Are You Too Dumb to Understand Evolution?

CreationEvolutionHeadlines ^ | September 10, 2008

[GodGunsGuts]

Sept 10, 2008 — Astrobiologist David Deamer believes that life can spontaneously emerge without design, but he thinks lay people are too uneducated to understand how this is possible, so he gives them the watered-down version of Darwin’s natural selection instead, which he knows is inadequate to explain the complexity of life. That’s what he seemed to be telling reporter Susan Mazur in an interview for the Scoop (New Zealand). Is the lay public really too dense for the deeper knowledge of how evolution works?...

[ColdWater]

An observer standing on a stationary, non-rotating Earth with the Sun orbiting the Earth

I see you have not done the homework assignment I gave you last night.

[ColdWater]

Would you be willing to draw up the math and geometry that supports this claim?

I gave you the link to that earlier today.

[tacticalogic]

The upper limit is as low as their opponent is willing to drag the debate down and the low is as high a road as their opponent is willing to keep the discussion about science.

Is that "opponent" collective, or individual?

Keeping in mind if you’re demanding empirical evidence then be prepared to present your own. Walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk.

If I'm not proposing any theories, what is it I'm supposed to be providing evidence of? If they've got a theory, I'd like to see the evidence. Do I have to have a competing theory before they'll show it to me?

[ColdWater]

You are addression only one of at least three effects on the apparent position of the sun.

[ColdWater]

ToE doesn’t submit valid “empirical evidence” that makes sense to me when it comes to origins. Not even close. That life just sprang up out of dirt with no purpose or intelligent thought behind it, totally random and all the perfect conditions just happened to come together by...chance? accident? The sheer astronomical odds are staggering.

ToE does not address origins.

[ColdWater]

And just how is that required of someone that believes that aspects of the universe are better explained as being the product of intelligence than random chance?

Uh, you have to go to the experts in ID. Or, perhaps you have found a major flaw in ID?

[ColdWater]

Thanks for pointing that out. Correction below:

ToE does not address evolution

ORIGINS.

[Fichori]

“I see you have not done the homework assignment I gave you last night.”

Relevance?

[allmendream]

Shoddy thinking is reading a pubmed abstract about phylogenetic comparison and thinking that they actually TESTED mutation rather than ASSUMING it. And then Gibsoning the article to try to make it say that mutation is not random, when they never even tested mutation.

You are either a fool or utterly dishonest. Either way a Gibson quote shows you have no interest in approaching the subject honestly.

[Fichori]

“Would you be willing to draw up the math and geometry that supports this claim?”

“I gave you the link to that earlier today.”

I was asking LeGrande to draw the math and geometry that supports the claim he posted in 1,415

If your talking about the link you gave to the wikipedia article, that is a different subject.
(FYI, I have been referencing that WP article since long before you posted the link)

[ColdWater]

Relevance?

Your misuse of the term orbit. If you had done your homework you would know that your assumption would be physically impossible.

[ColdWater]

OH, you are asking him because you did not understand the link I gave you. You really should have done your homework and you would be able to understand.

[ColdWater]

Since you didn’t do your homework last night, your assignment for tonight is the same one. See you tomorrow.

[metmom]

Uh, you have to go to the experts in ID. Or, perhaps you have found a major flaw in ID?

I just don't see that the assertion that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection" requires belief that God is dead. It makes no sense.

ID doesn't specify who the designer is so I see no connection between that and belief in God's continued existence. Nor do I see that questions about the designer's continued existence are relevant to the assertion.

The aspects of the universe that are best explained by design are still there, whether the designer is or not. The best statement that it can make is that the designer existed (past tense), just like your posts on FR indicate that you were alive today, even if you were to die tomorrow. They reflect that you existed, not that you continue to exist after you stop posting. So if you stopped tonight, a year from now no one could make a reasonable guess on your continued existence based on your posting history, they would just know that at one point in time, you did exist.

[Fichori]

To: tpanther

ToE doesn’t submit valid “empirical evidence” that makes sense to me when it comes to origins. Not even close. That life just sprang up out of dirt with no purpose or intelligent thought behind it, totally random and all the perfect conditions just happened to come together by...chance? accident? The sheer astronomical odds are staggering.

ToE does not address origins.

1,445 posted on Fri 19 Sep 2008 08:07:06 PM PDT by ColdWater

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Oh?

According to evolution.berkeley.edu:

Table of Contents

next >>

From soup to cells — the origin of life

A microbe-like cellular filament found in 3.465 billion year old rock

Evolution encompasses a wide range of phenomena: from the emergence of major lineages, to mass extinctions, to the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria in hospitals today. However, within the field of evolutionary biology, the origin of life is of special interest because it addresses the fundamental question of where we (and all living things) came from.

Many lines of evidence help illuminate the origin of life: ancient fossils, radiometric dating, the phylogenetics and chemistry of modern organisms, and even experiments. However, since new evidence is constantly being discovered, hypotheses about how life originated may change or be modified. It's important to keep in mind that changes to these hypotheses are a normal part of the process of science and that they do not represent a change in the basis of evolutionary theory.

Here, you can learn about important hypotheses regarding when, where and how life originated and find out how scientists study an event that occurred so long ago.

[Fichori]

“OH, you are asking him because you did not understand the link I gave you. You really should have done your homework and you would be able to understand.”

No, I'm asking him because I think his claim it totally absurd and I want to see him explain it.

I've done my homework a long time ago.

Goodgrief!

Go read my posts!

[js1138]

That’s one incest story, but I was writing about Ham and Noah. The story makes no sense read literally,and the language is very similar to language used throughout the Bible to indicate sexual relations.

Something happened between the lines.

[allmendream]

?????????????????? Never read that into the story. Got a for instance?

[metmom]

ToE does not address origins.

Rather, scientists won't let the ToE address origins because spontaneous generation has been demonstrated to be impossible. So if it did, then scientists would be forced into a position of claiming that the process that caused life to arise violates known science. They'd be forced to choose between saying that either life arose spontaneously or that spontaneous generation is right. It's a conflict without resolution so they just ignore it.

If science is right that everything started out in some chemical soup, there has to be a transition from non-living matter to living matter that is part of the continuum from the simplest chemical substances to life as we know it today.

To lop out the part in the middle where the transition exists, and goes against known science, is not a very objective way to approach a problem in science. Ignoring it because it's too hard to explain is the lazy way out.

Scientists would gain more credibility if they admitted that they didn't know how to explain the apparent discrepancy than to brush it off and ignoring it.

[mrjesse]

No because you are talking about the orbit of the Earth not the rotation of the Earth.

But at least you acknowledge that the apparent position is not the actual position which was my whole point in the first place.

You claimed that they were the same.

First of all, compared to your claimed 2.1 degrees, and because of your reasoning (rotational rate of earth and distance to sun) they are the same. And I have never claimed that stellar aberration did not cause a 21 arcsecond displacement.

And it is not true that your whole point is that was that they were different - maybe you were confused as tarzan in the begining when you stated "2.1 degrees at any instant to an observer on earth" -- but that fact is that you have repeatedly defended the idea that there was a 2.1 degree difference between the two -- so are you now changing your mind to say that the sun is only apparently lagged by 21 arcseconds from its actual position?

No because you are talking about the orbit of the Earth not the rotation of the Earth.

Wait a second! I answered your question exactly! You just don't want to get roped into answering yes or no I suspect :-)

And in any case, the biggest scientifically known source of apparent angular displacement is Stellar Aberration which has nothing to do with the distance to the sun but only the transverse velocity of the earth. As you may know, the earth's rotation gives a surface speed at the equator of about a thousand miles an hour. The earth's velocity on its orbit around the sun is about 67K mph. And that amounts to at most 21 arcseconds! Since the sun isn't moving very fast, the light-time correction for it is even way below the 21 arcseconds of stellar aberration.

Are you talking about stellar aberration or light-time correction? or what? Why can you not produce a single scientific document that backs up your claim that the actual and apparent positions of the sun are about 2.1 degrees apart due to the earth's rotational speed and the flight time of light from sun to earth to an observer on the earth at any given instant? or is that not your claim?

I think there is a reason that you refuse to answer yes or no, and it is the same reason you cannot provide scientific documents backing up your claim - because you're wrong and not honest enough to admit it. What else can I think?

So please, if you haven't the integrity to be honest when you don't understand things, please don't go around pretending like you know what you're talking about when you know that you don't know.

I have no doubt that this is why science in the classroom today is in such shambles - crazy unsubstantiated ideas are taught and noone is allowed to ask -- or answer -- tough questions, because if they did, the whole evolutionary priesthood would come crashing down.

-Jesse