Piltdown and How Science Really Works [Evolution & Creationism]

OK, I lied already about school being out. You skipped something important.

For fifty points, Bozo, what part of the theory of evolution does the phrase "random copying errors" omit?

Again, if you don't know what the theory of evolution is, how do you know it's wrong?

You said "And all this is magically done via random copying errors."

What did you leave out, and why does it matter?

Not to mention "magically" doesn't belong in there. When the omission is rectified, what happens ain't magic. Which is probably why such omissions keep happening in creationist posts in the first place.

The marsupial wolf and grey wolf might look similar, but from what I understand they are same design reached in different ways.

They are both medium-sized four-legged mammalian carnivores, but one is fashioned from placental mammal and one is fashioned from marcupial mammal. From an Intelligent Design perspective it is as if two seperate designers tried their hand at a dog-like creature.

From a scientific point of view, it is no mystery that in two seperated regions, beasts available would evolve to fill the sucessful niche for medium-sized four-legged carnivore. Obviously there are optimum feature-designs to take advantage of this niche, such as jaw shape, skull shape and tooth shape. So it makes sense that both seperated populations would converge on this optimum design, but from different starting points.

"Why is this not science?"

I didn't claim it was. You seem to be under the impression that science is the only method of obtaining truth. This is incorrect. Science is very good at what it does. However, it is limitted. As you say, no matter what, if a designer whose purposes are unknown designed the universe, science would not be able to say so. That does not mean that those who say creation didn't happen are correct, or even say that creationism doesn't have evidence. It simply says that science cannot make such a hypothesis. If science makes a hypothesis based on the fact that it has excluded the other possibilities a priori, forgive me if I hold their interpretations a little in suspect.

"From an Intelligent Design perspective it is as if two seperate designers tried their hand at a dog-like creature"

Or one designer thought "I wonder what this would look like as a marsupial".

Have you ever ported a program just to see what design changes you would need to accomodate a different toolkit? Or rewrote a program you wrote earlier in a new language to see how the language would affect the program design?

"Obviously there are optimum feature-designs to take advantage of this niche, such as jaw shape, skull shape and tooth shape."

It is not obvious that there are so few. It is also not obvious why different continents/climates would produce such similar creatures. It is also not obvious that the same design can have a continual stream of stable intermediates from such diverse starting points.

"For fifty points, Bozo, what part of the theory of evolution does the phrase "random copying errors" omit?"

Natural selection. However, that is unimportant to my point, because the only things available to be selected are those produced by random copying errors, and, in some rare cases, horizontal gene transfers.

However, this is even more problematic, in that not only do you have to have what can be produced by random copying errors, but you are ONLY allowed those that can produce stable intermediaries.

Natural selection.

Hooray! Not many of you could have done even that much, religious horror and all that. Now, for the peanut gallery, all the forbidden and unknowable words together:

The theory of evolution says that the diversity of life on Earth is the result of common descent, diversifying through variation and natural selection.

However, that is unimportant to my point...

Wrong! You "forgot" it because random variation *acting alone* would not likely produce a change in any consistent direction over time. (Actually, it still would but the direction would be random and the progress would be achingly slow.) By comparision, high selection pressures are conceded to work, sometimes rapidly. ("But it's only microevolution and nobody disputes that! Blah! Blah!") Your point was an argument from incredulity against randomness moving things in a clear direction so you "forgot" the non-random part. Cheap, dirty, and dishonest, but par for the creation science course.

... because the only things available to be selected are those produced by random copying errors, and, in some rare cases, horizontal gene transfers.

It doesn't matter if the "only" source of variation is random copying errors. (But it isn't. There are non-copy-error mutations and you forgot sexual recombination.)

It matters that evolution is the joint action of two things and for strawman purposes you left one off.

Forgot something. This time I mean it, you may have the last word.

"Or one designer thought "I wonder what this would look like as a marsupial"."

Good you've made a hypothesis. It is a shame that Intelligent Design Theory does not allow such hypothesising about the designer. It is a lie that if life is intelligently designed, nothing can be infered about the designer. We have so many facts about past life, present life and it's distribution that lots of properties of the intelligent designer(s) can be deduced.

Here are some facts:
-Australia has marsupial mammals, while mammals in the rest of the world are placental.
-The fossil record shows that both marsupial and placental mammals have changed over time. So this is not an instant design, rather it was cumulative stepped design much like Windows 98 was a design based upon Windows 95. The marcupial wolf was based on previous marcupial designs. In fact all of the marcupials of australia were designed in many versions over many millions of years.

So given these facts does it look like motive of creating the marsupial wolf was due to curiosity based on the grey wolf?
Well no. The facts show that the steps to reaching both grey wolf and marsupial wolf were established millions of years before any dog-like designs were even in place. So either the designer(s) started out with the intention of reaching two types of dog-like mammals, or that both are dog-like is just a coincidence given the similar niche that exists in both areas (this is more like the evolutionary explaination).

That said you really have to question that marsupials and placentals are the result of the same designer. All intelligent designers have a motive for designing. Yet if no motive can be produced for a single designer to create two similar beasts using different methods then multiple designers is a far better theory.

For example two seperate designers, Microsoft and Macintosh have produced two seperate lineages of similar looking operating systems. This appears very much like how two different lineages of mammal exist. So from our experience of Intelligent Design it seems likely that multiple designers were at work in creating life.

Actually if we persue the logic of the Intelligent Designer(s) further we would inevitably run into contradictions and real stupidity. Some of the greatest problems have to be as to why island life is so often similar to nearby mainland life. This is easily explained via evolution, but what possible motive is there for intelligent designer(s) to spread out their designs like this? We seriously end up with the ridiculous notion that there are millions of intelligent designers all tinkering with different species throughout time (ooh looks like we've reached evolution, but with supernatural thrown in).

I think it would be hillarious to muddy the Intelligent Design waters by setting up an institute of Multiple Intelligent Design that argued that the evidence is clearly on the side of multiple designers, not a single designer. Furthermore if regular Intelligent Design really does make headway into schools as the theory that explains life is designed, then Multiple Intelligent Design would follow as the theory that explains the designers.