holy hell, I leave for a few hours and this thread explodes!
there was a cartoon a few pages back that suggested that those with a creationist outlook were the only ones that looked for data to back up there beliefs, and hinted that perhaps they ignored what didn’t.
I can imagine that people of the evolutionary mindset have probably done the same for the sake of promoting their cause.
After all, what would happen if what the scientific field had accepted as absolute truth turned out to be fundamentally flawed?
every project based off of that false premise would be discredited as well.
not only would it be disheartening and incredibly frustrating, but downright humiliating. surely anyone who attempted to make a move in that direction would be mocked, discouraged, and have their data suppressed.
people all have preconceived notions, it colors their perception and influences their interpretation of data.
I admit to being no different in this regard, and information can be “spun” to support just about anything.
I have enjoyed the discussion, and though mine is an unpopular stance I am still convinced it is correct.
and Beowolf, you are quite correct in saying that “God did it” is not science.
science is man’s attempt at understanding the divine order of his surroundings.
so in parting here, I can say I respect your views - as you have defended them intelligently, but politely disagree with you. later guys.
[quote]Jab1 wrote:
It’s a thorny issue. Some education from parents is necessary. But I’m of the opinion that a parent giving their child their religion is tantamount to abuse; children should be allowed to choose a religion when they are, say 18.
[/quote]
Cripes. Am I the first to coin the phrase “Separation of Atheism and State?” Or, has it been done already?
[quote]miroku333 wrote:
holy hell, I leave for a few hours and this thread explodes!
there was a cartoon a few pages back that suggested that those with a creationist outlook were the only ones that looked for data to back up there beliefs, and hinted that perhaps they ignored what didn’t.
I can imagine that people of the evolutionary mindset have probably done the same for the sake of promoting their cause.[/quote]
Absolutely not. This would be fundamentally against science. Science IS skepticism. That’s why most scientists immediately seek to replicate any study hundreds of times before accepting the findings. Unless they’re being payed off (which is indeed the case with many drugs, but not for Evolution I assure you).
[quote]
After all, what would happen if what the scientific field had accepted as absolute truth turned out to be fundamentally flawed?[/quote]
Wanna know a secret? This happens ALL THE TIME! Our understand of Chemistry has been majority altered three times since I began studying chem. What I learned in High School has been changed, and what I learn now in Uni is quite different in a sense.
[quote]
every project based off of that false premise would be discredited as well.[/quote]
Incorrect. Most scientific projects do not assume. They take data and attempt to explain it using new experimental data. Therefore, most projects would stand on their own. Only many hypothesis’s, which are NOT taken as truth, that are based on the assumption a theory is truth would be disproved.
[quote]
not only would it be disheartening and incredibly frustrating, but downright humiliating. surely anyone who attempted to make a move in that direction would be mocked, discouraged, and have their data suppressed.[/quote]
Actually, if they found legitimate data supporting the view and it was replicatable, they’d be lauded. Given prizes even. They’d be loved by the scientific community. See: Newton, Einstein, Copernicus, Galileo, etd ad infinitum.
[quote]
people all have preconceived notions, it colors their perception and influences their interpretation of data.[/quote]
True. But data is data. And the data does support evolution, and it CERTAINLY support natural selection. Extrapolating from there explains many other phenomena, this unless there is a serious challenge to evolution, it is ok to make said assumptions, so long as we recognize they are hypothesis until data is found supporting the claims independently of the assumptions.
[quote]
I admit to being no different in this regard, and information can be “spun” to support just about anything.
I have enjoyed the discussion, and though mine is an unpopular stance I am still convinced it is correct.
and Beowolf, you are quite correct in saying that “God did it” is not science.
science is man’s attempt at understanding the divine order of his surroundings.[/quote]
Science is not an attempt. Science is a process by which humans question, study, and come to understand natural phenomena. In a spiritual sense, I agree.
[quote]
so in parting here, I can say I respect your views - as you have defended them intelligently, but politely disagree with you. later guys.[/quote]
[quote]pushharder wrote:
I promise to use tracer rounds so that you can see where I’m firing from so that if I miss you can begin your campaign of vengeance.
[/quote]
Must be a trick to get .338/378 Weatherby tracer rounds. You’d have to pull bullets from .338 Lapua magnum tracer rounds, but those have to be special ordered from Finland.
Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to give me a sporting chance to fire back following your preemptive attack on me for not sharing your belief in the Hebrew creation myth.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
pushharder wrote:
I promise to use tracer rounds so that you can see where I’m firing from so that if I miss you can begin your campaign of vengeance.
Must be a trick to get .338/378 Weatherby tracer rounds. You’d have to pull bullets from .338 Lapua magnum tracer rounds, but those have to be special ordered from Finland.
Seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to give me a sporting chance to fire back following your preemptive attack on me for not sharing your belief in the Hebrew creation myth.
It’s not the lack of “sharing” that did it. Besides, I’m a sporting kind of guy so it’s not all that much trouble.
I would appreciate it if you forward your coordinates to me. Since MN is the land of 10,000 lakes I’m hoping I can sneak up on you via canoe. I might as well come your way; you have repeatedly broken your commitment to meet me in Whitefish where I can fire when I see the whites of your eyes. [/quote]
If you can see the whites of his eyes, one of you has not spent enough time in the Bulldog.
[quote]Jab1 wrote:
pushharder wrote:
You conveniently left out the part that says a theory is testable and has been tested - repeatedly. By its very nature macroevolution is not testable so it fails to ascend from hypothesis.
It may be the best explanation out there sans creation and therefore deserving of its strong following by those who abhor the thought of a mighty, omnipotent God but that in and of itself is not enough to propel it from a weak hypothesis to a fact.
Varq, do not err in this respect again because…well, trust me…my rifle can shoot farther than yours…I won’t have to be very stealthy to sneak up on you…
You’re still getting it confused. If it helps, think of a theory as a model; it is used to explain things. It can also be used to describe things, and to make predictions.
To quote Stephen Hawking; “A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.”
Based on this definition, evolution is a superb theory.
Now the scientific method works like this; you can never prove a theory, but if you find one thing wrong with it, you can disprove. So find me one thing wrong with Evolution that comes from a credible scientific source. I gave you the example of a rabbit in the precambrian earlier.
[/quote]
We are both hitting on the central misunderstanding of biology theory: it is testable and it is falsifiable and it may not be verifiable.
Because Pushharder demands a verifable proof, he will never be satisfied with our evidence–whether Tiltaalik or archeopteryx or cytochrome c evolution–however much it supports, confirms, is compatible with or gives credence to evolution.
On the other hand, there is no fossil evidence that conclusively falsifies Evolutionary Theory–yes, modifies, corrects, amends–but never falsifies it.
There is no bunny embalmed next to Tiltaalik, no feathered amphibians in the strata containing archeopteryx. When we find the Easter Bunny fossilized with a basket of pterodactyl eggs, we will know Pushharder to be right, and Darwin to be wrong.
Until then, I respect him as I respect doubters everywhere: an unchallenged truth is not worth defending.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
DrSkeptix wrote:
Jab1 wrote:
pushharder wrote:
You conveniently left out the part that says a theory is testable and has been tested - repeatedly. By its very nature macroevolution is not testable so it fails to ascend from hypothesis.
It may be the best explanation out there sans creation and therefore deserving of its strong following by those who abhor the thought of a mighty, omnipotent God but that in and of itself is not enough to propel it from a weak hypothesis to a fact.
Varq, do not err in this respect again because…well, trust me…my rifle can shoot farther than yours…I won’t have to be very stealthy to sneak up on you…
You’re still getting it confused. If it helps, think of a theory as a model; it is used to explain things. It can also be used to describe things, and to make predictions.
To quote Stephen Hawking; “A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations.”
Based on this definition, evolution is a superb theory.
Now the scientific method works like this; you can never prove a theory, but if you find one thing wrong with it, you can disprove. So find me one thing wrong with Evolution that comes from a credible scientific source. I gave you the example of a rabbit in the precambrian earlier.
We are both hitting on the central misunderstanding of biology theory: it is testable and it is falsifiable and it may not be verifiable.
You want to talk “biology theory” and its testability? Fine. You want to talk microevolution and its testability? Fine. You want to talk macroevolution and its testability? Unfine. You can’t do it. Saying you can is not doing it. You cannot find and test transitions above, say the family level, Doc. You can’t do it and neither can anybody anywhere. It’s never been done.
Because Pushharder demands a verifable proof, he will never be satisfied with our evidence–whether Tiltaalik or archeopteryx or cytochrome c evolution–however much it supports, confirms, is compatible with or gives credence to evolution.
You of all people should not be citing archeopteryx as a support and confirmation for the credence of evolution. Good grief.
Until then, I respect him as I respect doubters everywhere: an unchallenged truth is not worth defending.
There are doubters on both sides of the issue. If anyone, and I’m not pointing the finger at you, haughtily proclaims their unflinching view in a dogmatic manner on an issue that cannot be objectively analyzed without some degree of faith then they are guilty. Guilty of the very thing they so detest in the opposing side.
But you need to be challenged on your assessment of macroevolutionary theory as “truth”. You cannot claim truth in this matter. You are talking about an issue that happened in the distant past, i.e. history, if it happened at all. If it is still happening in the present as many claim, it is happening so slowly and imperceptibly that it cannot be measured. It cannot be tested. This is unchallengeable.
[Edit] If you beg to differ then make it simple and cite the experiments where for example an ocelot was observed to have bred with a wild boar and produced offspring. Or would you prefer to cite the successful breeding even if done in vitro of a sea snake and a flounder? How about a beetle with a spider? A pollination of a hibiscus by a ponderosa pine? A mating of a human with a chimp? (Oooh we’d better not touch that one)[/quote]
You choose to ignore my primary contention: where is the observation that falsifies evolutionary theory?
Do the carpal bones of Tiltaalik conform to evolutionary theory, or disprove it?
What exactly about the archeopteryx disproves evolution?
Where is the material evidence?
Certainly the experiment I would offer does not involve bizaare hybridizations, because that is not what evolution proposes as its primary engine.
Push wants an experiment. I might choose the following: now that we can evaluate the genomes of the species, I could disprove evolution if genomic concordance was a random events among the species and phyla. So, for example, humans are largely concordant with bonobos and those randy chimps, less so with orangs, less so with lemurs, or cows. And what a marvelous coinicidence: the particular paleogenetics of each species’ vital enzymes (for example, cytochrome c) mirrors precisely this concordance.
Now these observations don’t prove the theory, but the theory has been tested so, and it is not found false. The theory explains the findings quite nicely. And ID does not, unless it violates that razor of Occam/Ockham, ten thousand times over.
If you have not done so, you may like this one:
A great story of a diligent observer with brilliant insights.
And I still do not understand the evolution of the ammonites.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
You want to talk “biology theory” and its testability? Fine. You want to talk microevolution and its testability? Fine. You want to talk macroevolution and its testability? Unfine. You can’t do it. Saying you can is not doing it. You cannot find and test transitions above, say the family level, Doc. You can’t do it and neither can anybody anywhere. It’s never been done.[/quote]
I’ve already said this so I don’t see why you’re continuing along this line of reasoning; macroevolution is essentially no different to microevolution. This is the scientific consensus.
Evolution allows us to predict that, we will find evidence of macroevolution in, for example, adapting from the water to the land, ancient whale ancestors’ blowholes moved position down the skull until you get to modern day hippos. We have found fossil evidence where this appears to be the case. And then recently, we have found genetic evidence that shows this happened, and also changes the old school of thought that hippos are more closely related to pigs.
There is however a different side to macroevlution, that of rapid change such as when a genome duplicates. This can and has been observed and tested. I’ll get to your facetious edit in a minute.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
You of all people should not be citing archeopteryx as a support and confirmation for the credence of evolution. Good grief.[/quote]
The archeopteryx is good evidence. It was found at the time in evolutionary history that you’d expect to find it (based on dating tests), and its development for the time is as you’d expect. If you found a bunny rabbit in the pre cambrian; THAT would bring in to doubt the credence of evolution.
This is not how science works. Haughtily proclaiming unflinching views in a dogmatic manner comes from the religious/creationist side only. I think what you are doing here is projecting, because you evidently don’t understand the scientific method as well as you think you do.
Scientists are more than willing to change their minds. If any creationist discovered evidence for it he would be awarded the nobel prize and lauded as one of the greatest scientific minds of all time. I doubt this will happen because creationism is not science.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
But you need to be challenged on your assessment of macroevolutionary theory as “truth”. You cannot claim truth in this matter. You are talking about an issue that happened in the distant past, i.e. history, if it happened at all. If it is still happening in the present as many claim, it is happening so slowly and imperceptibly that it cannot be measured. It cannot be tested. This is unchallengeable.
[Edit] If you beg to differ then make it simple and cite the experiments where for example an ocelot was observed to have bred with a wild boar and produced offspring. Or would you prefer to cite the successful breeding even if done in vitro of a sea snake and a flounder? How about a beetle with a spider? A pollination of a hibiscus by a ponderosa pine? A mating of a human with a chimp? (Oooh we’d better not touch that one)[/quote]
You may have heard of the story of the Peppered moth? In pre industrial times, there were a preponderance of light coloured moths compared to dark ones; they camouflaged nicely against the light coloured trees and better avoided predators. With the industrial revolution came pollution, and darker coloured trees. A funny thing was observed in urban areas; the dark coloured moths became the common phenotypic variant. This is a change in phenotype at a species level, otherwise known as macroevolution.
Macroevolution does not work how you suggest. In fact your edit is along the lines of yet another a common creationist canard; “why have we never seen a crocoduck?”
The only benefit of you saying things like that is a demonstration of your lack of understanding.
[quote]pushharder wrote:
Even when you see crossbreds at the genus level like tigons and ligers you see huge fertility problems. But when you ascend the taxonomic ladder and attempt experiments at the family and order levels you run into a solid brick wall hence the testability problems I referred to in prior posts.
Having said all that I think EVERYBODY that’s anybody would agree that taxonomy is not an exact science with ironclad “laws” in effect.[/quote]
You are inventing a different version of macroevolution to the one I know. Of course there are testability problems with something like that!
Taxonomy is not exact yet, but in the future we will have mapped enough genomes to start developing a precise evolutionary tree. There is only one, and one day within the next 50 or a hundred years, perhaps sooner, we will know it. We’ve already achieved small parts of it, for example identifying the genetic links between humans and chimpanzees.
Those gaps for your god to fill are getting smaller and smaller.
…‘theory’ does that, it changes when new evidence is submitted. That allows for progress and that leads to increased knowledge about our origins. Something i find much more interesting than ‘God did it’ to be honest…
no more, no less . . .well, maybe a little more . . .
Ahh, but you see, you don’t believe God did it - you’ve never placed yourself into the mindset and then asked the logical questions that would result from it. That is why people rarely understand it each other - we only see from where our eyes are or have been . . .
You get it all wrong because you assume that just because we say God did it - that that suffices as an answer to all questions - WRONG
Lemme splain - see, if God did it - ok, that tells me why it is - but it does not tell me how, when, where, or what. God is the why of life - and we still get to learn the rest. That’s why a person with a love of truth and a knowledge of the Divine will know this world far better than anyone else - - this of course assumes the intellectual discipline, etc - but that is a different thread . .
Evolution has no why . . . you are trying to get to a why, but never can. Why is there matter/energy - you don’t know, Why is there life - you don’t know. Why is there pain and evil - you don’t know. You come up with the what, where when and how answers, but at the end the why line is still blank . . .[/quote]
Between your craziness, I think perhaps we agree!?! God=why, science=how. The two should not really mix.
[quote]Beowolf wrote:
Wanna know a secret? This happens ALL THE TIME! Our understand of Chemistry has been majority altered three times since I began studying chem. What I learned in High School has been changed, and what I learn now in Uni is quite different in a sense.
[/quote]
I actually laughed when I read this. Your understanding of chemistry may have changed, but the understanding in the scientific community has not seen major changes in that time.
You probably started out with some simple Lewis structures in high school and everything was simple and swell. Match up a couple of valence electrons and you were good to go, right? Then you get to college and find out electrons really are contained in nice little orbitals. They just rotate around that nucleus and hope to bump into another atom so that they can get that magic number of 8 electrons. Life’s still good and chemistry’s as simple as can be.
But now you’ve taken a bit of organic chem, haven’t you? A few weeks in there and your whole world’s been turned upside down. Electrons aren’t in any orbit at all. Suddenly they aren’t simply a particle but are a wave at the same time, and we actually don’t have a clue where they reside in the atom at any given time. What’s more is that some guy named Schrodinger is telling you that you can use the energy of the electron to figure out where it probably is. Huh?
This has all been around for nearly 100 years. Chemistry may have changed in your little world as your knowledge grew, but the currently accepted mainstream theories have not.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Sloth wrote:
For the most part it’s seems this discussion is about young earth (no dinos) creationists vs. evolution. However, do deists count as creationists in the broad sense? I suppose they could believe the deity/whatever had absolutely no hand, at any point, in the universe’s and our existence, but atheism seems the home for such thought.
I don’t see why an intelligent person who believes in God can’t just take the position that macroevolution is the method God has chosen to proliferate life. This position would neither deny faith in a creator, nor ignore the preponderance of evidence supporting evolution.
[/quote]
later guys.