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Common Creationist Arguments - Pseudoscience
http://www.stardestroyer.net/Creationism/Arguments/Pseudoscience.shtml ^

Posted on 03/13/2002 4:47:26 AM PST by JediGirl

Common Creationist Arguments

Pseudoscience

Pseudoscience is a scientific-sounding argument which in fact has no scientific validity whatsoever. This type of argument is based on the fact that the average layperson knows so little about science that he or she is liable to judge a scientific argument solely on its style and presentation (eg- "does it sound scientific?", or "does it incorporate scientific-sounding terms?") for lack of any other method of judging its validity.

Suggested Tactics

This type of creationist argument is difficult for most people to defend against, unless they are fairly knowledgeable about science (that's why it's so popular with creationists- they may not know anything about science, but they're gambling that you don't either). In my case, I simply call upon my knowledge of certain basic scientific principles that I learned in university, but I can't instruct everyone to do this, since not everyone has a technical background.

Therefore, it's difficult for me to recommand tactics for laypeople to counteract this sort of argument, but we should keep in mind that creationist pseudoscience arguments are almost never generated out of the mind of the creationist himself. They all tend to come from the same widely distributed pool of creationist literature, which is one of the reasons that creationists all over the world tend to spout the same pseudoscience arguments. I can offer the following suggestions:

    Remember that if your opponent has no direct knowledge of the science involved, and is merely claiming truth because "I read it somewhere", this constitutes a fallacious appeal to authority. Point this out to him. One should always be able to explain the logic and science behind one's argument rather than simply making vague reference to an anonymous source.

    Since these arguments are actually second hand arguments, demand to see the original source for his claim. When you see the source, check the credentials of the author. If they aren't fraudulent, check up on the university where the author got his degree. Odds are that the degree is either honorary, or it comes from a cheap diploma mill (or worse yet, one of the many church-run schools set up expressly for the purpose of handing out degrees to creationists). If you don't have the resources to check up on universities, try looking up the Talk.Origins website at www.talkorigins.org, which maintains a list of discredited creationist "experts" and their bogus credentials.

Examples follow:

"Occam's Razor is a scientific principle which says that when faced with two theories, we should always choose the simplest theory. Evolution theory requires billions of years of chemical reactions, environmental effects, and genetic mutations. Creation theory simply says "God did it". Creation theory is obviously simpler, therefore Occam's Razor demands that we must select Creation theory on scientific grounds."

This is perhaps the single most moronic creationist idea I've ever heard (it's also been used to "prove" the existence of God, by arguing that the concept of God is much simpler than the study of science). It's a classic example of creationist pseudoscience. They learn the term "Occam's Razor" and they learn just enough about its definition to abuse it, but they make no effort whatsoever to learn its true meaning.

"Choose the simplest theory" is an oversimplification of the concept of Occam's Razor. The term is named after the 14th century philosopher and theologian William of Occam. It might strike some as strange that a scientific principle might have come from a theologian, but good scientists do not practice appeals to authority or ad hominem attacks. If an idea makes sense, it doesn't matter who it came from, and the universal acceptance of Occam's Razor is a perfect example of that philosophy.

In any case, he argued that we should never "multiply entities unnecessarily". In other words, cut out extraneous terms from an equation. He used that principle (which is really just an argument against redundancy) to show that it was impossible to deduce God's existence through reason alone, so one would have to take it purely on faith. The irony is that a theologian realized that there was no logical basis for God's existence more than 600 years ago but modern fundamentalists still can't figure it out, and actually use his name to "prove" the exact opposite of what he himself argued!

For those who cannot appreciate the simplicity of Occam's Razor in its original form, Isaac Newton restated it thusly: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances." In plain English, when faced with two scientific theories which make the same predictions, choose the simpler theory. Or, as Stephen Hawking put it: "Cut out all the features of the theory which cannot be observed." (taken from A Brief History of Time).

Like all scientific principles, Occam's Razor is accepted not because William of Occam said it, but because it makes sense. You don't need to appeal to authority or take its validity on faith. If you are faced with two competing theories between which you have no other method of deciding, is it not obvious that the theory containing extra or unverifiable terms must therefore contain redundancies? The fact that the simpler theory can accomplish the same descriptive and predictive feats while utilizing fewer terms and not relying on unverifiable or unobservable phenomena is evidence of superiority.

Consider the analogy of two mechanical devices for making widgets. Both perform exactly the same function. In repeated, exhaustive tests, both are shown to produce exactly the same quality of widget, at the same rate, with the same raw materials. Both produce the same amount of waste. Both consume the same amount of electrical power. They cost the same. In other words, their performance is identical in every measurable way. The only noticeable difference is that device #1 is much simpler than device #2. It contains fewer components and mechanisms, and its operating principle is therefore simpler. Which one would you choose?

Suppose the salesman for device #2 is quite upset that you are leaning toward device #1, and he promises to do better. The next day, he returns with a new device (we'll call it device #3) which is completely sealed in black plastic (the classic "black box"). He says it's the latest, most advanced widget-making machine in the world. You feed it electricity and raw materials, and it spits out widgets. Its performance is no different from device #1 and device #2, but it is not user servicable. You can't see inside to figure out how it works, and the salesman refuses to let you see diagrams or schematics, ostensibly because the operation of the machine is beyond both your intellectual capacity and his. The salesman argues that device #3 is actually simpler than both device #1 and #2 because it has just one component: the black box. Does this make sense to you? Again, which device would you choose?

Occam's Razor is merely a name given to a logical and intuitively obvious thought process of eliminating redundancies. It cannot be used to choose between competing theories whose predictions are vastly different, any more than the simplicity of a drill press can be used to prove that it's superior to a fighter plane. Now that we are equipped with an understanding of the reasoning behind Occam's Razor, we can list some of the reasons that it cannot be used to support either creationism or the existence of God:

  1. Occam's Razor is a method of choosing between competing scientific theories. It is irrelevant when comparing a scientific theory to the concept of God or creationism because God and creationism are not scientific theories. There are no objective terms in the concept of God. No equations. No mechanisms. No limits. No methods through which it can be used to predict the outcome of natural processes. No methods through which it can be tested, or disproven. The concept of God is actually the antithesis of a scientific theory, in that one resorts to the divine only when one's reason has either failed or been voluntarily suppressed. In the analogy above, Occam's Razor was used to evaluate a pair of machines. It couldn't be used to evaluate a machine versus, say, a piece of music.

  2. "God" is actually not a "simpler theory" than science. "God" is merely a three-letter name which is affixed to a deity whose machinations are supposedly so complex that they are beyond mortal comprehension! If God's methods are inscrutable and incomprehensible to humans (as claimed in the Bible and by all Christians), then what business does anyone have claiming that they are "simpler" than a theory which humans can understand? In the analogy above, the concept of God is very much like the "black box". The salesman may argue that it's simpler because it's a nice smooth black box instead of a set of gears and motors, but that's a childish superficiality at best, and a bald-faced lie at worst.

  3. Occam's Razor is not invoked unless the competing theories make identical predictions. It is a method of eliminating redundancies, as William of Occam first reasoned, and it only applies when the performance of the competing theories is identical. When two theories make vastly different predictions (as is the case with science and Biblical literalism), then Occam's Razor is completely irrelevant. In the analogy above, Occam's Razor was used to evaluate a pair of machines whose performance was identical. If the two machines made widgets of vastly different characteristics, Occam's Razor would be irrelevant.

The use of Occam's Razor to "prove" the existence of God or the validity of Biblical literalism is a classic example of creationist pseudoscience, because it is so emblematic of their method: take a real principle and grossly misinterpret it to mean the exact opposite of what it truly means.

"The second law of thermodynamics makes evolution impossible. It states that complexity cannot be spontaneously created, so it is impossible for natural processes to create a complex organism from a simple organism!"

This is one of the oldest, and most popular creationist pseudoscience arguments. It's been kicking around for more than a century, thanks to general public ignorance of thermodynamics. In fact, it's wrong on so many levels that it's hard to know where to start! Perhaps we should start at the beginning, with the definition of the second law of thermodynamics. According to my engineering thermodynamics textbook, the second law of thermodynamics has two basic postulates:

  1. All physical processes create entropy (microscopic disorder).

  2. The entropy of a closed system cannot decrease, ie- entropy can be created but not destroyed.

That's a lot different from "complexity cannot be spontaneously created", isn't it? Big surprise- creationists don't know anything about thermodynamics. Now that we've established their bizarre misconception about the second law of thermodynamics, we should try to understand what strange mental contortions were necessary to go from "the entropy of a closed system cannot decrease" to "complexity cannot be spontaneously created."

Upon further questioning, creationists invariably reveal the following beliefs about the second law:

  1. "The entropy of a living organism can't decrease."

  2. "The creation of complexity requires the destruction of entropy."

  3. "The second law of thermodynamics applies to spontaneous events, but not to the deliberate acts of man (or deity). That's why humans can build a complex structure but natural processes can't."

These three beliefs are all completely wrong, and they all indicate a frightening ignorance of scientific principles. Let us examine each belief separately:

  1. Actually, the entropy of a living organism can decrease, because a living organism is not a closed system. Since it is an open system, entropy can leave and enter. Entropy doesn't have to be destroyed- just moved. The concept of the closed system vs the open system is one of the most basic concepts that we teach kids in high school, and if someone thinks a living organism is a closed system, he must be staggeringly ignorant. Food, water, and energy enter and leave your body all the time, thus making it an open system. Furthermore, an entire species is even less of a closed system than an individual life form, and evolution occurs from one generation to the next, not in a single organism as it ages.

  2. Complexity is not the destruction of disorder or the creation of order. In fact, there is more disorder in complex systems, as any student of chaos theory (or government bureacracies) can tell you. There is far more entropy in a nuclear power plant than there is in an ice cube, and a pretty snowflake has much more complexity than the drop of water from whence it came.

  3. Physical laws apply all the time, to everybody, regardless of intent or intelligence. If the second law of thermodynamics truly prohibited the creation of complexity, then it wouldn't matter whether the complexity is created by "deliberate" acts or by random happenstance- it would be impossible in both cases. It is utterly unbelievable to me that creationist ignoramuses would interpret any physical law to only apply in the absence of deliberate intervention. No other physical laws of physics are interpreted to apply only in the absence of intelligent intervention- does gravity shut off when humans intervene?

This argument has been so thoroughly disproven, so many times in so many ways, that it's almost comical when people keep bringing it up. They might as well just tattoo their foreheads with the words "scientific ignoramus."

"By taking a random mixture of elements and analysing the probability of elements randomly forming into the correct combinations and orientations to make a simple amino acid, I can show that it is probabilistically impossible for the simplest amino acid to form, never mind the first living cell. Therefore, a Creator must have formed the first organisms, if not all of them."

This argument is invalid for the following reasons:

  1. Spontaneous formation of amino and fatty acids has been observed in the laboratory, by subjecting an atmosphere of hydrogen, water vapour, ammonia and methane to electrical discharges and ultraviolet radiation. This simulates primeval Earth environmental conditions, therefore it is an observed fact, and not subject to debate.

  2. Chemical reactions are not random! Elements only bond in certain combinations. Light a match in a cloud of hydrogen and oxygen, and countless trillions upon trillions of hydrogen and oxygen atoms will react to form H2O. Not H8O, and not H5O, but H2O. Purely random combinatorics are a completely invalid way of modelling chemical reactions.

  3. The first living cell did not have to form from raw materials. It would have formed from more primitive components such as RNA, which was proposed many years ago as the first self-replicating molecule. It was even experimentally found to have catalytic capabilities for adding new nucleotides to the end of the chain or removing them, leading to the term "RNA World" to describe the origins of life. But even if RNA is not the candidate we're looking for, there is certainly no need to assume that the first organic self-replicators would have been full-blown single-celled organisms. The early self-replicators (such as RNA, if it was indeed the first self-replicator) would not have left fossils.

  4. This entire attack is a red herring, because evolution theory and abiogenesis (the formation of organic self-replicators from simpler organic materials) are two completely different theories. Lumping them together is just as fallacious as lumping evolution theory with Big Bang theory. The process of evolution is heritable change in populations over multiple generations. Because the process of evolution requires multiple generations to occur, it cannot possibly happen before the first living organism! It doesn't kick in until after the first living organism already exists! Even if abiogenesis could be disproved, evolution theory would still be valid.

I should also note that this argument is generally coupled with the fallacious reasoning that "anything we don't understand is proof of divine intervention." Poorly understood phenomena are not invalidations of science- they are opportunities for scientific investigation. If we treat every gap in our understanding as proof of divine intervention, we would be no better than the tribal primitives who attributed divine intervention to everything from solar eclipses to rain. Visit the Probability page if you want to know more.

"Some older species fossils can be found on top of newer fossils. This inconsistency in your so-called 'progressionism' proves that creation theory is correct, since it means that all species were created at the same time."

More bad science, since this only occurs with animal remains that are on the surface. What happens is that severe erosion or a geological upheaval can occasionally expose strata bearing fossils, and of course, when Skippy the Dog runs away and dies near these old fossils, the "Young Earth Creationist" crowd immediately interprets this as disproof of the entire fossil record, the entire field of geology, the age of the Earth, etc.

As usual, their argument is based on ignorance of proper scientific method. This evidence would be disproof of the fossil record if it was impossible to rationalize its existence with that record. However, that is simply not the case. Geologists can examine patterns in the rock to determine whether a region is old or new, cross-cut, the result of upheaval, etc. It is the creationists who will look at a region, assume its age without using proper methodology, and then use fossil findings in that region to "disprove" geology and evolution theory.

"Evolution can explain changes in a species, but where does a whole new species come from? Speciation is the downfall of Evolution Theory!"

This is another case of creationists projecting their own pseudoscientific attitudes onto evolution theory. In this case, they are predisposed to believe that the creation of a species is a sudden, dramatic event at some fixed moment in time. One moment there's species A, and then the next moment there's species B. Much as God created Man from dust, and Eve from Adam's rib, they imagine that "evolutionists" describe evolution creating a man directly from an ape. But evolution theory does not work that way.

Speciation is not a sudden, miraculous transformation from one species to another. The way creationists envision evolution theory, a pregnant female ape went into labour one day and a human being popped out! It is a gross understatement to say that this is a misrepresentation of the truth. In reality, evolution theory merely proposes that a great many small changes eventually caused an animal population to become intersterile with its ancestors.

Of course, this would mean that there should be fossil evidence of various intermediate stages between successful species, and there is. Naturally, creationists explain all of the evidence away by pointing the finger at their favourite whipping boy: the global conspiracy of evil scientists, who work tirelessly to cover up the truth and fabricate false evidence. These people watch "X-Files" too damned much.

"I know we've observed micro-evolution, but what about macro-evolution? There is no evidence for macro-evolution!"

The creationist invention of the terms "macroevolution" and "microevolution" is a good example of how they try to mutilate the terms of science to their own advantage. Biologists do not differentiate between micro-evolution and macro-evolution, any more than mathematicians differentiate between micro-addition and macro-addition.

Their argument that there is no evidence for "macroevolution" is ridiculous because "macroevolution" is simply the result of adding a lot of "microevolution" together, and "microevolution" is, by their own admission, completely supported by various forms of evidence.

The other problem for this argument is that there actually is evidence to directly support what they describe as "macroevolution", and it's called "the fossil record". It's evidence because it is consistent with prediction. Of course, that's not enough for the creationists- they demand direct observation of massive evolutionary change in living animals, even though they know that we would have to observe living animals for millions of years in order to obtain the evidence they seek. Can you see the problem with this demand? It's pretty obvious- they are deliberately asking for a form of evidence which is impossible to obtain (millions of years of direct observation), and ignoring a form of evidence (the fossil record) which is relatively easy to obtain.

The universe operates on tiny processes, affecting tiny particles, which add up in tremendous numbers to cause large changes. If someone is going to claim that a slow, steady process cannot create large-scale changes given sufficient time, he had better provide some evidence and reasoning, rather than simply stating it as a fact and demanding impossible forms of evidence to disprove it. Are we to assume that all gradual processes eventually hit "brick walls" and stop, for mysterious and unknown reasons?

Do we question tectonic plate theory on the basis that we've observed small-scale tectonic plate movement but not large-scale tectonic plate movement? Do we insist that no one should believe in tectonic plate theory until we've been able to observe it for millions of years, so we can see long-distance movements firsthand? Do we deny the possibility of large-scale rock erosion because we've only seen small scale rock erosion? Why would a gradual process like tectonic plate movement, rock erosion, or evolution suddenly stop after an arbitrary length of time? What would make it stop? Why make this ridiculous distinction between "micro-evolution" and "macro-evolution?" Where is the line drawn between the two? What causes the barrier? These are questions that the creationists don't attempt to ask or answer, because like O.J. Simpson's defense lawyers, they're not serious about uncovering the truth. They just want to create "reasonable doubt" in the minds of a gullible audience.

The "microevolution vs macroevolution" argument is an example of creationists projecting their own mentality onto evolution, and then attacking the resulting strawman, ironically, for the very aspects that come from creationism. Creationism describes separate and distinct species: "each according to its kind". Creationists therefore make the same assumption: species are separate, indivisible, and disconnected. When they project this mentality onto evolution, they run into an obvious problem: there is no way for the process of evolution to "jump" over the invisible "barrier" between species. The problem is that they are assuming that this barrier exists! The terms "microevolution" and "macroevolution" are not found in biology; they are creationist inventions. Gradual changes eventually add up, and can turn one species into two, or they can cause a species to change so much that it becomes a distinct species from its predecessors.

As a thought experiment, consider human beings. It is generally assumed that any male/female pair of healthy human beings can produce children. But biological reproduction is a complex process, and it requires great genetic commonality. We know that two modern human beings can produce children, but what about a modern woman and a man from ten thousand years ago? What about a modern woman and a man from fifty thousand years ago? Is there still enough genetic commonality? Species are not delineated by distinct, clear boundaries. Rather, they are defined by intersterility and overt physical characteristics, and there is no "barrier" between species for the process of evolution to hurdle.



TOPICS: General Discusssion
KEYWORDS: crevolist
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To: Junior
Unfortunately, you seem hung up on mammary glands; do you have a boobie fixation?

Whether I do or I do not is irrelevant to this discussion. :)

The point is that there is nothing intrinisically necessary between the 3 earbones and mammary glands - the true definition of a mammal. There is an almost necessary connection between live birth and mammary glands because individuals not born from an egg are not able to feed themselves. We see though in the platypus that even this almost necessary connection is not true. So to say that the connection between mammary glands and 3 earbones is not necessary in animal fossils is a very valid statement. And this is the problem with paleontology - it will assume that any animal with 3 earbones is a mammal and any animal without 3 earbones is not a mammal. This can only be true if one also assumes the coevolution of different sytems at the same time. Such an assumption is of course utterly ridiculous and it is clearly laid to rest by our friend the platypus.

1,521 posted on 03/23/2002 6:38:39 AM PST by gore3000
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To: Junior
"But evolution does not start from scratch every time. "

I did not say every time.However, it does start from scratch when it comes to creating an entirely new gene. New genes are always necessary for macro-evolution. In fact whole sets of new genes are required to give an organism new faculties. These new genes start from nothing, and until they provide a new faculty that can be tested by "survival of the fittest" are just useless DNA. Therefore the many different random mutations required to achieve the proper sequencing of the new gene cannot be helped by selection.

1,522 posted on 03/23/2002 6:46:26 AM PST by gore3000
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To: AndrewC
When you roll a pair of dice, one of them stops before the other.

Yes indeed. The laws of probability have a brilliant proof. It is called Las Vegas - a city of fantastic hotels built with the money of those who believed that the laws of probabiltiy did not apply to them.

1,523 posted on 03/23/2002 6:50:01 AM PST by gore3000
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To: Tribune7
No, it has nothing to do with the individual if it's a scientific theory. It has to do with the proof.If you're correct about the proof being there it just has not been presented to me effectively.
If that is the case, then how come the evidence presented to me is sufficent proof for me, but not you?
See, it is an individual matter of preception. It depends on the mind set. Some may be more open minded to the "evidence" than others.
Oldcats
1,524 posted on 03/23/2002 6:50:42 AM PST by oldcats
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To: Lurking Libertarian
"(a)That is totally unresponsive to the point I was making in the post you were replying to, which is that the sequence of reptile-to-mammal fossils shows what creationists say doesn't exist (a long series of small, gradual changes all eventually leading up to the development of an entirely new type of living thing).

No it is not. The problems of paleontology, and specifically the problem I have been discussing - the lack of evidence it truly provides for most of the significant changes in organisms relates directly to this. In fact, only the circular assumptions of paleontology tell us that no animal without three ear-bones could have been a mammal. We have fish nowadays that are mammals, paleontology cannot tell us whether some of the fish we know only by bones nowadays were mammals or not, it can only tell us that they did not have 3 earbones. Changes in bone structure tell us very little. The bones represent a very small part of the genome of an organism and the most interesting parts, the ones that tell us the most about an organism and which need to have evolved also and paleontology can give us no proof of them are the development of what most of us would call the "entrails" of the organisms. Look up the platypus and tell me how many of the unique features of it would have been determined just from the bones.

1,525 posted on 03/23/2002 7:05:50 AM PST by gore3000
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To: f.Christian
I thought you said the word science didn't exist more that a few hundred years ago? Seems that it excisted (in a different form in in Latin didn't it?
But then again, what is the f**king use? Your arguments are so infantile...so nonsensical..so idotic..so convuluted, that I can not begin to tear them apart.
I know that you will think you have won, and that is fine...(just make sure you use a towel to clean yourself odf before Mommy comes in and catches you doing what infantile lil boys do when sitting at the computer.) But it has been an unfair battle hasn't it? I have used reason and sense in my posts, and you resort to...well I don't even think there is a word to describe your ramblings. Please do not reply to anymore of my posts.
Oldcats
1,526 posted on 03/23/2002 7:06:22 AM PST by oldcats
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To: Lurking Libertarian
You win the point, I should have said they were all warblers still. However, my main point that the example of the warblers did not show macro-evolution, that a change in the song pattern cannot even be said to be a speciation event, is still true.
1,527 posted on 03/23/2002 7:09:06 AM PST by gore3000
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To: gore3000
A new theory (endosymbiosis) is being created out of whole cloth to support another theory (evolution) which cannot explain how eukaryotes arose through descent from prokaryotes. It is pretty much like the Ptolemaic theory of geocentricity - as more was discovered, the more epicycles were created.

Shame you didn't read that article you linked for more than lawyering purposes. Organized religion has such a stultifying effect on some people, it's hard not to be poisoned against it.

New hyptotheses arise in science. Some of them are pretty interesting. Science makes progress. Religion doesn't. Religion should thus stay out of science.

1,528 posted on 03/23/2002 7:11:47 AM PST by VadeRetro
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To: oldcats
If you had done ANY reading on this subject you would know that brain size is used RELETIVE to the entire body size.

The size of Neanderthal skulls is larger than those of homo-sapiens. So your statement trying to save the ridiculous assumption made by evolutionists is false. In addition, many times the only part of a species we find is the skull, sometimes only part of a skull. Only by assuming the size of the rest of the body can you make such a determination. That is another example of the circular reasoning used by paleontology. If that were not enough, we are quite aware that humans only use a very small proportion of their brains so brain size is not an indication of intelligence. It would also be nice for you to explain how the brains of elephants do not provide it with greater intelligence (not that you will be able to do so).

1,529 posted on 03/23/2002 7:18:32 AM PST by gore3000
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To: PatrickHenry
It's only retro if you stopped using them. LOL
Oldcats
1,530 posted on 03/23/2002 7:18:39 AM PST by oldcats
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To: js1138
There are serious folks who believe that large brained mammals were sexually selected -- that is smarter guys got more girls.

Don't you see the problem with the above statement? Let me show it to you very simply. Can you tell the IQ of a person by the size of their head? Does a person with an IQ of 150 have a head 3 times the size of one with an IQ of 50? Brain size and intelligence are totally unrelated.

1,531 posted on 03/23/2002 7:23:08 AM PST by gore3000
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To: Lev
Do you think fitness functions do not exist?

Oh I am sure they exist. There are plenty of so-called scientists that have very little to do. The question is not whether the functions exist. The question is whether such functions have anything to do with reality. The fact that you were not able to compute the parameters for the function shows that its applicability to anything is very doubtful indeed.

1,532 posted on 03/23/2002 7:27:44 AM PST by gore3000
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To: gore3000
So to say that the connection between mammary glands and 3 earbones is not necessary in animal fossils is a very valid statement. And this is the problem with paleontology - it will assume that any animal with 3 earbones is a mammal and any animal without 3 earbones is not a mammal. This can only be true if one also assumes the coevolution of different sytems at the same time. Such an assumption is of course utterly ridiculous and it is clearly laid to rest by our friend the platypus.
Paleontology has help from comparative anatomy. Can you cite a lizard or bird or fish or amphibian with the "mammalian" earbones?

Do you give up on the line of reasoning that says there were no mamms on T. rex? There's no excuse for you not to have produced it by now. If you're pretending you can't see it, think of the implications of admitting you've never at any time understood at even the most basic level what you were arguing against.

1,533 posted on 03/23/2002 7:32:39 AM PST by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro
I do not favor cluttering up a thread with a mass of copied/pasted material

You do not need to mass copy anything. What you need to do is copy and paste the paragraph that backs up the point you are trying to make and link to the rest. It is unfair to readers to make them look through a long article for the point you are trying to make. That is why most people will not click on a link and therefore are not fit for a public discussion.

1,534 posted on 03/23/2002 7:36:24 AM PST by gore3000
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To: VadeRetro
I have not read one source that addresses the question of mammaries on dinos.

Fine, after many posts I finally got the admission that there is no proof at all of whether dinos had or did not have mammaries. All that there is is circular reasoning from the non-science of paleontology.

1,535 posted on 03/23/2002 7:55:53 AM PST by gore3000
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To: gore3000
So if there is no proof that they did or did not have mammaries, how does that advance either argument?
Sounds like a no win situation for both sides.
Oldcats
1,536 posted on 03/23/2002 7:59:36 AM PST by oldcats
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To: AndrewC
The program(s) is(are) still being "decoded" so I must rely on those who are working on it.

It'd be more correct to say that the codes are still being decoded, but I see we're talking past each other again. I was talking about genetic programming, not genetic engineering.

I took a look at the article you linked. Tough reading (too technical, not enough explanation) but I got the gist of it. Here's my guess. As we understand more and more of the genome we'll see more and more complexity, more and more mechanism, cycles impinging on cycles in crazy ways. That is not a hallmark of design at least as practiced by humans.

But that's just a guess. Time will tell.

1,537 posted on 03/23/2002 8:10:53 AM PST by edsheppa
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To: Junior
Exactly, but with the ID model T. Rex might not only have had mammary glands, but been colored bright purple simply because the DESIGNER happened to be infatuated with Barney the Dinosaur.

The above is a very willfull misrepresentation of Intelligent Design which needs to be cleared up. Evolution says that all species descended from a simpler species gradually. Intelligent Design says that gradual evolution is impossible because certain faculties are inextricably connected to each other and could not have arisen gradually. The questions which ID asks are very legitimate and need to be answered by evolutionists. In this thread we have hit on some questions which cannot be answered by simple evolution and some of the evolutionists here had to answer that certain features coevolved. Intelligent Design explains why this is very unlikely, unlikely to the point of it being impossible through gradual evolution. So when I asked Vade, half in jest, what is the theory of coevolution, I was asking a very serious question which has not been responded to.

1,538 posted on 03/23/2002 8:18:51 AM PST by gore3000
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To: Heartlander
Where did our intelligence come from?

Our brains appear to be quite a sophisticated computers. Other creatures have less capable ones of varying degrees. Some have none. Is your question why we have better ones than others? Is it why are there brains at all? Is it how can brains be as good as ours?

1,539 posted on 03/23/2002 8:20:25 AM PST by edsheppa
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To: gore3000
The part of my post you saw fit to quote:

I have not read one source that addresses the question of mammaries on dinos.

Your response:

Fine, after many posts I finally got the admission that there is no proof at all of whether dinos had or did not have mammaries. All that there is is circular reasoning from the non-science of paleontology.
How is this honest when my entire post read as follows (already quoted part in blue):

I have not read one source that addresses the question of mammaries on dinos. For all that, I know what evolution must certainly say on the subject. I reason this by applying the model. The answer has to be: No mamms on a dino.

Again, how am I doing this and where does ID offer anything comparable?

Let me know if you give up, but anyone who claims to know enough about evolution to reject it should at least be able to reproduce the reasoning I use but have not stated. (Although I've certainly given you some big hints. Anyone could read the thread and get it if they didn't know.)

You do this trick of pretending you can't see things. And sometimes, like now, you pretend to see what isn't there.
1,540 posted on 03/23/2002 8:21:10 AM PST by VadeRetro
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