A Question for Evolutionists

February 3rd, 2002 | Sabertooth

[tortoise]

I am incapable of understanding some science they way others can't understand simple logic.

You don't have to agree with everything a scientist says to be scientifically rigorous. There is an implicit assumption in science that a theory is wrong, at least in the details. As for simple logic, most people who profess to understand it and know how to use it don't. Saying something is true doesn't make it so.

Science is the religion of those educated by atheist.

This is a stupid assertion. I've known plenty of well-educated and intelligent people with religious tendencies, and I've also met a few atheists that were ill-educated and profoundly stupid. This is independent of any religious inclination.

I will grant that people of certain religous persuasions are far more prone to applying inconsistent standards of reason and logic than other religious persuasions (or people lacking religious persuasion), but this appears to be a side-effect of particular religions and personality types. The inconsistent application of any fundamental principle is an egregious character flaw no matter what one is talking about.

[f.Christian]

took the day--thread off...ketchup?

[PatrickHenry]

Dog biscuits ... oxygen ... atheism!!!

[f.Christian]

mustard!

[Stone Mountain]

Very interesting - I had never considered the differences between a scientific "law" and a scientific "theory" but I like the distinction you make.

[f.Christian]

God made---OWNS science and these tinker toy idiots are aborting it!

Analyze this...

One-by-one ---- science uncovered the facts. One-by-one, all religions 'evolved' into an unprovable faith-based, invisible god [except the comet a few years back](raven).

"science uncovered the facts"(more raven)...???

Pretty funny...using consciousness(science) to deny its intelligence---originator---designer(me)!

Isn't that like having an eye witness at a bank robbery---the bank robber??

[the food for thought is that religion always keeps a step ahead of a science that chips away at religious assumptions](raven)

159 posted on 2/4/02 3:13 AM Pacific by The Raven(maniac)

Chef looney(Raven)---what a recipe(food)...botulism!

Is this like asking a forgerer--counterfeiter to work at the bank--mint...a grand jury of loons!

PC--evolution madness---the bogus/counterfeit is real-tender and the real is trashed--worthless.

What would a title company say when you show them your crayon scribbles--babbles---laugh you outta there with your Brooklyn bridge thesis/deed!

God created---OWNS science...man invented evolution--DENIAL--spontaneous life...matter too?

Would that be like saying your grandparents never existed---you never saw them---believed them.

All because you say--think so?

Evolution is false anti-science/anti-theism--a hoax!

Religion-ideology-culture-history has nothing to do with it---

yeah in a murder case ask the murderer to supply all the evidence to the prosecuter and void out everything else....yeah--no body/no God!

Make it all up...LIES/THEFT-fraud

and get your friends--the blind and the deaf-dumb to judge the case--

"evidence"---real science--objectivity--

whole hearted--headed "honesty" by goons-LIARS

162 posted on 2/4/02 4:26 AM Pacific by f.Christian

These abortion--evolutionistas are like a one act play/audience...

and they want no reviews--critics for a farce they think is real---the only show in town/earth...

wake em up---it stinks!

[connectthedots]

I'm not inclined toward the theory of random causes, but I absolutely allow that it's a plausible explanation. I can certainly offer no compelling evidence otherwise. I just have a hard time understanding the difficulty some are having in saying "we really don't know." Their intransigence strikes me as something other than scientific.

It is my opinion that the main reason evolutionists generally refuse to admit "we don't really know" is such an admission would compel them to acknowledge the possibility that God is real.

The evolutionist will generally state or infer that one who believes in ID/Creation is acting on nothing more than blind faith when, in fact, there is substantial scientific evidence in support of ID/Creation. Intelligent proponents of ID/Creation do not hesitate to admit that there is an element of faith involved in taking their position because to maintain otherwise would be blatant intellectual dishonesty.

The anti-ID/Creationist simply rejects the possibility of ID/Creation with a mere waving of the hand, so to speak. Their argument can be boiled down to 'evolution must be true because ID/Creation can't possibly be true'. Evolutionists cannot or refuse to admit that their beliefs must be based on a degree of faith.

From a purely logical basis, neither evolution nor ID/Creation can be proven in the affirmative. Since there is no proposed third explanation to explain life, the debate is necessarily centered on efforts to disprove the opponents position. Logically, if one position can be demonstrated to be false, the opposite must (or is much more likely) to be true.

Behe and other scientists have meticulously demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that macro-evolution as advocated by evolutionists has some very real problems that defy logic or a scientific explanation. While disproving the scientific model of evolution does not equate to absolute proof of ID/Creation, the fact that there is no generally accepted, or even advocated, alternative to either evolution or ID/Creation should lead an objective person to more carefully consider the possibility that ID/Creation is true, or at least offers much better explanation than evolution.

[JMJ333]

Thanks! Brilliant and accurate stuff!

Here is my contribution. I posted it on another thread and no one will address it.

"Why debate evolution? Because...The facts in favor of evolution are often held to be incontrovertible. Those facts, however, have been rather less forthcoming than evolutionary biologists make out. If life progressed by an accumulation of small changes, as they say it has, the fossil record should reflect its flow, the dead stacked up in barely separated strata. But for well over 150 years, the dead have been remarkably diffident about confirming Darwin's theory. there are gaps in the graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms but where there is nothing whatsoever instead.

Before the Cambrian era very little is inscribed in the fossil record; but then, signaled by what I imagine as a spectral puff of smoke and a deafening ta-da!, an astonishing number of novel biological structures come into creation, and they come into creation at once.

Thereafter, the major transitional sequences are incomplete. Most species enter the evolutionary order fully formed and then depart unchanged. Where there should be evolution, there is stasis instead.

The fundamental core of Darwinian doctrine is no longer in dispute among scientists. Such is the party line....But it was to the dead that Darwin pointed for confirmation of his theory; the fact that paleontology does not entirely support his doctrine has been a secret of long standing among paleontologists. The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid.

Now...these same people [the extreme dogmatic ones] use it as a tool to deny the existance of God. Sorry--that won't fly, because it does nothing of the sort.

76 posted on 2/5/02 11:10 AM Pacific by JMJ333 [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 68 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

Also...the shark has survived for millions of years, sleek as a knife blade and twice as dull. The shark is an organism wonderfully adapted to its environment. *hmmmmmmmmmmm* And then the bright brittle voice of logical folly intrudes: after all, it has survived for millions of years.

This should be deeply embarrassing to evolutionary biologists. And yet, time and again, biologists do explain the survival of an organism by reference to its fitness and the fitness of an organism by reference to its survival, the friction between concepts kindling nothing more illuminating than the observation that some creatures have been around for a very long time. This is not a parody of evolutionary thinking; it is evolutionary thinking! I love it! =)

[garbanzo]

It depends on what you mean by "observed" - do you mean direct observation in real-time or something that can be seen indirectly as in the fossil layer or say a videotape? I think the first is overly restrictive - and you've stipulated the second so I'm still not sure where you're going with this.

[Sabertooth]

It depends on what you mean by "observed" - do you mean direct observation in real-time or something that can be seen indirectly as in the fossil layer or say a videotape? I think the first is overly restrictive - and you've stipulated the second so I'm still not sure where you're going with this.

The first isn't overly restrictive, it's the normal means by which we confirm scientific theories. A theory of Evolution dependent on random spontaneous mutagenic speciation predicts that we will see the random spontaneous mutagenesis of species. So far, we haven't.

So, random spontaneous mutagenic speciation remains unconfirmed by direct observation. The absence of obesrvation doesn't disprove this possible mechanism for evolutionary speciation, but it prevents us from presuming it to be true.

In the second case, you misunderstood what I stipulated... I believe the fossil record indicates evolutionary speciation. I believe it is utterly silent as to the cause of that speciation. It informs us neither about random causes, nor about Intelligent Design, nor about the Dr. Seuss, nor about any other theory.

What that means is that appeals to the fossil record have no bearing on what the causes of evolutionary speciation actually are.

So... where is the evidence to support the contention that random causation explains evolutionary speciation?

In direct observation? No. In the fossil record? No.

In the absence of such evidence, don't we have to allow for the possibility of some non-random cause of evolutionary speciation?

Where I'm going, head-on since post #1, is at the intellectually dishonest, unscientific adherence to the notion of random causation of speciation, to the exclusion of non-random theories.

[Sabertooth]

Placemarker.

[donh]

in response to your requests:

Would it be fair to say that such assumptions are not scientific?

Only if it is fair to say that ptolomaic astronomy is not scientific. It served our purposes when we hadn't known as much or thought as deeply as we do now.

And would it be fair to say that, in the absence of evidence or observation, claims of specific loose ends being tied up are also not scientific?

Depends on what you mean by "tied up". If you mean "proven for all time", then no. If you mean a pretty satisfying explanation of some specific sub-phenomenon that needs accounting for, than, frequently, yes.

Would you say that an unqualified claim that evolutionary speciation arises from random mutagenic causes is unscientific?

op. cit.--no. But you'd have to range pretty far afield to convince me a thesis offered in seriousness--and without obvious cause for denial, and which I can see a way clear to perform experiments or field work to verify--isn't science. Some people, including some scientists I respect, are quite a bit more intolerant than I on this matter. For example, I am not bugged by the ID crowd's apparent inability to suggest a deductive experiment I can perform today, within the world's available scientific budget.

Here is the thread you were asking after.

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a8ef634710e.htm#99

I believe there is more detail about the DNA mutational clock's derivation forward-referenced from here in this thread, but this is the place to start.

[donh]

In the absence of such evidence, don't we have to allow for the possibility of some non-random cause of evolutionary speciation?

Do we have to allow for the possibility? Sure. Do we have a felt need to bankroll it or teach it in school? Not obviously. Natural causes has turned out the be a satisfactory explanation for things we didn't previously know every time the question has been put to the test so far. Let's not be making stupid bets out of a sense of fairness.

[Sabertooth]

Do we have to allow for the possibility? Sure. Do we have a felt need to bankroll it or teach it in school? Not obviously. Natural causes has turned out the be a satisfactory explanation for things we didn't previously know every time the question has been put to the test so far. Let's not be making stupid bets out of a sense of fairness.

I'm not suggesting that non-random causes are necessarily supernatural.

Isn't it possible for natural causes to also be non-random?

[donh]

Before the Cambrian era very little is inscribed in the fossil record; but then, signaled by what I imagine as a spectral puff of smoke and a deafening ta-da!, an astonishing number of novel biological structures come into creation, and they come into creation at once.

Mountains began heaving seriously up out of the ocean in the final act of the pre-cambrian, and the weathering of calcium by rain and river action made serious amounts of CaCo3 available in dissolved form in ocean water. Without this, it is not practical to be in the exoskeleton business. No calcium means no bones, no bones means no fossils.

[donh]

Isn't it possible for natural causes to also be non-random?

Well, of course, and that is where I'd bet our available scientific resources, if it was up to me. As you might infer from my opinion of how much the radiation clock stinks. However, I'd bet my money on as yet unappreciated RNA forces before I'd bet it on little green men from Alpha Centuri. Since some evidence (immune response) trumps no evidence.