Posted on 12/11/2002 6:28:08 AM PST by A2J
But I was eerily correct in predicting that you would not accept it as a fact that any theory of the diversity of life would have to explain. Perhaps I should sign up with Psychic Network.
Is your having a great-great-great-great-great grandfather--several of them, probably--a hypothesis as well? If it is, what's the use of insisting upon such ridiculous legalisms? I mean, where could you have come from without this line of descent?
The real difference between a scientific theory and a hypothesis (or a conjecture or a fairy tale) is that a scientific theory explains observation in some recognizably systematic, insightful, and rational way. No scientific theory, Darwin's or Gould's or anyone else's, of the diversity of life will get away with ignoring the evidence of the fossil record, comparative anatomy, molecular biology, embryology, field observation, etc. that there is a hierarchical tree of relatedness, the clear result of common descent.
That's easy. Evolution theory is just plain wrong. For one thing evolution texts continue to include as Haeckel's embryos and the moths which have been proven to be frauds for decades. You have a problem with the truth being taught?????
An informed reader would realize that the RNA world is even more unlikely than a DNA one. The reason why there are no living things made of RNA is simply that RNA is too unstable to last very long. Also an RNA world would require the creation of a string of DNA of at least some half million bases PURELY AT RANDOM but it also requires a cell for it to get the materials to create the material for reproduction. These problems are what makes abiogenesis totally impossible.
In addition, the problem with the prokaryotes, eukaryotes and archea are nevertheless a problem for evolution because there are, in spite of the impossibility of any of them having descended from each other, there are features in more complex creatures from each of these single celled organisms.
BTW - whether you like my posting to you or not, you are posting in a public forum, and your dislike of my responses does not give you license not to have your misstatements corrected.
Come on, that's not reasonable. You couldn't possibly know what else may be out there. "In the Top Ten" is about all we can fairly say.
Patrick Henry (fair and balanced as always)
Not to pick a nit, but would you care to explain what you think the connection is between the "continuum hypothesis" and "the nature of a fluid such as water"?
Well, you have generalized the word "theory" quite a bit to get this "used in the same sense" result. Generalize enough and a word can mean anything, y'know. ;-)
Throughout this conversation we had been implicitly using the word "theory" in contexts where it was understood that "theories" can be proven false. See, it is not how they are developed that I see as the key difference, I suppose.
It is the fact that a "scientific theory" may be disproved, or at least proven incomplete; it is always tentative and pending further results. A "mathematical theory" if you want to call it that is always completely 100% flat-out true. Nothing can "prove it wrong". Ever!
That is the key difference because it means that Doctor Stochastic was comparing apples and oranges when he brought up "mathematical theories". They can't be "wrong" in the first place. Best,
Of that we see. :-)
Uh, well that is what the article was about, after all. Remeber the article? The one up at the top of this thread? Yeah, that one.
[me: it's pathetic how you rely so much on ad hominem attacks which are based on dumb guesses] That's your story and you're stickin' to it.
Um, whatever. "That's your story and you're stickin' to it" isn't a really good comeback to what I said. The expression is almost an inappropriate response. Am I talking to a real person here, or a junior high school student simulator? It's as if I said "2+2=4" and you've come back with "so's your mother!"
But at least you're having fun. That's the important thing.
But you also appeal to the lack of human eyewitnesses to common descent as a means of relegating evolution to conjecture.
Try to understand, it's common descent which I've said is a "conjecture" (i.e. hypothesis). A fairly plausible one. "Evolution", I suppose, contains more than just the hypothesis of "common descent"; namely it provides a plausible mechanism for why "common descent" isn't a nutty hypothesis.
"Evolution" is a theory. "Common descent" is a hypothesis. Understand now?
(You do recall "agreeing" to conjectural status, don't you?)
Yes, but not of evolution. Of "common descent".
That same standard of proof would make the idea that you had a great-great-great-great-great grandfather a conjecture,
Well....... yeah. (I still prefer the word "hypothesis".) It's a hypothesis that I had a great^5 grandfather. It just happens to be a very very solid one. (The only alternatives being that I or one of my ancestors was created via immaculate conception, or similarly implausible scenarios.)
Not all hypotheses are equally plausible and just because I'm saying that A and B are both hypotheses doesn't mean I'm saying that B is just as plausible as A. (I'm not sure why I'm telling you this, BTW, since I don't think you'll understand it, let alone respond to it intelligently.)
You try not to get into the details of the anti-E technicals, which would only end with you linking TrueOrigins or AnswersinGenesis (at very best, Discovery-of-Nothing Institute).
It would end up with me "linking" what? "TrueOrigins"? "AnswersinGenesis"?
WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
What are these things? Are they websites? I honestly have no freakin' idea what you're talking about. More blind, dumb guesswork on your part in pathetic attempts at ad hominem. Face facts kid: you ain't a mind-reader. In fact you're horrible at it. Don't quit your day job.
Seen enough ducks to know a duck.
Apparently not, cuz you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
["common descent" is not a fact, it's a hypothesis] There's controvery on this branch and that branch about how exactly to reconstruct the tree of life, but it's a little too late to say that there is no tree,
I never said that "there is no tree".
or that it's really five separate trees,
I'm not saying it's "really" N separate trees for some N > 1.
or that humans at least are somehow disconnected from the rest of the thing.
Not saying that either.
Listen up: I think "common descent" is probably true.
But it's still a hypothesis.
A theory provides insight and mechanism to observation.
Right, but "common descent" is NOT AN OBSERVATION. It's a hypothesis about what we can observe.
Any useful framework (scientific theory) for the diversity of life has to deal with the evidence for common descent in the obvious way, which is that outwardly divergent life forms appear related because they are.
Right, that's why "common descent" is a plausible hypothesis and "evolution" is a useful theory.
THEORY.
The preponderance of evidence for common descent has reached the status of fact.
I don't think so.
A scientific theory has to address why the preponderance of observation is what it is.
True. Any alternate hypothesis to "common descent" would have to address all the facts.
This belief is required if one rejects the idea of a creator. The odds of a random abiogenesis are so ridiculously high -- pondering this caused Fred Hoyle to accept the existence of an intelligent creator -- that a need for a second one would destroy the faith of even the most strident atheist.
One who believes in God, however, would have no problem accepting a second or third or fourth or whatever is required to explain the variety of life. All the while accepting that natural selection and random mutation also have their roles.
And one who believes in God would have no problem accepting just one abiogenesis instance, if that's how the evidence shakes out.
Perhaps it's the fact that I'm an experimentalist, but I still don't see the difference. A mathematician considers a theory "right" if only it is self-consistent. By contrast, "right" or "wrong" for a scientific theory also addresses the question of whether or not it applies to the real world. But I can also apply the same standards to mathematical theorems: an experimental test of Euclid's theorems shows that they don't apply to real spaces as well as Riemann's do. To me, Riemann is "right" where Euclid is "wrong". Apples to apples, you understand.
So you see, it isn't that the word "theory" is used differently in mathematics and physics, but that the standards of "right" and "wrong" are different.
One can believe in God and also accept the science of chemistry. They are not at all incompatible. Given that the building-blocks of proteins appear in nature, it certainly isn't inconceivable that with sufficient time, and with oceans filled with pre-organic molecules floating around, a self-replicator could eventually get formed. One is enough. After that the fun starts. None of this rules out God, so I wonder why so many religious folk simply won't accept that life could have begun as a natural process.
That is due to the fact that you are omitting something. The process may be natural, but it is so unlikely as to be "impossible". Chemicals form compounds in repeatable and predictable ways. Life changes the chemistry, by having catalysts available and proximal to the reactants. Without those conditions the compounds necessary for life are not formed. Competing reactions will destroy complex chemicals before they have the opportunity to be of any utility in the formation of life. In a nutshell, if the compounds are stable in the environment producing them they will use up the reactants in their formation and be extremely difficult to catabolize. If they are unstable in the same environment, they will be catabolized before they are complex enough to do anything. This observation is valid for dimers through the longest stable polymer. There are countless competing reactions contending in a wild lifeless "soup". The "astronomical" numbers presented for the improbability of the formation of the putative chemical antecedents of life only consider one type of reaction in the calculations.
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