A Revolution in Evolution Is Underway

Thomas More Lawcenter ^ | Tue, Jan 18, 2005

[carumba]

(personally, I think ID is a conspiracy amongst school administrators who would really rather play golf than spend time organizing an actual science curriculum)
I thought the teachers prepared the curriculum and the administrators administered the paddle. At least that was my experience as a student. Let me take this opportunity to thank the teachers. They have my support (even the liberal whack jobs) if they care about the students and teach with empathy.

[lbmorris11]

Matter and energy are the different states of the same thing like ice and water. Combustion converts mass into energy. The mass did not cease to exist it changed states.

[dsc]

"I have to assume that anyone who disagrees with you about the age of the earth or the interlatedness of life is thereby claiming there is no God."

No, you don't have to, and unless you just want to quarrel, you won't.

[dsc]

"No, it isn't okay to make such a claim. I'm aware that there are a few people (Dawkins) who say such things: they are talking out of their collective asses."

Seems to me like there are more than a few. I see you're not one.

"Can you cite an example of a high school science teacher claiming that the fossil record proves that there is no God?"

I can search through the junk on my hard drives and try to find one of the incidents I remember reading about, but I'm not sure what I saved and what I didn't.

[TigerTale]

In that case, evolutionists should have no problem with the introduction of "intelligent design" or raw "creationism" into the schools

"Special Creation" does not accept speciation, and so is incompatible with the theory of evolution.

Intelligent Design is philosophical proposition which raises very interesting questions. It it perfectly acceptable for teaching in a public school, but should be discussed in a philosophy class.

At this point in its development, the proponents of Intelligent Design have to answer the philosophical question "Is it possible to tell the difference between something which has been designed and something which merely appears to be designed?" This question involves elements of logic, epistemology, and possibly metaphysics--all philosophical disciplines.

If the question stated above can be answered in the affirmative, then it may be possible to develop practical methods for distinguishing actual design from apparent design. At that point, such methods could be used to collect evidence for or against a scientific theory of Intelligent Design. Until such methods exist, however, ID will remain philosophy, not natural science.

[PatrickHenry]

The key presumption of the theory of evolution, as PatrickHenry has said, is that a continuum exists. Everything in the theory depends on it being a continuum and yet the evidence for the theory is quantization of that presumed continuum. IOW, if the evidence for a continuum is the quantization of it and the quantization of a continuum is a fallacy per se then ipso facto evolution is false.

I think we have different understandings about what this fallacy is all about. To me, the fallacy of quantizing the continuum occurs when: (1) the subect being dealt with actually is a continuum; and (2) someone siezes upon an artifically defined segment thereof (a quantum) to declare something about that segment which is allegedly unique to it and not to that segment's boundry regions. For example: "All people earning between $x and $y enjoy bowling, and will vote for my candidate." Probably not a great example, but it gives you the idea. Another: "All second-graders are ready to learn decimals."

The application to biology is readily apparent. If Darwin were right, and all life is related by common descent, then it form a continuum, rather than a collection of discrete groupings we call "species." Thus, even where no intermediate forms are now alive, the theory predicts that they once did live, and perhaps will be found. So finding transitional forms confirms a prediction of the theory, and establishes the continuum. Whereas insisting that each "kind" is and always was unique is an example of the fallacy.

[TigerTale]

Thus, even where no intermediate forms are now alive, the theory predicts that they once did live, and perhaps will be found.

And the answer to the question "Where are all the transitional forms?" is that all species are transitional forms, including us (provided our branch of Life is not wiped out by an asteroid or some similar exitinction event...)

[laredo44]

You guys sound precisely like liberals, you know that? Name calling, invective, ad-hominem attacks just like what you said to me are all common feature from your side's posts.

You make the above accusation when your post #3 stated, in to to,

Psychotically enraged Darwinist-atheist-antiChristian response to follow.

It's really so sad that God-haters can be so easily baited.

Who's a "God-hater"? Not me. Read your own tagline before you go around tossing stones.

Considering you are the only one to respond to my bait I'm left to conclude the other folks on your side are, at least so far, demonstrably more rational.

You throw a "first punch" then imply the guy the responds is the pugilist? Your definition of rational is, to say the least, bizarre.

So, care to rationally discuss the issue at hand or do I continue my battle of wits with an unarmed person?

So, care to rationally discuss the issue at hand or do I continue my battle of wits with as unarmed person? Just thought I should correct your typo.

[JFK_Lib]

The TOE is just that, a theory. It's being tested daily by scientists... Evolution is a fact. How life began is only speculation.

OK, please explain the apparent disconnect here, please.

Evolution does not, in any way, deny the existence of a creative deity. That's what the rabid anti-evolution folks don't understand.

They're talking about biogenesis, and that has nothing to do with evolutionary theory. If they could possibly get that right, they could probably get a statement in there with no objection.

I think that many, if not most, are also confusing the materialistic conclusions that many like Dawkins draw from what they think the science implies and dont bother themselves to preface their remarks by clarifying that they are talking about their *philosophical* derivitives and not the science itself. Which inflames the Biblical literalists and adds more fuel to the fire.

I think the public could use some people that know how to speak to evangeliclas and fundamentalists to present the TOE to them in terms that they can accept more readily. But the secular materialists have no desire to do this and are just as happy seeing these people rant about something they dont really seem to understand clearly at the most basic level.

BTW, my thanks were sincere.

[Aquinasfan]

Finally, they're beginning to see the Light.

Thank God.

Freud is dead. Marx is dead. Darwin's dying. It's a good way to wrap up the 20th century.

[Physicist]

IOW, if the evidence for a continuum is the quantization of it and the quantization of a continuum is a fallacy per se then ipso facto evolution is false.

Sophistry. Evolution is of course quantized at the level of the individual. The fossil record is of course tied to that quantization, because fossils are necessarily the remains of individuals. To claim that that disproves evolution is a farce, because it could not have been otherwise.

Note: that doesn't mean there is no continuum between lizards and snakes, because "lizard" and "snake" are abstract human concepts which discrete individuals match to non-discrete (i.e. continuous) degrees.

[Ichneumon]

Alamo-Girl: Wouldn't every one of the examples of "transitional fossils" you provide in your exhaustive post actually be subject to the fallacy of quantizing the continuum?

PatrickHenry: The increasingly evident fact that there are no clear-cut quanta (isolated species), but everything, past and present, forms a continuum, is what common descent is all about.

Ichneumon: No, because they're samples along the continuum of morphological change, and not being presented as discrete entities. In fact, it's the anti-evolutionists who commit the fallacy of quantizing the continuum, by trying to assert that these transitionals are all "separate" creatures, and that there exist no further links between them.

[Alamo-Girl again:] PatrickHenry wins the prize for consistency with tortoise’s definition of the “continuum” and Physicist's and Doctor Stochastic's explanation thereof. However you both lose for applying the fallacy when it helps you and ignoring it when it doesn’t.

No, I don't believe we do apply it inconsistently. On the contrary, I think you've misunderstood the sort of fallacy that tortoise is calling "the fallacy of quantizing the continuum".

He was speaking specifically of the kind of fallacy that is often called "black-and-white thinking", "all-or-nothing thinking", "either/or fallacy", or "false dichotomy". However, those terms all describe a general class of fallacious analysis, and it seems to me that tortoise chose a new name to cover just a *specific* type of this fallacy which seems to come up a lot in science/anti-science discussions.

The specific type he wanted to address was when a property which exists along a continuum is erroneously treated as if there is (or should be) a sharp line between different states, or that the two (or more) states are entirely disjoint. This is the type immortalized literally in the name "black-and-white thinking" -- when someone insists on partitioning all cases as either "black" or "white", when the issue actually exists across a continuum of white on one end, black on the other, and various shades of gray in between.

In the thread in which he introduced that name, he was pointing out that betty boop's comment about the "obvious" difference between living and nonliving things overlooked the fact that there are things which rest in a gray area (like viruses), and that in the rise of life-as-we-know-it from inorganic beginnings, there would have been several stages where both the terms "living" and "nonliving" would be strained in varying degrees if applied. "Life" as we now know it has *several* properties (replication, metabolism, interaction with its environment, energy storage, autonomy, and more), but a system which has only some (but not all) of those properties (*and* in varying degrees) would not entirely accurately be described as either "living" *or* "nonliving". This was tortoise's point.

I'm not going to rehash whether I think this was a fair critique of betty boop's post or not (dead horse), I'm just clarifying which kind of fallacy he was describing, so that I can address your current charge that PatrickHenry and I somehow "apply it inconsistently".

And I disagree with part of your summary:

IOW, the fallacy would say that it is impossible to define a point in the continuum at which life exists and thus abiogenesis is idle speculation.

I agree with the first half (that it would be a fallacy to define a *particular* point in the continuum at which "life" suddenly exists where it had not at all existed a moment before), but I disagree with the second half, concerning whether this would mean that "abiogenesis is idle speculation". I don't believe that was tortoise's point at all. In fact, I think it might be the exact opposite: By trying to "see" a sharp dividing line between "life" and "nonlife", one would have trouble understanding abiogenesis, because one would be looking for a "poof" moment when life "suddenly" arose from "nonlife". But this expectation would be mistaken, since abiogenesis would be the *gradual* emergence of life-as-we-know it by the slow one-at-a-time accumulation of the *many* processes which, all together, make up the complex system that we are familiar with under the label of "life". Between a chemical "soup" and even the simplest modern single-celled organism would be many stages in the "gray area" between "nonlife" and today's "life" as we are used to seeing it. Only by understanding that there *is* (or if you prefer, "would be") a continuum of nonlife/life is one able to begin to grasp the concepts of abiogenesis in a meaningful way.

To the contrary of your assertion, Ichneumon, a “sample” is in fact a discrete fossil, a quantization of the continuum, like a lizard or a snake, for instance.

First, pointing to a discrete spot on a continuum (or even labeling it for convenience) is NOT the same as "quantizing" the continuum. It in no way attempts to conceptually BREAK UP the continuum into DISJOINT, conceptually erroneous "blocks", which is the sort of fallacious quantizing that tortoise was speaking of.

Let's use a rainbow (or light spectrum/continuum, to be more technical) as an example.

Example #1, discrete samples from the continuum: "The light at this point in the rainbow has a wavelength of 660nm, and is red. The orange light over here has a wavelength of 620nm."

Example #2, quantizing the continuum: "This band is red, and this band next to it is orange." ("Um, you've drawn the line between them in the middle of an orangey-red color, and there's some of that in both your "red" and your "orange" bands, plus how did you choose that particular spot to divide it at, since the red smoothly transitions into orange all in between?") "No, dammit, this band is all *red*, and this band is all *orange*!"

Example #1 picks out discrete spots in the continuum for demonstration purposes, but doesn't misrepresent (or misunderstand) the continuum nature of the rainbow as a whole. Example #2 does, in exactly the way tortoise was describing -- by attempting to shoe-horn all portions of the continuum into ill-fitting conceptual "boxes" which are inappropriate ways to handle values that vary across a continuum and have, in reality, no sharp boundaries, only changing gradations.

It's like the difference between these two images:

The first accurately captures the "blurring" of one color into another. The second misrepresents the rainbow as having mono-colored "bands" which suddenly "shift" to another color at a sharp boundary.

But there is no quantizable beginning for snakiness, as Physicist explains here.

I never said that there was. I wasn't trying to quantize evolutionary change. And pointing to discrete points on the continuum is not quantizing it.

The key presumption of the theory of evolution, as PatrickHenry has said, is that a continuum exists.

It's not a "presumption", it's very strongly supported by the evidence. The paradigm of a continuum of living forms over time is the *conclusion*, not the premise.

Everything in the theory depends on it being a continuum and yet the evidence for the theory is quantization of that presumed continuum.

I think you're misunderstanding the term "quantization" as tortoise was using it.

IOW, if the evidence for a continuum is the quantization of it

It isn't.

and the quantization of a continuum is a fallacy per se

Not per se, although it's quite often an error (and tortoise was speaking of the *fallacious* use of it) -- just as invoking ad hominem in an argument is usually done in a fallacious way, despite the fact that it can be used appropriately (as when a source's reliability is legitimately called into question).

then ipso facto evolution is false.

Your premises are flawed, therefore your conclusion does not follow.

Whereupon hearing that, abiogenesis immediately vanished into thin air. It was shocking at the time, but looking back on it now it makes sense – because if there is no definition of life, there can be no theory of life from non-life. Abiogenesis could not exist. Perhaps that is why nobody seemed to mourn him – it’s like he never existed at all, even to the bodyguards.

I know you're trying to be humorous, but this really misrepresents the argument. The point isn't that there is "no definition of life", the point is that any definition which excludes the existence of gray areas, or which purports to be able to draw a clear objective line between life and nonlife for all conceivable cases, is a false and misleading one.

They said the same fallacy of quantizing a continuum would apply to species – that there is no clear point in time in the geological record when a lizard begins and a snake begins.

Correct. It's like asking for the "clear point" where the rainbow's "red" ends and "orange" begins. One *transitions* into the other. Failing to acknowledge, recognize, or understand this leads to incorrect analysis and conclusions -- and similar fallacies occur when people attempt to understand biology in general, and evolutionary biology in particular, without a good grasp of the fact that *transitions* can't be accurately conceptualized with "either/or" logic. Just as it's a nonsensical question to ask where in the rainbow red "first" appears, it's a logical error to ask when the "first" mammal was born, or to think of a reptile "suddenly" giving birth to a mammal. The change occurred *gradually*, across *many* generations, from a very "lizardlike" form, eventually to a "lizardish with vaguely mammalian features" form, to eventually something that people might consider "mostly mammal", and sometime down the road (but with no clear "aha" dividing line) to something we'd consider "fully mammalian" (like, say, a wolf). This same error is repeated endlessly on these threads by people who ask to see "an ape giving birth to a human". That's not how evolution happens, and it's fallacious to try to quantize an evolutionary continuum in that way, into an "either all ape or all human" way of thinking about it.

IOW, if there is no beginning to a limb then there can be no connection – and evolution himself existed not because limbs existed, but because he is the connection between the limbs, the theory of the origin of species, i.e. common ancestry

Again, this is a misrepresentation of the point.

Outside the window, the evolution haters were celebrating, they had made big signs declaring that evolution can’t be a science if it based on a fallacy, the fallacy of quantizing the continuum.

Again, this is incorrect.

The physician called this substance a statistical distribution within the continuum and used the example of a bell curve wherein there may be a range of points in which a more obscure difference (such as between a snake and lizard) might be observed in a continuum.

Yawn. Satirizing the evidence doesn't make it go away.

IOW, the distribution itself was derived from data points each of which is a fallacy of quantizing the continuum.

No, it isn't, as I've pointed out above. An observed data point is in no way the kind of "disjointing" that tortoise was describing as a fallacy.

Also, I’m sure there will be attempts to revive him. Or because under the fallacy of quantizing the continuum there is no distinction between life and death,

Yet again, this is a misrepresentation of the point.

The point is not that "there is no distinction between life and death", the point is that any definition which treats them as entirely disjoint sets -- or declares that the gray area can safely be ignored -- is going to be incorrect. Similarly, even though there are shades of gray in between which people need to take into account, that's not the same as arguing that "there is no distinction between black and white".

But for those of us who still see a distinction between life and death, he is most assuredly dead.

There is "a distinction", of course, but the boundary between is far more complex than most people realize.

Now, could you please explain why you allege that PatrickHenry and I, specifically, have some sort of double-standard on this issue? Please use specific examples from my posts, if you can.

[e p1uribus unum]

They don't learn it because, in the majority of cases it is not presented well.

I was fortunate, I had great teachers and learned early.

When my own kids were in school I found out just how bad science teaching could be and how much damage it could cause in terms of future learning.

[finnigan2]

The evolutionary theory bandwagon has recently lost a wheel and I wish I knew more of the background to the story as to what triggered the event. Everything seemed to be going fine; scientists were busy announcing the latest proof that Darwin was right and suddenly some seem to be hedging their bets with this intelligent design business and are now shuffling nervously toward the exits.
The only guess that I can make is that perhaps the more perceptive among them have learned through DNA studies and gene research that evolution, as preached by Darwin, cannot stand much longer against recent evidence. Intelligent design is therefore a fallback position which doesn't completely let go of Darwin but doesn't go so far as to admit that Creationists might have been right all along.

[e p1uribus unum]

Wrong again.

It was not a new qualifier, it was an explainer.

The data acquired by scientists is not science.

Science is a discipline, a way of approaching truth despite human fallibility. One of the problems in properly teaching the sciences is the conflation of data with procedures used to get the data and confirm its validity.

I'm offline until late tonight or tomorrow.

[Ichneumon]

Darwin's dying. It's a good way to wrap up the 20th century.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... For some perspective, check out this web page on The Imminent Demise of Evolution. Creationists have been continuously predicting that evolution was about to come crashing down any day now since 1840... That page contains quotes predicting the "any day now" crash of evolution from 1840, 1850, 1878, 1895, 1903, 1904, 1905, 1912, 1922, 1929, 1935, 1940, 1961, 1963, 1970, 1975, 1976, 1980, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2002.

Sample:

"It must be stated that the supremacy of this philosophy has not been such as was predicted by its defenders at the outset. A mere glance at the history of the theory during the four decades that it has been before the public shows that the beginning of the end is at hand."
-- Prof. Zockler, The Other Side of Evolution, 1903, p. 31-32 cited in Ronald L. Numbers, Creationism In Twentieth-Century America: A Ten-Volume Anthology of Documents, 1903-1961 (New York & London, Garland Publishing, 1995)

But surely, they're finally right *this* time, eh? Dream on, AF.

[Ichneumon]

The evolutionary theory bandwagon has recently lost a wheel

LOL -- dream on.

and I wish I knew more of the background to the story as to what triggered the event.

I wish you knew more of the background, so you wouldn't make silly posts like this without knowing what you're talking about.

Everything seemed to be going fine; scientists were busy announcing the latest proof that Darwin was right

And still are. There is, for example, a *HUGE* flood of new evidence confirming evolution from the recent revolutions in DNA sequencing and analysis.

and suddenly some seem to be hedging their bets with this intelligent design business and are now shuffling nervously toward the exits.

"Suddenly" my a**, there have *always* been fringe scientists around to argue against *any* established theory, including evolution -- see my previous post for examples from the 1800's onward. Nothing new or "sudden" about it.

The only guess that I can make is that perhaps the more perceptive among them have learned through DNA studies and gene research that evolution, as preached by Darwin, cannot stand much longer against recent evidence.

Again, please learn something about the subject before you attempt to critique it. Contrary to your misinformed opinion, "DNA studies and gene research" is daily producing a flood of further confirmation of evolution.

Intelligent design is therefore a fallback position which doesn't completely let go of Darwin but doesn't go so far as to admit that Creationists might have been right all along.

I should hope not, since just about every time creationists make a pronouncement, it's severely flawed and grossly in error -- and depressingly often it's badly dishonest or flat-out plagiarized. See my profile page for a few dozen examples (out of thousands I've seen personally).

[MineralMan]

"We teach them electrons move around the nucleus of the atom in nice neat little concentric circles. "

Actually, we learned a much more comprehensive model of the electron when I was in high school, and I graduated in 1963. It was still incorrect, but there were no orbiting electrons.

There may be some schools still teaching that nonsense, but I doubt that it's very many.

[dsc]

"One *transitions* into the other."

There are things that are so intricate that it's difficult to see how they could be the result of accidental transition. Carbohydrate metabolism, for instance, or DNA repair.

[MineralMan]

"No because one of the more interesting aspects of the human mind is that it intuitively grasps the highly complex physics of the projectile and can tell you where to stick your hand to catch the ball with a remarkably high degree of accuracy. "

Actually, that is a learned skill, not an intuitive one. You can watch the process by visiting peewee league baseball games. We don't intuitively know how to catch a ball. We learn how to catch a ball.