Posted on 03/24/2002 7:03:09 PM PST by scripter
It's the same kind of reasoning used to solve crimes. You see that something has happened. You discover means, motive and opportunity. You draw conclusions.
From a God's eye perspective, you haven't proved anything. It's not the kind of proof required in mathematics. The events can't be re-run in a laboratory. But people are executed based on this kind of reasoning.
Your eyeballs scanned what I wrote, but you didn't really read it.
Consider this:
Would you bet on your ability to flip 10 heads in a row if you didn't have to show every toss? Suppose you could do the flips behind a curtain and only raise the curtain at time of your choosing?
The prosseses of life are very cruel and wasteful. In sexual reproduction, millions of sperm never fertilize anything. Millions of embryos are naturally aborted in the first 30 days. These are hidden coin tosses.
This kind of selection operates on every level -- even on the non-living level. This is how chemical elements evolve in stars, how simple elements can evolve into amino acids.
It is absolutely and completely false to assert that everything prior to the current toss is garbage. Everything that has previously been selected is available to build upon. Every toss is independent of the past history of tosses. You cannot multiply the the probabilities of all the tosses to get the final probability, because selection cheats. It hides bad tosses.
...and multiplies good tosses.
Good tosses are rare but if they occur they spread pretty fast.
(mendelian genetics contradicting evolution?) just curious.
Fair enough with me. Let's just teach science. Let's get atheistic materialism out of our science courses. Let the Darwinians teach their religion in the church of the holy pond scum.
Science proves its propositions. Evolution has never proven its atheistic/materialistic proposition in any scientific way. It has never, and cannot now give proof of its main contention: that macro-evolution has ever occurred.
Why would such a thing occur - a similar protein, similar accross species function differently? You are so inbued with the nonsense of evolution that you ascribe everything that occurs to evolution. The actions of this protein show quite clearly intelligent design and the individuality of species.
Here's why. If these proteins had evolved in the process of being tranferred from one species to another, they would act in the same way because evolution supposedly works by small changes and in making a new creature it would copy as much as possible not just genetically but also functionally from the previous species. What we have here is a designer using bits and pieces of the genetic design of one species and by small tweaking using them for a completely different purpose in another species. Therefore, your dilemma is proof against evolution.
1. Mendellian genetics - he proved it himself with a bunch of peas, has been further verified by many breeding experiments.
Wow, really!? Do you mean to say that all of "mendellian genetics" has been proven? You do realize that this is not a single theory, but a whole field with many, many theories, principles, techniques, working assumptions, etc? Why is this such an active field, with many theories and hypotheses constantly being proposed, tested and investigated, if it has all been "proven".
You need to specify a particular theory within the broad rubric of "mendellian genetics" for which you believe positive "proof" has been provided, but for the moment I will assume (from your reference to his peas) that you mean to refer to Mendel's ratios.
The first problem you have here is that Mendel's ratios are LAWS, not THEORIES. (The theory part involved the entities of hereditary factors or "genes" that Mendel hypothesized to explain his ratios. OTOH I also claim that laws and facts, like theories, are also not "proven" and are subject to revision.)
The greater problem you have is that Mendel's ratios are not true!!!! That is to say, rather, that they are only true some of the time. How can a claim which is not universally true be "proven"?
Mendel had the sheer good look to have chosen traits for which the genes resided on different chromosomes. If this is not the case then Mendel's ratios do not always work. See: Linked Genes On The Same Chromosome Exhibit Distorted Mendelian Ratios There are a number of other phenomena which lead to non-Mendellian ratios, e.g. multiple alleles with co-dominance, semi-dominance, recessive lethal alleles, alleles that are lethal in combination, and so on.
The point here, which should be getting through even your hyper-robust cranium (but probably isn't), is that scientific theories are never finished (and therefore never "proven"). Although Mendel's detective work with his peas, and his inference that his data could be explained by hereditary "factors" acting in pairs, was brilliant, it was only the merest beginning. It eventually led to a greater understanding of genetics, chromosomes, and to a general explosion of knowledge about the material basis of heredity, and to completely unexpected discoveries like linked genes, precisely because it wasn't completely true and final.
2. Gravity - by the American landing on the moon. All the calculations were made using the theory of gravity.
Wrong. It was the LAW of gravity which was so used. A complete and satisfactory THEORY of gravity has yet to be devised!!! (Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is essentially a theory of gravity -- arguing that gravity is caused by mass induced warping of space-time, that it is phenomenologically indistinquishable from acceleration, and so on -- but it leaves many important questions unaswered. E.g. whether the force is mediated by a particle, whether it is quantitized, etc.)
3. Relativity - the atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb.
More specific, please. General or Special relativity? Also, how have you (or anyone else) logically and conclusively eliminated the possibility that a yet to be devised theory may explain the operation of "the atom bomb" as well as "relativity" and also explain things that relativity cannot?
Don't you see that claiming a theory has been "proved" is essentially a claim of omnipotence? You are claiming that no future evidence could ever overturn the theory. I'm sorry, but to anyone familiar with the history of science, this is a VERY STUPID claim. This assumption is also absolutely contrary to the core scientific value that holds nature as the ultimate arbiter of all our theories.
Sorry, gore. You attempt to specify a proven scientific theory has failed. But then you seem unable to even delinate a specific theory (proved or otherwise).
In the paragraph above the only major point we disagree on is the effect of mendellian genetics on evolution. At the time "On Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" was published, Mendellian genetics had not been discovered. Darwin made the assumption that the traits of each parent 'melded' in their progenitors and that therefore a favorable mutation would be easily passed throughout a whole species in a short time. This made his theory very viable. This was proven untrue because like the rest of his book it was not science but a bunch of assumptions without scientific basis strung together to prove a theory. What mendellian genetics shows is that it is very difficult, if not impossible to pass on a new trait throughout an entire population. Here's why. For each gene we have a reciprocal gene called an allele. During reproduction only one of these paired genes gets passed on to the next generation. This selection is totally random. So right from the start a new gene has only one chance in two of being passed on to the next generation. Being a new gene, no one else in the population has it. Therefore the chances of its being passed on to each succeeding generation are cut in half with each generation. This makes the spread of a new mutation almost impossible. It can happen, but it will take numerous favorable mutations to die in the genetic abyss before one will finally make it throughout the whole population. Now evolutionists thing that there has been enough time for all these new genes to spread throughout all these different species, but that is not the case. The two-three billion years since life began on earth are insufficient time for the numerous mutations that were necessary to spread throughout all living things when the delays caused by Mendellian genetics are taken into account. Darwin realized quite well that the amount of time to spread these traits was critical for the viability of his theory. Mendellian genetics extends the time far too much for his theory to be viable.
I am aware that there is shuffling amongst genes and that for example 100 genes can perform (say)some 300 functions due to the shuffling. However, I do not understand how you arrive at the conclusion that due to this new functions arise or more importantly as to the matter of evolution, how it ends up in the creation of new species. After all, it seems to me that all individuals with the same genetic structure would be able to do these functions so that these functions, though not residing in a particular gene as we commonly think, would still be part of the species and would not result in a new species. In fact, I think it is this "shuffling" that is the cause of what is called micro-evolution - changes caused by the environment to help a species adapt to it.
Okay, what experimentation have they stood up to? Can you give some examples for discussion?
Very nice. However, the problem is that evolution has been saying that it is proven science for 150 years and we yet have not seen any scientific proof for it. You are telling us to continue to wait. I say it is time for evolutionists to stop telling us that evolution is science until such time as they can give proof for their theory. Enough of this someday nonsense which everyone from Ms Cleo on uses to fool people.
What would that leave? Isn't all science non-theistic and materialistic? All Darwin's theory says is that no miracles are needed to explain the diversity of life; it says nothing about abiogenesis or theology, except that a literal reading of parts of Genesis is wrong. But astronomy and geology teach us the same thing.
There is no evidence for evolution, yet it gets taught in the classroom as science, which it is not. All that evoilution is is a materialistic/atheistic philosophy posing as science.
This crap is getting offensive; you know as well as anyone else, you've certainly been told enough times, that scientists (including bioligists) come in all flavors when it comes to religious belief.
Your statement is total sophistry. All these theories have given experimental, mathematical and practical proof that they are true. You are trying to establish an impossible standard of proof because your silly theory cannot give any proof at all of its validity. If you do not believe in the proven theories of science, then go live in a cave without tv's, cars, planes, refrigerators, medicines, and the millions of other things which science, true science has done to advance all our lives.
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