Pharyngula

Posted by: Ben in Texas | September 9, 2009 9:28 PM

Did help ma boab write that column?

Posted by: Mike Wagner | September 9, 2009 9:29 PM

Wait... what about the laws of thermodynamics?
I saw those quoted twice on youtube last night, and neither people that used them understood what the hell they were saying.
To give them credit, I didn't know much about the laws of thermodynamics last year when I started researching counter arguments to these schmucks. Oh wait, I can't give them any credit, because I don't present something as an argument for my side until I understand it. :)

Posted by: Hurin | September 9, 2009 9:30 PM

"Wake me up when a creationist says something intelligent."

Paradox. Prepare to sleep forever.

Posted by: peter | September 9, 2009 9:32 PM

I thought British people were supposed to be smart.

Posted by: Invigilator | September 9, 2009 9:34 PM

Long you will sleep, Professor!

Posted by: Larry | September 9, 2009 9:35 PM

What about the banana fer christ's sake! It fits the human hand so perfectly, dontchaknow. A sure sign creationism is true! And he didn't even mention it.

Posted by: Jordan | September 9, 2009 9:37 PM

You'll be sleeping for a long time, I'm afraid. Are you sure the journalist isn't setting these creationists up? He found the best arguments, and now he's waiting to really hand it to them next?

Posted by: Matrim | September 9, 2009 9:38 PM

This would make me laugh if I didn't know that plenty of people are reading this right now and nodding sagely at it.

Creationist stupidity doesn't entertain me...it worries me.

Posted by: maxamillion | September 9, 2009 9:39 PM

Allegory

So creationists aren't literalists then?

Ken Ham will be surprised!

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 9, 2009 9:39 PM

The real five best arguments for creationism:

5. I don't see how all this could have evolved.

4. How can you know anything is true, if your brain evolved?

3. If we come from monkeys, then maybe I should act like a monkey! How would you like that?

2. If the Earth was too close or too far from the Sun, then there wouldn't be any liquid water for us to drink.

1. You're going to burn in Hell for ever and ever.

Posted by: James F | September 9, 2009 9:41 PM

"If evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"

Posted by: Beaker | September 9, 2009 9:46 PM

Peter @#7, Britain has plenty of stupid people. They just generally don't get as much attention as American stupid people.

I thought the Telegraph would have been above this sort of rubbish. Just another reason to stick to the Times.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | September 9, 2009 9:47 PM

If monkeys are true, why is there still evolution?

Posted by: Lorax | September 9, 2009 9:49 PM

Wake me up when a creationist says something intelligent

Dateline Sept 9th, 3015: This just in....University of Minnesota-Morris (site of the current capital of our reptilian overlords, all hail Sssthhtss) professor continues to sleep!

Posted by: Badger3k | September 9, 2009 9:51 PM

Aww, come on people. The best argument. Why are there PYGMIES+DWARFS! (or is it DWARVES?)

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 9, 2009 9:54 PM

http://www.thepaincomics.com/3006%20A.D..jpg

Posted by: Badger3k | September 9, 2009 9:57 PM

After going there and reading the story, and some of the comments - the Stupid - it Burns! It's pretty sad that this was the best they could come up with.

Posted by: Kapitano | September 9, 2009 10:02 PM

Hey, I can give you five reasons that're even *better*!

5) Scientists don't know everything, so maybe something they don't know disproves everything the do - *and* proves creationism.

4) God loves you. He'll send you to hell if you don't love him back, but that's just tough love. And lovers don't lie to each other, do they?

3) Hitler used Darwin's ideas. Sort of. Which proves...something.

2) Everything in the bible is true. We know this because it says so in the bible. Even though it actually doesn't.

1) God tells me so. He talks to me and tells me evolution is a lie. Okay, he talks through my toaster, but that's no different from talking out of thin air.

Posted by: foxfire | September 9, 2009 10:05 PM

So much for investigative reporting.....

Posted by: Carlie | September 9, 2009 10:08 PM

1. You're going to burn in Hell for ever and ever.

Or the corollary: I'm afraid that if I listen to you, I'll burn in Hell forever and ever.

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | September 9, 2009 10:09 PM

I'm going back to writing. Wake me up when ...

No wonder Prof. Myers is such a prolific blogger, if he writes in his sleep. Look to your laurels, Dr. Asimov!

Beaker @ # 23: Just another reason to stick to the Times.

Uh, last I heard that was a Mordor Voldemort Murdoch property. Unglue yourself and search for something with at least a 33% chance of factuality.

Posted by: Medievalist Jon | September 9, 2009 10:09 PM

And evolution's a RELIGION, dontcha know?

Seriously, it must be nice to be able to publish in a newspaper and only have to rely on sources like CreationWiki and the bible.

Posted by: Screechy Monkey | September 9, 2009 10:13 PM

We now present The World According To Accomodationists:

Hmm, these arguments for creationism seem rather illogical and poorly supported to me. Let's see what this Myers fellow has to say about them....

Oh my stars and garters! He's using sarcasm! Why that's ... that's ... incivil! That does it. LA LA LA I'M NOT LISTENING! CREATIONISM FOREVER!

Yeah, doesn't seem very likely to me, either.

Posted by: Scooty Puff Jr. | September 9, 2009 10:15 PM

Those aren't even arguments for creationism. At best, they're arguments against evolution. It would have been nice if the Telegraph wouldn't have played the creationist game of pretending that disproving evolution automatically makes creationism true.

Posted by: Psykhos | September 9, 2009 10:19 PM

Crap. Now I have no choice but to drop my atheist banner and my physiology degree and become a creationist. If only I had heard these amazing arguments before I wasted so much of my life.

Posted by: Bryan | September 9, 2009 10:21 PM

"Wake me up when a creationist says something intelligent."

Read further down in the story. He lists the "best" arguments to support evolution as well - and they're far more convincing. The creationist side of the paper will probably be considered an unintentional strawman by creationists.

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 9, 2009 10:25 PM

Fucking A, this is horrible writing. It's like a bad elementary school report. "See in the dark"? Does this guy think cats have compound eyes? You know, like BUGS?

It's like compound interest. The cat's compound eye adjusts quickly, and a little light becomes a lot!

I'm actually imagining cats with compound eyes now. It's making my skin crawl.

Posted by: MadScientist | September 9, 2009 10:28 PM

"Wake me up when a creationist says something intelligent."

Hmmm. I still prefer "when hell freezes over".

Is there some special contest that I hadn't heard of - perhaps some multi-million dollar prize for being a moron? Why do creationists persist? They can't all be going for the Templeton Prize, can they?

Posted by: NoFear | September 9, 2009 10:40 PM

The part at the end "The best arguments to support evolution" are very poor, perhaps intentionally. I think instead they should have rebutted the creationist arguments.

1. There are tons of transitional forms that show that fish evolved into amphibians evolved into reptiles evolved into birds, etc. Many are still extant. Lungfish anyone?

2. Evolution makes no statements about the age of the earth. Geology, paleontology, cosmology and physics have provided evidence for the age of the earth, not evolution. But, yes, evolution does require lots of time to achieve the biosphere we live in today.
a. Not every skeleton is preserved in fossil form ... in fact most are not. Yes, there are some gaps but the gaps are small enough to allow a big picture to emerge. But regardless, this is not an argument for creatonism.
b. What do cave paintings have to do with evolution? And why should there be more. Homo sapiens have only been around for ~100,000 years. And if the story of the bible is to be believed, there would be no cave paintings. Adam and Eve were created with the gift of language according to that specious text cristians (and jews) love so much. Where in the bible/pentateuch is a stone age even mentioned?
c. Again,vhow is this evidence for creationism? God could have made the sea as salty or not as he liked so one can not argue that the amount of salt in the oceans is evidence for creationism. But nor is it evidence against evolution. The saltiness of the sea has nothing to do with evolution.
d. See above.

3. PZ covered this. Pretty much all of the stages of the development of the eye are extant today, from simple light sensing jellyfish to the eagle's eye. And why would god give the eagle a better eye than man? An eagle can spot a rabbit a mile away. Wouldn't god gift his favored species with all the best designs he has to offer? Thought about that way, the eye is an argument against creationism.

4. Irrelevant and not an argument for creationism in any way. And it contradicts the earlier denial of an old earth in argument #2. If those days are ages, then why not accept that each "age" is about 640 million years? Then the ages of the bible and what science has discovered would line up.

5. The fact that science can not provide a purpose for life is not an argument for creationism. Life needs no purpose. The universe needs no purpose. Get over it.

As to the "Space" argument for evolution, that is not an argument for evolution. It is an argument for the age of the universe .... but why stop at 8,000 light years? We can see objects billions of light years away. Hubble Deep Field images anyone? And I've never seen any evolutionary biologist offer the lack of finding Noah's ark as evidence for evolution. That is just ludicrous. Cetainly this article could have done much much better in their arguments for evolution.

What a pathetic piece of journalism.

Posted by: Pygmy Loris | September 9, 2009 10:52 PM

And I've never seen any evolutionary biologist offer the lack of finding Noah's ark as evidence for evolution.

If no one's done it before do you think my article would get past peer-review ;)

Posted by: blueelm | September 9, 2009 10:53 PM

I believe what they mean is:

There is no evidence for evolution that we like. Whatever evidence you produce, we will simply say that there must be better evidence because the best evidence is the faith we have that godidit.

We don't like the historical record either. Godidit too. And fast.

We don't like any of that fancy talk about how the eye evolved. It doesn't make a lot of sense so it's probably all a big lie to sound all important. We know how that works because...

We don't like it when you point out how crazy our book looks. We want you to believe it literally but not question it like it was meant to be believed literally ok? Because it doesn't make sense that way so that's not fair!

There isn't any evidence on GOD'S earth we like beside GOD. So there!!!!

Posted by: Quantabot | September 9, 2009 10:56 PM

I'm sorry all, but these five well-reasoned counter-arguments have finally convinced me. You're all nuts. May the FSM bless you while you burn for eternity in hot spaghetti sauce.

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 9, 2009 10:59 PM

Gregory Paul interprets his own research to mean that religiosity is a response to economic despair and social isolation.

This interpretation has gained more empirical support in the intervening years, too. As Saint George asked, "fine, but if it's God's will and he's going to do what he wants to anyway, then why the fuck bother praying in the first place?"

Well, it turns out that when people feel powerless, they turn to superstition, possibly as a way of imagining that they are in control again, in order to reduce stress.

Posted by: blueelm | September 9, 2009 11:02 PM

Where did the the cause come from that started everything?

I don't understand you. What cause? You mean the beginning of exsitence, of life, of the universe? Evolution doesn't attempt to explain those things.

You mean the cause of the conflict between science and creationism? That's a different story...

Posted by: defective robot | September 9, 2009 11:04 PM

In deference to the journalist who wrote the piece (badly, I'll admit) I'll point out that the intention of the article was not to convince anyone of the validity of creationism, it was merely to offer the 5 best arguments for it, which it did. Never was it promised that they would be good arguments, merely that they would be the best, and indeed they were.

Posted by: Curt | September 9, 2009 11:06 PM

Wow, one of the best five arguments for creationism is an argument against it. That says a lot about the other four, and really, every other argument "for" it.

Posted by: R. Schauer | September 9, 2009 11:07 PM

PZ said,

Wake me up when a creationist says something intelligent.

Ok, Rip Van Winkle.

Posted by: Alberta Terry | September 9, 2009 11:09 PM

They didn't even use the 'crocoduck' argument...

Posted by: NoFear | September 9, 2009 11:12 PM

@ creationist #64

Well, what caused your god? Oh, he's eternal and needs no cause. Well, guess what .... I say the universe (or multiverse for the pedantic) is eternal and needs no first cause. But even if there were a first cause and that first cause could be called god .... that does not mean that it waS your god. Nor does it mean that men and beasts were created as is. A first cause could simply have started the whole big shebang rolling and then gone off to never never land. Ever heard of deism? Look it up. But I am not a deist either, though of all the ideas of god, it is the only one that makes any sense whatsoever .... except for he fact that we still need to find a cause for that first cause. So let's let Occam carve out a better theory ... the universe (multiverse) just is. Even so, a first cause would not argue against evolution occuring on this planet to create the diversity of life we see today, including humans .... and whatever it is you are.

Posted by: creationist | September 9, 2009 11:14 PM

I don't know.
But I do know that you don't know either.
And I do know that your answer is more complicated than the question it purports to solve.

I appreciate your candor but there is no way you can know that I don't know.

Have we ever witnessed an effect that did not have a cause? Is it possible? If there is a way to explain the ultimate beginning without a cause, I will embrace atheism.

Posted by: BdN | September 9, 2009 11:16 PM

Yeah! The argument from ignorance !

Posted by: Lynna | September 9, 2009 11:20 PM

There's a good argument for evolution at this link http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090904071650.htm
Excerpt:

The researchers were able to correlate the progressive loss of enamel in the fossil record with a simultaneous molecular decay of a gene, called the enamelin gene, that is involved in enamel formation in mammals.
     Enamel is the hardest substance in the vertebrate body, and most mammals have teeth capped with it.
     Examples exist, however, of mammals without mineralized teeth (e.g., baleen whales, anteaters, pangolins) and of mammals with teeth that lack enamel (e.g., sloths, aardvarks, and pygmy sperm whales). Further, the fossil record documents when enamel was lost in these lineages.

Posted by: Samantha | September 9, 2009 11:23 PM

Have we ever witnessed an effect that did not have a cause? Is it possible? If there is a way to explain the ultimate beginning without a cause, I will embrace atheism.

According to creationism, "God" is the cause that did not have a cause, or "the first cause". Atheists just don't go that extra step back and instead say that the first moment of existence (most popularly, the "Big Bang") is the cause without a cause or the first cause. The main difference is that we're working to replicate something similar to see whether it's possible or not while creationists are working to prove that their theory is unfalsifiable as more and more of their points are disproven in the minds of real scientists.

Really, though, if explaining the beginning by using a cause without a cause will make you an atheist then your belief in God should make you an atheist as that is exactly what he is supposed to be.

Posted by: blueelm | September 9, 2009 11:24 PM

Forgive my bad syntax there, I was trying to say too many things at once.

But then I also thought about this:

"Have we ever witnessed an effect that did not have a cause? Is it possible? If there is a way to explain the ultimate beginning without a cause, I will embrace atheism."

I don't think that anyone is suggesting that without a cause is the same thing as not done by God.

God is not only not-the-only-potential-cause, but also God is the only cause which can pull back and shrink to whatever gap evidence fails to provide. Already you're logic has done this now. Like i said before, evolution just doesn't even touch the acutal origins of life. Already some ground is lost when you pit God against Evolution as an explanation. That ground keeps shrinking. You say, give me evidence of EVERYTHING but God and I will abandon God? I say give me evidence, one single piece of evidence of God and I will embrace that answer.

Posted by: tmaxPA | September 9, 2009 11:25 PM

#1 is a very good illustration of what it is about fossils that the creotards don't understand. They think the transition between any two species is one generation long.

#2 is just a mashup of talking points, obviously. The saltiness? Really?

#3 is the most fun. Whatever creature it is that evolved eyes that let them see in the dark, I want them.

#4 Allegory! Way to make yourself look desperate.

#5 PZ's response is accurate, to be sure, but, well, harsh. It makes more sense to say "not everything has a purpose" rather than "there is no purpose".

1. You're going to burn in Hell for ever and ever.

Or the corollary: I'm afraid that if I listen to you, I'll burn in Hell forever and ever.

More importantly, no Heaven; their ticket to heaven is guaranteed, if they can just stay as ignorant as possible until they die... It really does all come down to the afterlife.

Posted by: lordshipmayhem | September 9, 2009 11:29 PM

As I read these five "best" arguments for creationism, I'm reminded of the nonsense babbling of Professor Geoffrey Spaulding, The African Explorer or Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff.

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 9, 2009 11:30 PM

I appreciate your candor but there is no way you can know that I don't know.

Wrong, creationist. I know for a fact that you do not know why "something" exists rather than "nothing."

Because nobody knows.

Have we ever witnessed an effect that did not have a cause? Is it possible?

Maybe.

If there is a way to explain the ultimate beginning without a cause, I will embrace atheism.

If you insist that everything has to have a cause, then your God has to have a cause. Who made God?

Posted by: defective robot | September 9, 2009 11:31 PM

The manner in which creationists desperately cling to their belief reminds me of the old Bazooka Joe joke:

Joe: “Mort, if you lost your watch over here, why are you looking for it over there?”
Mort: “The light’s better over here.”

Now let’s jettison any allegorical connotations (light, dark, blah blah blah) and just look at it as it is: a story of a guy looking for something in the wrong place because it’s easier to look for it there. That's sort of how faith works. Faith requires no work, no effort--all you have to do is believe, and belief is phenomenally easy. It’s lazy knowledge. So despite protestations to the contrary, faith is not hard.

Science, however, requires a little bit of work. You can’t simply rest on your laurels and blindly accept any old thing that any old guy reading from any dusty old book tells you. You have to examine evidence, formulate ideas, test hypotheses, apply standards, use brain power… Folks, faithless is hard.

And that’s why it’s shunned.

People are just fucking lazy.

Posted by: Rus Bowden | September 9, 2009 11:32 PM

@BdN #76

What makes you write a response like that? It is you who cannot be taken seriously. Develop an argument.

Posted by: defective robot | September 9, 2009 11:34 PM

And I do know that your answer is more complicated than the question it purports to solve.

I rest my case.

Posted by: John Morales | September 9, 2009 11:36 PM

Monado,

See, we got quanta, too!

Yeah, but how much? ;)

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 9, 2009 11:37 PM

to all: Without attacking me, or whatever religion you believe I adhere to, what do you say to my questions?

I say again that your answer is not an answer. If everything has to have a cause, then your God has to be caused by a bigger and more powerful SuperGod, and that SuperGod has to be caused by a MetaSuperGod, etc.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 9, 2009 11:41 PM

While you are currently content to claim ignorance of what the first cause was, you seem certain that it can't be a creator. Why can it not be?

to all: Without attacking me, or whatever religion you believe I adhere to, what do you say to my questions?

I think Carl Sagan summed it up best.

Who created the creator? You can either say that the creator created himself/herself/itself or that the creator always was. But why not skip a step and say the universe created itself or that the universe always was? At least you know the universe exists.

Posted by: defective robot | September 9, 2009 11:44 PM

creationist @ #96:

There MUST be a first cause.

Says who?

Posted by: Scooty Puff Jr. | September 9, 2009 11:44 PM

to all: Without attacking me, or whatever religion you believe I adhere to, what do you say to my questions?

Could you start by answering my question? What makes you think that anything can be caused to exist? Do you have an example of something being caused to exist?

Posted by: tmaxPA | September 9, 2009 11:47 PM

Wrong, creationist. I know for a fact that you do not know why "something" exists rather than "nothing."

Because nobody knows.

Actually, we do. The reason there is something rather than nothing is because something is more stable.

Posted by: Kobra | September 9, 2009 11:50 PM

Debunking this filth. Fish. Dry bucket. Buckshot. Etc.

Posted by: Bryan | September 9, 2009 11:51 PM

@creationist:
"Where did the the cause come from that started everything? What was the cause?"

1) We don't know (yet).
2) We don't have to know for evolution to be valid.
3) We don't have to know for radiometric dating to be valid.
4) Humanity's lack of that knowledge doesn't point anywhere. Not to God. Not to Allah. Not to evolution. Nowhere. We simply don't know, and to make assumptions based on it is rather the definition of "arrogant".
5) So, why do you think that question may be a defense of creationism?

Posted by: R. Schauer | September 9, 2009 11:54 PM

#100

Posted by:Intelligent Designer, OP

Look at those Hubble images I posted above ignoramus. Now read Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku...and compare to the babble...then, wake the f*ck up.

And, please quit bothering us with your weakness at self-education...we don't need anyone here who can't figure shit out for themselves as you so deftly demonstrate from your posts.

FYI, this place for people who can think independently and extract knowledge from observations not indoctrination. Thanks for your understanding. -R

Posted by: Intelligent Designer, OP | September 10, 2009 12:01 AM

NOR

Your simulation is irrelevant.

You didn't bother to look so how would you know?

Posted by: R. Schauer | September 10, 2009 12:05 AM

Brother Smoggy,
We have missed you and your sacred words, gravely. -R

Posted by: creationist | September 10, 2009 12:10 AM

creationist, you can use

html like this

to make html like this It makes things easier for everyone.

Thank you.

Look everyone, the silly creationist learned something:-)

So despite protestations to the contrary, faith is not hard. Science, however, requires a little bit of work. You can’t simply rest on your laurels and blindly accept any old thing that any old guy reading from any dusty old book tells you. You have to examine evidence, formulate ideas, test hypotheses, apply standards, use brain power… Folks, faithless is hard. And that’s why it’s shunned. People are just fucking lazy.

I can see that you and I must define faith differently.

There is blind faith, which is what I think you must be referencing, correct me if I'm wrong. There is also faith which is based on good reason to believe.

Will the sun rise tomorrow? Of course it will because it always does. We've never seen it do otherwise so we have faith the earth will continue to spin and we will see the sun shine again. It is well grounded in reason.

Can you explain to me again abiogenesis? To account for the theory of evolution, this had to have happened, correct? Why do you have faith in this?

Posted by: John Morales | September 10, 2009 12:10 AM

Rus:

[@66]: Evolutionary theory assumes that each species in existence evolved from predecessors [...]
[@118] I am familiar with common descent.

I'm not "assuming what I [you] do not know and that I [you] am confused." — I'm inferring it from what you posted (the evidence).

I could be wrong. But, since you hold that evolutionary theory is "begging the question", I think not.

Posted by: Dust | September 10, 2009 12:13 AM

Creationist whined: There MUST be a first cause.**********

Yep, there is. It's turtles; turtles all the way down.

Posted by: Rus Bowden | September 10, 2009 12:14 AM

@AM #120

I see. You want me to come up with another theory. So my theory would beat evolutionary theory. And until I do, that would this mean that evolutionary theory is proven or something? Of course not. Humans lived with the idea of Newtonian physics, and Euclidean space for a while. Einstein came along and now we think of these matters differently. If a bet would matter, I would bet that an Einstein will come along and turn evolutionary theory as we know on its head as well. But, just the possibility of this happening makes my case. By the way, this would not take away from the usefulness of evolutionary theory. It is a model, just as Euclidean space is a useful model. They are man-made constructs.

On the Tiktaalik. That is not a case of evolution from one species to another. That's a species adapting to the environment.

Posted by: rus bowden | September 10, 2009 12:21 AM

@ John Morales #125

To use the theory in order to come to conclusions about the theory, is simply to form the theory. Such formation is assumptive.

That is not anti-evolution as a statement. It is a recognition of the approach we make, and the parameters we have to work with. If it were any other way, we could take the word "theory" away.

That such evidence does not disconfirm the theory is significant, surely. But, to state that we can then conclude the theory is true from it is assumptive.

Posted by: David | September 10, 2009 12:23 AM

PZ Said: [The Eye]"Weird. Why pluck out one seemingly random organ out of all the many to choose from?"

Because they are idiots. One could find just as much awe in the colon but "the eye" is something that requires no understanding to be in awe of so any moron can say "oh my, we can see, how could that have happened with evolution".

Posted by: BdN | September 10, 2009 12:24 AM

@Rus

On the Tiktaalik. That is not a case of evolution from one species to another. That's a species adapting to the environment.

That's why I was asking if you were serious. If so, I must repeat, without being harsh, what John said : you're confused about evolution.

Posted by: Anri | September 10, 2009 12:26 AM

creationist sez:

Will the sun rise tomorrow? Of course it will because it always does. We've never seen it do otherwise so we have faith the earth will continue to spin and we will see the sun shine again. It is well grounded in reason.

Um, the 'sun rising' is not a discrete event. What you're asking is, do we think the earth will continue turning for a number of hours.
The answer is yes, the forces that are slowing it are acting too slowly to kill off its angular momentum so soon.

Can you explain to me again abiogenesis?

Not yet, but we're working on it. So far it rests on the concept that chemicals (especially organic ones) often combine to become more complex, and life is just very complex (organic) chemistry.
Should we stop working on this problem?
If not, why not?

To account for the theory of evolution, this had to have happened, correct? Why do you have faith in this?

And to account for the 'theory' of creationism, acreatorgenesis had to have taken place. Please explain that.

Also, please stop using this argument: 'Everything has to have a cause, therefore something didn't have a cause.'
Because it makes you sound very, very stupid.

Posted by: R. Schauer | September 10, 2009 12:28 AM

#128 Intelligent Designer, OP

I think you've read the answers to your posts regarding your code....

Now, I ask you...you've read the babble haven't you? This book from Michio is 1200 pages less and seems to explain much, much more ...ahem, er..coherently wtf is going on.

Check those new Hubble images out, too! Let's see...those are from more than 100 million light years away....hmmm, wondering...got code for that in some log showin' 6000 years? Can't wait for my 2 mouse clicks on that shit.

Posted by: Intelligent Designer, OP | September 10, 2009 12:29 AM

PZ just sent me a note saying that he is writing up his rebuttal right now. The rest of you should write one up really quick instead of letting PZ do the thinking for you. NOR, you go first. Don't waste your time tattling on me for this post and trying to get me kicked of the blog.

And Ichthyic (where are you anyway) you better not have sent another fake email from PZ to me and be tricking me like that. You know how gullible I am. You better not be trying to get me in trouble.

(silently prays for God to give PZ a sense of humor)

Posted by: rus bowden | September 10, 2009 12:31 AM

@Dust #138

It is not germain to the first argument, the missing link argument, that a species would evolve and remain the same species. What is significant to the transitional-forms argument is that a transition is made from one species to another.

Posted by: Mike Wagner | September 10, 2009 12:32 AM

If we look at the compression of knowledge in the human timeline the distance between Newton and Einstein, or Darwin and Venter / Thomas / Endy / PZ is comparable - because human knowledge has increased at a fantastic pace in the last century and a half.
And still, all of these fantastic advances in biology, genetics, geology, etc. etc. have tended to support the heart of Darwin's theory, if not all details. The fact that the man was able to build such a strong case that held up to such heavy scrutiny would make him comparable to the Einstein of the example.
Of course there could be a better explanation, but if it's found it will be science that finds it, and not fundamentalist religion.

Posted by: BdN | September 10, 2009 12:33 AM

It is not germain to the first argument, the missing link argument, that a species would evolve and remain the same species.

WTH?????????

Posted by: John Morales | September 10, 2009 12:34 AM

Rus:

Humans lived with the idea of Newtonian physics, and Euclidean space for a while. Einstein came along and now we think of these matters differently.

You argue against your own thesis, here.

Quantum and relativistic physics generalised classical physics, but in the domains to which they applied they remain quite accurate.
Newtonian physics is not wrong — it is incomplete (e.g. Newton's second law still applies; F=ma).

If a bet would matter, I would bet that an Einstein will come along and turn evolutionary theory as we know on its head as well.

Perhaps. However, should that individual does so, their new theory must still account for everything current theory does, and more besides.

It won't make current evolutionary science wrong; it will merely show it incomplete, much as is the difference between classical and quantum mechanics.

Posted by: SC, OM | September 10, 2009 12:35 AM

Posted by: Intelligent Designer, OP | September 10, 2009 12:29 AM

You'll be lucky if that isn't it for you. Moron.

Posted by: MikeTheInfidel | September 10, 2009 12:38 AM

creationist spluttered:

it is not because of ignorance that I believe what I believe about the ultimate beginning, it is because effects have causes. We have never witnessed otherwise. All of science rests on this and completely crumbles without it. There MUST be a first cause.

There was. The Big Bang. TIME ITSELF began with the Big Bang. There could not be a cause OF the Big Bang, because there was no time.

Or are you going to somehow suggest a new definition of "cause" that doesn't require sequential events occurring within time?

Posted by: Intelligent Designer,OP | September 10, 2009 12:42 AM

OK. I know five of you have run the simulation. Can one of you tell Strange gods before me that it is safe (unless run from PZs IP address).

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 10, 2009 12:43 AM

creationist,

It is to question dogmatic adherence to naturalistic materialism.

There is no dogmatism to "naturalistic materialism". It is a conclusion drawn from the available empirical evidence. Vitalism has been dead for a long time now and neuroscience is closing the gaps in which dualism can hide. As for naturalism, I have yet to see any good evidence for the supernatural. If you have any good evidence showing a supernatural agent intervening in human affairs I'd like to hear it. This is isn't a matter of opinion but one of matching the facts and being parsimonious.

Posted by: MikeTheInfidel | September 10, 2009 12:46 AM

rus,

Significant to "creationist" argument #1, the missing link argument, there must be evolution from one species to another. This is not the case with Tiktaalik.

So, what, are you looking for a species that is a transition between two extant species?

Yeah. Good luck with that. (I'd suggest looking for a ring species somewhere.)

Posted by: Jeff S | September 10, 2009 12:48 AM

While you are currently content to claim ignorance of what the first cause was, you seem certain that it can't be a creator. Why can it not be?

It is not that it could not be, there isn't enough information to give a definitive answer. The question I would ask is, why would you say it was a 'god'?

There is absolutely no evidence of such. The only 'evidence'that suggests a conscious creator is responsible are human religions. The problem with that being the horrible inconsistancy of the different religions. Something can hardly be considered accurate or true if its inconsistant.

Posted by: MikeTheInfidel | September 10, 2009 12:50 AM

Jeff, let's be incredibly generous. Let's allow creationist's idea that the universe was created by an intelligent being.

I want him to now present convincing evidence that this being must be and could only be the God of the Bible.

Posted by: creationist | September 10, 2009 12:53 AM

@MikeTheInfidel

There was. The Big Bang. TIME ITSELF began with the Big Bang. There could not be a cause OF the Big Bang, because there was no time. Or are you going to somehow suggest a new definition of "cause" that doesn't require sequential events occurring within time?

It's not new, it's called agent causation. There is event causation and agent causation. It is what ID concludes from the evidence. Also Anthony Flew(former atheist philosopher turned theist) You should read his book, "There is a God".

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 10, 2009 12:55 AM

I see. You want me to come up with another theory. So my theory would beat evolutionary theory. And until I do, that would this mean that evolutionary theory is proven or something?

Rus, evolutionary theory has predictive power. A "fishapod" was previously predicted to be found in particular strata. Then they went digging. And they found the species now called Tiktaalik, just as predicted.

That's why evolution is not just a post hoc rationalization to fit the data. The theory actually predicts the location and morphology of new scientific finds, in remarkable detail, before they are found and confirmed.

Evolutionary theory is the best idea we have. There have been remarkable improvements to it. Mendelian genetics was the Einsteinian revolution of Newtonian evolution, to use your analogy. But every improvement has actually confirmed that what we knew so far was basically correct.

For now, evolution by natural selection is the best theory that explains the data and has predictive power. If there ever is a newer and better theory, it will not be the sort of silly bullshit that attracts you; rather, it will explain exactly why natural selection was such a magnificently explanatory and predictive theory.

And until that time, if it ever comes -- and I notice you have a completely faith-based assurance that it will, strange since you claim to be so empirically minded -- yes, evolution is correct, at least as much as Einsteinian relativity is correct.

Posted by: SC, OM | September 10, 2009 12:56 AM

Posted by: Intelligent Designer, OP | September 10, 2009 12:52 AM

Randy, did you miss PZ's post above, or are you really that dumb?

Posted by: Stanton | September 10, 2009 12:58 AM

creationist, there is no evidence for Intelligent Design. The explanation of "I don't understand (whatever biological phenomenon), and I lack the intelligence, imagination, and scientific education to conceive of (whatever biological phenomenon) evolving, therefor GODDESIGNERDIDIT" is simultaneously thoroughly unconvincing, and wholly unhelpful.

Or, perhaps you can provide us with examples of when Intelligent Design proponents have been able to explain Biology and or Paleontology better than actual scientists?

Posted by: Intelligent Designer, OP | September 10, 2009 12:59 AM

A "fishapod" was previously predicted to be found in particular strata. Then they went digging. And they found the species now called Tiktaalik, just as predicted.

And they say they knew exactly what is was even before they dug it out of the rock.

Posted by: Nibien | September 10, 2009 1:01 AM

Please, for the love of Athe, tell me that Rus Bowden is a troll.

Posted by: BdN | September 10, 2009 1:02 AM

"Randy, did you miss PZ's post above, or are you really that dumb? "

He doesn't know how to count neither : first 100 of us had run it, now it's only 5...

Posted by: Coyote | September 10, 2009 1:03 AM

"Wake me up when a creationist says something intelligent."

In his house at Morris, dead PZ'thulu lies dreaming...

Until the creationists are right.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | September 10, 2009 1:04 AM

MiketheInifidel, #164

Okay, but remember you still have dishes to do.

Posted by: rus bowden | September 10, 2009 1:06 AM

Science does not conclude that evolutionary theory is correct. I need to say that again, here in a science blog.

This is not an argument from an English professor. This is basic science stuff. It is science that relates to evolutionary theory as a theory.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 10, 2009 1:07 AM

Rus bowden,

I don't see what your point is. You say science has been wrong, but my point is that's not an argument. It would be like my friend telling me my shoes are untied and I respond by pointing out that my friend is not always right. True, but irrelevant. Just because my friend was wrong in the past doesn't mean they are now.

Science does not conclude that evolutionary theory as we know it is correct.

Science doesn't conclude ANY theory is correct. At best it could say which fits best and which are false. Writing about how evolution isn't 100% certain is trivial since nothing in science has metaphysical certitude.

Significant to "creationist" argument #1, the missing link argument, there must be evolution from one species to another.

There is plenty of fossil evidence vindicating evolution. And even if we didn't have a single fossil (we have many) there would still be an abundance of evidence from comparative anatomy, genetics and embryology.
I'm sorry but I have to agree with those saying you are ignorant. The good news is that it's curable, if you are willing to do the work.

Posted by: Intelligent Designer, OP | September 10, 2009 1:09 AM

Randy, did you miss PZ's post above, or are you really that dumb?

opps. Goodnight.

Posted by: BdN | September 10, 2009 1:10 AM

And they say they knew exactly what is was even before they dug it out of the rock.

Wow... mkay, so if a prediction made because of the science available, and that prediction is found true, that means it is...a hoax ?

So, let me get it straight : the Big Bang theory predicted CMB, which we found... so... no Big Bang for you ?

Posted by: Nibien | September 10, 2009 1:14 AM

Wow... mkay, so if a prediction made because of the science available, and that prediction is found true, that means it is...a hoax ?

So, let me get it straight : the Big Bang theory predicted CMB, which we found... so... no Big Bang for you ?

Well, given the accuracy of Christian prophecies, it makes sense that he wouldn't understand what a correct prediction is.

Posted by: MikeTheInfidel | September 10, 2009 1:14 AM

Of course, BdN. That's how it works. If you use some model to predict that you'll find something, and you do, you know that the model was wrong.

Randy is the sort of guy who circles a parking lot for hours, knowing that just because he observes a car pulling out of a space, that doesn't mean that he'll be able to park there. That would be presumptuous.

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 10, 2009 1:16 AM

Stop with the insults, though. You lose every time when you do this. No, I am not ignorant.

Yes, it is a fact that you are ignorant, if you're claiming that Tiktaalik is not a transitional fossil.

And insulting people does not mean that anyone loses. That's not the way the world works. You can be wrong, and you can also be an ugly cuss while you're wrong.

You have said some very stupid things in this thread. Taking your argument seriously, we should not trust that gravity exists.

Posted by: BdN | September 10, 2009 1:17 AM

So, if I predict is simulation is bullshit, and I see it and it is bullshit, does it mean I'm wrong and he's right and it's not bullshit ?

Posted by: truth machine, OM | September 10, 2009 1:19 AM

creationist, Stimpy, and Rus Bowden: evidence of the Dunning-Kruger effect, in increasing order of strength (ratio of self-perceived intelligence to actual intelligence). There may actually be some hope for creationist.

Posted by: rus bowden | September 10, 2009 1:20 AM

@MikeTheInfidel #190

Yes, I agree with you on your dogma statement.

The overturned part of Newtonian physics is correct. That's a hair that needs to be split. "incomplete" is even misleading. Its use is has more to do with the development of ideas than application to the physical world. Newton worked on what is now an archaic cosmic model.

I'm off to bed.

Thanks for the discussion.

Posted by: BdN | September 10, 2009 1:22 AM

Ok, Rus, as someone else asked, WHAT would be a transitional fossil ?

And as Feynmaniac wrote, you're right about science not concluding anything about any theory by itself, but you seem to have a very strange conception of what science is. What would it actually be ?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 10, 2009 1:23 AM

On the Tiktaalik. That is not a case of evolution from one species to another. That's a species adapting to the environment.

what the hell do you think "evolution from one species to another" is?

It's precisely the adaptation of one group of a species past a point at which it cannot be considered as the same species as another group of the species which didn't adapt, or adapted in different ways. Most commonly, it's said that this step is achieved when the two groups cannot interbreed anymore. but there's some 150 different definitions of "species", so the line is a fuzzy one and varies greatly depending on the definition you're using.

nothing evolves into something that already exists, and nothing leaves behind its ancestry; a whale will always be a whale, it will just be a differently adapted species of whale.

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 10, 2009 1:24 AM

If a bet would matter, I would bet that an Einstein will come along and turn evolutionary theory as we know on its head as well.

Rus, you reek.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | September 10, 2009 1:28 AM

Rus Bowden, if you do not want to be insulted then do not come to an evolution blog and make grossly false proclamations about evolution that make it clear that you're an arrogant ignorant idiot, like "There are indeed no transitional forms."

Posted by: Traveler | September 10, 2009 1:31 AM

Creationist @79 says:

Have we ever witnessed an effect that did not have a cause?

The decay of an unstable nucleus. What causes a specific radon-222 nucleus to decay at the specific moment that it does?

Posted by: MikeTheInfidel | September 10, 2009 1:41 AM

Jadehawk:

The difference between "evolution from one species to another" and "adaptation to the environment" is the old "macro vs. micro" nonsense all over again, which is why I'm keen to think that rus isn't being wholly open with us here. Especially judging the sort of meaningless blather he seems to post elsewhere...

Posted by: truth machine, OM | September 10, 2009 1:44 AM

@BdN #76

What makes you write a response like that?

Probably the fact that what you wrote is mindbogglingly stupid.

It is you who cannot be taken seriously. Develop an argument.

He doesn't need to, any more than if you posted on a mathematics blog that there really are no prime numbers, supported this by pointing out that Fermat's Conjecture turned out to be false, noted that the biblical claim that pi is 3 goes neither for nor against it being transcendental, and wrote other nonsensical drivel. "Are you serious?" would be an appropriate and sufficient response.

Posted by: BdN | September 10, 2009 1:50 AM

"Are you serious?" would be an appropriate and sufficient response.

Well, thanks! It's always comforting to know we're backed up by truth itself !

Posted by: BdN | September 10, 2009 1:53 AM

Especially judging the sort of meaningless blather he seems to post elsewhere...

Just read it. It's even worse than what he posted here.

At least two leaps must happen for this. The first would be to postulate that truth is within evolutionary theory, and the second is the logical flaw, the postulate that since there is truth within evolutionary theory, evolutionary theory must be truth. In this sense, we go from the utility of the theory, to the theory as dogma, a dogma intolerant of being questioned.

I'm no philosopher, but damn, even then, I can tell he's completely wrong. And that's without even touching his last paragraph...

Posted by: theVOID | September 10, 2009 1:55 AM

Any of you read the rest of the article?:

The best arguments to support evolution

Answers
Evolution is the only solution to a problem that no other theory can explain. Among other things, it explains how and why plants and animals exist, where all life comes from and what happens to us when we die.

Tangibility
The theories of evolution are based on explanations of a scientific and material - as opposed to abstract - nature.

Support
The evidence in support of evolution is vast, supported by tens of thousands of laboratory studies.The vast majority of the scientific community and academia supports evolutionary theory – as do more than half of the world’s religious bodies.

Space
Objects in space, which are more than 8,000 light years away, can be seen from earth.

No imagination-stretchers
Show me Noah’s boat.

Posted by: What | September 10, 2009 2:01 AM

When I was a youngster playing guitar in a road band our bands drummer, who was becoming increasingly involved with drugs and religion, offered up this defense of creationism that I will never forget. Here it is in it's entirety ... Ready?:

"What about the trees?"

I have heard none better since and doesn't that say it all.

Posted by: Keelyn | September 10, 2009 2:04 AM

"1. No evidence for evolution

There is no evidence that evolution has occurred because no transitional forms exist in fossils i.e. scientists cannot prove with fossils that fish evolved into amphibians or that amphibians evolved into reptiles, or that reptiles evolved into birds and mammals. Perhaps becuase of this a surprising number of contemporary scientists support the Creation theory."

What the hell is this, now?? It was all here this morning. I know it was - I saw it. I suspect that in addition to being a damn liar, Ken Ham is a THIEF! I think someone should organize a reconnaissance mission to the Creation "Museum" ASAP. I bet he is burying all of our evolution evidence under the "Garden of Eden" display as I type. You can't trust any of them; now they are stealing our evidence.

Posted by: Christophe Thill | September 10, 2009 2:14 AM

"Perhaps becuase of this a surprising number of contemporary scientists support the Creation theory."

I totally agree with this. To me, any number greater than zero is surprising.

But there's still something wrong with this sentence. Creation is not a theory. It's a dogma.

Posted by: Daniel | September 10, 2009 2:15 AM

rus bowden, 192:

I never said that science is incorrect. You said, "Science doesn't conclude ANY theory is correct." Right, my point exactly. Precisely. I said "Science does not conclude that evolutionary theory as we know it is correct."

I really don't see what he was trying to argue. That evolution is a scientific theory like every other scientific theory? Or that science and evolution are related? Maybe he doesn't want to admit that he didn't know what a theory was?

Anyway, this would fit most of his arguments. They all seemed rather inane.

Posted by: Clemens | September 10, 2009 2:18 AM

And then, they accuse Richard Dawkins of not being familiar with all the apologetics for their stupid believes.

I especially liked the argument from the salt in the sea. This happens if you extrapolate in a naive way, like in that xkcd-comic: "Yesterday you had zero husbands, today you have one husband, so by next month you'll have 30 husbands".

Posted by: Christophe Thill | September 10, 2009 2:29 AM

Rus Bowden #192:
"Stop with the insults, though. You lose every time when you do this. No, I am not ignorant."

"Ignorant" is not an insult. It is a statement of fact. It can even be said to be a positive word, as it should encourage you to learn.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | September 10, 2009 2:32 AM

About Me

Rus Bowden from Lowell MA, a car salesman dabbling in poetry.

No wonder he's such an expert on transitional fossils. Unlike any of us, he's never seen one, so he can state with authority that they don't exist.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | September 10, 2009 2:38 AM

that xkcd-comic

Check out the latest one.

Posted by: jkc | September 10, 2009 3:03 AM

Could you start by answering my question? What makes you think that anything can be caused to exist? Do you have an example of something being caused to exist?

the fact that we EXIST is answer to your question; if there is no God, then our existence is proof. If we require God for creation, than God is the proof

Posted by: CHUTNEY | September 10, 2009 3:10 AM

Just testing that I can make/save a comment as I had a few problems signing up.

Many apologies please delete this if possible.

Cheers,
CHUTNEY

Posted by: Tom Mahon | September 10, 2009 3:11 AM

Don't you just love a challenge? I'm always looking for some splendid argument from a creationist that would make me think, but they always give me such silliness, instead.

Well, I am not sure what type of challenges you like, but I doubt they have anything to do with rational discourse. For anyone who believes that there is no God is bound to be irrational or completely insane, or both. For the bible, which was inspired by the God who created all things says: "Only the fool has said in his heart, there is not God." So what types of challenges a fool would welcome, puzzles my comprehension.

Don't just love watching the blind leading the blind?

Posted by: maureen brian | September 10, 2009 3:18 AM

I think, Tom Mahon, you are quite the wrong person to be complaining about the irrationality and/or insanity of others.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | September 10, 2009 3:24 AM

puzzles my comprehension

Not surprising for someone who is profoundly stupid. You should take a look at http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/plonk.php, especially

Godbotting Making an argument based only on the premise that your holy book is sufficient authority; citing lots of bible verses as if they were persuasive.

Posted by: echidna | September 10, 2009 3:41 AM

Justin @242 said:

No excuse for that kind of shoddy work from a widely distributed & widely read publication.

True, and arguing for creationism in the first place announces shoddy education before you even get to the language, style or anything else.

Posted by: Andyo | September 10, 2009 3:43 AM

??? My comment seems to not have passed moderation. I just called him stupid like everyone else, I don't know why it didn't get published.

Posted by: Geoff | September 10, 2009 3:48 AM

Actually, the Torygraph probably did put its best science reporter on the job.
I used to take the Telegraph in the 1970's, mainly for the splendid crossword (you know, like taking Playboy for the interviews).
I came across a description of the Nobel presentation for Chemistry which was probably the worst bit of journalism I'd ever read. I was a postgrad student in Chemistry at the time and it occurred to me that the rest of the paper had been feeding me similar garbage, but I hadn't been in a position to realise it. Once I started to buy a real newspaper my suspicions were confirmed. I doubt the Torygraph has improved since.

Posted by: Wretch Fossil | September 10, 2009 4:03 AM

Here is the silliness of, and challenge for, Mr. PZ Myer:
http://www.wretch.cc/album/show.php?i=lin440315&b=13&f=1588690160&p=69

PZ claimed the above shows nothing but rock. I claimed it showed Haversian canals, proving Mr. Ed Conrad's specimens include fossils, some human, that are as old as 300 million years old (note 1, note 2).

Note 1:http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AWAY4iBfjKMUZGRncXY5emJfMGY1dnpicWM4&hl=en
Note 2: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AWAY4iBfjKMUZGRncXY5emJfM2RyOGQ0eGZ4&hl=en

Posted by: Crewvy | September 10, 2009 4:08 AM

"Only the fool has said in his heart, there is not God."

Ahhhhhh, the killer creationist comeback, trotted out whenever they have no answer to the hard evidence presented to them .
Like a little Dalek ,instead of repeating exterminate ,repeats ad nauseum "god says you are a fool".
I would have thought groveling to some snivelling skygod that refuses to show himself ,does nothing and is completely useless,would be the definition of foolishness.

Posted by: Kel, OM | September 10, 2009 4:13 AM

Sure there was a God, we just killed him... with science!

Also, with reason. Can't forget the role Hume played in it all. Nietzsche was just the journalist who wrote the obituary.

Posted by: SEF | September 10, 2009 4:18 AM

@ peter #7:

I thought British people were supposed to be smart.

You must be thinking of the bowler hats or something. There's no good reason to suppose the IQ distribution in the UK population is substantially different from that of any other relatively well-nourished population. We just have more accidental/default atheists and nominal "believers" in evolution in the UK because there's less rabid religion here than in the US. The majority of them are not actually any better at genuinely knowing what they're talking about than UnSAnians are. They're merely idiots rather than IDiots.

Posted by: JMk2 | September 10, 2009 4:27 AM

I suppose my Telegraph-reading UK creationist acquaintance will have discovered that article. He's used two other arguments recently which I'd not come across before - apparently from a John Mackay DVD doing the rounds of the UK churches.

One I'd seen before struck me anew as ridiculous; the claim is that because there are places on earth with 'missing' geologic strata - e.g. a Permian layer overlying a Devonian one, yet no sign of a Carboniferous layer inbetween (my just-invented illustrative example) - that the slow formation of the geologic column is somehow denied. This and his corollary, that the entire geologic column exists nowhere on earth, can be refuted with references to scientific work found in articles such as http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/
It's a ridiculous argument, as I say - this particular creationist had been given the impression from the DVD that the whole earth should have a complete intact geologic column everywhere if scientific geology were true. I stumped him by asking where, then, do you think that geologists think the material all came from? Doesn't he acknowledge that geology accepts erosion and deposition?!

The second argument was new to me: finding all the seashells in a particular rock formation perfectly aligned was claimed to be an indication that they had been buried all at once by a huge inflow of water - i.e. the Great Flood. My acquaintance couldn't tell me over what area the alignment had been found, but my response was that this - while perhaps evidence for rapid burial in the local area (I'm not a palaeontologist or geologist), this clearly wasn't evidence for a world-wide flood unless the layer was shown to exist in a pattern indicating that, and that alone, which evidence apparently had not been presented. I asked whether they had looked 1km away, 10km away, 100km away - were the seashell fossils still in alignment, or in some other arrangement indicating a flood? Again, the man was stumped.

Has anyone come across these arguments before and have a better account of the arguments than I've heard? What responses have you given? I'm actually becoming inspired to take a part-time University course in palaeontology; evidence is so much more interesting than fiction.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | September 10, 2009 4:30 AM

Clemens, #262

Correction noted and appreciated. Gives me even more reason to support the ability to edit one's comments to correct errors.

So when reading comment #254 wherever "boson" appears replace with "fermion".

Posted by: MW London | September 10, 2009 4:46 AM

Best comment ever over at the Telegraph:

"I could have ate a bowl of alphabet soup and shat a better article"

Well done, sir. Well done.

Posted by: Roameo | September 10, 2009 4:52 AM

So what types of challenges a fool would welcome, puzzles my comprehension.

Posted by: SEF | September 10, 2009 4:55 AM

@ creationist #79:

Have we ever witnessed an effect that did not have a cause? Is it possible?

Lots of times; and yes!

Eg: radioactive decay (which is outstandingly commonly observed to occur and has become relied on by all sorts of science and now technology too, such as clocks and satellites, which you almost certainly use and rely on yourself); particle pair creation in a vacuum (which is somewhat harder to observe but very interesting).

If there is a way to explain the ultimate beginning without a cause, I will embrace atheism.

I don't believe you. You didn't get where you are today by being honest.

For example, if it (ie whatever gets proposed as being the "ultimate beginning") doesn't have a "cause" then you won't (by your most likely definitions of things, as a creationist) accept that it's an "explanation" at all. So by the very way you pose your demand, you've already completely ruled out any answer to it. Until and unless you can accept that some stuff does just happen, you're doomed to remain an IDiot.

Posted by: Dunc | September 10, 2009 5:03 AM

Wake me up when a creationist says something intelligent.

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh PZ R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

Posted by: Roameo | September 10, 2009 5:06 AM

Also, I'm surprised that only one creotard has commented on the telegraph article. Maybe we should invite this Les character over here.

Posted by: John Morales | September 10, 2009 5:09 AM

ShaunOTD @272, nice!

I might steal that, sometime. It's nice and succinct, and shows the "argument" in all its glory.

Posted by: John Morales | September 10, 2009 5:17 AM

Ack. Pre-emptive correction to my #250, lest I get called on it.

It should read:
"No, most atheists are charitable and have no ideological religious dogma to impede our empathy; we don't like suffering."

Many of us most certainly suffer from ideological dogma.

Posted by: SEF | September 10, 2009 5:22 AM

@ creationist #96:

it is not because of ignorance that I believe what I believe about the ultimate beginning

Oh yes it is! {pantomime mode engaged}

it is because effects have causes

Some do, some don't.

We have never witnessed otherwise.

False. Eg radioactive decay.

All of science rests on this and completely crumbles without it.

No. As it happens pretty much all science rests on the fact that things don't have a cause in the sense you mean a cause. And now, rather a lot of science (and technology) relies on some very specific and extremely common uncaused events - viz radioactivity.

There MUST be a first cause.

Depending a bit on your definitions, that's a self-refuting statement you have there! I don't suppose you're bright enough to recognise that though. I also doubt that talking you through it will help; but ...

If your postulated "cause" is something at all meaningful, ie has an existence of its own in any sense, then it too "needs" a cause. It can't, by definition, possibly be the first thing. You do require an uncaused event somewhere along the line.

Where you're then being stupid and dishonest is in making out that that non-cause can be a god - and specifically that it has to be your god rather than someone else's. All the attributes you require of your god completely rule it out from itself being an uncaused cause; and nothing in evidence points towards your god having greater credibility than anyone else's god nor towards it even existing at all!

While you are currently content to claim ignorance of what the first cause was, you seem certain that it can't be a creator. Why can it not be?

Because what you are imagining as a creator (ie an intentional, powerful, complex being) would itself need a cause (by your very own definitions and limited understanding of things) in order to come into existence. So there's no way such a creator can possibly count as a meaningful first cause. You're just in a deep state of denial about that. It's part of your willing self-delusion and fundamental dishonesty.

You really do need to address the question of what would have caused your god to exist. If you don't you're an intellectual coward. If you come up with the pat answer of "god doesn't need a cause", then you're being dishonest. If you come up with the deeper answer of recognising that you require that your god doesn't have a cause (yes, I know those two things superficially look alike but really they're subtly and importantly different), then we can say: "See, you do accept that it's possible not to have a cause!" and proceed to "Why can't you extend that same courtesy to the universe without inventing an unnecessary and unevidenced god step in between?".

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 10, 2009 5:30 AM

Read further down in the story. He lists the "best" arguments to support evolution as well - and they're far more convincing.- Bryan@51

Are you serious? Here are the Bellylaugh's
"best arguments to support evolution"

Evolution is the only solution to a problem that no other theory can explain. Among other things, it explains how and why plants and animals exist, where all life comes from and what happens to us when we die.

WTF? What happens to us when we die? Funny, I've read quite a few books on evolution, and that issue has never been mentioned. possibly because it has fuck-all to do with evolution.

The theories of evolution are based on explanations of a scientific and material - as opposed to abstract - nature.

True but extremely vague.

The evidence in support of evolution is vast, supported by tens of thousands of laboratory studies.The vast majority of the scientific community and academia supports evolutionary theory – as do more than half of the world’s religious bodies.

WTF? What relevance do "the world's religious bodies" - organisations devoted to irrationality - to the assessment of a scientific theory?

Objects in space, which are more than 8,000 light years away, can be seen from earth.

WTF? The evidence for evolution would not be affected in the slightest if the Earth's atmosphere was such that we could not see anything other than the sun.

Show me Noah’s boat.

Idiocy 'yond idiocy. Just as evidence against evolution (if there were any) would not be evidence for creationism, evidence against the literal truth of Genesis is not evidence for evolution.

Posted by: truth machine, OM | September 10, 2009 5:33 AM

You can decide that the biblical God was the initial cause of life on earth, if you want to, without being a creationist.

You can also decide that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden, if you want to. But not being a creationist isn't the same as not being a superstitious idiot.

Posted by: SEF | September 10, 2009 6:17 AM

@ Christophe Thill #235:

"Ignorant" is not an insult. It is a statement of fact. It can even be said to be a positive word, as it should encourage you to learn.

Indeed, ignorance is about the only fixable thing there is among the causes of creationism (and other similarly defective but pervasive ideas).

Stupidity is essentially unfixable (although malnutrition during development can cause more of it than would be natural, later physical damage can cause more of it and illness can temporarily simulate it but be reversible). Dishonesty also seems to be relatively unfixable. Laziness is an endemic problem (it's natural to the whole universe, not just humans).

One needs to exceed a threshold of combined intelligence, education (not merely of the academic kind but also real-world experience beyond oneself) and intellectual honesty. The only thing which can "easily" be pumped into the system by human activity is better education for all. The other attributes seem to be largely genetic and would require a lot more evolution or the sort of GM tinkering (or euthanasia!) which is generally not regarded as ethical.

So, if the thing most obviously wrong with someone is merely their current ignorance, then there's a lot of hope for them getting better.

The biggest barriers to that, given how freely available information now is, are their level of intellectual dishonesty (eg they want to remain ignorant and are dishonestly trying to avoid learning anything which might upset that) and their inherent laziness (ie they mostly do have to bother to actively learn rather than simply revel in the comfort of their ignorance).

Very few people are so stupid that they can't learn at all beyond the absolute minimum of instinct refinement (eg walking and chewing). But they may be somewhat limited in how, how much and what they can learn. However, that should then become a far more obvious factor than merely their current level of ignorance.

Posted by: Michael Spencer | September 10, 2009 6:29 AM

Oh, gosh, #5?

I have believer friends who actually use this, and my standard answer is that atheism gives you authority to make of your life whatever you can, or will–just like god intended. Oh, the mirth…

Posted by: Cactus Wren | September 10, 2009 6:41 AM

Nearly 300 comments into a thread on creationist arguments, and no one has mentioned flying feral chickens?

Posted by: Roger | September 10, 2009 6:50 AM

You have no reason to doubt my credentials as an evolutionary biologist (I trained under Russ Lande and Mike Lynch among others).

I absolutely support, believe in, etc. every tenet of Neo-Darwinism, and beyond, such as debates over micro versus macroevolution. And I deny every claim of the myth called creationism - it is, as you have often pointed out, a blight on society.

So PZ, please take my remarks in the spirit they're intended.

Although the Telegraph is correctly seen as right-leaning and theirs was not a well-thought out article, I feel it is a bit disingenuous to imply that the newspaper advocates or supports creationism. Maybe they do, but from your post, you make it seem as though the Telegraph wrote an article purely to support a creationist view. In fact, the article reports on a creationist film to be released in Toronto. No where in your post do you mention this. And in fact, the film may well have a bigger impact than the article. You missed an opportunity to alert your readers to the film.

Indeed, most of your commenters, it seems, did not bother to read the source article! If they did, they would have seen that the article offers its own (admittedly poorly written) arguments in support of evolution, including "The evidence in support of evolution is vast."

As scientists it behooves us to not fall into the same trap of which creationists are guilty, viz. applying circular reasoning and selective observations to support our preconceptions.

In that spirit, let us continue to critique the press, but at least remain honest about what we are criticizing.

Posted by: Spiro Keat | September 10, 2009 6:59 AM

Randy @ 128

I am only asking for two mouse clicks and you want me to go read a book first?

But no one here is interested, not even if you scweem and scweem and scweem until you're sick.

If you go read a book, it will give you less time to bore us on here.

Posted by: Kel, OM | September 10, 2009 7:12 AM

If I were going to write the 5 best arguments in support of evolution, it would go as the following:

1. Evidence
2. Evidence
3. Evidence
4. Evidence
5. Evidence

Works for me

Posted by: rus bowden | September 10, 2009 7:24 AM

Instead of developing arguments, what has taken place while I slept, is the development of insult. This has precluded argument. I warned about this, and it caused this thread devolve.

I need to go back to what is not being understood. And this morning, because it is so easy for those to call me ignorant whenever they make a counterpoint, I will say that to be discussing evolution, and not understand the difference between the evolution of the same species and the evolution from one species to another is to be just plain ignorant on the subject. I should not have to go into this in a science blog.

To evolve from one species to another, means the DNA changes, that a species becomes or creates a different new one; aquatic apes, or some other species, spawn human beings on the time line, say. This did not happen with the Tiktaalik. Therefore, no transitional form was show by such an example.

Let's go back to the original question, that there has been no transitional form. And all I can do is reiterate. One has to assume that evolutionary theory is true in order to call any species a transitional form, or any time period of a species existence to be a period of a transitional form for that species. Whenever it has been claimed that a "species" with a different genetics is a transitional form, or a precursor, we have assumed evolutionary theory. This means we have been begging the question. Without showing how such a thing would take place, it is assumption. There are hypotheses for this, that include a period of time when the old species can still mate with the new one, creating more of the new species. But this is all speculation. It has never been shown to be true.

As I said above, before AM said I reeked of creationism, that this is the case does not support creationism. It has nothing to say about creationism. If our assumptions have been true, then we just haven't gotten there yet. But, being assumptions, they could very well be false.

Posted by: andrew n | September 10, 2009 7:28 AM

I spilled my tea....out my nose when I read the...

W

T

F.

hahhahah

Posted by: Kel, OM | September 10, 2009 7:32 AM

Randy, can I get the source code to your program? Methinks it is less painful that to install Silverlight ;)

Posted by: Carlie | September 10, 2009 7:40 AM

, I will say that to be discussing evolution, and not understand the difference between the evolution of the same species and the evolution from one species to another is to be just plain ignorant on the subject. I should not have to go into this in a science blog.

To evolve from one species to another, means the DNA changes, that a species becomes or creates a different new one; aquatic apes, or some other species, spawn human beings on the time line, say.

You have no idea what a species is, do you? It's an arbitrary designation made by scientists to more easily categorize the organisms they study. There is no magic barrier, DNA or otherwise, between two species. There are over a hundred different ways to categorize species. Scientists can almost come to blows over whether two groups are the same species or different species. There is no qualitative or quantitative difference between evolution within a species and evolution from one species to the next. The only reason a splinter group gets upgraded to being its own species is that enough scientist decide "Yep, that's just about enough difference now." A SPECIES IS NOT A MAGIC THING. Really, it's not.

Posted by: rus bowden | September 10, 2009 7:46 AM

@AM #302

Dear AM

If you disagree with that statement, it is you who must prove that the Tiktaalik evolved from one species to another while it famously adapted to the environment. It is very likely that you will receive the Nobel Prize if you do. Go for it.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 10, 2009 8:01 AM

If you disagree with that statement, it is you who must prove that the Tiktaalik evolved from one species to another while it famously adapted to the environment.

Posted by: Knockgoats | September 10, 2009 8:04 AM

But this is all speculation. It has never been shown to be true. - Rus Bowden

Simply false. Observed Examples of speciation ; Some More Observed Speciation Events. In addition, there are ring species, cases of partial barriers to interfertility between populations, abundant genetic evidence of recent speciation events (in, for example, sticklebacks, cichlids, mosquitoes), and fossil records of gradual transitions between (for example) species of foraminifera. With regard to Tiktaalik, there are two distinct meanings to "transitional": transitional between species - see the foraminifera for fossil examples, besides all the other forms of evidence for speciation - and forms that have features of what are now two distinct groups, such as fish and tetrapods. It is in the latter sense that Tiktaalik is transitional. your talk about
Tiktaalik showing adaptation within a species is simply nonsense: it's a single fossil, so it could not do anything of the kind. Its importance is that it is one of a series of fossils that show how fish gave rise to tetrapods; and that the presence of this kind of fossil where it was found was predicted in advance on the basis of evolutionary theory, and detailed paleontological knowledge. Evolutionary theory was originally an abduction from the evidence; and has since withstood countless tests, any one of which could have shown that it was false. It has indeed been modified - for example, the theory that eukaryotes arose by symbiogenesis shows that random mutation and natural selection are not the only processes involved - and may be again. That's science. But assuming the truth of common descent is not "begging the question" - because an out-of-place fossil find could at any time refute it: the assumptions of science are always provisional, unlike those of religion and pseudoscience.

Posted by: Jack | September 10, 2009 8:05 AM

Well, the good news is that the article, and creationism, is getting a thorough kicking in the comments.

Posted by: Carlie | September 10, 2009 8:10 AM

Any time a creationist says "No one has ever seen a species change into another one", I want to smack them over the head with a copy of Verne Grant's paper and yell "This was over 40 years ago! Get! In! This! Century!"

Posted by: Sleeper | September 10, 2009 8:16 AM

Got to the end of the article, read the link "More on" and could only agree.

Posted by: rus bowden | September 10, 2009 8:21 AM

I'm off to work. You guys who want to argue will have to do better.

It is up to those who suppose that Tiktaalik was a transitional form, that it was a transitional form.

It is that assertion that I am challenging. It has not been proven nor shown.

Now, go high five each other after you've done your homework. I'm off to work.

Posted by: mpatter | September 10, 2009 8:26 AM

Thank you PZ, for reminding me that my nation too is burdened with ignorant pandering asshats.

OT, who wants to go admire this atrocity on 3rd Oct? Please email me, as it would be lovely to be joined by some free thinking friends. Godless attire optional.

Posted by: maddogdelta | September 10, 2009 8:28 AM

OK EVERYBODY...HERE ARE THE FIVE BEST ARGUMENTS FOR CREATIONISM.

// And I guarantee that they make more sense than TFA....

1. Because motorcycles don't wear pants
2. Because blue cheese doesn't wear high heels
3. Because bedbugs don't compete in swimming competitions in the olympics.
4. Because Joan of Arc just whispered it into my ear
5. Because twelve.

There, see if you can poke holes in that logic!

// unfortunately, I think some creotards might think these are excellent reasons...

Posted by: Thorne | September 10, 2009 8:39 AM

@ creationist #96:

There MUST be a first cause.

Without having read any of the later comments, I'm going to respond to this one.

First of all, why MUST there be a first cause? Granted, experience tells us that effect always follows a cause, but how do you know this is always so under all conditions? At the moment of the Big Bang the universe was so strange that we cannot even begin to guess what kinds of conditions existed, if any!

Secondly, if A caused B, then what caused A? If you assume that there WAS a first cause, then you must agree that there had to be something which caused that. And something before that, as well.

And thirdly, even if you do assume that A caused B and there was no cause for A, how can you prove that a god, any god, is equivalent to A? Most especially, how can you prove that YOUR god is equivalent to A?

Science tells us that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. So why must we assume a beginning? Why can't the energy have always been here, spread evenly throughout the universe, with occasional hiccups where it comes together to form matter, as in the Big Bang? This makes the universe eternal (just like your god) and without a creator (also, just like your god.)

People need to learn to accept, "We don't know" as a valid response. Just because we can't explain it doesn't mean something is invalid. And it certainly doesn't justify the use of magic to explain it. Because with science, the answer is really, "We don't know YET!"

Posted by: Rickety Cricket | September 10, 2009 8:43 AM

Have any of you seen the show "Real Estate Intervention" on HGTV (here in the states)? The premise revolves around a hard-ass realtor with a Hitler mustache who steps in and helps people sell their house with a tough love approach. Every seller bought a house at the height of the market and has to sell, for some reason or another, at the very bottom of the market. The host shows the sellers two comparable properties which often are undeniably BETTER than their own home and are ALWAYS listed much lower.

The point is that the people on the show rarely, if ever, admit that the comparable properties are better or more desirable in any way than the home that they are trying to sell. They will stand in a $60,000 kitchen and blindly, faithfully recount the more favorable aspects of their own 1980's style kitchen which is the size of a closet and has no dishwasher. You see, they want so badly for their house to be worth a certain amount that they cannot see the forrest for the trees.

I was watching this the other night and it struck me that these average, often bright people were being reduced to idiots. They have so much faith in the value of their home that, even in the face of direct and indisputable evidence, they fail to grasp the big picture. Faith...not a virtue.

My own personal moral: If you truly believe that your house is the best on the block, great, I hope you are very happy living there. As soon as you try to sell that house to someone else, you should be prepared to face reality or, as is the case, look like a moron.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 10, 2009 8:44 AM

Is it because you don't have one?

Posted by: Tom Mahon | September 10, 2009 8:46 AM

I think, Tom Mahon, you are quite the wrong person to be complaining about the irrationality and/or insanity of others.

Maureen Brain? Wow! The above is a mere assertion, unsupported by evidence or argument.

Don't you just love a brain that doesn't work?

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | September 10, 2009 8:51 AM

The five best STRAW MAN arguments for creationism ever!

There! Fixed it!

Posted by: Gruesome Rob | September 10, 2009 8:58 AM

@blueelm #82:

I don't see it that way. It's very simple because it breaks things down into small questions.

Please explain how something of infinite power knowledge always existing is simpler than a handful of rules always existing.

Posted by: Drosera | September 10, 2009 9:02 AM

The sad thing is that the five best arguments for creationism aren't any better than the five worst.

Posted by: John Morales | September 10, 2009 9:11 AM

Rus, are you aware of this earlier post?
Tiktaalik makes another gap.

It clearly explains how it's a transitional fossil.

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 10, 2009 9:22 AM

Please explain how something of infinite power knowledge always existing is simpler than a handful of rules always existing.

Gruesome Rob, there is a series of misunderstandings going on with that subthread. Long story short, blueelm agrees with you.

Posted by: Gruesome Rob | September 10, 2009 9:27 AM

Gruesome Rob, there is a series of misunderstandings going on with that subthread. Long story short, blueelm agrees with you

Thanks for the clarification, it's hard not to skim when the threads get this long.

The question remains open to all creationists however.

Posted by: Elliott | September 10, 2009 9:33 AM

> I thought the Telegraph would have been above this sort
> of rubbish. Just another reason to stick to the Times.

Repeat after me: THE TIMES IS A MURDOCK RAG

If you read the piece you'll note it was part of a film review not a science article

Posted by: Josh | September 10, 2009 9:34 AM

Oops - having difficulty remembering whether I'd come across the creationists' 'missing geological strata' argument before.

Like pretty much everything else that the creationist camp trots out and tries to put forth as evidence against evolution, or supporting the notion of a young earth, the constant whines about The Geological Column^TM not being present everywhere is a non-argument.

1. Much like with this transitional fossilsforms bullshit, creationists who make the geological column "argument" are mixing up the rock record and the geological time scale. What they're completely missing is that we use the concept of the geological column to teach people about deep time as it is recorded in the rock record. The Geological Column^TM is a concept. We never asserted that it will be/should be everywhere as a complete and uninterrupted sequence of Precambrian-Recent materials, so jumping up and down about “missing strata,” as if it’s a problem, just, once again, makes creationists look foolish (as if they needed additional help with that…). This issue actually came up just the other day in the Carlos Cerna thread:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/09/carlos_cerna_will_someday_dema.php#comment-1912388

This seems to be a pretty pervasive problem, and one that illustrates pretty clearly just how uninformed these folks tend to be.

2. As to the question, itself, of missing rocks in any local stratigraphic sequence*, there are two main reasons as to why any given interval of time might not be represented in that area by rocks.

A. The area in question was principally erosional during the time interval in question.
B. The rocks that were laid down, in the area in question, during the time interval in question, have subsequently been removed via tectonics/weathering/erosion.

B should be fairly self-explanatory and shouldn’t really need to be addressed in this comment. The actions of tectonics/weathering/erosion shape Earth’s surface landscape by moving material from place to place (and by removing it from the lithosphere altogether). These processes can removed from an area the entire geological record of a given time interval.

A might be a little less obvious, but basically: in any area, in order for a given time interval in earth history to be represented by rocks, rocks had to be produced in that area during that interval. It’s fine to remove the rock record from an area, but in order to erode it away, you first had to lay it down. Not all areas of Earth’s surface are accumulating rock at all times.

If you’re in an area where Devonian-aged rocks are exposed at the surface (and so thus this is what you’re seeing), and if there was no volcanism happening at that place during the Devonian, then you should not expect to see volcanic rocks.

If we look at Kansas today, we see a largely flat landscape being slowly dissected by intermittent river activity. The entire state is mostly “erosional.” There isn’t any volcanic accumulation going on to speak of and no tectonic processes are really bringing metamorphic rocks to the current surface. And there isn’t much sediment being deposited in Kansas that will last. Sure, the rivers in Kansas are depositing sediment here and there and the winds that are blowing across the prairie are generating little deposits here and there. Almost none of this shit is going to last. Unless something changed dramatically right now (a really fast marine inundation or perhaps the tectonics of the Front Range speed up and we start getting blankets of thick river sediment being brought in from Colorado and laid down across the prairie), the modern deposits in Kansas are mostly likely going to go away completely. In Kansas, there is going to be little or no record of this current time interval recorded for Earth’s posterity. In 5 or 10 million years, the local stratigraphy in Lawrence is probably going to show Pennsylvanian-aged rocks (this is what is at the surface now) overlain by whatever comes next in terms of deposition (probably marine sediments?). And the Pennsylvanian section will probably be a little thinner than it is now because it’s currently being eroded. The record of our current time is most likely going to be a gap. This is because what little sediment is being deposited in Kansas right now is temporary. It’s all really more interested in moving toward the Gulf and elsewhere. Kansas just isn’t in the business of long term sediment storage right now.

Creationists have a lot of trouble with this concept too:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/02/science_of_watchmen.php#comment-1495086

They love to try and use it as though it’s a problem. It’s not. It’s business as usual. The real problem is that the creationists haven’t bothered to study the business.

*I’m simply not going to address this point with respect to The Geological Column^TM because doing so is just…well…fucking stupid and meaningless.

Posted by: Tim Danaher | September 10, 2009 9:38 AM

SGBM wrote:

Rus Bowden, you are not as smart a person as you imagine yourself to be.

Indeed. There's even a name for it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

Posted by: JediBear | September 10, 2009 9:47 AM

BS? They're right. These are the five best arguments for creationism. It's just not saying much.

Posted by: Celtic_Evolution | September 10, 2009 9:59 AM

dammit... go to bed early and miss all the fun... I went to bed before this post even came up and there's already 353 + comments...

Shorter Rus Bowden @ 321:

"Whoops! Getting in over my head... can't answer tough questions... so I'll just be off with one more smug assertion of how much smarter I am than the hundreds of thousands of trained, educated scientists who clearly haven't figured out what the world's most intelligent used car salesman / warrior poet sees as so damned obvious.

You're all doing science wrong and I'm right. Later."

At least he seems to be following the "first rule when in hole"... I'll give him that.

Posted by: James Sweet | September 10, 2009 10:09 AM

Woah. I expected it to center around the whole Irreducible Complexity argument, since even though the argument is flawed, you need to be both educated and humble to understand why.

When I was in high school, for example, although I was surely not a creationist, I had been under the impression that evolutionary biologists had trouble explaining some adaptations where it was not obvious how it could evolve step-by-step. I had sort of gotten Punctuated Equilibrium conflated with an intuitive idea of IC and thought there must be some other as-yet-undiscovered mechanism at work that was external to the idea of natural selection. I didn't say goddidit, but if I had been inclined to that sort of thing I might have.

Actually, I think when I first started to grasp what I was missing and accept that natural selection explained it all was when I saw a re-enactment of Behe's disastrous performance at the Dover trial. heh... I had never been sympathetic to IDers, but I was sympathetic to folks like Fred Hoyle.

Anyway, that was all a big tangent. What I'm getting at is that if I were challenged to come up with the five "best" arguments for Creationism, I would focus on IC-related arguments, because 1) to understand why they are wrong you have to have a deeper understanding of evolution than the average layperson, and 2) there really are some adaptations that evolutionary biologists can't (yet) fully explain. Granted, IC-related arguments are not "good" arguments, but I think they are Creationism's "best" shot.

But the article only touches on IC in point #3. The other four points are so laughably dumb, a child could refute them.

Posted by: DuckPhup | September 10, 2009 10:18 AM

rus bowden @ #301

"If our assumptions have been true, then we just haven't gotten there yet. But, being assumptions, they could very well be false."

What you are identifying as 'our assumptions' seem to be, instead, your misconceptions.

Posted by: Lynna | September 10, 2009 10:19 AM

Okay, just catching up here.
First, Thank the Gods for Smoggy, 'cause otherwise some of this might get boring.

He may not be a god, but he is a god of clarity, I give you MikeTheInfidel @155

TIME ITSELF began with the Big Bang. There could not be a cause OF the Big Bang, because there was no time. Or are you going to somehow suggest a new definition of "cause" that doesn't require sequential events occurring within time?

And following up MikeTheInfidel's comment to Alan K., I too am one of those dreaded persons with a degree in English (oh, the horror, the horror!). I'm still in pout mode over this:

Your understanding of common descent is that of an English professor, your arguments regarding common descent are that of an English professor. - Alan @162

On the Tiktaalik. That is not a case of evolution from one species to another. That's a species adapting to the environment.

what the hell do you think "evolution from one species to another" is?

"Mammals without enamel are descended from ancestral forms that had teeth with enamel," Springer said. "We predicted that enamel-specific genes such as enamelin would show evidence in living organisms of molecular decay because these genes are vestigial and no longer necessary for survival." http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090904071650.htm

Posted by: Lynna | September 10, 2009 10:25 AM

From the perspective of the much-maligned possessors of degrees in English, the Surrealism @325 was much appreciated. LOL. Poetry, of a kind.

Posted by: Gerry | September 10, 2009 10:38 AM

To all creationist -
I will believe in your god when -
1- it shows up and destroys all implements of war without harming anyone.
2 - it shows up and removes all pathological organism.
3 - it shows up and redesigns the human body so that it does not become old and decrepit.
4 - it shows up and makes it possible for humans to live without having to kill other living things to keep living.
5 - when you can show me how free will and an omniscient being can logically be reconciled.

etc etc etc

Posted by: Lynna | September 10, 2009 10:41 AM

The second argument was new to me: finding all the seashells in a particular rock formation perfectly aligned was claimed to be an indication that they had been buried all at once by a huge inflow of water - i.e. the Great Flood.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 10, 2009 10:47 AM

And the Science that was supposed to make sense of it all now tinkers at things that make nonsense of it all.

Posted by: BdN | September 10, 2009 10:55 AM

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/eleph5.jpg

I already hear you saying no. "You only see them as transitional because you ASSUME they are the result of evolution".

You seem to have a strange conception of "transitional".

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 10, 2009 11:02 AM

I think these are the 5 best arguments for creationism.

1. A lie. Many fossils have been discovered.
2. What? Billions of stone aged skeletons? You realize the human population hasn't been as big as it now? Since the human population wasn't that great during the stone age you wouldn't every cave to have drawings on it. Also, bones end up getting buried over time or getting eaten. I'm gonna say this "argument" relies on false assumptions.
3. A 'watchmaker' argument applied to the eye. Was a decent argument, up until Darwin proposed another mechanism. That the eye "defies attempts to explain it through natural mechanisms" is false.
4. Not even an argument for creationism. It's actually one for theistic evolution.
5. Not an argument specific to creationism (theistic evolutionist can ask the same), and irrelevant to the question.

So there you have it. The five best arguments for creationism turn out to be based on lies, false assumptions, ignoring the better arguments, an argument against it, and a red herring.

Posted by: Yo | September 10, 2009 11:16 AM

I just realized that of the days in genesis is actually ages, Adam and Eve would be millions of years old before they were booted from the garden of Eden

Posted by: Joseph Francis | September 10, 2009 11:28 AM

Evidence of engineering solutions in biological forms like the 'irreducibly complex' eye always suggests Evolution to me, not God.

God is all powerful and unconstrained, so if created by God, Man would function packed solid with nothing but Skippy peanut butter.

God would touch Man's organless body and say, "Live."

God would touch Man's eyeless peanut butter head and say, 'See.'

None of this eye lenses and veins and neurons and cellular machinery stuff. Just peanut butter. That would do just fine.

Posted by: Em | September 10, 2009 11:36 AM

As a Christian (but one who has no doubt that the earth is billions of years old), there's one point I never see my fellow scientists make that is, I'd argue, more important than whether evolution objectively happened or not. And that is,

SCIENCE IS A PROCESS!!!

This process includes researchers throughout the world contributing to the body of knowledge and move it forward, through peer-reviewed journals and quantifiable experimental results.

Currently, this scientific process has clearly converged on evolution. If (via some bizarre turn of events) it turns out that the earth is 5,000 years old, the international scientific process will discover that.

In other words, perhaps we should stop talking about the objective truth and start moving the argument towards the process. For instance, let's force the creationists to develop physical models showing how the weak nuclear force can result in considerably shorter half-lives than we see in the labs. Let's force creationists to show how the solar system can be 5 billion years old, but the earth only 5 thousand.

Etc...

Posted by: Rich | September 10, 2009 11:41 AM

@96

"to all: Without attacking me, or whatever religion you believe I adhere to, what do you say to my questions?"

If there MUST BE a first cause, what created your creator?

Posted by: Iris | September 10, 2009 11:52 AM

Randy Stimpson is now banned.

Ramen to that.

Posted by: Frank Lovell | September 10, 2009 12:04 PM

This "The five best arguments for creationism ever!" telegraph.co.uk article exemplifies the truth of the dialogue Bob Schadewald composed of a brief conversation between an evolutionist and a "scientific" creationist in order to succinctly illustrate the whole body of so-called "scientific" creationism:
______________________________________________________________________________

Evolutionist: Tell me something scientific about creationism.

Creationist: Evolution sucks!

Evolutionist: That's negative; tell me something positive about scientific creationism.

Creationist: Evolution positively sucks!
______________________________________________________________________________

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | September 10, 2009 12:19 PM

I have sent no such note. Stimpson is now lying to drum up attention for his idiotic blog.

Randy Stimpson is now banned.

Stimpy you EEEEEEEDIOT

Posted by: Bobber | September 10, 2009 12:28 PM

Stimpson is now lying to drum up attention for his idiotic blog.

Randy Stimpson is now banned.

Tell me I wasn't the only one to see this coming.

Months of reading posts by various creationists, IDers, fundamentalist religionists, assorted nefarious crackpots, and the unfortunately mentally ill - why does it all seem to end in either denial or lying?

Not that I'm sad, mind you. But the patterns are there...

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 10, 2009 12:29 PM

Randy Stimpson is now banned.

Posted by: nigelTheBold | September 10, 2009 12:36 PM

Science is more than a process.

It's also an epistemology. In fact, it is the best-proven epistemology we have.

Most of the folks with whom I've talked who do not trust science fail to understand the basic epistemology of science. They see science as a process without foundation, followed blindly by scientists in white smocks, mixing fuming multi-colored liquids together and making pronouncements.

Perhaps they do this because that is the the only epistemology they know? They picture preachers the same way, only instead of sitting over unknowable beakers of chemicals incanting alchemist arcanities, they ponder the Bible? And since the Bible is accessible to them, the lay public, they are more apt to accept the preacher's pronouncements over the scientist's.

Or maybe they're just stupid.

Posted by: MikeTheInfidel | September 10, 2009 1:16 PM

Joseph Francis said:

God is all powerful and unconstrained, so if created by God, Man would function packed solid with nothing but Skippy peanut butter.

God would touch Man's organless body and say, "Live."

God would touch Man's eyeless peanut butter head and say, 'See.'

None of this eye lenses and veins and neurons and cellular machinery stuff. Just peanut butter. That would do just fine.

I am SO GLAD to see that I'm not the only person who has thought of this.

The fact that the human body is such a kludgey mess is definitely an argument against an omniscient deity with supernatural abilities. The Bible says we're made of dust. WHY ARE WE NOT LITERALLY DUST? At what point did dust give birth to a bag of wet meat and bones?

In reference to God, I follow Einstein's mode of thinking:
"The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible." If it were made by a God, it wouldn't need to be comprehensible.

Posted by: MikeTheInfidel | September 10, 2009 1:19 PM

... WTF, blockquote?

My first words above are "I am SO GLAD..."

Posted by: Holbach | September 10, 2009 1:39 PM

The religionists claim their imaginary god created everything in six days. Duh, if I were a supreme being it would only take me a fraction of a second to create the whole shebang. Good grief, is there no enlightened thought that penetrates an insane mind?

Posted by: BdN | September 10, 2009 1:53 PM

Appeal to other ways of knowing.

Posted by: Carlie | September 10, 2009 1:55 PM

What about allergies to peanuts ? Duh...

God is your Epi-Pen. How's that for a little religious coercion?

On the other hand, bacon...

We are made of meat.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | September 10, 2009 2:05 PM

God could have made the sea as salty or not as he liked so one can not argue that the amount of salt in the oceans is evidence for creationism. But nor is it evidence against evolution. The saltiness of the sea has nothing to do with evolution.

If you're stupid, it has something to do with the age of the Earth. Stupidity manifests as a failure to take the deposition of evaporites, ion exchanges at black smokers, and so on into account – there are both sources and sinks for sea salt. This is why comments 233 and 234 are right on the money.

You missed the point of the first argument. There are indeed no transitional forms. There is no missing link for any of the species on the planet, only conjecture. For instance: Elaine Morgan says we evolved from aquatic apes. She brings forth evidence to support this hypothesis. But it is only a hypothesis. There is no aquatic ape to bring into evidence. And if there were, we would still need to show that and how humans evolved from them.

Such an aquatic ape would be a transitional form… but there are other reasons why Morgan is wrong anyway…

Technically, however, the transitional-forms argument is not an argument for or against creationism. In fact, it is not an argument against evolution. Evolutionary theory assumes that each species in existence evolved from predecessors, specifically via procreation. However, assume that we knew that species were "poofed in", that just tonight, in fact, the TV showed us all how the mew-dog species just poofed in, caught on camera. Such poofing in could be considered a quantum evolutionary event. No creationism would need to be assumed.

Isn't it obvious to you that such an event would be completely incompatible with the theory of evolution by mutation, selection and drift?

This theory does predict the existence of transitional forms – the existence of organisms with intermediate sets of features between other organisms. The existence of transitional forms can be tested without preassuming the theory. Don't you agree that the monotremes are in many respects intermediate between the marsupials and placentals on the one hand and the turtles plus lizards-including-snakes plus crocodiles plus birds on the other? Don't you agree that glaucophytes are intermediate between green and red algae on the one hand and ordinary eucaryotes plus cyanobacteria on the other? And so on.

Now the funny thing: the theory of evolution predicts that the similarity of life is arranged in a tree shape. Not a straight line, not a circle, not a square or disc or whatever, but specifically a tree.

Lo & behold, that's exactly what we find. We find monotremes, but we don't find mammal-insect, mammal-sauropod, or mammal-cyanobacteria intermediates.

Tiktaalik is just one more short little branch that happens to sit in an area where known branches are not horribly dense.

Have we ever witnessed an effect that did not have a cause? Is it possible? If there is a way to explain the ultimate beginning without a cause, I will embrace atheism.

I have to announce to you that you've been sleeping for the last 100 years. Uncaused events happen all the time. Lots of stuff, such as the already mentioned radioactive decay, happens just because it can, without being caused. This is explainable by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Relation, which you really ought to have heard of.

One common kind of uncaused event is the creation of a particle-antiparticle pair (or of a single particle outside that symmetry, such as a photon) out of nothing. Called "quantum fluctuation", happens all the time – look up the Casimir Effect. Now, the interesting thing is that the time of existence of such a particle (pair) is indirectly proportional to the amount of energy that was necessary to create it by E = mc² – this energy has to be paid back, after all, because the first law of thermodynamics still holds. Now, if you add the mass and the gravity in the universe, you apparently get a big fat 0. So, if the Big Bang is the result of a quantum fluctuation, the universe can be eternal without violating any known laws of the physics within it…

Will the sun rise tomorrow? Of course it will because it always does. We've never seen it do otherwise so we have faith the earth will continue to spin and we will see the sun shine again. It is well grounded in reason.

No, such an argument would be fallacious.

Why do I have confidence that "the sun [will] rise tomorrow"? Because I know about things like gravity, the conservation of momentum and angular momentum, and the like. My confidence is a deduction from theories of physics. It is not an argument from induction.

Importantly, it remains a testable hypothesis.

Can you explain to me again abiogenesis? To account for the theory of evolution, this had to have happened, correct?

Wrong. Evolution starts when the first self-replicating entity exists; how that entity came into being is completely irrelevant.

Abiogenesis is, of course, interesting in its own right, and AFAIK the people who're working on it can explain about half of it to you. The latest big news (got even into the New York Times) was that someone found a way to make ribonucleotides under conditions that are probably realistic assumptions for the early Earth; once you've got ribonucleotides, the RNA world (a term you should look up) is just around the corner… But I repeat: this is a separate field. Evolution is defined as descent with heritable modification; no such thing can go on before there is something capable of reproducing and inheriting.

(…Yeah, astronomers talk about "stellar evolution". That's something biologists call development or ontogeny – how an individual changes during its real or metaphorical lifetime.)

Why do you have faith in this?

If you have faith in science, you're doing it wrong.

Here's why:

I see. You want me to come up with another theory. So my theory would beat evolutionary theory. And until I do, that would this mean that evolutionary theory is proven or something? Of course not.

As you just said: of course not. Nothing is ever proven in science. Science cannot prove, only disprove.

Suppose we discover the truth. How can we find out that what we've found is indeed the truth? By comparing it to the truth, which we don't have? We can only work by elimination, and there are always more possibilities than we've thought of.

Science is not a search for truth. It's a search for falsehood, for everything that's false, for everything that demonstrably contradicts tangible reality.

Imagine a truth guru, who has been alive for as long as humans have been on the earth, and will only answer "yes" or "no" to whatever question is posed to her. Throughout the ages, whenever a genius, or a group, comes up with a new theory of the cosmos, they ask her: "Is this it?" I submit that she has only answered "no". This means that the next Einstein will also receive a "no". Although, that next Einstein will also reveal why the last one got the "no".

At least in part :-)

Stop with the insults, though. You lose every time when you do this. No, I am not ignorant.

As a matter of fact, you are. If you see this as an insult instead of an attempt to explain to you that you've got more to learn than you think, that's your problem, not ours.

Here's an example:

I will say that to be discussing evolution, and not understand the difference between the evolution of the same species and the evolution from one species to another is to be just plain ignorant on the subject. I should not have to go into this in a science blog.

See? Believing that there's something magical about species, that species have sharp, magical barriers between them, is a symptom of ignorance. There's a reason why there are 147 different definitions of "species" in the scientific literature that have nothing more in common than the word "species"; depending on the definition, there are from 101 to 249 endemic bird species in Mexico.

And here is an example of speciation in the fossil record under, probably, most or all definitions of "species". (PDF file.)

If your favorite species concept is based on the ability to interbreed, speciation is a very gradual process. Some mules are still fertile…

The only reason a splinter group gets upgraded to being its own species is that enough scientist decide "Yep, that's just about enough difference now."

Not even.

There is no official body that decides such things. To the contrary, the codes of nomenclature insist on what they call "taxonomic freedom". This means that different scientists have different opinions on which groupings are species and which aren't. Of course it also means that the same scientists have different opinions at different points in their careers.

Doesn't everybody learn about basic logical fallacies in high school?

No. I was never taught them. To get them presented to me in any kind of explicit form, I had to read Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World.

Comment 390 bears repeating; comment 266 (especially the last line) is Molly material.

Posted by: JBlilie | September 10, 2009 2:33 PM

David Marjanović, OM @ 407:

Super.

Posted by: scarn | September 10, 2009 2:44 PM

#407 is one of the best comments I've ever read on a blog. +1.

Posted by: Leon | September 10, 2009 3:22 PM

So according to #2 we live on a young Earth, but according to #4 we live on an old Earth? Anyone else notice that contradiction?

Posted by: pdferguson | September 10, 2009 3:32 PM

help my boob blathered:

I see that I am appearing in more bloggers' dream or fantasy life. It is to be expected.

Don't flatter yourself, Skippy. It's got nothing to do with dreams or fantasy, you simply have become an object of ridicule. We get that here from time to time, a loony creationist with a wildly inflated sense of self importance. It is to be expected.

Posted by: ericg | September 10, 2009 3:48 PM

here is what happens:

scientists use empirical data to try and figure stuff out.

denialists, creationists and contrarians try and turn science into religion to invalidate everything usually by requesting impossible - i.e. godlike - amounts of evidence and certainty, fundamentally misinterpreting the point of science, while offering nothing in return. Thus they "prove" (exceptionally loose interpertation of the word prove even by those "lazy scientific standards of proof") the scientific premise invalid so they can blissfully return to the null hypothesis: we dont know, therefore there is a god. The whole thing becomes so numbingly circular that the aforementioned twit becomes confident that their ability to know nothing is indeed the righteous path. But, the scientist persists because only a lazy A hole "accepts" the null hypothesis.

when discussing matters of reason, run from those who don't play by the rules.

Posted by: Stanton | September 10, 2009 4:06 PM

[pedant] JackC, just to let you know, the term "species" is both plural and singular, "specie" is the term for unminted money, i.e., the slug one uses in place of a quarter.

Posted by: bobxxxx | September 10, 2009 4:47 PM

Randy Stimpson is now banned.

Good riddance. What a stupid piece of shit.

No evidence for evolution

This reminds me of one of my favorite articles by PZ: Ann Coulter: No evidence for evolution? which was posted on June 18, 2006.

Many times I have seen on the internet a knowledgeable scientist patiently and politely explaining the evidence for evolution to a Christian stupid asshole, and always the Christian asshole waits until the scientist has wasted hours of his time, then tells the scientist "There is no evidence for evolution." These creationist retards need to be, well, never mind, I better not say what I'm thinking right now.

Posted by: JMk2 | September 10, 2009 5:03 PM

Josh@#348: Thank you - a much more learned rebuttal than I managed; there are lots of biologists taking on the creationists, but fewer geologists that I know of. Not all the arguments the creationists use are so easily dealt with as are the ones that started this thread.

Lynna@#367: Thank you, too! (Will that thread never die?)

Posted by: JackC | September 10, 2009 5:19 PM

the term "species" is both plural and singular

I am blaming the cyclobenzaprine I am taking for my back pain I got while putting in my Spa this past weekend. That's my story and I am sticking to it.

Well.... that and I had to correct my son's Algebra homework and couldn't come immediately back after my post, see the stupid and fix it.

JC

Posted by: tmaxPA | September 10, 2009 6:07 PM

Since there are creationists here trying to steal my arguments, I've gotta jump in:

On first cause: what caused it? (Answer, there is no 'first' cause.)

On "faith and the sun rises": your dichotomy is unsupported: "deep" faith is just as delusional as "light" faith, but that the sun will rise tomorrow is not a truth based on faith, but is based on empirical truth. Not simply that it always has, not simply that we know why it will, but both of those and more. All religious faith lacks this empiricism, substituting naive, unfalsifiable, anecdotal claims in place of facts or evidence.

And finally, the biggy from Rus:

I see. You want me to come up with another theory. So my theory would beat evolutionary theory. And until I do, that would this mean that evolutionary theory is proven or something? Of course not.

Oh my. I guess this MUST have been addressed in comments already, I must have missed it, because you are so thoroughly and obviously mistaken. That is indeed how science works: your theory must better explain ALL the facts, not just the ones you want, even BETTER than the old theory, in order to be considered "true". The failure of your alternative theory (and, indeed, of all coherent alternative theories presented so far) is all that makes evolution "true".

Humans lived with the idea of Newtonian physics, and Euclidean space for a while. Einstein came along and now we think of these matters differently. If a bet would matter, I would bet that an Einstein will come along and turn evolutionary theory as we know on its head as well. But, just the possibility of this happening makes my case.

The possibility Einstein's relativity could be "overturned" does not provide any basis for your assumption that it will be. Yes, it could be; that's called being falsifiable, and it is an important component of scientific validity. That possibility does not support your erroneous understanding of empirical truth, though.

When Netwon's theory's were superceded by Einstein's, it didn't make gravity stop working. Likewise, no advance in biology is ever going to make evolution "untrue". Common descent and diversification through means of natural selection isn't a theory that can be overturned; it is a fact that only evolution can adequately explain.

By the way, this would not take away from the usefulness of evolutionary theory. It is a model, just as Euclidean space is a useful model. They are man-made constructs.

You are mistaken. Evolution actually happened; there is nothing man-made or constructed about it. It is a fact, not a theory. Your response, I presume, would be to claim that 'Euclidian space' was once called a fact and is now considered a theory. Without arguing with your terms, which are inappropriate, you are still missing the point. That our universe is not Euclidian does not prevent Euclidian space, if it exists, from having all of the properties which scientific knowledge informs us it would have.

On the Tiktaalik. That is not a case of evolution from one species to another. That's a species adapting to the environment.

That's evolution, and how one species evolves into another (generally once two gene pools are separated somehow.) Your confusion might be alleviated if you concentrate on the fact that transitions from one species to another are not one generation long. In fact, they are generally one species long, since, as has already been explained, 'species' is a man-made construct that has little relevance to evolutionary history.

The Tiktaalik fossil does not prove evolution. What proved evolution is that they found this fossil precisely where they expected to, and it showed precisely the kind of 'transitional features' that they said it would.

Posted by: aratina cage | September 10, 2009 6:17 PM

@bobxxxxx

Thanks for the link back to that Pharyngula post. It has oodles of resources for learning about evolution. I repeated PZ's PubMed experiment by searching for the word "evolution" and got these results (2009-Sep-10)

All Articles on Evolution: 249732
Review Articles on Evolution: 34320
Primary Articles on Evolution: 215412
Primaries in Last 30 Days: 1446

Oh yeah, I also searched for "intelligent design" and got back 110 total articles, 24 of which are reviews and 86 primary articles (some of them using the term in a subversive way to the ID/Creationist movements), with one hit in the past 30 days to a paper by Ken Miller that defends science against IDiots.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | September 10, 2009 6:27 PM

Stanton #419

[pedant] JackC, just to let you know, the term "species" is both plural and singular, "specie" is the term for unminted money, i.e., the slug one uses in place of a quarter.

Ummmmm, no, not really. Or to be more precise, no, not at all.

Specie may refer to coins or other metal money in mass circulation, bullion coins, hard money or commodity metals. Specie is any money that isn't fiat (generally paper) money.

Posted by: raven | September 10, 2009 6:34 PM

On the Tiktaalik. That is not a case of evolution from one species to another. That's a species adapting to the environment.

That is both stupid and wrong. Adaptations are what evolution produces.

This is the latest meme of the creos. Since evolution is undeniable they give it a different name and say it happens. Swine flu didn't evolve, it simply adapted to humans in 1918 from swine, readapted to pigs, wandering around for 91 years, and then readapted to humans. But it wasn't evolving, just heritable changes in its genome being selected by natural selection.

Their other meme is the old, microevolution happens but macroevolution is impossible. They never throw out the old lies.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 10, 2009 6:46 PM

It seems possible that this is where some people are getting off track in their thinking.

They will speak as if these theories are so compelling that they ought to be laws.

When did the first human with the first human genes occur, and from which other species?

None of this will be done for the sake of avoiding this discussion.

Posted by: Carlie | September 10, 2009 6:51 PM

Rus, no one is trying to turn theory into law. I think you're getting the definitions confused yourself.

Fact - description of reality.
Law - generalized description of reality.
Theory - overarching framework used to explain an interaction between supported hypotheses, facts, and laws, arrived at only after hypotheses have been tested in numerous ways and all evidence still fits within the framework.

Evolution the word is used to describe two separate things. Evolution the fact is the fact that species do change from generation to generation. Evolution the theory states that the diversity of species we see now is a result of the accumulation of those kinds of changes.

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 10, 2009 7:09 PM

I was thinking today about the error that is being made here on the acceptance of evolution as truth, versus its acceptance as a theory. It seems possible that this is where some people are getting off track in their thinking. The issue is that evolution is not a law. It does not qualify as a law.

Rus, you are not a smart person. I suggest that you start asking more questions instead of asserting more bullshit.

Here's a good question you could have asked: "does a theory ever become a law?"

And the answer is "no, never. There is no such thing as a law that used to be a theory. Theories and laws are two completely different things, and one never turns into the other. http://notjustatheory.com/

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | September 10, 2009 7:13 PM

#407 is one of the best comments I've ever read on a blog. +1.

You must be new here. :-) Comments of this and higher quality occur over here about once a week, I think.

No, really. I'm surprised at getting that much praise. Does this mean my comments are usually too long-winded, and this rather short one finally got it right? ;-)

I haven't made any point that hasn't been made on Pharyngula before. Special thanks to Prof. Ulrike Aspöck who photocopied the July 2001 issue of TREE, the paper on speciation in the fossil record included, for each participant of her course in phylogenetic systematics. The idea that the total energy of the universe is 0 is something I found somewhere on teh intartoobz, maybe on Pharyngula; it's a pretty widespread argument by now. The argument about the similarity of life being arranged in a tree shape isn't original either; one reason I'm aware of it is that I've read about the botanist Bernard de Jussieu, who, in the late 18th century, believed that the morphological diversity of life was arranged in a straight line, which it manifestly isn't (which, in turn, is why his method of classification has died out).

And, I mean, everyone here knows what to say to a creationist who believes speciation is a miracle. The example with the endemic birds of Mexico comes from a congress I attended in 2006; I've mentioned it here so often that I'm surprised nobody beat me to it this time.

I suspect that his argument wouldn't be that Tiktaalik doesn't meet the definition of a transitional fossil, but that the notion of a transitional species is an impossibility.

I agree; that's what I've tried to address.

If I wanted to be a creationist I would have my choice of any number of theories to explain what foolish scientists think are transitional fossils.

All of these already have stock answers, though:

1) God created them all individually, but made them look transitiony to test our faith.

Immediately puts all even vaguely Christian creationists (except Theodore "Vox Day" Beale... is he a creationist, actually?) in deep metaphysical shit. "Test"? Not necessary, God is supposed to be omniscient. And the whole argument turns God into a liar. Also ought to work with Muslims, though not with Vedic creationists.

2) Satan did it to tempt us into atheism.

Untestable. <yawn>

3) It's all just paleontological pareidolia. We're seeing patterns where none really exist.

Easily remedied by pointing to specific examples. Any specific example of a reasonably well known transitional series.

4) What appear to be transitional forms exist throughout the fossil record, but scientists look for them only in strata that will confirm their status as transitional.

We don't only find what we look for! Who ordered Lazarussuchus? Hey, who ordered any champsosaurs in the first place?!?

5) What appear to be transitional forms exist throughout the fossil record, but scientists are hiding this from us.

Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead. Can thousands keep a secret...? (Yes, there are several thousand vertebrate paleontologists in the world. I can't begin to estimate the numbers of ammonite workers or of biostratigraphers for the oil industry.)

Some radioactive isotopes are more stable than others, and so have longer half-lives. But the fact we don't know why radioactive decay happens does not mean there can be no cause.

We know exactly why radioactive decay happens: because it can.

The binding energies of nuclei can be calculated. Like for the electron cloud, there's a shell model for the nucleus; certain numbers of protons and of neutrons (the "magic numbers") result in especially stable nuclei, and "double magic" nuclei (with magic numbers for both protons and neutrons) are even more stable.

The funny thing is that, according to classical physics, all nuclei are stable, because no particle ever has enough energy to leave even a nucleus with a very low binding energy. According to classical physics, radioactive decay is completely impossible.

Enter Heisenberg's uncertainty relation, which says that the location of a particle isn't always clearly defined. So, a particle can suddenly find itself outside a nucleus. (Tunnel effect.) The probability of this happening is indirectly proportional to the binding energy...

Radioactive decay is completely indistinguishable from random, and it cannot be influenced. There is no way to predict when a particular nucleus will decay – even though the probability with which it will decay during any period of time can be given very precisely.

To assume a cause wouldn't explain anything. Plus, we don't know any causes that are indistinguishable from random chance. The theory of quantum physics says there is no cause, and the predictions of the theory pan out, so the simplest interpretation is that the theory is right.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | September 10, 2009 7:35 PM

Therefore:

Fortunately, nothing of what you write after that word follows from your glaring misunderstanding of what the term "law" means in science...

However, and we have to make a thought-experiment leap here, if new species were to be poofed in, they could be products of mutation,

Only if millions of mutations happened at the same time and in exactly the right places. That would be a miracle.

selection, and drift.

Nope. Those can't happen when an individual is poofed into existence. Think about what these terms mean (you'll probably have to look up what genetic drift is, but Wikipedia is good enough).

What we could proffer, is a quantum evolutionary event.

Which would be just as much a miracle as divine intervention.

No god is proved. No creationism is proved.

Agreed.

But evolutionary theory would be conceived of differently.

Very differently.

When did the first human with the first human genes occur

Please. There is no such thing as a human gene. AFAIK we don't possess a single gene that chimpanzees lack. Some of our genes differ in their sequence from their chimp counterparts, but genes aren't poofed into existence any more than mew-dogs are. See comment 438.

All that we use to explain this process, not just for humans, but for each species on earth now and in the past, is based on conjecture.

Not more so than any other scientific theory.

Posted by: tmaxPA | September 10, 2009 7:46 PM

Evolution is a law. The Law of Evolution is so absolute that God Himself, who can bend and mold the very Laws of Physics themselves, could not violate it, even if He were to somehow be capable of existing.

If you have replicators with phenotypic expression, presuming any mistakes are possible in replication, natural selection will cause evolution of the population(s) to adaptive genomes.

The fact of evolution (common descent with variation) is indisputable. The theory of evolution (genotypic inheritance proves the fact of evolution) is unassailable. The law of evolution (replication+mutation=diversification explains the theory of evolution) is incontrovertible. (It should be pointed out that, despite this, they are all falsifiable.)

It isn't official, I'll grant you, but just because scientists don't speak of the Law of Evolution doesn't mean there is no such law limiting what we know can happen in our universe, regardless of circumstances. Which to me is what a law means, in the quasi-scientific sense of "laws of physics" or "laws of probability".

Posted by: Lynna | September 10, 2009 7:50 PM

Josh @348, thanks for the clear explanation. That was all info I knew, but couldn't present as clearly. I especially liked the use of Kansas as specific example -- that would work for educating high school students, as well as for knocking down a creationist argument.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 10, 2009 9:14 PM

rus, stop beating that poor "you guys treat evolution as absolute truth"-strawman.

no one here assumes evolution is Teh Troof

no one here is going to stop accepting evolution as the best available explanation until someone comes up with a better (i.e. one that explains more, more precisely) Theory

no one here is going to seriously take into consideration things said by someone who doesn't know that a Scientific Law isn't truer than a Scientific Theory, who doesn't know that evolution IS adaptation, and who thinks there's such a thing as a distinct "human gene"

you're ignorant. that's a fact. it's also fixable, if you'd just stop asserting and start learning.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 10, 2009 9:32 PM

I'm not sure why you think I meant otherwise.

That's what the thought experiment yields.

Posted by: rus bowden | September 10, 2009 9:43 PM

@Nerd #451

What do you want me to show hard core physical evidence of?

Evolution is an interpretation of the objective world we share. It works very well. It is adaptable itself.

My prediction is that there will come a time when it is overturned as we know it, just as we no longer accept a Euclidean cosmic model. This has always been the case. We as people are way too limited to ever reach the peak of the mountain of truth. Certainly scientific method will not get us there--and that's not to bash scientists.

I'm not here in support of creationism. Nor do I think these five arguments are good arguments for creationism.

Posted by: SC, OM | September 10, 2009 9:48 PM

Hmm. rus bowden's posts make no logical sense. I'm tempted to develop a drinking game... The rGb (with a color-wheel design)?

Posted by: rus bowden | September 10, 2009 9:57 PM

@'Tis Himself #452

Why bring it up? It addresses transitional forms. Transitional forms, in the sense of the creationist argument, attacks the accepted mode of evolution, that transitions are made from one species to another through the transitional forms. The use of transition to say that one species went from sea to land has nothing to do with what the argument against evolution. Thus to bring up Tiktaalik is meaningless. To create a list of accepted "transitional" forms is meaningless. It is begging the question. And it becomes an argument against a straw man. Poofing in subtracts that, and says, "Have it your way. Even if each species were poofed in, we still have evolution, only different mechanisms."

Posted by: rus bowden | September 10, 2009 10:00 PM

@Jadehawk #456

If you've been trying to procreate with a chimpanzee, it's not going to work. There's too much difference in the DNA.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 10, 2009 10:05 PM

If you've been trying to procreate with a chimpanzee, it's not going to work. There's too much difference in the DNA.

1)your attempt at an insult has been noted and laughed at

2)congratulations on completely missing the fucking point

Posted by: tmaxPA | September 10, 2009 10:09 PM

We as people are way too limited to ever reach the peak of the mountain of truth. Certainly scientific method will not get us there

You're compounding error on error, Rus. The scientific method GOT us there, hundreds of years ago. We now know what objective truth is. The reason you are confused is because you think that would require us to know what THE objective truth is in any possible context, without any empirical evidence to enable us to do so. Humans are not capable of naturally knowing what is or is not true. That isn't the same as saying we can't know what is or is not true. We must learn, and although it took us thousands of years, we eventually learned that objective truth can be discovered even by entirely subjective observers. {Note that if you believe either philosophy or quantum physics indicates this is not true, you are misunderstanding either the philosophy or the quantum physics.}

We can refine our understanding of evolution, as Einstein refined Newton's understanding of physics. That didn't make gravity stop; likewise, evolution is not 'an' answer (although current evolutionary theory is), it really is 'the' answer. We have found no anomalies in all of the genomes we have studied to indicate anything but common descent and natural selection explains everything we know about biology, and no other even hypothetically possible alternative does.

Briefly put: though science will always advance, there is no woo, the non-Euclidean nature of space-time notwithstanding.

Posted by: Steve_C | September 10, 2009 10:14 PM

Rus is one of those Matrix type sophists.

"But what if it's all in your mind?"

Are we going to take the red pill and find out evolution is a lie?
That the evidence is a lie?

Is god the red pill Rus?

Posted by: JefFlyingV, Wham! | September 10, 2009 10:20 PM

SC, OM, don't start a drinking game based on rus bowdens idiotic statements, alcohol poisoning or cirrhosis of the liver will quickly ensue. Where do these creotards spring up from?

Posted by: IaMoL | September 10, 2009 10:26 PM

Just because we have an explanation---or really a way of explaining since we have not explained everything---this does not mean you have the answer, objective or otherwise.

Posted by: Wretch Fossil | September 10, 2009 10:32 PM

Comment 446, you have a problem with your eyes. So I expanded the photo for you to recognize Haversian canals in this figure:
http://www.wretch.cc/album/show.php?i=lin440315&b=13&f=o1588690160.jpg&p=69

Obviously you are arrogant and prejudiced in saying Ed's Carboniferous calvarium is "obviously concretion". Obviously you did not read my articles on Mr. Ed Conrad's fossils at
http://docs.google.com/#all
(Study on Ed's Carboniferous calvarium and femur).

Posted by: aratina cage | September 10, 2009 10:32 PM

Sincere thanks to those who put up sincere and cogent arguments.

the insults are coming, and I am leaving. This is no place to have a discussion.

Posted by: tmaxPA | September 10, 2009 10:42 PM

I don't really mind your quibbling, but your 'corrections' are slightly misguided, if I might say.

If you have replicators with phenotypic expression, presuming any mistakes are possible in replication, natural selection will cause evolution of the population(s) to adaptive genomes.

Let me put it this way: as soon as some replicators are better at replicating than others, due to heritable factors, natural selection happens: those that are better at replicating will have more offspring. In other words, the traits that made them better at replicating are selected for.

That's what I said. In fewer words, and covering more cases.

Populations don't become genomes...

Populations are genomes. Collections of genomes similar enough that their phenotypic expressions can interbreed to produce more genomes. Try to think a bit more creatively; here, 'genome' becomes a synonym for 'individual' (or for 'species', take your pick they both work) rather than for 'the typical and/or average DNA sequence of a population of individual creatures', the way you are more used to. A 'genome' in this context is an instance of a genome, not a class of genome.

The theory of evolution (genotypic inheritance proves the fact of evolution)

You're getting muddled here.

I think you should say that you are getting confused. There's nothing muddled about being succinct.

There is no such thing as proof in science.

But there is in the English language, of which I am currently availing myself.

The theory of evolution by mutation, selection and drift* explains evolution as the result of mutation, natural and sexual selection, and drift (...duh).

Yup. And thereby proves Darwinian evolution to be true, as Darwinian evolution explains it better than the alternatives. Try to keep up.

* I spell it all out to distinguish it from the evolution theories by Lamarck, Buffon, Osborn, Schindewolf and others.

Distinctions which are entirely beyond and unimportant to the audience for my explanations, which was decidedly not you. No disrespect.

The law of evolution (replication+mutation=diversification explains the theory of evolution)

Nonsense. The theory is what does the explaining; that's why it's a theory. There is no law of evolution. There is no separate law of physics that operates only in evolution. And laws don't explain, they are just generalizations.

The theory does 'the explaining' to you, the scientist. The kind of explaining I'm talking about here is for "normal" people. ;-)

By that I mean the law of evolution (that selection happens naturally) explains why the theory of evolution (that selection did happen naturally) explains the fact of evolution (that something explains our existence). Just as the "laws of physics" are what explains "why" the Earth orbits the Sun, the law of evolution explains why humans eat, crap, and congress on Earth.

Posted by: SC, OM | September 10, 2009 10:56 PM

SC, OM, don't start a drinking game based on rus bowdens idiotic statements, alcohol poisoning or cirrhosis of the liver will quickly ensue.

...Seven minutes later:

Well, the insults are coming, and I am leaving.

One's health is always safe with these jittering jagoffs. :)

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 10, 2009 10:57 PM

Rus never did fully explain his thoughts. We don't like "discussing" things with muddled thinkers. They never get to a point, because they have none. I was never able to figure out what your point was Rus. Evidently you didn't have one. Next time try "this is what I believe, and this is the evidence to back it up." We might even listen.

Wretched Fossil still mistakenly thinks we are interested in his nonsense. Buzz off idjit.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 10, 2009 11:08 PM

What do you want me to show hard core physical evidence of?

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | September 10, 2009 11:21 PM

We can all pat ourselves on the back for a job well done today. That's four (or more?) trolls trudging off in one day: Intelligent Designer, Piltdown Man, this dingbat, and andyet (apparently).

Pilty left? like, for real left, not just flounced? what did you guys say to finally make him go away?

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 10, 2009 11:23 PM

Herman Cummings,

Where would you like to start?

Well...

But now, the truth of Genesis has been uncovered, authenticating the Word of God. Fifteen years ago, this author discovered undeniable evidence of a Divine Creator, and even secular science will have to admit that it is more than “a convenient coincidence” that Genesis reveals more about prehistoric life on Earth than was ever known before. Genesis gives documented proof that mankind has been on Earth for more than sixty million years.

I'd like to hear that "undeniable evidence".

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | September 10, 2009 11:31 PM

Pilty left? like, for real left, not just flounced? what did you guys say to finally make him go away?

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 10, 2009 11:37 PM

Herman Cummings:

I am the only person I know or ever heard of presently on this Earth that is qualified to teach Biblical Creation.

You don't need to feel modest here. Tell us everything...

*** Opens new window. Types in http://fstdt.net/SubmitQuote.aspx. Gets ready***

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble OM4Jesus | September 11, 2009 12:03 AM

Ha Atheists!

You may have seen off all of God's other missionaries, but don't pat yourselves on the buttocks yet.

For I, Smoggy Batzrubble, God's appointed missionary to the atheists am still here, fully clad in my Armor of God and my Papist codpiece, ready to BATTLE!

And don't think I'm going to bend over quietly like Piltdown Man, Rus Bowden and Intelligent Designer, part my cheeks, and let you jam me up the poop-chute with an engorged member-full of reason. I'm not that easy (and, thanks to Floyd Rubber and Brother Padraic of the "Christian Brothers' Orphanage and Sodomy School", not that tight).

As for this "Herman Cummings" impostor with his obscene porn star pseudonym, I revile him in the name of Jesus and I pray God will damn him on judgment day for his sick and depraved mind.

Be warned "Hardman Cummings", your satanic innuendo about erections and ejaculation will be your undoing. God is not mocked! He's gonna smite your ass, and the Holy Spirit is gonna enter your soul with such vengeful fury that you'll feel like it's been penetrated by a stallion.

Now, where was I? Oh yes...

God created everything 6243 years ago, after an eternity of sitting in the dark on his own, because he was bored and he wanted something to torment. How do I know? Jesus told me AND I feel it in my heart.

BRING IT ON, HEATHENS!

Yours in Christian Love
Smoggy

OM4Jesus

Posted by: Mr Mark | September 11, 2009 12:14 AM

When a creationists sez, "Genesis "days" could also be read as "ages," do they ever stop to think what they're saying in context of the Genesis story?

Genesis says that god created the plants on Day Three. He then created the sun and moon on Day Four. If the Bible is talking about a day being literally 24 hours, then one can imagine the plants surviving without sunlight for a single day. If a Genesis "day" means "ages" - as in hundreds or thousands or millions or billions of years - then the survival of the plants would be impossible.

Even their "scientifically revised" arguments are stupid.

Posted by: Krystalline Apostate | September 11, 2009 1:44 AM

Wretch Fossil @ 471:

Obviously you did not read my articles on Mr. Ed Conrad's fossils at http://docs.google.com/#all

Posted by: uncle frogy | September 11, 2009 3:19 AM

I have been slowly reading this thread for too long it is kind of fun as I write this I have no idea where the thing is now it says 401 just above.
i just had to make a comment here seems like an understandable error to me.
>>Elwood Herring | September 10, 2009 9:00 AM

Hoping for a logical coherent argument for creationism would be equivalent to expecting to hear my cat sing the blues

It is not surprising that you would make that mistake seeing that cats do not or very rarely sing in English or any other human language. Having their own well developed grammar and syntax and following their own meter and sometimes do not follow any meter at all they most defiantly sing the blues! it is of a very rural nature and lacks some of the urban influences we see most often in modern blues though their duets are aw-inspiring almost operatic in a sensual way.
Dogs on the other hand are to very poor singers only having a simple moaning song but they are very quick to declaim there verses of remarkable variety using the most crude language and violent gestures.

creationists on the other hand ???????????

Posted by: DingoJack | September 11, 2009 4:14 AM

Although I'm late to party, allow me to explain for the benefit for anti-scientific types:
A) Every Monday morning at 8:45am I buy a weekly train ticket. The tickets are numbered with an positive integer. Each of my weekly train ticket's numbers can be approximately described by the formula 'y = 11233.575x + 53.334' with an error of around plus or minus 55.332* (where y is the number of the weekly ticket & x is the week number of the year).
B) Most people who travel by train using a weekly ticket from my station every week buy a train ticket at approximately the same time early on Monday mornings like I do. Many leave even earlier to get into work (I start at 10am), some later than I do (even later in the week), however since each ticket is bought every week at the same time the result represents the 11,183 - 11,289 persons who travel to work each week from my station using a weekly train ticket.
A) is a law, it explains how the numbers vary;
B) is a theory, it explains why & how the law works. - DJ
_________________
*using a 'least squared distance' best fit from a linear regression.

Posted by: ian | September 11, 2009 5:31 AM

Hmm. rus bowden's posts make no logical sense. I'm tempted to develop a drinking game... The rGb (with a color-wheel design)?

Reading over Rus's philosophical wankery which tries to accommodate Evolution and Creationism while bashing both, I figure he has already developed a drinking game as his posts display the distinctive air of Johnny Walker wisdom. Fluffy thinking.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | September 11, 2009 6:26 AM

SEF, #434

Would you stop confusing "why is" with "why does"? What I provided is what I understand to be the mechanism behind radioactive decay. Namely, that the Strong Interaction (I looked it up :) ) acts upon the fermions of the nucleus, but in the case of the unstable elements---and certain isotopes of the stable ones---the Strong Interaction is insufficient in and of itself to, well, keep things in line. The Weak Interaction also plays a role in this insofar as it mediates the radioactive decay of neutrons in certain situations. It might be though an interaction with the Strong Interaction.

I understand your assertion, that radioactive decay has no cause. I disagree. Things happen for a reason, it's just that in many cases we don't have enough information to say what the cause is. We don't know why, that is my point.

What it comes down to is, we don't know. At the very least, if we do know---even a vague idea, I haven't heard of it. But ignorance of a process does not mean that process cannot exist.

I don't believe in a universe where things arbitrarily happen. In my experience things happen for a reason, which can be learned if we put our minds to learning that reason. My universe is one where things can be understood, and understood through learning, observation, and experimentation. Sorry to hear your universe is an impenetrable mystery.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | September 11, 2009 6:44 AM

Re: 'Tis Himself @454

/Bad British Accent

I think he's got it!

\Bad British Accent

Posted by: strange gods before me | September 11, 2009 6:53 AM

Alan Kellogg, are you saying that when we understand nuclear decay better, we'll be able to predict it?

Posted by: Jeff Eyges | September 11, 2009 7:22 AM

Kevin @502,

Everyone else here will demolish that argument from an evolutionary perspective. What often doesn't get mentioned in these situations is a fundamental problem with Irreducible Complexity arguments from a Biblical perspective - supposedly, no suffering existed before the "Fall". This would include parasitic relationships. However, the IC argument is that complex phenomena - be they organs or relationships - couldn't have evolved; God had to poof them into existence. The only conclusion is that God created these parasitic relationships as they currently exist.

Posted by: John Morales | September 11, 2009 7:44 AM

Alan K:

I don't believe in a universe where things arbitrarily happen.

Then your belief is counter-evidentiary; taken on faith, much like Einstein's¹.
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the 'old one'. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice. (Letter to Max Born (4 December 1926))

Sorry to say, Alan, quantum mechanics is no less established or predictive than relativity; in each case, the math works to astonishing degrees of accuracy.

Both are counter-intuitive, do you reject both, or only the one?

--
¹ Yes, faith.

Posted by: defective robot | September 11, 2009 9:00 AM

John Morales @ #511:

No, faith. Trust. Understanding. But not faith.

Keep in mind that relativity didn't become accepted (canonical?) until about 15 years after he had proposed them, when Eddington confirmed one of the predictions of General Relativity. Many more predictions have since been confirmed. To say it's accepted on faith dismisses out of hand just about everything relativity has informed since them, which, by the way, is just about everything.

Posted by: Brian | September 11, 2009 10:53 AM

My answer to the "gaps" argument is this...

If I were putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a bear (and I didn't know beforehand what it was), would I need to have every single piece of the puzzle in place before I knew what it was? Or could I come to the reasonable conclusion after I put together several groups of pieces that shows claws, fur, and a head.

Posted by: BdN | September 11, 2009 11:59 AM

Hi David and SEF,

I'm trying to understand the distinction you both make between "cause" and "reason", or something along those lines, but since I don't know much about radioactive decay, I don't get much of it. Would you have a more trivial example to give so I can pretend I grasp at least some of it ?

Thanks, it would really be appreciated!

Posted by: Bjoern | September 11, 2009 12:22 PM

@David Marjanović:
Really good explanation of radioactive decay (why does a PhD student in paleobiology know so much about that?) - but a small nitpick: helium 4 nuclei are bosons, not fermions.

Posted by: Just Some Guy | September 11, 2009 1:07 PM

> Wake me up when a creationist says something intelligent.

Enjoy your eternal nap. I'll ring you up sometime in 2082 when they finally admit they never made any sense at all.

Posted by: tmaxPA | September 11, 2009 1:18 PM

@ tmaxPA #475:

By that I mean the law of evolution (that selection happens naturally) explains why the theory of evolution (that selection did happen naturally) explains the fact of evolution (that something explains our existence).

No, you're just making up your own definitions of words now, Humpty Dumpty.

Such is the nature of language. You're doing the same thing, just not as well. It is called "explaining", not "making up definitions", though an objective examination would reveal that they are only subjectively distinguishable from one another, which is another way of saying there is no difference and they are the same thing.

In fact there are no 'Laws' and so they cannot have any useful "relationship" with any theories. Yet, we speak of them often, and to do so is useful for accepting facts without understanding them, something that all people actually need to do constantly in order to deal with the real world. (There also are no 'toads' or 'frogs' or 'horses' or 'species'. Yet these words and these things exist, you see?)

I was rather happy with my encapsulation of the relationships of various aspects of evolution. So you can accept it or you can argue against it, but you will not get anywhere trying to claim I haven't any right or reason to write it. Nor will Richard Dawkins himself (though I would be greatly more interested in his opinion on this than yours or even John' or David's, who both fall somewhere on the spectrum in between.)

Other commenters have already corrected you on the "law" vs "theory" thing (though, as with frogs and toads, historically, people haven't always stuck strictly to the sensible distinction when naming a new example).

Others have provided their opinions. "Correcting" isn't really the right word. There is no "sensible distinction "to be struck; these are words, they are not mathematical terms. How scientists tend to use them, even if they rigorously agree to use them only that way and never change it, do not dictate what words mean (unless, of course, they make them up, which they do often.)

The words 'theory' and 'law' work more-or-less as I use them, which is the same as how everyone else uses them, in general. Your authoritarian approach to language might also infect your approach to science, unfortunately, causing you to mistake the content of science with the process of science. So it isn't only your mistake here you must admit to, you may have to correct your general thinking, as well.

Posted by: BdN | September 11, 2009 1:24 PM

The words 'theory' and 'law' work more-or-less as I use them, which is the same as how everyone else uses them, in general.

I don't know who are your friends and family, but people around me don't use those words in the same way you do. At all. And scientists even less. Even social scientists.

Posted by: David Marjanović, OM | September 11, 2009 1:58 PM

Now, I know you guys can kick the crap out of this before I could say "flibbertigibbet,"

Can we? Let's try.

but it still seems to me to be better than the five "best" arguments for Creationism

Oh, absolutely. But that's hardly difficult. :-)

In a nutshell: if species B reproduces in a radically different way than species A (from whence it allegedly evolved), and there is no way to have a gradual transformation between the two, then the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is falsified.

Too little imagination here. The mammalian jaw joint is not descended from the normal one… we had ancestors with double jaw joints, as the fossil record makes very clear.

Another central principle of neo-Darwinian evolution is that simplicity precedes complexity.

Ultimately, yes, but it doesn't have to be directly. Simplifications happen all the time – perhaps even more often than increases in complexity, except that complexity can't really be measured.

The problem for neo-Darwinian evolution comes in trying to explain the development of sexual reproduction in lancet flukes. Let us assume for the sake of discussion that the ancestor of the lancet fluke lived its complete life cycle within the snail, reproducing asexually.

That's wrong for two reasons.

One is that sexual reproduction isn't new within eukaryotes, as previously pointed out. The bdelloid rotifers have managed to get rid of it – but they can only afford it because they've found a way to get rid of transposable elements*, and the fact that they're tetraploid and extremely good at repairing DNA damage certainly also helps.

The second is that you are trying to explain the evolution of the life cycle of the lancet fluke directly from a free-living ancestor. That's wrong-headed, because the lancet fluke isn't the only fluke; a complicated parasitic life cycle is clearly ancestral for flukes. So, the first thing you should do is to compare the life cycles of all flukes in order to try to figure out the ancestral fluke life cycle. Then you should compare that to other parasitic flatworms and then to free-living flatworms.

Tree-thinking. "Nothing makes sense in biology, except in the light of evolution" (Th. Dobzhansky); "Nothing makes sense in evolution without a good phylogeny" (Gina C. Gould & Bruce MacFadden, 2002, 2004).

* No idea how. That's really unique.

Now, the additional wrinkle is this: the "brain-worm" does not reproduce!

So what? As you pointed out, flukes reproduce asexually in snails. All flukes in a single ant are therefore genetically identical. All of them carry the genes responsible for brain-worm behavior. The brain worm doesn't need to reproduce in order to get these genes replicated. To the contrary, sacrificing itself actually helps.

So…

So, the initial mutant genes responsible for "brain-worm" behavior5 would have been suicidal, eliminating themselves from the gene pool before any series of transitional steps could create a new, grazer-based reproductive system.

Complete misunderstanding.

(Why am I not surprised to find a complete misunderstanding in a creationist argument, even a fake one! :-D )

Posted by: (((Billy))) The Atheist | September 11, 2009 2:32 PM

David (516): Sorry, keep in mind I study history. I should have been more clear. In my view, on an individual basis, the purpose is to procreate. That way I can inflich my genes on the future. As for a purpose for the whole shooting match? There isn't.

And sorry about screwing Homo sapiens.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg | September 11, 2009 3:07 PM

John, #511

My contention is that quantum mechanics is not complete. Indeed, to some degree it is an admission that we don't know what's going on. No scientific theory is the final answer. All any scientific theory can be is a close approximation to what is going in, and all scientific theories are per force incomplete.

It is my thinking that the Weak and Strong Interaction play some role in radioactive decay. What that role is we don't know, because while we have some idea as to what each Interaction is involved with, we don't really not what they do. At least that's my understanding.

Why am I so adamant about this? Because in my experience I have yet to see us coming to a complete understanding of anything, and I don't see us coming to a complete understanding of anything.

Can you explain the role the Strong Interaction plays in the stability, and the instability, of the atomic nucleus? Why is Helium 4 stable whereas Hydrogen 4 is not? Is it because the ratio of neutrons to protons in Helium 4 is stable, while the ratio of neutrons to protons in Hydrogen 4 is not?

I don't believe in speaking from absolute authority, but in questioning common wisdom. "It just happens" makes no sense to me. Screw the intuition, I prefer a universe that makes sense, and a universe where things just happen makes no sense.

Science is about learning what happens in the world, and in that learning we learn how ignorant we are of the world. That is what I've been saying. In time we will learn what part the Strong and Weak Interaction play in nuclear physics and gaps in our knowledge will be closed.

Posted by: Feynmaniac | September 11, 2009 3:52 PM

No scientific theory is the final answer. All any scientific theory can be is a close approximation to what is going in, and all scientific theories are per force incomplete.

You're right that we won't know if any one theory is ever 100% correct, however we can know if they are wrong. Science has shown that determinism, despite it's intuitive appeal, just doesn't hold. Physics has all but giving up on it.

My contention is that quantum mechanics is not complete.

That has already been attempted and already shown to be wrong.

"It just happens" makes no sense to me. Screw the intuition, I prefer a universe that makes sense, and a universe where things just happen makes no sense.

If your goal is to understand nature then you should be prepared to have your preconceived notions challenged and possibly shown to wrong.

By saying things can happen out of the blue, with no cause, you are saying that the universe is ultimately not understandable.

No, it's saying that the universe is unpredictable, at least deterministically. The best we can do is so what the probability of certain events occurring are. These probability does not represent our ignorance but the inherent indeterminism of nature. Not all hope is lost because you can know the statistics of what will happen. For example, if you pass electrons through a double slit you can only say the probability of where it will land on the screen. However, throw a while bunch of electrons through there and you will be able to accurately predict the pattern on the screen. Also, while certain events like having all the atoms of the statue of an arm move in the same direction so that it appears the statue is waving are possible, they are extremely, extremely improbable.

Posted by: JackC | September 11, 2009 4:06 PM

(I think I may better have said "at a sub-particle level" - since understanding of quanta at a probability level is well defined. It's been a long day - and I am quite worn out after reading nearly every post above this one. Cruel and inhuman punishment, that was.)

JC

Posted by: CJO | September 11, 2009 5:07 PM

Pfff, like David Marjanović is only one person...knowing so much about physics and paleobiology, being able to write in 5 languages and understanding at least three others while loving mint chocolate chip ice cream ? I call fairytale! ;-)

Indeed, if David Marjanović did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

Posted by: Jeff Eyges | September 11, 2009 9:39 PM

Rev. BigDumbChimp: We have the fossils. We win.

Love Lewis Black. Love him. I still quote from that routine regularly - "They're watching the Flintstones as though it were a documentary!"

Posted by: Malcolm | September 12, 2009 12:51 AM

I think that it is important to remember that the people who believe that there are no transitional forms also believe that evolution means cats giving birth to dogs.
For them, you would need to have the duck, the crocodile, and the crocoduck alive at the same time.

Posted by: Bjoern | September 12, 2009 4:48 AM

@Alan Kellogg:
"My contention is that quantum mechanics is not complete."

In the sense that Quantum Theory still is not united with General Relativity, it is still not complete, yes. In all other senses, it is indeed quite complete. And it is complete enough for us to say with confidence that there are indeed completely random effects in the world, and that these happen all the time.

Please don't use the "science doesn't know everything, therefore it can't say anything with confidence" argument!

"Indeed, to some degree it is an admission that we don't know what's going on."

No. We know quite well what is going on on the quantum level. The fact is simply that much of it is unpredictable and can only be described statistically. Please read up on hidden variables and the Bell inequality.

"No scientific theory is the final answer. All any scientific theory can be is a close approximation to what is going in, and all scientific theories are per force incomplete."

Duh. See argument above about science not knowing everything.

"It is my thinking that the Weak and Strong Interaction play some role in radioactive decay. What that role is we don't know, because while we have some idea as to what each Interaction is involved with, we don't really not what they do. At least that's my understanding."

Then your understanding is wrong. The role of weak and strong interactions in nuclear (in)stability and therefore in radioactive decay is well understood.

"Why am I so adamant about this? Because in my experience I have yet to see us coming to a complete understanding of anything, and I don't see us coming to a complete understanding of anything."

So you say that we e. g. have no complete understanding of how a computer works?

"Can you explain the role the Strong Interaction plays in the stability, and the instability, of the atomic nucleus? Why is Helium 4 stable whereas Hydrogen 4 is not? Is it because the ratio of neutrons to protons in Helium 4 is stable, while the ratio of neutrons to protons in Hydrogen 4 is not?"

It is because neutrons are fermions, and therefore obey the Pauli exclusion principle (two fermions can not be in the same state simultaneously). Hydrogen 4 has three neutrons, which can't all be in the same energy state (since there are only two spin states), and hence one of these three neutrons is in a higher energy state (that's in essence the consequence of the Strong Interaction). In Helium 4, both neutrons can be in the energy ground state. Therefore Helium 4 has a lower total energy than Hydrogen 4. Therefore Hydrogen 4 can beta-decay (that's in essence the consequence of the Weak Interaction) into Helium 4, and hence is not stable.

"I don't believe in speaking from absolute authority, but in questioning common wisdom."

Well, what about first learning what "common wisdom" actually is, i. e. what physicists actually know?

"It just happens" makes no sense to me.

"Heavy things fall with the same acceleration as light things" also makes no sense. Nevertheless, it is also right.

Posted by: KevinC | September 12, 2009 8:20 AM

Alan Kellogg @531:

"It just happens" makes no sense to me. Screw the intuition, I prefer a universe that makes sense, and a universe where things just happen makes no sense.

Why would anyone's preference be relevant? I would prefer a Universe without a Big Bang, something eternal and recognizable, like that of Hannes Alfven's plasma cosmology. And I would prefer that the vast majority of the Cosmos not consist of invisible, nearly-undetectable stuff whose presence can only be known by gravitational effects ("dark matter"). Buuuut, Universe doesn't appear to give a tinker's cuss what I prefer. :)

Alan Kellogg @532:

The universe is understandable.

How do you know this? Our brains evolved as mechanisms for getting around on the African savanna, outsmarting stronger animals with sharp, pointy teeth or big tusks, and to enable us to cooperate with (and compete against) other souped-up chimps like ourselves. At the outset of inquiry, there is no reason to assume that the Cosmos at the quantum level (or as a whole, on the opposite end of the scale) will be understandable to brains like ours. Do you have a reason to think that it should be?

That does not mean that understanding is going to be intuitive, but it is understandable. By saying things can happen out of the blue, with no cause, you are saying that the universe is ultimately not understandable.

Well, it would be more accurate to say that that aspect of Universe (the quantum realm where acausal events can apparently take place) is ultimately not understandable, at least in any complete sense. We can understand enough about it to make our transistors work.

That science is nothing but a bunch of empty guesses with nothing substantial to support it.

I don't see how this follows. If there's an area, or several areas of Universe which cannot be grasped by unintentionally jury-rigged brains suited for knapping flint and bonking things with clubs, that does not mean that areas within the grasp of such brains cannot be subsumed by scientific understanding that is more than "empty guesses." I think it's remarkable (and lucky for us) that we can understand as much of Universe as we do.

This common feeling that Universe ought to make sense in human terms is, I think, one of the reasons for the tenacity of Creationism, and supernaturalism in general. Consider this strange fact: the story of Cinderella makes sense. When young children watch it or hear it read for the first time, encountering things like talking animals and a woman who can change a pumpkin into a coach by waving a stick around and saying "bibbity bobbity boo" we don't often see them stop the DVD, or the person reading the book and saying, "Wait--you're kidding, right?"

The idea that animals can talk like people, or that Universe itself can be talked into changing by somebody who knows the right words/gestures/supplications/bribes (magic/prayer) apparently makes so much sense to us that the opposite notions represent fairly recent discoveries in the course of human history.

I think this is because our natural tendency is to look at Universe through human-colored glasses. We have this tendency because for the most part it is more important for us to have an accurate understanding of the social aspects of reality than things like physics or cosmology. A real estate agent, for example, could probably get through life just fine believing that the Earth was flat and the night sky was the starry belly of the goddess Nut. But s/he had better understand the difference between a police car and an ordinary car, be skilled at manipulating and persuading his/her fellow domesticated primates (salesmanship), etc..

Our social intelligence is vastly sophisticated compared to our mathematical ability, so much so that we actually think the math is harder. If the history of "artificial intelligence" is any guide, this is not the case. We can program a computer to perform calculations millions of times faster than a human, but we are nowhere near being able to make a computer with the social-smarts to be the most popular girl/guy in school.

Given this enormously powerful hammer of social intelligence, it's no wonder humans tend to view Universe as a nail. The whole basis of theism is the attempt to relate to Universe socially. A god or goddess is an alpha ape or projected parent with whom we can ply our social skills in hopes of re-ordering those things in our world over which we have no control. If we don't have control over them, somebody has to...or so we tend to think. "Who made the Universe? Come on, you don't really believe that an eyeball or a cheetah or a beautiful galaxy can just happen without somebody making it all for a purpose, do you?"

The idea that there are impersonal phenomena--that indeed, most of the things in Universe are impersonal is not something that ordinarily makes sense. It requires special training (education) to understand, based on a long, slow accumulation of understanding by our predecessors in order to accept an impersonal Cosmos. It was only within the last three hundred years or so that a sizable portion of humans were able to accept that "witches" with real and dangerous magical powers do not exist.

Nutshell: the very idea that Universe is impersonal and operating in accordance with natural regularities that weren't decreed by anybody* is only barely "understandable" to human beings. That's why Creationists are able to get so much mileage out of Arguments From Personal Incredulity ("How could all this complexity exist without an Intelligent Designer?") and Arguments From Consequences ("If there's no God to order things to make sense, or impose morality, then everything is just a bunch of empty guesses.").

Shorter Creationism: "I prefer a universe that makes sense, and a universe where things just happen [without somebody to make them happen] makes no sense."**

*Even now we tend to call these regularities "laws" of nature.

**This is not to accuse Alan Kellogg of being a Creationist, only to make the argument that the expectation that the Cosmos will fit a mold of human-comprehensibility is the root from which Creationism grows.

Posted by: JackC | September 12, 2009 9:10 AM

Tis:

Officer or enlisted?

JC, USN, 73-79, avoided the Nuke Field by the toss of a coin.

(My far more intelligent buddy in boot chose Nuke and wanted Nuke ET - got Nuke Electrician. He was not happy.)

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | September 12, 2009 9:20 AM

JC,

I was a nuke Machinist's Mate, made First Class just before I got out.

Posted by: aratina cage | September 12, 2009 9:34 AM

KevinC, I thoroughly enjoyed reading your insightful description (#545) of the distinction between human and artificial intelligence and the counterintuitiveness of the way reality works to how our brains expect it to work. It felt like a much needed grounding to the debate surrounding theism in general (but it incorporated evolutionary principles so it might not be wholly accepted by IDers and YECs).

Your argument for Creationism (#502) was also much more imaginative and compelling than the five in the original article, even though David Marjanović, OM, craftily started out his refutation of it by saying, "Too little imagination here." Yes, our open-minded Creationist friends do seem to suffer from severely limited imaginations.

Posted by: Pharmg816 | September 15, 2009 4:46 PM

Very nice site!

Posted by: Ray Harwood | October 17, 2009 10:07 PM

If only the majority of commentators were a fraction as intelligent as they imagine themselves to be.

Posted by: Diana | November 9, 2009 12:58 AM

After reading your blog, I must say I felt a very sad for your soul.Whether one chooses to believe in God or not, he is real, and the Devil will always try to tell you other wise. I truely hope that soon you will see the love and power of God.
Your last comment was that our lives have no purpose but they do. If your saying that when we die we all just end up in the same place,then where do the people who did wicked things and did'nt pay the consequences in this world go.Do they just get to freely corrupt the lives us others and never have to pay their dept? That makes absolutely no sense. I've always wondered why peopl believe in good and evil but choose to not believe in it when it comes to God and the Devil. To be honest I think along the road you just decided to live your own life without having to answer to any one, but thats exacly what God needs from us. I believe we were all born with an awarness that God exist and there will always be people who would rather live by their own standards rather than by the Lords whose ways are always better and more fulfilling. If you read this I pray that your heart may be open to it.