evolution? I define “evolution” as a shift in the gene frequency within a given population owing to a change in environment. If you want to call that “adaptation” until it produces an inability for two populations to interbreed (so that they are then, by definition, separate species), that’s fine by me. Still doesn’t change the fact that you can see organisms responding to their environment in the wild, a necessary condition for the evolutionary “hypothesis” to be correct. Among such “slowly” reproducing species, it’s the that most we could hope to see on a human timescale. The geologic time scale is mind-bogglingly vast. I find the “it’s adaptation” argument a matter of semantics. As far as I can tell, the proponents don’t want to admit that any kind of evolution can take place (the fixity of species), so they use the word “adaptation” instead of “microevolution.” A spade is still a spade. But do we not live in a world were clear and distinct definitions matter? When one talks about Evolution, they relate it to the larger scale of Evolution; do we not conclude the apparent (whether macro or micro) that man “evolved” from apes? In other words, is not the “necessary condition for the evolutionary “hypothesis” to be correct” also correlated to the overall hypothesis that man came from Apes? How can we distinguish from a small spade and a large one? Can you see the frustration that many people have with the lack of distinction between a finch with a small beak to one with a large one, and an ape to a man?
Moreover, that fact that all life uses the same genetic code and that the differences between the genes is consistent with the evolutionary progression derived from the fossil record (e.g., longer time since divergence = larger difference in genes), lends further support to the idea. But is there any record of a genus/species jumping to another genus/species? Has there ever been a species that has been observed to have mutated out of its genus? Are not all mutations sub-species of another species?We’re definitely moving beyond my knowledge base here. My first response is that no, I don’t believe so, but based on the pace of changes in the fossil record, I don’t think that we’d expect that on a human timescale. The first place I would look for information is with micro-organisms, because of their faster reproduction. Is there a genus for micro-organisms? If so, have there been any jumps to another genus there?
(If it were discovered that different organisms used a different code, and that the differences were not consistent with the fossil record that would have been a major blow to the biological theory of evolution.) But is it not the minute differences in the genes that make up the differences in life? Does this mean that since a frog has five toes, ankles, knees, thighs, etc; e.g., frogs are human too? Would it not make sense for a designer to use the same material to make a house (concrete and steel) as a building? What about anomalies, such as hemoglobin found in vertebrates, and found in earthworms, mollusk, starfish, and some bacteria? Nurse sharks and camels have an identical antigen receptor protein with the same unusual single chain structure? Is, as so many pro-abortionist believe, the zygote of a fish is the same as a human zygote (I know you don’t believe this, but I have seen with my own eyes the case made to have an abortion)? It is hard for me to know what a designer would do. A lot of scientists that we have looked at in this class made claims about the way that they would expect God to put together the universe, and notice how often they disagree with one another, so sure, a designer might use the same structures, but then again, they might not. I’m glad to here you believe that there is God, but what percentage in the science community believe that there is a god? How many of them would actually let this hypothesis in a high school system? My point is this: the designer could have made it really hard for us to even consider the idea of evolution by making living organisms far more different from one another. I think He has enticed us to chase him, don’t you? There are indeed strong genetic similarities between humans and many bacteria. That seems pretty consistent to me with the idea of evolution (but is not the differences that contradict this idea?). I cannot say I’m familiar with your claims about hemoglobin: the blood work that gets the people feisty is R.F. Doolittle’s work on blood clotting. From my coursework at UCSD with him, I seem to remember him showing how their way divergence but similarities within different lines of descent. I must admit, I’m a bit surprised that bacteria use hemoglobin – what’re your source for this? – From “Wikipedia-Hemoglobin” , but I guess that shows I’m a physicist by training. And I’m your pupil! ;)
In various labs, scientists use the principle of natural selection to try and predict the strains of flu that will be out next year, so that they can produce vaccines in time, or how to fight bacteria and viruses and insects which are evolving resistance to our drugs (medicines, pesticides, etc...). Could not the same be concluded by testing for adaptation? Does not trying to mutate outside a species to form another species lead to a dead end? What do you mean by a “dead end”? Do you mean the organism would have no one to reproduce with or produce unviable offspring? (Note that copying errors within sexual reproduction constitute mutations too, but do not necessarily produce unviable offspring. This is one advantage of “sex,” perhaps explaining why it is so common within successful organisms: the great variation allows them to deal better when their environment changes, whether climate or a new species.) Let me rephrase this (this is why one should be distinct): since we have no data, evidence, of a genus jumping to another genus, why try to find propagation in this direction? Microevolution (adaptation) sure, but Macroevolution (genus to genus) reproduction?
My understanding is that ID attempts to interpret many of these facts differently, so I think an argument can be presented that it is an alternative theory. Hopefully, government schools will feel the same way and strike down the fallacy of “separation of church and state” “inferred” in the Constitution. I side with those who want to keep ID out of the science classroom: its rejection of naturalism is the basis for my claim. How about the acceptance of both theories without the rejections, and let the students decide? Doesn’t mean it is wrong, though. What I really want taught is that science is useful, but doesn’t tell us “the truth” (Are you talking about philosophy?) so much as it helps us understand how the material (natural?) world works. This, of course, has implications for what happened in the past, which tends to annoy people when it doesn’t match their own understanding. (Please give an example of what happened in the past. I could give the example of the present; would you not say [leaving out the rejections of naturalism] that the theory of ID is left out of schools because it does not match the establishments own understanding and tends to annoy people? ) The problem is that, how things worked in the past really does have implications for now (but has this reversed itself? And which has greater implications? Wouldn’t the middle ground on this be best?).
By the way, whose church should we use? (That seems to be the most important reason to keep church and state separate to me. There is no way we’re going to get all the Christians to agree with one another, let alone the other religions.) Yours? Mine? Everybody’s: let everyone go to a different school and be taught according to their own tradition? It’s not who’s church should we use, it’s that we should include the Bible if we are trying to prove it wrong or right. I think your inclusion of the Genesis verses in class was commendable (unfortunately, the day the class discussed this was the day I was in Texas, darn it!) As I wrote in my research paper: “…in 1947, the Everson v. Bord of Education Supreme Court Case found, in the Establishment clause in the 1st Amendment, a separation of church and state (though I can't find it). Never before has this clause been interpreted as such until then, it had always been interpreted as an establishment of a church. This lead to Supreme Court decisions, beginning in 1948, deciding that Creationism, or ID, was a violation of this interpretation. To add insult to injury, SCOTUS (Supreme Court Of The U.S.) decided in 1968 that Evolution will be mandatory in government schools. Mr. Branch, try as he might, argues that it was all a science debate between ID and Evolution, and it was Evolution that won the opinion of the courts. In reality, it had nothing to do with the scientific debate; it had everything to do with a Liberal SCOTUS at the time, thinking that the Constitution is a “living document” instead of its “Original Intent”. In other words, it had to do with law and politics! Who knows what a Conservative “Original Intent” SCOTUS will decide? At present in the U.S., the Liberal-secularist have the upper hand in science and the teaching of it in our school system, but there are many court battles still to come.” What I also find incredible is that only Christian based beliefs have been outlawed in government schools; there have been no negative decisions on other religions involvement, all have had Christianity in the forefront.
ID's basic principle - correct me if I am wrong - is that living organisms themselves or structures in them are too complex to have evolved, typically because too many "parts" would have to evolve at just the same time in just the right way for it to function and give any kind of advantage necessary for natural selection to work. An evolutionary biologist would say that new genes develop and are preserved in a population even when they don't offer an advantage: it is the change in the environment that helps a gene spread when it now becomes an advantage (e.g., thicker or faster growing fur if a climate becomes colder). It looks to me that the two are apples and oranges, i.e., parts and development. I believe the theory by ID is that the mathematical sequences in DNA are so complex that it took a designer. It’s what changes the sequence NATURALLY is the mystery, or is there? I’m under the impression that a variety of factors (radiation, sexual reproduction) can lead to changes in the sequence. We call them “mutations,” right? Let me ask you then, if rarity considers the notion of extinction due to an insufficiently dense population of a given species; than is "rarity" a problem for the whole notion of “mutation (speciation)”? Do you think “mutation (evolution)” occurs quickly or over long periods of time? Do you believe in characteristic chromosome numbers? And how did we go from 22 or 24 (or whatever) chromosome pairs to 23 over a long period of time?
As I understand it, the majority of ID people (at least the intellectuals who lead the movement: I don't think they make this very clear to their followers, at least in my experience with the followers) have no problem with life changing over a vast period of time. They explain this change as owing to a "designer" interfering periodically on the Earth, and claim that this is a better explanation because life is too complex to have developed on its own.) This is one, of many, differences that ID and Creationists have. This also is a subject that I’m investigating about in history of science in the 1800’s; that the scientists of the time were mainly ID, and gave too many concessions to Evolutionists. This is the era of when “Darwinism” took over the sciences, universities, and political systems as well. As the old saying goes, when good people do nothing…I think you need to state this a bit more precisely: Evolutionists took over, but Darwinists did not, at least if you define Darwinism as evolution by natural selection. If anything, the evolutionists of the late 18th century were neo-Lamarckian (even Darwin by the end of his life!). The ironic achievement of Darwin was to convince many people that evolution had happened – it just explained so many things about the natural world – but they didn’t buy into his really innovative suggestion, natural selection. (See E & C, p. 242) Yes, I’ve had that page marked, but it does not mention, as much, the concessions made by “ID-ists” (to coin a phrase)” This point is very important for one of my research papers; what is your definition of “Darwinism”? Please help me be distinct on this as it describes the difference between the philosophy and the science in these two titles, “Darwinism” and Evolutionism”. I always thought “Darwinism” was the philosophy and “Evolutionism” the scientific theory, no? If this is incorrect, then what is the philosophy called? The point I will be trying to make is the history of how the entwinement of science, academia, law, and politics through the 1800’s went from the Creator to no Creator, or how we went from Biblical philosophy to Darwinist philosophy(survival of the fittest and such). Most, if not all the Universities were founded on Biblical principles, today they are secular (without God); why do you think the Christians left them in their hands? What were their concessions?
Most believe in "microevolution" (small changes can occur within species - it's hard to deny the evolution we've observed happening on human timescales), but think the "big jumps" (macroevolution) are too implausible. - E.g., the difference between ID and Creationism. Yup. The Creationists would probably claim that IDer’s – by allowing for microevolution – make the possibility of macroevolution too plausible. Better to hold the line. Could you please explain what you mean by “hold the line”?
Some allow far more evolution than you might think. For example, my understanding is that Michael Behe (a biochemist and author of "Darwin's Black Box," one of the best pieces of scientific ID that I've read) has allowed in speeches that all you really need is a "first cell" and everything evolved from that point on. (Ironically, this is not much different than Darwin's "god breathed life in to one form or a few and from these..." at the conclusion of the "Origin of Species.") I was floored when William Dembski was recently reported to have said that maybe designer put the "seeds" of everything in organisms from the beginning so that they'd unfold (This is what St. Augustine suggest in the 4th century.), and then developed from that point. (Is he merely arguing, then, that we need a deterministic theory of evolution, and then ID folks would be satisfied? I'm mystified about what the argument is over if this is what they are proposing.) Again, -E.g., the difference between ID and Creationism.
Philosophically, I have a problem with the "god in the gaps" argument that life is so complex, we could never figure out how it developed naturally (thank God Galileo, Kepler, Isaac Newton (all believing that God created the earth – yes, of course, but an interesting question is, which of them would have expected God to do it naturalistically? I’d guess Galileo would be all for that, while this notion would disturb Kepler and Newton – don’t forget, Newton is an Arian! Still, there writings about God and science would be outlawed in schools if they were written today. I know what your probably thinking, “would they believe in God if they had the knowledge we have today? We will never know.), and the rest didn't do that when were trying to figure out how the world works), but ID folk do have a good point that all things might not be explicable naturalistically. However, when it comes to what I consider to be science, I don't want physicists to be able to say "Mercury has that orbit because God made mercury behave that way" or "Mercury's orbit is too complex to understand" and then move on to other issues. I'd rather say, we don't completely understand it yet, but here is our current naturalistic interpretation of the observations ("facts"). On the contrary, I truly believe that science and all of nature were left here to learn more about how God works, to have a closer relationship with Him. I also believe that His providence will open new avenues to scientists as the population grows. If you look at past history, population growth and the knowledge of science, and the utility of it, have grown at approximately the same rate. Just look at transportation and communication. I’m not sure how to measure these to establish a rate of change. All of them are probably exponential, though. Providential?
I’ll grant you though; the “God said it, that settles it” crowd is taking the Bible way out of context. This has lead to good Christians convincing themselves that they should not be a part of the world, which leads to good people doing nothing about bad situations. You’re preaching to the choir here. ;)
Philosophically, I am also skeptical of "relativistic" claims. (As I noted in my discussion of relativity, it is really the principle of the invariance of the laws of physics even though people may see things differently. At the heart of things, there are absolutes according to the theory of relativity.) I quite agree; as Einstein stated, “Relativism is for physics”, not psychology, as too many try to do.
However, students are welcome to articulate relativist arguments: they just have to support them well! I truly thank you for the opportunity of this discussion, and that we can agree and disagree agreeably. I hope this was as much fun for you as it was for me!
Hope this helps, It most certainly has.
P.S.: Thanks sooo much professor in helping me in the understanding of this subject, and your patience with sometimes trite pupil. All this information I’m sure will make for a better research paper.
Gravity is a theory, so is drug receptor interaction a theory. The cause and effects of essentail hypertension are theories.
But I'll tell you this:
I take my blood pressure tablet every day. I also pray every day.
Wow! Militant ignorance and scientific uncertainty conflated! I'm underwhelmed.
Really? I calculated it at 1720.
Cheers!
Electrons move around the nucleus at high speed, but not light speed. Protons are in the nucleus. In relativity acceleration to the speed of light is impossible because as you approach the speed of light the object's mass increases, thus making it harder to accelerate even more. According to the calculations an object can never be accelerated to the speed of light because its mass would go to infinity, thus requiring an infinite amount of force to achieve that last bit of acceleration.
homo sapiens are a hybrid and have fractile dna as such
Ehh?
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