Posted on 01/19/2005 9:21:33 PM PST by quidnunc
My dear reader, I lied to you. I told you last Wednesday that I would not return to the subject of evolution in the near future. Whereas, I'm not finished with that ankle yet. No sooner had I filed the piece, than news came of Repenomamus gigantus. A dinosaur-eating mammal in the early Cretaceous — the sort of thing that would get anyone's attention. However, I can guarantee that I won't return to the subject through the next four Wednesdays, because I'll be on holiday after Sunday.
Now, there is no threat whatever to the evolutionary establishment in the story I mention, any more than there was a threat to the "ontological discontinuity of man" in the earlier story about Homo floresiensis, the fossil woman from remotest Indonesia just one metre high.
Today's creature, or rather creatures, were just found in China's Lianoning province. As anyone familiar with the existing evolutionary charts will know, a powerful, warm-blooded mammal has no business being found in the early Cretaceous strata, of about 130 million years ago. Especially one with a clearly organized, carnivorous set of teeth, like R. gigantus — or like his smaller cousin, R. robustus, with the trademark slightly-displaced mammalian stomach, and a little dino he just ate, ripped up inside. Mammals of that epoch are supposed to be tiny mole and shrew-like jobs, subsisting on seeds and insects. Whereas carnivores tend to inhabit the top of the food chain. One wonders therefore if our latest finds also took dinosaurs larger than themselves — say, by hunting in packs.
The Yixian field, in which the discoveries were made, promises more surprises of just that sort, including (I can just taste it) perhaps feathered birds, also entirely out of the established evolutionary sequence. It appears to have been a kind of Cretaceous Pompeii, with whole populations caught napping in a single moment by a volcanic explosion preceded by lethal gas, and then encased in an ideal plaster of sandstone and ash.
-snip-
I realize it is not possible to produce such evidence for reasons of timeframe. I am willing to consider a less direct evidence, such as, for example, manipulating the process with accelerated changes in the chemical environment in order to artifically speed up the mutation/selection apparatus. I would also take any complex form of life, not necessarily a homo sapiens, as a result.
Nevertheless, I provided an answer to the question you posed, since your question did not ask: Which discovery that is easy to make would falsify the theistic or Intelligent Design view? -- it simply asked if such discovery were conceivable.
If the fossilized bones of a modern human were found in previously undisturbed 50-million-year-old sediment, it would be impossible for modern humans to have evolved from earlier hominids which are only a few million years old. Hence it would be false to claim that modern humans evolved from the earlier hominids that we currently recognize (because the discovered bones would be far older than those hominids ever were).
I maintain that this argument—which is essentially the same argument I've made twice before and won't repeat again—is independent of any particular mechanism or detail of evolution theory. It's a philosophical argument, not a scientific one. If you disagree, make your case.
You're pointlessly repeating yourself, and not replying to a word I wrote. You prefer to have the last word?
I am willing to consider a less direct evidence, such as, for example, manipulating the process with accelerated changes in the chemical environment in order to artifically speed up the mutation/selection apparatus. I would also take any complex form of life, not necessarily a homo sapiens, as a result.
That's a much more nuanced view, and I accept your re-statement (although we could discuss further the meaning of 'complex', I suppose). In fact, I'm pleased to learn that you would accept a successful result of such an experiment as a falsifying event for creationism/intelligent design, for I surmise that in the next few years (or decades, at the outside), we're going to be informed that just such an experiment has been performed successfully.
I'll save this thread, and if we're both alive and FReeping when the news breaks, we can laugh about it via FReepmail.
Best regards...
Is that correct?
Pleasure talking with you.
Let me also express the theistic view, because it is often confused with fundamentalist Christian literalist view (I am Roman Catholic and I can assure you that my thinking on the origin of life is in line with most Catholics).
The relevant chapters in Genesis are there to give us guidance as to the proper relationship between man, other living matter, dead matter and God. It gives us enough knowledge to produce coherent theology and it is not intended as a manual on genetics, biology or geology.
It is then a mistake to count six days, add on the lifetimes of the Biblical patriarchs, add on 2000 years of Christendom and work out the age of the universe. Or any more complex calculus like that.
It is conceivable for a theist that God set up mechanisms according to which the universe operates and created man indirectly through these mechanisms. In fact, several aspects of the Genesis story support some form of evolution: Man is created from dust; creation proceeds in stages; the stages are roughly what the science tells us they are, from shapeless matter to stars, planets, organic life, animals, and humans. If a videotape of Darwinian evolution is discovered, proving beyond doubt the mud - bateria - ... - fish - ... - apes - man sequence, a theoist would shrug his shoulders and say,-- Ah, so that is how God made us.
Christianity is falsified if things like sovereignty of God, man's free will, man's dominion over the rest of the Creation, man's supernatural entry into in the Kingdom of Heaven judged by Christ, -- are falsified. Since these things have the supernatural as the reference point, no scientific falsification of theological constructs is possible. Faith is not threatened by science, nor science is threatened by faith, although, of course, historically the two world views resulted in real life conflicts.
Don't be ridiculous. Evolution cannot be falsified. We thought it was falsified when no transitional creatures could be found. Nope. We thought it was falsified when the fossil record repudiated it. Nope. Instead, we got ridiculous "modifications" to the theory such as "punctuated equilibrium." Darwinism simply cannot be falsified, thereby proving it to be philosophy, not science.
And spare me your comebacks. If you say the fossil record supports evolution, you are either a fool or a liar. I've debated both and it is a waste of time.
Again, best regards...
Other readers will decide for themselves which one of us is more likely to be the fool or the liar, Timmy.
I am anti-evolutionist when the evolutionists overreach and attempt to furnish their findings to the service of militant atheism; or when they use the power of state to influence what should be an open debate. There was a period when the shoe was on the other foot, and back then I would have had a greater sympathy for them.
Folks may want to take a closer look at just how science works. Many posts in this thread have made significant errors in scientific method. For example, many are spending time on how to prove a "theory." From this and related threads, some want evolution labeled as a "theory" so that it will not be taken seriously and so creation science or intelligent design can be given equal footing.
If you want to do science, at least do your homework.
I am not going to give a lecture (that costs extra), but here's a hint--look up the role of hypotheses and hypothesis testing in science.
The rest is left as an exercise for the student.
I am anti-evolutionist when the evolutionists overreach and attempt to furnish their findings to the service of militant atheism; or when they use the power of state to influence what should be an open debate. There was a period when the shoe was on the other foot, and back then I would have had a greater sympathy for them.
I try to avoid militancy, at least in scientific matters. But I do think it's likely to be true that life on Earth in fact developed from what is usually taken to be non-living matter, and that the bewildering diversity that we see today in the biosphere is (in ways we still seem far from understanding) the result of random variation and mutation taking place over vast time periods within enormous numbers of remarkably ordered chemical structures (DNA and RNA, chiefly), which structures express themselves in types of organisms that the environment and its vicissitudes (that is, the occasional earthquake or fire or comet impact or meteor impact or change in climate or ...) then select for.
It doesn't seem to me, though, that it's a consequence of this view that there is no deity. Rather, the evolutionary approach—indeed, the natural science approach—is that we try to explain as much as we can without invoking non-physical causes. So it's a working hypothesis, rather than a conclusion to be drawn, that a deity (or some other consciously directing force) isn't required to explain the development of life on Earth. We take it as far as we can and see what happens.
Those who are currently interested in dismissing evolution studies entirely seem to me to be treating a baby as if it were an adult. The biosphere is so complicated that it seems to me safe to say that we're only just beginning to get a bit of understanding of it.
I was one of the addressees of your post, so let me say that I don't believe you'll find in my posts on this thread what you're criticizing in your post.
Posts to various individuals for informational and ping value only. No slurs intended to anyone.
None taken. My post was for clarification purposes.
Indeed it seems likely. And it does in no way invalidate theism and in particular, the Catholic reading of the Bible. In fact, if complex form of life is ever created in a testtube from dead matter, that would only corroborate the Biblical precept of man's dominion over nature in cooperation with God. If human life ever developed in a test tube, the theological challenge is not insurmountable either, since the unique mystery of human life is in its infusion with an immortal soul, -- the phenomenon in the realm of the supernatural once again. So I'd like to qualify what I said in #17 about falsifying creationism. It will falsify naive creationism which teaches that human body is directly and non-incrementally shaped by God, and it will falsify intelligent design provided that no steering for a particular set of features was employed by the experimenters. It will not falsify the theology of humanness as a creature in the image of God possessing an immortal soul, because surely the sovereign God can infuse a test tube human with soul if He so wishes.
Here is a link to a good discussion of the scientific method:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
When discussing scientific methods, it is best to be aware of these guidelines. When discussing religion and particular beliefs, other guidelines will, of course, apply.
Many of the problems on these threads occur when people intermingle, or ignore, the two different approaches in their efforts to convert others to their positions.
Creation science / intelligent design adherents often pervert the scientific method (whether out of ignorance or deliberate intent does not matter) in an effort to discredit evolution as a theory because this is what they believe.
On the other hand, scientists and those who follow this line of reasoning really should study and adhere to the scientific method. A little study of the scientific method, even as a refresher course, is never time wasted.
The many people who enjoy this forum, from all viewpoints, will thank you!
You misunderstand science. And you misunderstand the difference between fact and theory. If one allows for a fact of black body radiation, attempting to explain it is not a fact, but rather a theory as to cause.
There is no scientific method - save for verification. Great discoveries are the product of night terrors and demonic suggestion, or that of angels - you pick. The ideas just pop into one's head, as with the great lyric and song, poem and novel, painting and organizational idea, for which so many are so embarrassed to take personal credit. It wasn't me - they say.
Rather, the scientific method is verification based on metric. You have to be able to measure it, define it, and falsify it. It's always a guess. It's designed to be wrong. And it must ALWAYS be subject to test on the same protocol and assumptions made by the first, second and so on to perform the test. It's tradecraft, based on the language of math, and the calibrated rule.
And so evolution, as we see in this thread, and so many other places, is difficult to place in the category of science. So much of that specificity is missing. The tests are not encouraged but resented. The theory hides in a fog. The fact becomes a tautology. And so on.
Just give me a sentence of two. You used the phrase - the theory of evolution - do you not?
Spell it out. And then don't be so bothered if I wonder why it is lacking certain words and phrases found in so many other statements of supposedly this same theory.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.