This is a nicely done lecture on design flaws in our anatomy and physiology, to refute claims of intelligent design.
I know exactly how creationists will reply, though, since I've heard it often enough. She's making a theological argument, they'll say, claiming to know God's intent and making an assumption of his goals. It will be a restatement of the old chestnut, "God works in mysterious ways."
However, that's not the argument here. Imperfections and sub-optimal properties are an outcome of evolutionary theory; this is a positive argument that observations of the world best fit a model positing a history of accidents and refinements constrained along lines of descent. If the creationists want to complain, they first have to propose a set of predictions that would discriminate between accident and design, and starting from a god who can do anything at any whim is not a fruitful source of hypotheses.
PZ Pity you didn't come to Perth when you were in Aus. Found a mutant magpie on the UWA campus, has a hooked beak where it shouldn't. I think it unfortunately might have been killed off in the hailstorm.
It's more than just imperfections and suboptimal properties are predicted by evoulution: it's that the NATURE of the "imperfections" we see are understandable only as a result of evolution. The recurrent laryngeal nerve, for example, is badly "designed," but you can explain its bad design--the fact that it loops down around the aorta on the way from the brain to the larynx--is explainable because it used to be aligned with that aorta. Evolution explains that bad design; creationism does not. This is not a theological argument.
when god's "mysterious ways" so closely mimic randomness, what allows believers to presume that he wouldn't write a book that tells them to do the opposite of what he wants?
I once tried to get this import of this argument across to a creationist by using an analogy to a "path." Assume you are climbing a mountain, and come across a bit of smooth ground leading upwards, which lets you climb more easily. The question is, is this "path" a man-made road, specifically made for the purpose? Or is it a dried river bed, which can be used for the purpose, but wasn't designed for human benefit?
An experienced geologist who held the latter view could draw attention to feature feature after feature which was typical of the way rivers cut through rock; he could show places where it was very hard to manipulate indeed. These areas of course made perfect sense if the path had once been a river. You can explain it using basic geology and physics. But no path designer would have put in areas where you had to scamper over sharp rocks, say.
Not so, a critic could respond. You don't know what the road might have been used for. Maybe there were parts of it that were an obstacle course. Or it could have been for some reason we don't know. It only seems like it 'makes no sense,' if you think you know everything about what people are like, and what they are likely to do. But that's really all speculation, isn't it? You're not a psychologist. You haven't met every single person in the past, including those who might have done this, and left no record other than the path. Think you're smart, do you?
In this example, it's made clear that the geologist not only had an explanation, he had an explanation which explained the reason for, and mechanism behind, specific features -- especially, the areas of the path which were almost impossible to climb. The alternative explanation can only deal with the rough area of the path by hypothesizing that the purported "designer" is an inscrutable crank, and pretending that the path question calls for an expertise in psychology which nobody has.
As I recall, it didn't work on the creationist, but I don't recall where it broke down for him.
#1 Found a mutant magpie on the UWA campus, has a hooked beak where it shouldn't
I am *so* tempted to ask where the beak was... but I won't.
I think this argument completely neglects the possibility that God is an incompetent screw-up. There is ample evidence for this theory in the Bible!
God moves in mysterious ways his blunders to perform.
The evolution of the bible bogey is something that creationists should be aware of. The ancients, (Mesopotamians, Greeks) had gods that were physical, or at least had an ability to take on physical form. The bible bogey derived from Mesopotamian religion, & is just the same. It is in part a ghost or spirit, which therefore implies that it is, in part, physical. The ancients also had their abode of the gods peopled by lesser gods - nymphs, dryads - which seem to live on as 'angels'.
What i'd like to know is, given what we now know of space, where exactly do the physical manifestations of the Christian, Jewish, Moslem gods & lesser gods live? We deserve an answer.
The point, really, is that no known designer would make either the "good designs" or the "bad designs" as we find them to be in nature.
No kid would be constrained by heredity as evolution is, even when making a kludge. The kid would take parts of disparate origins, and while the whole thing might suck, it would still betray thinking.
Evolution just adapts what it gets hereditarily (including via horizontal transfers in some lineages), and does not exhibit cleverness at all, not even when it makes the peacock's tail feathers.
Even "good design" is nothing like what humans make.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Btw, nothing intrinsically wrong with writing design flaws in the title (after all, "design" is not something that is said only about what is intelligently made), but rhetorically it would be better to include "design" in scare quotes.
You know some IDiot is going to say, well, if you're arguing about design, only how good or bad it is, then what's the problem? Design is design. Sure it's obtuse, and likely in part the obtuseness is deliberate, but when rhetorical "points" are all you can ever make, you take what you can get.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
Well said, especially the "positive argument" bit. Imperfections in the design are not a "disproof of God" per se; rather, they are an argument in favor of an evolutionary explanation, from which follows the "I have no need of that hypothesis" argument against the existence of a creator.
It's not a "proof" of God's non-existence, it's just a very very very convincing argument.
I'm a designer. An intelligent designer, I think.
(landscape designer, that is)
As a designer I follow the classic "form follows function" basis for design.
I'm a better designer than god!
Horrible audio, but this first part is funny. Loved the testicle part. I wouldn't have designed them that way!
I was surprised the woman in the video mentioned the appendix. Even a quick glance at wikipedia gives current information about the possible uses of the appendix:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermiform_appendix#Possible_secondary_func…
There are also other references to look at:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090820175901.htm
For those who have not yet read it, Jerry uses a number of examples of "bad design" as evidence for evolution in his book, Why Evolution is True. Do yourself a favour, and beg, borrow or steal a copy and read it.
Concerning the video's reference to the "poor design of the eye":
It may be that the eye is actually well designed. Here is one indication and there are other references available on various sites:
http://www.trueorigin.org/retina.asp
"The inverted retina has, therefore, long been regarded as inferior. Here, we provide evidence that the inverted retina actually is a superior space-saving solution, especially in small eyes. The inverted retina has most likely facilitated the evolution of image-forming eyes in vertebrates, and it still benefits especially small and highly visual species."
God works in mysterious ways....Except when he's telling ME how YOU should live your life. THEN he's crystal clear.
In my previous post I gave the wrong link. Here is the correct link:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19591859
The link I did give is a site that also presents a case for the idea that our eye is well designed: Here is that link again:
http://www.trueorigin.org/retina.asp
JohnHamilton,
Can you provide a link that is not a paper from an organisation that does not require members to reject naturalistic explanations ?
Wow! I have made the testicle argument against ID for years! The only reason it's the way we know it is because of the need to produce sperm at slightly lower than body temperature. An intelligent designer would have adjusted the chemistry before compromising on the psyiology!
Sastra,
I once tried to get this import of this argument across to a creationist by using an analogy to a "path."
I am so going to remember that one.
JC (more than a coincidence?)@2
JohnHamilton,
The creationist garbage you link to makes crass and elementary errors, e.g. "For example, cats have no colour vision." False, and known to be so for some time. Since the purveyors of this crap can't get such elementary stuff right, it is absurd to take them seriously.
Here are the links I have presented so far:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermiform_appendix#Possible_secondary_func…
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090820175901.htm
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19591859
http://www.trueorigin.org/retina.asp
Each of these has given scientific information at odds with the points given by Abigail Hafer in the video presentation.
Perhaps she is just not up to date with the field she is speaking about.
JH, if you link to any creationist/design site, you lower your credibility to less than zero for anything else you post. Welcome to real science.
I get what you're saying, but to me this seems akin to confronting an astronomer over Keplerian motion and demanding to know the elements of the orbit of Jupiter around the Earth. The fact that a person's belief is partially derived from an older belief does not require the person to also accept the older belief, nor is it evidence that the newer belief is wrong.
Hamilton. Our eyes suck when compared to other animals. They aren't well designed. Plus they degrade over time. The eye is a poor argument for design. Well actually they all are, but the eye is particularly bad.
Creationists with tired worn out ideas are really boring.
I am not getting into an argument about which sites people here think are worthwhile.
An argument stands on its own wherever it is posted.
Also I am amused that people ignore the links to wikipedia and sciencedaily and
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov and only focus on the one site they think they can dismiss.
The woman in the video has ignored reasonable scientific counter arguments to her position.
I am simply pointing that out.
Her comments about the appendix and the eye are unfounded.
And I do not even want to talk about the absurd idea that a marsupial has a better birthing process. That is just laughable.
Her talk may go over well at a Humanist meeting but otherwise it is just poor science.
Ah, yes. The, "We can understand the mind of god enough to know he hates homosexuals," followed quickly by, "How do you know it's a bad design? You can't know the mind of god."
I simply love contradictory logic. It just shows that logic is so versatile. Especially when compartmentalizing.
1. Just because you can find a website that disputes a point, doesn't make that website, or that disputation, correct.
2. Ms Hafer seems to be working with information from this century, not 2000 years ago, as you appear to be.
I bet that happens a lot...
Understanding the argument fail...
When the secondary function list of the appendix should also include death, it's not generally something you want.
(BTW, John, death is generally something you want to avoid if you plan on reproducing...)
@JH,
The links about the appendix are irrelevant. Regardless of whether it has an actual function, it still has an annoying tendency to get inflamed and cause death when not treated with surgery. Whatever function it has doesn't seem to be terribly important compared to that. Ergo, bad design.
The space-saving advantage of the inverted retina as an argument for creationism is easily refuted just by reading the abstract of the article you linked to. "The inverted retina has most likely facilitated the evolution of image-forming eyes in vertebrates, and it still benefits especially small and highly visual species." By "small and highly visual", they're talking about, e.g., zebrafish. Not humans.
re 22:
here is one response:
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/darwin_and_the_vermiform_app…
I am not getting into an argument about which sites people here think are worthwhile. - JohnHamilton
If you cite creationist crap, knowledgeable people are not going to take you seriously; deal with it.
The fact that the appendix may have some secondary functions does not mean it could be considered "good design", considering that people can undoubtedly be healthy without one, and the death rate from appendicitis before modern surgery.
JohnHamilton,
Have you ever given birth?
No, I thought not. Then who are you to say that the marsupials are not, perhaps, one up on us humans?
No, that just means you don't understand what real evidence is. If there is true support from the peer reviewed liteature, it is good solid evidence. If it is creationist/designer lies, bullshit, and distortion of the scientific work, no, it is not real evidence. Science has standards. Creationists and ID'ers don't.
let's take a vote.
all in favor of evolution say "eye."
.
.
.
the "eye's" have it.
Do Jerry Coyne a favor, and a copy. You won't be disappointed - it's a keeper.
No scientific evidence is found at creationist/ID cites. Lies, bullshit, and distortions of reality are found there. That makes you a liar too if you think it is scientific.
I am a 30+ practicioner of science. The woman talked science. What are your credentials to be talking about science? From your evidence, I would say you have very little or no scientific training. That makes you an ignoramous thinking you can play a science authority to this crowd.
As for the retina, the cephalopod eyes are superior, and they aren't any larger than a cat's eyes, say. Or even a hawk's eyes. And then there's the blind spot, as well as the reduction of effective light.
And still to be address: the recurrent laryngeal nerve. The panda's thumb. The human spine. The lack of vitamin C synthesis in humans. Wisdom teeth. The small size of the human pelvis compared to the head of the emerging baby. Nasal passages that drain in the wrong direction.
Finding one small advantage in wrong-way-'round eyesight (one that doesn't benefit humans at all, so we're still stuck with an inferior design) does not negate the fact that, if it was intentionally designed, it was done so by a poor engineer.
Arguing against ID using "design" flaws is theological.
Predicting in ID that there will be little junk DNA is science, uh, theological by the same standard.
Ergo, ID is theological.
Of course ID in fact predicts nothing at all, since it has no causes for its "design effects," meaning that they can't even predict that life will be complex (do they know of a designer 4 Gya that was intelligent enough to make complex life? I mean aside from an evidence-free "god"). But it's absurd to pretend that you make scientific design predictions about "junk DNA" based on function while claiming that "design flaws" are theological, not scientific.
And actually, they are somewhat correct in saying that the "design flaw" argument is theological. What other kind of argument can you make against theistic apologetics?
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
The link JohnHamilton provided about small vertebrate eyes seems to be strong evidence for the tinkering of evolution to adapt what worked for our small vertebrate ancestors rather than start from scratch with our big human eyes.
Rather than a piece of damning evidence to the contrary...
@36 Me: HTML fail.
Do Jerry Coyne a favor and buy a copy.
*sigh*
re: #12
None of the proposed functions of the human appendix even comes close to compensating for the risk of death and infertility accrued from appendicitis. Ergo bad design.
Indeed, the functions for which we have evidence for are exactly the kinds of functions that could have arisen by cooption of a pre-existing structure with a different original function, or a residual function that was far more important in the ancestral past but is almost irrelevant in the present.
All fully consistent with what evolutionary theory predicts and expects.
re: #14
Simple binary logic should have told you that this argument goes nowhere. If the vertebrate inverted retina is the optimal design, then the cephalopod non-inverted retina must be bad design. Or vice versa. And the two retinas are used by fish and squid who live in the exact same environment and in fact compete directly with each other, and prey on one another, in overlapping niches.
So either the vertebrate eye is bad design, or the cephalopod eye is bad design, or both are bad designs, and the best design should have been a combination of the best elements of both, without the specific weaknesses of either. Note that this hypothetical eye does not exist in nature, at least not on earth.
Note how evolutionary theory easily explains why each of these two eyes are different from the other, and why each has its own particular advantages and disadvantages.
All you can say with designer theory is either he hates vertebrates, or he considers cephalopods abominations unto the lord, or he's an arthopod and despises both.
re: #26
So you admit then that the marsupial way of giving birth is inferior to the placental way? That it is badly designed?
Thanks for conceding the whole argument, sir.
I once had a fellow tell me that the human body is perfectly designed. While he stood there sniffling, peering through glasses, flashing a gold tooth, wearing shoes, wearing clothes, leaning on a cane, tapping his hearing aid, sporting a five-o'clock shadow, and bulging with fat.
I see the creationists have come a long way from likening anatomy to a watch with its intricate mechanism of gears and penduli to "if you squint just right and under some conditions the vertebrate eye isn't as shitty as once thought."
Must be hard to shoehorn YHWH into these increasingly vanishing gaps. Is He on Aktins or South Beach?
God lives on sin. That was his purpose in Leviticus for making pretty much everything sinful. It's no coincidence when we talk about a rich chocolate cake, it's "sinful." (BTW: the cake is a lie.)
To god, sin tastes like chocolate cake. That was his whole purpose for creating us, so that we would sin, and bake him a chocolate cake.
Like what?
Goddidit but he is a clumsly inept Designer.
Goddidit but he made everything look like it evolved so people wouldn't believe in him and go to hell to be tortured for eternity.
@19 RamblinDude:
Good for you. Me, I only wish I knew one tenth of what Sastra forgot. :-)
So hell is a giant oven, and we're driven to sin so that we can fuel it and He can eat cake? Makes about as much sense as the trinity if you ask me.
Kludgy design and vestigal features aren't the only evidence for evolution.
Whales are occasionally found with atavistic legs. Humans are occasionally born with fur or tails.
Creationists cover their eyes and claim they didn't see them while their little minds explode.
Other Ian @ 24. Okay, but the Christians, (who believe in the Trinity, i.e. that their god [the bible bogey] is composed of a ghost or spirit & two other 'persons'), need to explain something. If part of it's a spirit, then the rest of it must surely be material? So where the fuck does it (or them) live?
Yes. And if you do not believe in my culinary god, you are doomed to a lifetime of gastro-intestinal distress. This is not a result of poor design, and ulcers. This is a result of you not baking a chocolate cake, and sending it to:
nigelTheBold
1212 Eastwick Street
Branson, OH 44931
You have been warned.
Look, john the creationist,
even the most useless and harmful object can have some use under certain circumstances. For instance, if your watch doesn't work you can take a glass out and use it as a cup.
The appendix in humans may have a certain function. But it does a lot more harm than good. People who lose it never miss it. But its existence predisposes you to a deadly disease. Is this too complicated for you to grasp?
As for the retina, if you want to argue the blind spot is a good thing, that's up to you. The question, though, is why would your god never, ever create a vertebrate without a blind spot, or a squid with one? (unless he was trying to fool us into thinking that the vertebrates had a common ancestor, and so did the squids, but the two were different,since you know, such anatomical features are inherited).
I can't read your god's thoughts. If he wants to come across as a useless drunk he can be my guest. By why did he have to leave all those patterns that suggest he are related to other life forms by descent?
Unless he did create vertebrates with blind spots and you creationists have been too lazy to find them.
Humans have a lot of vestigal features. Some of these are so useless and atrophied that they don't even occur in some people. The Palmaris muscle in the forearm is well developed in primates who swing through the trees. It's been a while since humans did that.
The vomeronasal organ is why your cat wrinkles its nose while checking out some patches of ground. Humans have one packed with olfactory receptors. None of which work any more. Some humans don't even have one.
had to google "film". Apparently it was a what cameras used before there were CCDs and flash RAM, back in the late neolithic. Some kind of photosensitive chemical paste smeared on glass, mylar, or animal skin, apparently. The chemicals would undergo a reaction when hit by light, simultaneously capturing and storing the image. Later a chemistry lab would "develop" the film to turn it into a picture. In other words you'd have to wait days or weeks to look at your pictures. What a drag.
@nigelTheBold, Simonator
I think I like that theology better than the Christian one. You should make a religion.
Have you heard something from Kerrigan Skelly?
He have this clam that atheist can't be right if they relay to senses which evolved in process of evolution.
This is stupid. If atheists rely on senses that evolved, so do xians.
We are all the same species, hard as it is to admit sometimes.
If atheist's evolved senses are unreliable, the xians are equally unreliable.
No I haven't heard of Skelly probably because he is a moron and no one pays any attention.
Goose-flesh is one of the coolest vestigial features of humanity, IMO. Forget the cretins/IDiots, what a weird thing to raise our pathetic little body hairs when we're scared, as if we were trying to look bigger. And when we're cold we erect our hairs in a (virtually) useless attempt to keep warm.
It's all so ape-like, and if perhaps not completely and entirely useless and functionless, clearly it exists for no reason other than ancestry. You almost wonder how it can still exist after all this time that we've been hairless (almost certainly over a 100 thousand years, could be a lot longer), but most likely it is genetically shared with a number of other still-crucial developments, so not easy to dispense with. And the cost is fairly low.
Takes some faith (stupidity/denial) to avoid such clear indications of our much hairier ancestors.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
indeed they do. added bonus that if humans were marsupials, abortion wouldn't exist, since apparently (some?) marsupials can hit the pause button on fetal development for long periods of time, and then finish the pregnancy when it suits them better.
clearly, god hates humans.
Is that a real address because for that culinary god thing with hell and chocolate cake, I might just send you one... or at least a chocolate pudding.
I haven't heard about being able to "pause" on fetal development, but I really only know about sugar gliders.
As an owner and caretaker of these little animals, I have read a lot about them and have personal experience with them, and I can tell you for a fact they have a more efficient system, not only because the interal gestation period is only 16 days long, they only stay in the pouch for about 2 months after that, which means the child is much less of a burden on the mother than the 9 month gestation period of a human.
Becuase of the external gestation, that also means that if the mother has a multiple birth (generally 2), they aren't a detriment to eachother, unlike humans can generally end up with complications caused by low blood sugar, low body fat, etc.
There's virutally no such thing as a premature birth or complication like an umbilacle cord getting wrapped around the child's neck, choking it to death. (There's something very poorly designed in humans and accidental death by way of the path of sustainence... first the cord, then eating... it's silly.)
There's also none of the complications during childbirth for a sugar glider like a human has, especially by means of danger to the mother.
As an added bonus, the males have a forked penis which basically goes right up into both the tubes of the female and almost makes impregnation a certainty if she's in heat.
Score one for sugar gliders? Definitely.
#60,
Alas, that is not a real address. The thought of posting my real address on the innertubes gives me the heebee-jeebees. Instead, I will gladly accept your intent to send me a cake, or pudding.
I will have to obtain my hell-cake elsewhere.
@nigelTheBold
I will, too, then intend to send you hell-cake. Although it may be difficult for me to bake, as I have no hell-cake-pans.
Perhaps a nice batch of hell-cookies will suffice?
Raven, excellent post of examples.
I had another explanation for this one though, that I think works well or better:
I think the following two explanations work better than the "used to be herbivores" explanation:
1) We used to have a wider mouth. If you look at the skulls of our ancestor apes, they had bigger mouths. The health problems we face from our wisdom teeth are almost all universally caused by the fact that there isn't room for them in our jaws anymore. So sometimes they appear so far back they can't be reached by your tongue (or a modern toothbrush) and are hard to keep clean so they rot out easily. Sometimes they cause crookedness because the jaw has too many teeth jammed in it. But in any case these problems go away if you have a bigger jaw like our ancestors did.
2) Once upon a time, we didn't have dentistry and we didn't have toothpaste. If you have several gaps in your jaw from missing teeth, then the wisdom teeth won't have these sorts of problems because there is plenty of room for them by the time they arrive. In fact, one might argue that the existence of wisdom teeth is an evolved response to the tendency to lose some teeth by the time you're 20 years old in the wild. They're meant to replace some of the teeth that, statistically, you should have lost by then.
Nicely done.
Oooo. With chocolate chips of vice? Yes, please.
I believe I may have to throw my scruples to the wind, and start my own religion. I shall never lack for tasty treats, the labor of sin!
I don't think L. Ron Hubbard thought grandly enough, grubbing after mere money.
"Pangloss gave instruction in metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology. [...] It is clear, said he, that things cannot be otherwise than they are, for since everything is made to serve an end, everything necessarily serves the best end. Observe: noses were made to support spectacles, hence we have spectacles. Legs, as anyone can plainly see, were made to be breeched, and so we have breeches. . . . Consequently, those who say everything is well are uttering mere stupidities; they should say everything is for the best."
Im wondering how you can have "design flaws" if there is no designer???
By design, we are referring to the formation of an organism through natural selection. No divinity needed.
I figured that. I was just trying to point out the language thingie. ;)
I guess thats just part of my design, oops, formation through natural selection.
Think of "design flaw" as a metaphor.
grins
Operating those tiny muscles does actually generate some heat, so it does help heat us. Of course, it's terribly inefficient and largely ineffective (as you rightfully pointed out), and never mind the fact we already have better mechanisms to keep warm, including shivering.
None of this changes its status as a vestigial feature, of course. Just because something can still provide a function in some limited way, that doesn't mean it isn't unnecessary. It just means the cost of natural selection eliminating them is higher than the cost of producing them anyway. Evolution is both merciless and sloppy as hell.
I thought this was a great video with the exception of the childbirth part. I think a Creationist would swat that away with Genesis 3:16; not that that makes the childbirth any more evidence of "design".
No, Vinnie, that would only reinforce the bible's general and hateful misogyny.
All I hear is "wah wah wah wah wah wah." It's like I'm trying to understand Charlie Brown's teacher. The MacBook White speakers aren't exactly helping either.
This reminds me of one my favorite jokes, with a nod to the Salem Hypothesis: Three engineers were finishing lunch at the Discovery Institute cafeteria and were engaged in a heated debate over what type of engineer God must be, based on his "intelligent design" of the human body.
"Well, said the first, "take a look at our musculo-skeletal system--all those bones, joints, muscles, tendons and ligaments connected and moving together so smoothly--no doubt about it, I say the Big Guy is a Mechanical Engineer!"
"Nah", said the second, "consider the brain and spinal cord--it's the central nervous system that controls all we do--that is definitely the work of an Electrical Engineer!"
"You're both wrong," said the third--God's gotta be a Civil Engineer--after all, who else but a C.E. would design a waste water treatment facility right through the middle of a recreational area?"
Van, #50
In the wafer tin. Obviously.
John Hamilton: posting links to creosites won’t get you a response around here. Most folks have been there and read that and just don’t have the stomach to digest that much stupid in one setting anymore. You will have better luck posting the argument, as you see it, reference the sites and then peeps will take the time to tear you a new one.
Luckily for you, I have not checked out the verted (opposite of inverted) argument for the creation reason for screwed up eyes so I did go check it out.
First off – calling the Creation Ex Nihilo Technical Journal, peer reviewed was not the way to start things off. Having your lab partner proof-read your article does not make it “peer reviewed”.
After describing the function of the retina we are given this:
Let’s break that down a bit:
1) For eye to function; for photoreceptors to work – must have Retina and choroid
2) For Retina and choroid to function they must be opaque
Q) Therefore Retina and Choroid need to be in front of photoreceptors
&) Oh, and we should assume this is so for good reason
How does it follow that for light to reach the photoreceptors there should be an opaque structure in front of it? That’s just crazy or inverted, take your pick. The conclusion is not warranted by the evidence – unless you are going for circular reasoning. And even worse – it is demonstrably untrue because there is a perfectly functioning eye that does not have opaque tissues external to the photoreceptors. This does not refute that the eye is poorly designed. That is why 1 + 2 != Q and ‘&’ has nothing to do with anything. If there are good reasons then they should be argued not just concluded.
But the best part , really can’t make this stuff up, the author of the article takes it all back in the next section of the article:
Or to be blunt, where greater sensitivity and direct light hits there are fewer opaque structures external to the light receptors; Or all the arguments that explain why the retina is in front of the photoreceptors that your were just told about are not true.
What about the blind spot?
Where to even begin with this strawman? The only solution the omniscient creator of everything can think of is a Cyclops? How about putting the eye together without a blind spot? Wouldn’t that fix the problem? Put the plumbing behind the photoreceptors and poof no more Cyclops. (Sorry Ulysses.)
File this part under WTF
The current frequency of fluorescent lights would be irritating – therefore good design
Cat can’t see colors (even if they can) – therefore good design
Because humans can compensate for bad design – therefore good design.
The next part about the invertebrate eye makes even less sense. (I know hard to believe but work with me here.)
Prove putting the eye together in a straight forward manner is really better! Which is the point of this argument in the first place. What? No switching the burden of proof at the end the article, it is bad form. The argument was not toward final functionality, it was based on design principles: if an intelligent designer were to design an eye, where would the plumbing go, in front of the eye or behind? Check out your TV, are the electronic bits in front of the screen or behind? How about a camera, how much stuff should go in front of the lens and how much behind?
Finally it is good design cause it works -
Well, no. It is evolution because the eye works good enough. If it was design, you would expect good design and it works good enough.
There is no reason to believe that putting the structures at the back of the eye would result in more opaque layers and not less. In fact, it makes more sense that there would be fewer opaque layers and that may explain why our cephalopod friends who live in lower light environments got lucky when they got more efficient eyes. The article itself posits that there is less protection for the eye in the exact places where more and more direct light is focused. The conclusions do not come from the evidence (color me surprised).
There you go mr hamilton – that is why most folks won’t be bothered to read that creationist drivel. It just ain’t worth the effort.
Hey, if the rest of you read this and correct for spelling etc. Can we call this “peer reviewed” too?
You know, that's the first time I've heard that joke from that angle. Usually it's that the recreation area is between the waste outflows. I had to think about your version for way too long before I got it.
I thought the main thing about the human eye was that it shared "design properties" with all other vertebrates. While an octopus has a comparable eye to ours, it does not share that same design flaw. As an example of contingency, what better illustrates the point of common descent?
As for vestigial structures - humans born with tails! Nothing more needs to be said (though I did love that bit in Coyne's book about the Vitamin C pseudogenes)
that video makes no sense how could those things be flaws?
@#81 -- Nice timing.
========
You know, I've heard the hypothesis that maybe the appendix does have an actual "use", as at the Wikip link. But let's think for a couple of seconds about the "functions" offered...
I think we can ignore the whole "lymphoid cells" suggestion. The appendix is not the only source of those, so that's really kind of redundant. Training the immune system? Again, it's redundant for that as well. The immune system pervades the whole body; the appendix isn't necessary to get working.
How about the gut flora one? That's actually kind of interesting. There you are, burbling happily along, when you suddenly contract some nasty infection that makes you SHIT YOUR GUTS OUT. And after this happens, you somehow manage to avoid DYING FROM DEHYDRATION. So now you're crawling along, having survived this near-hit, but wait! The human body requires certain nutrients that are produced by the commensal microbes that you just shat out of your gut, so that you don't DIE FROM VITAMIN K MALNUTRITION. So there's the appendix, acting as a commensal microbe hangout, from whence they can go forth and recolonize the gut.
Pop quiz for JohnHamilton: Is the above "function" of the appendix something "intelligently designed" by a benevolent and loving God (who mercilessly kills 2 million+ babies per year from the dehydration caused by the diarrhea that necessitates the "function" in the first place!), or is the purported "function" of the appendix something that ONLY MAKES SENSE IN LIGHT OF EVOLUTION?
No hints from the choir!
Sorry, unwatchable.
I've never been able to understand why people who produce videos like this don't do a bit of audio editing on the soundtrack. Just removing the horrible high-volume bass hum would be a 100% improvement.
Wouldn't take much to remove the echo, either.
PZ:
I know exactly how creationists will reply, though, since I've heard it often enough. She's making a theological argument, they'll say, claiming to know God's intent and making an assumption of his goals. It will be a restatement of the old chestnut, "God works in mysterious ways."
It is, of course, a very obvious contradiction for a Biblical creationist to claim that "God moves in mysterious ways". These very same people claim to inerrantly understand a book written by that same God. That would hardly be possible if God moved mysteriously.
So any Biblical creationist should ALWAYS be able to inerrantly answer any question about anything that God did in nature or elsewhere. Or else they must accept the fact that they may not understand the Bible inerrantly.
The excuse I'm most used to hearing is "We didn't have that flaw until after The Fall of Man."
Adam and Eve eat a piece of fruit and POOF! Inverted retinas.
*headdesk*
@ kantalope #78
You're clouding the issue with demonstrable facts and sound logic. These are things folks like Hamilton can't find on their own and can't comprehend when given them outright.
@ ButchKitties #85
I've encountered that same "reasoning" to assert that humans were strictly vegetarians - until the "fall."
The design flaw that seems obvious to me but rarely mentioned, why do the airway and food passage cross. Even worse why have the airway pass from dorsal to ventral such that aspiration or choking become a risk?
Speaking of crossed design: Why does our evolution do that right-side-of-brain-controls-left-side-of-body business? Was there somewhere along the line a twist in the system?
I read something about evidence that the body plan is actually that of an upside-down swimmer, and specualtion that an earlier ancestor of all chordates flipped over long ago. What I wondered is if, maybe, our bodies flipped but our heads stayed right side up, twisting the nervous system.
That just sounds crazy, but I can't write it any better.
Thanks.
#88
I think that idea dates all the way back to Goethe, of all people, who thought that such a twisting could produce the dorsal-ventral vs ventral-dorsal arrangement of the nerve cord relative to the digestive tract as seen in vertebrates vs arthropods (and all of their respective relatives among the deuterostomes and protostomes). Don't know what the current thought on that would be.
It is interesting to note that thanks to this cross-over, there is a very small area at the base of the brainstem/top of the spinal cord, where the motor fibres cross over, where a very, very small injury, such as from a very tiny stroke that might otherwise not have resulted in much significant injury, results in total paralysis, with retention of consciousness - the infamous "locked-in" syndrome. (There are other causes for the syndrome as well)
Since injury to this area even slightly larger than this hypothetical scenario pretty much spells guaranteed rapid death, I wouldn't necessarily call it "bad" design. But it certainly can't be considered "good" design.
#87
And humans are particularly vulnerable to this because of modifications in the shape of our pharynxes that help provide a greater resonance chamber for speech. It's not really such a problem in any other animals.
In humans, of course, the selective advantage of speaking articulately over-rode any disadvantage from the increased risk of choking.
Which makes it an excellent example of a disadvantage resulting from evolutionary contingency.
The Eye Sounds Nothing Like Intelligent Design. It Is Backwards & Upside Down.
It's not a fruitful source of hypotheses, but it's a great source of just-a-theories.
"It's more than just imperfections and suboptimal properties are predicted by evoulution[sic]: it's that the NATURE of the "imperfections" we see are understandable only as a result of evolution."
"See? Imperfection is predicted by evolution. (Luv ya Jerry)
(I know, typos. It just shows that Jerry isn't a Firefox fan.)"
Imperfection is predicted by evolution.
The imperfection in the original post (the misspelling of "evolution")is predicted by evolution.
Mindless, random evolution explains these imperfections - in Nature and in Jerry Coyne.
And yet there is an oddity here.
The "imperfect" human thinks he/she knows the true nature of reality.
And certainly evolutionists think that they know the true nature of reality.
Interesting - evolutionists on the one hand correctly proclaim their own imperfection while at the same time claiming insight into truth for themselves.
"Evolutionists" claim to "know" no such thing.
Assertion =/= fact. Making up shit and proclaiming it as some sort of profound insight isn't all that impressive to me.
And repeating the same bullshit assertion, reworded, isn't actually interesting, it's repetitive.
You know nothing of science.
The imperfection of knowledge is the whole point.
Any claims of insight are backed by observable evidence and rigorous logic.
Now from your use of the term 'evolutionists' I infer that you think there are other ways of knowing stuff, even imperfectly. The difference between your imperfect 'knowledge' and mine is that a) mine is supported, as indicated, by empirical evidence and b) mine is testable and teakable in the face of new observations or more accurate logic.
Oh, and... since this need to be pointed out repeatedly and often...
Therefor, god?
Interesting - science denier thinks he has a clue what he is talking about, yet continues to display things that directly contradict that thought.
^w
tweakable
re 89:
It is also interesting to note that this "design flaw" does not exist in babies, who can drink and breathe at the same time without choking (an obvious advantage during nursing). It is only in the course of development that the "crossover" moves around to make choking (and speech) possible.
John Hamilton,
And yet there is an even greater oddity here.
The utterly clueless poster thinks he can regurgitate Alvin Plantinga's clueless sophistry and appear clever.
Dude. Perfection and imperfection isn't the issue. Sufficiently accurate perception of reality to survive is the issue, and evolution has no trouble explaining either where our perception works or where it fails.
I see a response from an imperfect evolutionist. But he/she continues to respond as if he/she knew.
Perhaps there is an imperfection in the level of mind that is being used. Perhaps the survival level of mind is not capable of understanding the true nature of reality. And evolution theory is solely about the survival level of mind.
Perhaps we have a level of mind above the survival level that evolution theory does not account for.
Evolutionists take the philosophical position that there is no level of mind beyond the survival level.
JH, do you mind showing some physical evidence for your imaginary deity? Evidence that will pass muster with scientists, magicians, and professional debunkers as being of divine, and not natural (scientifically explained), origin. An eternally burning bush would be a good place to start. Without that physical evidence for your imaginary deity, it remains imaginary, and of no consequence except in your delusional mind. And based on your inane posts, you are very delusional.
Well that's nothing more than a complete reading comprehension failure on your part. Certainly imperfect, but fixable.
And perhaps there's a hidden tribe of truffle gnomes buried 200 feet below the Arc de Triomphe... why don't you go start digging...
fap fap fap fap....
Question JohnHamilton
Do you have a point beyond a public display of mental masturbation?
Clue: when you demonstrably have no earthly idea of what 'evolution theory' actually entails, pronouncements about what it is 'about' look very, very silly.
My eye-rolling muscles!!! Ouch!!! Make it stop!!!
Science assumes that we are "imperfect" and makes no claims about the "true nature" of reality. Science is about developing accurate models of reality that reflect and reasonably predict what we can measure. So maybe your statement is true, but it is completely irrelevant. There may well be aspects to reality we are incapable of understanding, that in no way imples GOD. Science is about organizing and understanding what we are capable of understanding. Your statement is like criticising a painting as imperfect because it does not use colors we cannot see.
Such automatic hostility and ridicule from the people here. So automatic, so unthinking. The stimulus response level of mind in action.
Those are the manifestations of the level of mind that evolution theory is solely about.
The stimulus response level of mind. The survival level of mind.
"Such automatic hostility and ridicule from the people here."
There's his point, Rev. BDC. Should have seen it coming a mile away.
You are ignorant.
Do you suppose that there might be circumstances under which something more than simple stimulus-response reflexes might enhance survival? Or, more to the point, reproduction?
You should probably start with Pinker, but somehow I am certain you won't.
Because you science deniers are a dime a dozen and not nearly that entertaining.
Automatic, yes. I automatically get annoyed with science deniers who think their mental masturbation is a better door to reality that what we can actually show via the scientific method.
Unthinking? No I think you're annoying and boring.
What sort of dressing would you like with that word salad? I suggest a nice get over yourself vinaigrette.
John Hamilton says
"Perhaps the survival level of mind is not capable of understanding the true nature of reality."
Oh, you're so close here. No, we do not understand the true nature of reality. This becomes clear as soon as you look at the quantum realm. We can describe it only imperfectly--precisely because we did not evolve to perceive it.
JH: "And evolution theory is solely about the survival level of mind."
Not even clear that we've achieved survival level. Your mind is clearly in denial, and that is not conducive to survival.
"Perhaps we have a level of mind above the survival level that evolution theory does not account for."
Again, given that we may not even have what it takes to negotiate the threats we create (e.g. climate change, nuclear weapons, etc.), it would be charitable to even call this wild speculation.
Concerning #106.
Your posts are interesting SteveM.
I did not say there are aspects of reality we are incapable of understanding. I am saying that the survival level of mind is insufficient for comprehending the true nature of reality.
And I do not criticise a painting as imperfect because it does not use colors we cannot see.
I am not talking about the painting. I am talking about the level of mind you bring to the perceiving of the painting (to the perceiving of reality).
No, that describes you to a tee. Especially the unthinking part. You still have presented no physical/scientific evidence, and your assertions are nothing but hot air without that evidence.
Oh I figured as much. It's another one of those public masturbation types who gets off on others watching him.
If he was interested in actually making a connection he would.
But he's not.
Rev. BDC asks JH: "Do you have a point beyond a public display of mental masturbation?"
I rather doubt he has sufficient bloodflow to achieve an erection of his frontal lobes. Alas, they lie there limp.
Concerning post #99.
Very interesting information SteveM.
It appears that the breathing and eating overlap does make sense, right down to the baby.
re 112:
Fine, you got me there. I am incapable of perceiving the difference between those two statements.
You sure like that baseless assertions don't you?
First you can yet to establish that "evolutionists" think the mind operates only in survival mode.
Second you have yet to establish that even if that were true that a survival only mind would be incapable of comprehending "the true nature" of reality
third and most importantly you have not established what the "true nature" of reality is.
Fourthly you are implying there is another way or ways of knowing that allow you to know the "true nature" of reality.
fifthly you seem to imply that you know which way of knowing will open that door to the "true nature" of reality
So JohnHamilton
Tell us
What is the True Nature of reality and what path must we take to be able to know it?
that = those
pfft
Damn it.
The pharynx, too, turns out to be perfect if you look at it the right creationist's way.
I find these coy creobots very dumb. They can never get to a point, which shows a lack of intelligence in its own right, primarily because they don't have one. The presuppose their imaginary deity, and must manufacture inane "evidence", usually some sophist philosophical meanderings to back it up. But, the minute they put their ideas out there it is refuted soundly, as science doesn't care about philosophy, just the evidence, preferably physical evidence.
We see what you did there JohnHamilton
You started off posting links to people who allegedly knew more about the eye than the speaker in the video. Then, when any third rate hack with an hour to waste can tear those sources apart you retreat into sophistry.
Original argument = these guys know more
response = obviously these guys are wrong
JH rebuttal = well no one can know anything
As a public service JH, since you don't know anything about evolution (maybe you are taking yourself as an example to prove your hypothesis about evolution preventing minds from developing higher function) we'll look into the actual theory of evolution and not the one you made up.
REAL Evolution has a process where a primarily survival based function can be adopted to other uses(maybe for reproduction or for another survival strategy - like socialization or communication). For example, a brain that is used primarily to remember where food can be found (your "response level") could then be used to remember other things - like which people are smart and which are not so much. So, a "response level" brain can...and has apparently in some hominids, attain higher functions.
You can google: exaptation
but you should probably start slow and just look up evolution first. And don't look at those sites you cited before - it is proven that they are not that reliable.
If you know how, maybe you could read a book. The Greatest Show on Earth will give you a quick overview.
Good Luck and we all hope the medications start to kick in soon.
Holy shit the typos here flying up there.
First you can have yet to establish that "evolutionists" think the mind operates only in survival mode.
No it doesn't. Which you would realize if you actually stopped to read the post carefully and think.
The overlap occurs because speech was jury-rigged by evolution on top of a pre-existing breathing system.
The overlap does not occur in human babies because speech was jury-rigged by evolution to develop on top of a pre-existing breathing system after infancy, and natural selection did not favor extending the jury-rigging to a period before the brain and throat musculature was developed enough to actually speak.
But there is NO INTELLIGENT REASON WHY THERE SHOULD HAVE EVER BEEN SUCH AN OVERLAP IN THE FIRST PLACE. A simply decoupling between the feeding pathway and the breathing pathway is ALL IT WOULD HAVE TAKEN, such that one breathes and speaks through one orifice, and eats through another. All the benefits of speech. NO risk of choking. There is no circumstance where this hypothetical setup is not massively superior to the existing one. Ergo, bad design.
Note also that the breathing/eating overlap occurs ONLY in vertebrates. No other animal group (to my knowledge) has it. A speaking arthropod would never choke (they would probably generate sound by rubbing specialized appendages together rather than expelling air across a resonance chamber attached to their breathing apparatus). A speaking cephalopod would never choke (and cephalopods would probably actually communicate visually with skin pattern changes instead). A speaking jellyfish would never choke. A speaking earthworm would never choke.
Only a speaking vertebrate, thanks to the historical contingency of the first fish lung evolving as an outpouch of the pre-existing esophagous, would ever, ever be at risk of choking!
Fixed that for you...
Concerning #120:
That is a very interesting link.
http://creation.com/is-the-human-pharynx-poorly-designed
One by one, we see that the points made in the video do not stand up.
By the way I am not a creationist. But I know from long experience, that you claim I am one in order to dismiss and ignore the philosophical and scientific issues involved.
That is as transparent as the bullying and insulting techniques you also resort to.
But keep them up if you wish. It only makes your case look weak.
No any claim that you are one is because you are demonstrating that you think just like a creationist.
Oh and that you keep linking to creationist sites.
Kind of a telltale.
Huh. Interesting that... you believe "creation_dot_com" to be, in any way, a viable site to refute claims of evolution (peer-reviewed evidence anyone over there? No? Hello? Anyone?)... you parrot all the oft-repeated and oft-refuted talking points of creationists... you have spent your entire time here arguing against the merits of evolution... but no... you're not a creationist.
So, you don't accept evolution, and you don't believe in creation. Care to divulge what the heck it is exactly you believe to be the explanation for the diversity of life on earth?
Please make it be large lizard aliens, please make it be large lizard aliens, please make it be large lizard aliens...
We were all sneezed out of the nose of the Giant Green Arkleseizure. And must fear the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief.
re 126:
So the creationist argument that the human pharynx is not poorly designed is that choking is rare and usually due to people eating too fast?
So I guess they'd also say that Toyota's sticking gas pedals are not poor design because they only stick rarely and the drivers panic.
Ok... time to get down and dirty...
you provided the link... now pick any one of the points from the video that the link you provided definitively refutes, and explain why you believe that to be the case, in your own words...
re 131:
oh crap, html fail, should have been:
First of all, evolution is a scientific theory with a million or so paper backing it, directly and indirectly, in the peer reviewed scientific literature. That literature is found at institutions of higher learning world wide. And science is only refuted by more science. Which requires evidence, and publishing it in the peer reviewed literature. In a scientific discussion, a point is often reached that is essentially "put up or shut up". If you can't present the proper scientific evidence for you ideas, you must keep quiet until you can do so.
Philosophical meanderings mean nothing to science, and cannot in any way refute science, except in the minds of delusional fools.
Compared to your total lack of a case? What a fool. You have nothing. Present your ideas with peer reviewed scientific evidence, or go away. And your linking to a creationist web site shows your lack of intelligence, cogency, and understanding of what is necessary to refute science. In other words, you have nothing but hot air, which is found at creationist sites, and is spewed by ignoramouses like yourself.
People here are making themselves look silly.
Look at post #120.
I was not the one who introduced the link to creation.com.
People are so desperate to score cheap points that they grasp at anything - even when it makes them look silly.
Do people not have anything constructive or scientific or philosophical to contribute?
re 135:
120 posted it to ridicule it, you reposted it as a good argument. It is you making yourself look silly.
Steve M. summarizes the argument from Creation.com:
"So the creationist argument that the human pharynx is not poorly designed is that choking is rare and usually due to people eating too fast?"
Yeah, it's kind of like Bill Donohue telling the little kiddies that being raped by a priest isn't that bad and they should all stop whining.
Like deity, like apologist!
re 135:
Do people not have anything constructive or scientific or philosophical to contribute?
You certainly don't.
You can start by answering my question in #118
And you can ignore the typos. It happens.
Oh, and just for fun... if you follow our deluded little friend's link, have a look at the "About us" link and click on "who we are"...
Then get a good chuckle out of some of the listed "degrees" and "credentials":
To go along with a few degrees in Engineering, Physics, Chemistry, "Medicine", Geology (for shame!) and a couple in zoology, we have
"Noah's Ark Specialist"
"Licentiate in Theology"
"Diploma in Electronics"
"M. Div"
"M.Th"
"Ph.D. in science" (really)
"B.A. in Bible" (what??) "with a minor in Pulpit Speech" (wait... WHAT?????)
You know what's severely lacking? Biologists. They list two. One a Marine Biologist and the other Peter Sparrow, the loony from the "Creation Bus".
People want more from me.
You have not even attempted to understand what has already been said.
And people think they can insult me and then I will just answer their questions.
You are living in a dream world if you think that way.
a_ray, that was a bit of a tasteless comparison. Not that I'm defending creationist stupidity in any way, but there can hardly be a moral comparison between JohnHamilton's (apparently sincere) blithering and Donohue's morally repugnant defence of child abuse.
No, you are making yourself look silly.Do people not have anything constructive or scientific or philosophical to contribute?This is a scientific debate. That requires evidence which you aren't producing. If you want some, try:
Neil Shubin Our Inner Fish
Jerry Coyne Why Evolution is Real
Richard Dawkins The Greatest Show on Earth
And, of course, the peer reviewed scientific literature, found at institutions of higher learning world wide.
This is not a philosophical debate, which is nothing but mental masturbation. Besides, you have presented nothing concrete anyway.
The burden of proof is upon you to prove your ideas. We are satisfied with the scientifice evidence for evolution. Show us otherwise...
When someone has something constructive to contribute I will respond. Till then I have other things to do.
Yes many have and found what you are saying to be utter garbage.
You obviously do not think it is garbage.
So one way to defend that is to ANSWER QUESTIONS.
The last site you recommended for showing design in the eye proved to be idiotic. Why should this one for the pharynx be any different?
writes like a creationist;
links like a creationist;
argues like a creationist
but you are right, that is correlation and not causal. Other options include troll or idiot - but none of those is mutually exclusive and they correlate quite a bit too. There are probably other possibilities too but those are the only ones that I have observed. So, for now -- I'll with the the evidence: creationist-idiot-troll like creature.
choking is rare is the defense?
According to link
but even if it is 'rare' it seems pretty important to those it effects. If Toyota was killing 5000 per year with crappy design a recall would be their least concerns.
Translation: "I am a mindless god-bot and my head is filled with birdseed, therefor I am unable to answer actual questions that might indicate my level of understanding of anything I'm talking about... so instead I'll keep on fap-fapping about how mean and insulting you are... maybe that will distract you from my total ignorance".
For future reference... it doesn't.
What constructive have you said or done? Zip, nada, nil, zero, zilch. Trash talk by a evidenceless idjit.
Never underestimate the mendacity of one who is convinced their "salvation" rests on not accepting evolution.
No you won't, liar.
You've been asked several fair questions and you can't be bothered to answer any of them.
And continuing to argue about the tone with which you are being addressed isn't going to get you anywhere... not after you came in here with your cock-sure arrogance and willful ignorance put on display...
You want to appear witty and intelligent around here? You'd better be able to defend your position with more than rhetoric and meaningless sophistry.
If you can answer the very simple, basic questions we've asked, then put down the pearls your clutching and engage in an honest, intellectual debate, and you'll find the treatment will change drastically...
If you can't, then simply admit you were here just to mentally masturbate all over the place, but actually have no idea what you're talking about, and then go away.
Or, you know, just go away.
In other words, you're taking your ball and going home?
Typical creationist behavior when their idiocy is confronted.
I know I know. You're not a creationist.
yep
not
a
creationist
John Hamilton @144
When danger reared it's ugly head;
he bravely turned his tail and fled;
Yes brave Sir Jonny turned about;
and gallantly, he chickened out.
And suddenly, the information content of the board increased!
The pharynx site is even sillier than SteveM indicated:
So - need to swallow lung-snot in the third sentence but does not need to swallow it in the next one?
This whole article misses the point. The point is not that the current evolved system does not work - it is that a differently designed system would work better. There is no reason to have the air path attached to the alimentary canal. In fact, if the air path was separate - it could manage itself. And the food path could manage itself. Not a fish physiologist but I don't think gills attach to the stomach...so there is a design that would work---separate airholes that come in through the side.
Unless...God is Rube Goldberg.
oh, my.
Yes, it was me. I linked it.
Irony. Look it up.
With evolution, JohnHamilton, we expect design flaws. Evolution explains these design flaws very well. With a "perfect" god, there is no valid explanation for suboptimal design.
With those who think their "happily ever after" depends upon faith in a particularly unbelievable creation story, we expect excuses and semantic silliness like yours. With an omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient god, we'd expect he could "know" your faith by looking into your thoughts and not need you to "prove" it by posting silly things on scientific blogs.
Well, the gill slits do in fact perforate the pharynx, but the respiratory water flow 'goes out' through the sides. The respiratory and digestive systems of fish therefore do still share the pharynx (differently) and it is possible for a fish to do something analogous to choking to death, if an item taken into the mouth as "food" gets tangled up in the gills enough to interfere with gas exchange.
JohnHamilton, did you realize that those with conflicting creation stories (like Mormons or Scientologists) could use the same semantic nothingness to support their very different creation stories? And we'd treat them the same way for the same reasons.
Science recognizes this human propensity to fool oneself, and so takes this into account and develops error correction mechanism so that we can have a clear understanding of the truth as possible-- the objective truth-- the kind that doesn't need to be "believed in" to still be true.
All creationists are liars (but that doesn't mean that all liars are creationists.) They lie to themselves and they lie to those that they are attempting to inflict their memes upon just as was done to them. So claiming not to be a creationist is a pretty good sign that you ARE a creationist. Even Behe claims not to be a creationist. (Creationists often change the meaning of terms as needed to support their shifty argument.)
But real scientists don't appeal to magical stories (or websites that promote magical thinking) to support their claims. It would be akin to claiming that a "missing person" could have been abducted by aliens. It's silly and non-explanatory to anyone interested in the facts. Pointing to gaps in knowledge is not a point in favor of alien abduction or any other fanciful story. It's self-serving way for people to feel like the things they have been indoctrinated to "believe in" are rational. It's what you've done here and what all creationists do to try and convince themselves their "woo is true" (--even the creationists with conflicting creation stories!)
The only people who seem to have problems with evolution are those who fear damnation or some other "punishment" for accepting it. I think those were the same people who had trouble with Galileo's discoveries too. You are transparent.
Alternative Titles:
Intelligent Design? Bollocks!
Microcephalic Babies Demonstrate Intelligent Design, or, Is the Evidence for ID all in Dembski's Skull?
ID: Choking Since 1984
The Creator Demonstrably Favors Cephalopods: Kneel Before Your Tentacled Overlord!
An example of a "design flaw" from the plant world: The holoenzyme that reduces carbon dioxide (Rubisco) will alternatively bind free oxygen at its active site resulting in photorespiration, which costs energy and does not benefit the plant. Plants in high temperature/high oxygen environments have evolved a complex solution to this problem (C4 photosynthesis) that requires significant anatomical restructuring. Rubisco's abilty to bind oxygen doesn't make sense at all from a design perspective--however, anoxygenic photosynthesizers used this enzyme for ~800 million years before oxygenic photosynthesis evolved. Rubisco evolution began in an environment in which high oxygen levels were not a danger. Evolution provides an explanation that design does not.
huh.
plants you say?
Thanks Sven. Well there you go--hooking the breathing parts to the food eating parts is never a good idea - if you don't want the subject to die that is.
I'm not sure putting the entertainment center in the outhouse is so great, either.
Perhaps JohnHamilton you could answer a couple of questions I had about Intelligent Design:
The problem I have with ID proponents is that there is no positive theory. There's no positive evidence, there's just "Darwinism can't explain X". The logic is akin to if all cars aren't red they must be blue.
Even in Expelled where ID proponents had a chance to explain their case, all they could muster was "Darwinism can't explain the complexity we see in nature" - That's it! All it is from my observation is a negative position. And because of that, no matter whether evolutionary theory has explanations for X (e.g. interlocking complexity) or that an explanation may come about in the future - the ID proponents position relies wholly on an argument from ignorance. Or even at times an argument from personal incredulity.
So please JohnHamilton, illustrate the validity of ID as a scientific hypothesis. What is the positive case for ID? If it looks designed, therefore designer doesn't work if we don't have an observed designer to make it. Otherwise you have a circular argument...
Kel.
If you come to realize that Darwinism can't explain the origin and development of species then perhaps you will turn and look for the answer.
Till then you will just play at this and get nowhere.
Nobody can be convinced against their will.
Again, all you're doing is pointing out a negative. You're making an argument from ignorance!
What's the positive evidence for your position?
Sometime I'd like the ID creationists to explain the Intelligent Design theory. I don't want them to give an overview (GOD er, we mean INTELLIGENTDESIGNERDIDIT) but an actual explanation of how ID works and how it can be tested.
What we see from the ID creationists are usually attacks on evolution or denunciations of us for "believing" in evolution. But the cdesign proponentsists never even try to justify their theory.
But it does. Very, very, well. You are just too afraid (beawk, beawk, beawk) to acknowledge it. What else is new from creobots? Still no theory or evidence presented by JH. What a scared loser.
Acceptance of evolution among scientists runs over 99%. Over half of those scientists are religious, mostly xians.
The majority of xians worldwide don't have a problem with evolution. Creationism is a cult belief of a few US sects and has nothing to do with science or xianity.
Until you learn to think and tell truth from lies, you will always be a blind, hate filled religious fanatic. The difference between your kind and a Moslem suicide terrorist is very, very thin. If it even exists. Ask Scott Roeder the xian assassin or the Hutaree militia about that difference.
Since you refuse to learn any science or tell the truth, here is a nonscience question for John H.
We scientists created modern 21st century civilization. We have increased life spans by 30 years in the USA in a century and feed 6.7 billion people. What in the hell have you fundie xian death cultists ever accomplished besides murdering more than a few MDs and trying to overthrow the US government?
Won't get an answer but it is obvious. The fundies are just baggage being dragged along by our society.
What evolutionists do not acknowledge is that evolution theory is INTERPRETATION of evidence. It is not evidence itself.
Take for example, the same characteristic being found in two unrelated animals. This is fact. This is evidence.
How do you INTERPRET that evidence?
You interpret that as "convergent evolution".
Is that a fact? Is that evidence? No, it is interpretation of facts.
That is the first thing that must be understood.
The issue is not disagreement on facts - it is disagreement on INTERPRETATION.
Until a person starts to understand this they are in the dark.
Yes, John's whole argument is that the design is not as flawed as the lady on the video would have us believe; therefore "god" (or so we are to infer).
(And everyone who doesn't agree is mean.)
Funny that because that was exactly what I asked from you. What does ID explain? What does ID answer. Because from all I've read on ID all I get is that ID is a pseduo-intellectual way of saying "Goddidit". It doesn't explain how the bacterial flagellum came about, it doesn't explain how the immune system was put together, it doesn't explain the eye. It just says "a designer did it" and leaves it at that.
In other words ID is a non-answer masquerading as one. It doesn't explain anything!
And that's not even to say that the basic premise (That Darwinism cannot explain X, therefore ID) is valid. This logic is absurd, because exactly the same statement can be made before Natural Selection (Lamarkism cannot explain X, therefore ID). It's a false dichotomy, and one that leads you and a score of other ID proponents to misunderstand how evolution work. Because you've set your minds that the only thing stopping a teleological explanation is the Darwinian one. Hence your entire position is a rejection of evolution, you don't have a positive case.
Meanwhile evolutionary biologists are doing experiment after experiment and making observation after observation that so far has all fit into the evolutionary framework. And what does the IDist do? Go anomaly hunting and think that if they can find just the right unexplained structure that they can dismiss the whole thing. That there's now a detailed explanation for the evolution of eyes and the evolution of wings shows the frivolity of the exercise.
If you want to make a scientific argument, you need to do science!
What are you talking about? Of course it's an interpretation of the evidence, to see where it fits into a particular framework. This is why theories make predictions. Whether a particular trait or particular behaviour fits into that framework or not.
Just because you're ignorant of how science works, it doesn't mean that you can pass off your ignorance as knowledge to people here. This kind of stuff might go down well on a creationist forum, but here people are educated enough to see past your superficial rhetoric and look at the underlying issues.
In short, get an education on the matter before continuing to argue it please.
What facts do cdesign proponentsists use? The only "facts" you folks use are feeble attempts to sneer at evolution. GODDIDIT is not a fact. It's not even an interpretation. It's a myth.
No, it is what the evidence says. Show otherwise by citing the peer reviewed scientific literature.
Yep, you got that right.
Using science, not religion, which is not scientific. Loser for not recognizing that fact.
Scientific fact. Which is as good as a fact.
Wrong religion breath. You are the one with the interpretation based on presupposition that your imaginary deity exists.
Only in your relgion warped and deluded mind. You have produced no evidence your imaginary deity exists. Therefore, it doesn't. Science is simple that way. Science, in any case, is adeistic, and ignores your imaginary deity. Your interpretation is religious. Either acknowledge that fact, or shut the fuck up.
Kel, get an education on the matter I am discussing before continuing to argue it please.
re 168:
So, John, what is your interpretation? Until you tell us, you will continue to be mocked. You keep saying that we don't understand the "true nature" of reality. Well what is the "true nature" of reality. Your statements clearly indicate that you think you know. And if you retreat into that tired old "I don't know, but neither do you" then all your words really are just mental masturbation and completely pointless. At least our "interpretation" actually produces useful stuff like technology and medicine instead of just useless rhetoric.
He has one, you don't. You learn some science. Get real religious twit.
John Hamilton, Sheesh, did you even read what Kel wrote? He asked you to come up with a testable hypothesis for ID, rather than simply asserting that science can't explain it.
We know that GODDIDIT can explain anything--that is precisely the problem. Because it can explain anything, it can predict nothing. Therefore it is not science.
And you don't even have the courage to honestly stand up for what you believe. You keep denying that you are a creationist--come on, you can do it once more before the cock crows, can't you. Just once!
JH, get real. Either your imaginary deity exists or not. If you feel he exists, show us conclusive physical evidence for it. Otherwise, what is your point? You have none without a deity. And you know it, and a deity is a religious idea. Science rightly ignores imaginary deities, since there is no physical evidence for any of the 1000+ deities invented by man. The odds of Yahweh being the one true god are rather slim...
JohnHamilton,
Instead of telling us what's wrong with evolution, how about you explain what's right about cdesign proponentsism? You cdesign proponentsists have to do two things, show the flaws in evolution AND show how cdesign proponentsism explains the same things evolution explains only better.
You're poorly equipped to expose problems with evolution. To do so you'd have to have a good understanding of evolution and you lack such an understanding. So rather than continue to display your ignorance of evolution, why don't you try to explain cdesign proponentsism?
Odd, nobody has acknowledged the simple truth about INTERPRETATION that I mentioned. And I even gave the example of "convergent evolution".
People cry out for answers but ignore the first basic point that I have presented.
If someone acknowledges the first basic point, there is a starting point for discussion.
Take "convergent evolution".
Acknowledge that that is simply INTERPRETATION.
Till then I have better things to do.
JohnHamilton wrote:
Irony meter go boom!
JohnHamilton, Kel's demonstrated that he understands the science supporting the fact of evolution and the interpretation that supports the theory to explain that fact - while you have yet to do so.
I think you need to show us that you actually understand both 'sides' of the evolution 'debate', JohnHamilton - using some examples of what those who accept evolution argue for.
Because, based on the fact you've avoided presenting any substantial refutations of the questions Kel and others have asked I sincerely doubt you understand what it is you're claiming doesn't explain life as it is on this planet.
Your interpretation is wrong. WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. Show us hard core physical evidence for your imaginary deity, or shut the fuck up. Welcome to real science, where parsimony puts deities in the dumpster.
Then you will never post here again, as you have no cogent point if we don't accept the concept of your imaginary creator. Which we don't by parsimony. Show us otherwise with hard scientific (not religious, ie, delusional fool) evidence. What a evidenceless loser...
Standard Ken Ham type creationist lie. Presuppositionalism. "We have the same evidence but interpret it differently."
But you religious kooks don't. You ignore the vast majority of the facts and twist and distort a few of them.
Creationism is a cult belief held up by lies.
Another lie from Hamilton. You fundies are just baggage being dragged along by our society. It could be worse. In the Moslem societies, the load of toxic religion is much larger than ours and holds them way back.
The cdesign proponentsist whines "nobody has acknowledged the simple truth about INTERPRETATION" but fails to realize Kel "acknowledged" the point in post #171. This tells me the cdesign proponentsist is either an idiot or a liar.
So, cdesign proponentsist, which are you, an idiot or a liar?
John Hamilton says, "What evolutionists do not acknowledge is that evolution theory is INTERPRETATION of evidence."
Uh, no. Evolution is a SCIENTIFIC THEORY. It looks at the evidence to frame general conclusions AND THEN it makes testable hypotheses. If the hypotheses are found to be true, THAT is evidence in favor of the theory. Mere explanatory power doesn't provide support for a theory. A quadratic function can always fit 3 points exactly, but it cannot predict what the fourth point will be once it is measured.
Your GODDIDIT theory is not science.
LEARN WHAT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY IS.
JohnHamilton
Sure - in the same way 2+2=4 is simply INTERPRETATION. Or that the earth is (roughly) spherical is simply INTERPRETATION. Or the said spherical earth orbits the sun rather than the other way around is simply INTERPRETATION. Or that objects falling to ground is because of gravity and not the refusal of invisible, undetectable lifting fairies to keep them afloat is simply INTERPRETATION.
INTERPRETATION isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card, JohnHamilton. There's only one INTERPRETATION that's actually correct, and that's evolution.
But you still haven't demonstrated you understand what evolution is - so I feel you should stop trying to argue against something you've really go no idea about beyond not liking the fact it's yet another reason to do away with your archaic, nonsensical god.
re 180:
Yes I did (@175), and asked you for your interpretation since you did not provide one. Well, what is it?
And why the hell do you need acknowledgement? Just discuss already. Stop with the coy little remarks about how you know something we don't. JUST TELL US WHAT IT IS. What, are you 5 years old?
So yes John, science, all science, is just an interpretation of the facts. NOBODY disputes that. You have been acknowledged. Now discuss.
Waste of time trying to reason with a religious fanatic like Hamilton.
You can't reason someone out of a belief that they didn't reason themselves into.
Really, all you can do is watch them closely as a matter of common sense and personal and national survival. If they break the laws, arrest them, try them, and send them to prison. Even then, most of them never really get that reality thing.
Scott Roeder was sentenced to life for murdering an MD. He is still ranting and raving. FWIW, everyone who knew him including his family thought he was mentally ill. That pretty much sums up xian death cult religion.
raven wrote:
Indeed. Christians - at least those few who actually engage in some sort of introspection - don't really use these arguments to explain their Christianity, they use them to try and justify it and attempt to negate the cognitive dissonance an irrational belief system necessarily creates.
Scientologists have an "interpretation" of the age of the earth based on their religion just like the young earth creationists. There are lots-o-interpretations but only one actual age for the earth. I trust science for finding that actual age because it is the only method with a proven track record. So, too, with the explanation of how various species came to be.
So far, science is the only method that finds, refines, and explores the truths that are the same for everybody-- no matter what their "interpretations" of the facts are. Like technology, it only gets better with time.
There is no evidence that there are such things as "religious truths" just as there is no evidence that any invisible forms of consciousness exist. Never once has a supernatural explanation turned out to be correct, but many times it has delayed the discovery of the correct answer. Humans have a strong history of fooling themselves with religious type myths and beliefs.
Your semantic jibberish, JH, is as useless to science as any other kook's similar jibberish would be to you. If you have a point, state it clearly-- otherwise we will treat you, the way you'd treat a nutter trying to inflict their delusions on you.
Your childish posturing hasn't fooled anyone.
JohnHamilton:
Convergent evolution is a theory that explains the facts found. A very important point though is that it also explains a lot of other facts that you didn't care to mention.
It sufficiently explains the similarities and differences in the genetic makeup. It explains "design" flaws. Etcetera.
It also fails to be in conflict with observable facts. It isn't in conflict with what is known about the age of the earth, how organic chemistry work, and so on.
A theory that explains all the facts that have been found over centuries of human research and fails to be in conflict with them is probably as close to the correct interpretation as we are likely to come (of course the theory is still refined, but you know, in general terms). Especially when there is no hint of a competing theory that would also explain all the facts while failing to be in conflict with known facts (or do you have one? If so you can expect your Nobel Prize shortly.)
That is how science works. It works that way when biologists study evolution, and it works the same way when other scientists do other things. And the important word here is "works" - because science does work.
Modern electronics, nuclear power, spaceships, modern medicine... all products of a process of discerning knowledge that works. The scientific method works and is the reason you can live the modern, relatively comfortable life that you enjoy today.
I trust that you understand that science works. Why do you think that science doesn't work in this particular instance? Do you bleet about "it's just an interpretation!" when it comes to other scientific theories that have nothing to do with religious views of the world? Or do you then accept that this method of interpreting facts does in fact work?
If the above things are true, why do you treat the science behind the theory of evolution differently than you treat other science?
I think that it is very important to emphasize the predictive power of a theory rather than just its explanatory power.
GODDIDIT is a theory that can explain anything, but it cannot predict anything--unless you want to try and psychoanalyze the deity.
There is a very fundamental statistical quantity called the Akaike information criterion (AIC), and using it you can prove that ID cannot be a scientific theory because it has an unlimited number of parameters (e.g. decisions by the designer). AIC essentially expresses Occam's razor.
"I think that it is very important to emphasize the predictive power of a theory rather than just its explanatory power. "
Pay attention, Hamilton. Here's how this "interpretation" thing works. The flaws we see in the "design" of organisms are the sort of thing we expect in a process of continual tinkering with previous forms and genomes. That's the predictive power of the theory of evolution.
Design has nothing to say about these flaws. If an organism had some potentially fatal flaw, then the design people could just point to how the organism usually survives, and so obviously the designer made it just fine. If we could find absolutely no flaws in the design of an organism, well then that's even better for the design proponent to proclaim "Godidit."
We know how evolution works. Nobody knows how this supposed designer works, least of all the people who go on the loudest about the designer and how we can't hurt the designer's feelings by leaving him/her/it out of legitimate science classes. Everyone's too cagey to actually put forth any hypotheses so that they could have it tested. It's just a big magic "get out of criticism free" card. Design has in one way or another been posited as an explanation for life, the universe, and everything for thousands of years, and yet nobody has made any progress in figuring out who or what this supposed designer is and how he/she/it designs. And it doesn't even matter to them as long as they can fleece the rubes with their happy little stories.
Oh, and by the way,
"Kel, get an education on the matter I am discussing before continuing to argue it please."
"Take "convergent evolution".
Acknowledge that that is simply INTERPRETATION. "
You got a LOT of nerve. Could be why people here aren't giving you flowers. That and we're quite tired of the peanut gallery sniping at science.
Hamie - Had to retreat from postings to creosites claiming authority;
Resorted to Sophistry - where there is no knowledge;
That didn't work and went for Interpretation.
But interpretation got torn apart earlier when it was shown that the creosites authority was based on bad interpretation. What does that leave?
nuthin nuthin nuthin
191 - 194
Beautiful. Separately and together, simply beautiful.
Oh, forgot. Here is a prediction: next stop - different way of knowing.
Correct, but without any definition of what that really means, or concrete examples of it. Yawn, these IDiots are all the same. Boring and vague.
Well said, Rey Fox.
I came to the conclusion many many posts ago that our ignorant friend Hamilton here suffers from an acute case of TSTKTS...
There's really no helping him, so I've decided to ignore him...
People here think that if someone shows the incorrectness of evolution theory that they are against science. That does not follow.
And nobody has yet acknowledged that "convergent evolution" is simply an interpretation.
It is not even an explanation.
It is an excuse masquerading as an explanation.
But there is no point in arguing this. Either people are honest about this or they are not.
Evolutionists pretend they have the moral high ground but it is built on dishonesty.
But it is too big an ego thing to admit it.
JohnHamilton,
Instead of whining about "evolutionists" why don't you explain how your theory is ever so much better. Or don't you know enough about it to even try to explain it to us?
If folks actually debate the science, and not their religion, like you are trying to do, you would have a point. Try citing the peer reviewed scientific literature (PRSL), or shut the fuck up. That is what separates the science from the idjits with religion and its non-scientific presuppositions.
Sorry idjit, it is the scientific interpretation. If there is another scientific interpretation, cite the PRSL the prove your point. A creationist or ID web site is not scientific and cannot be cited in a scientific debate. And scientists, not lay people like you, decide what is and isn't science.
Only in your inane and unsubstantiated opinion. Which is worthless if it isn't backed by scientific evidence, found in the PRSL.
We are honest, you are not, but you can't acknowledge that fact.
No, it is built on the honesty and double checks that occur in the PRSL. Checks like following the protocols of science that creationist and IDiots don't follow. Which is why they aren't scientific, and can't be used to substantiate a scientific argument. Starting with their imaginary deity. If they don't have evidence for that, they have nothing.
No, any scientist can admit they are wrong with the proper evidence. IDiots like you cannot show the proper evidence from the PRSL, and try to pretend their religious interpretations equals science. They don't. Only more science can refute science. And IDiots have no science.
JohnHamilton
fap fap fap fap...
Doh - prediction fail.
Dead Horse flogging first.
Hamie says debate on my terms. No reason given. No response to people saying his terms suxor. No response to fact that his interpretation is inferior to evolutionary interpretation: Indicates 1) did not even read responses 2) bag of tricks is running empty.
Martyrdumb next?
I still think he will go for different knowing at some point.
JH,
Do you think you've shown the incorrectness of evolution?
Where? I missed it. (You really ought to submit it for peer review.)
And the only dishonesty I've seen on web page is from you. You think that if you show that a flaw isn't really that big of a flaw, it counts as a point in favor of "goddidit" and against evolution. That's like saying the fact that the oceans don't spill out counts in favor of the bible's flat earth and against the spherical earth.
It's just too silly to argue with. You're scientifically ignorant and too ignorant to know how obvious your ignorance is.
I will predict that JH will present no scientific evidence in his next post. He is incapable of understanding what scientific evidence is. I also predict he will not explain his ideas. That would definitely leave him open for refutation, which must be avoided at all costs. Not a winning strategy. The only winning strategy here starts with the statement "this is what I believe, and this is the evidence why".
Sure it does.
Evolutionary biology is a science.
Those who assert -- not show -- that evolutionary biology is incorrect are just denialists, making logically fallacious arguments and demonstrating their failure to understand logic, scientific epistemology, or the basis of the scientific consensus based on empirical evidence.
Therefore, those who deny one of the branches of science are against science.
QED.
What are you talking about?
Birds exist.
Bats exist.
Birds and bats have a common ancestor in the distant past (a tetrapod), but derive from completely different evolutionary paths (dinosaurs and mammals, respectively).
Flight, in both of these organisms, is explained as being the result of convergent evolution in very different non-flying parent species, not of birds and bats deriving from a recent common ancestor that had flight.
Are you arguing otherwise? If so, based on what?
So far, you've been either dishonest or incompetent.
Evolutionists necessarily have the moral high ground, because they have the evidence and logic to back up their arguments.
Science denialists -- like you -- have neither evidence nor logic, and are far too dishonest to admit this.
JohnHamilton wrote:
No, people here know that when someone keeps asserting - that is, claiming with any evidence or argument - that there is an 'incorrectness' to evolution, that they are ignorant of science, because by the 'rules' of science, evolution has been supported by evidence thousands and thousands and thousands of times over.
We'll happily listen to your claims of where evolution fails to explain something its proponents claim is explains - but you haven't yet given us anything except unsupported, vague assertions that it has somehow failed.
Cough up, JohnHamilton. What does evolution fail to explain?
And "convergent evolution" shows that workable solutions such as flight and sight can evolve via different paths... which is why they've evolved more than once. It's kind of like how humans have "evolved" helicopters, jet planes, blimps, and other modes of flight... and all sorts of cameras too. Different paths can lead to similar places.
This is really easy to understand if you're not indoctrinated to imagine yourself saved for your ignorance on the subject. How is god did it in a less-than-perfect manner a better explanation exactly?
Of course, if you think believing "goddidit" is the key to "happily ever after", all the evidence in the world is unlikely to make a dent. I think it's time for you to admit that-- at least to yourself.
JohnHamilton,
I'll give you some help. In post #209 WowbaggerOM asked the following question:
Here's some answers:
Gravity.
Why when you turn on the radio the first thing you hear are the last four bars of your favorite song.
Why, if given a 50-50 chance of picking the right answer, you'll be wrong 90% of the time.
Just where do you think I'm lacking in education? Do you think my general science knowledge is lacking? What about my specific knowledge of evolutionary theory? What about my understanding of intelligent design? What about my understanding of logic? Philosophy perhaps? No doubt I'm lacking in some areas generally, and definitely on specifics that can only come with study on the topic. But I digress.
Can you show me where I lack knowledge? Please enlighten me as to where I'm ignorant and I'll do my utmost to correct it. After all, that's how I learn. Find out where areas of my knowledge are lacking and seek to change that.
But just for fun JohnHamilton. Let's take your earlier assertion: If you come to realize that Darwinism can't explain the origin and development of species. This as a statement can't just exist on its own, it needs to be demonstrated. So here's the challenge. Since you are arguing the negative, demonstrate how biologists think evolutionary theory explains the origin and development of species. Then once you have shown you understand what is being argued (so as not to argue a straw-man), then proceed to show where the flaws in the current explanations are and how they demonstrate that evolutionary theory as it currently stands not only has a gap in knowledge but a contradiction as well.
Otherwise you're just making a bare assertion, which from my position looks like nothing more than an argument from personal incredulity. Demonstrate that Darwinism cannot explain the origin and development of species, show how its wrong instead of merely asserting it.
(Of course, it has been argued that bats are bugs...)
(And, oddly enough, was immediately refuted. Go figure.)
References:
===========
Calvin and Hobbes. 1989. Science report on bats. Communications from Elementary School Studies.
Susie and rest of Calvin's class. 1989. BATS AREN'T BUGS!! Ibid.
Yeah-- what Kel said.
And then show us how you can explain it better.
NO U
You haven't shown anything, buddy. And your postmodern chant of evolution being just an "interpretation" means you are anti-science.
Simplu an interpretation? Just like saying "Evolution is only a theory". Why is it that moles and cavefish both have lost eyesight? Why is it that there are marsupial mole-like creatures as well as placental moles? Why is it that sharks, ichthyosaurs and dolphins all have a similar body shape even though an ichthyosaur is a reptile and a dolphin is a placental mammal?
"Simply an interpretation"? I don't think so. That doesn't do justice to the scientific method, it doesn't do justice to the theory of evolution, and the only reason to put it that way is to try to diminish the role of something that clearly shows evolution in action.
Oops. Typo in the References...
Take 2:
========
Calvin and Hobbes. 1989. Bats: The Big Bug Scourge of the Skies. Communications from Elementary School Studies. 1989-11.
Susie and rest of Calvin's class. 1989. BATS AREN'T BUGS!! Communications from Elementary School Studies. 1989-11.
What is your alternate "interpretation", JH?
God "poofed" things into existence as is-- kludginess and all? Do you even know how convergent evolution differs from homologous structures? Can you give an example of each, the scientific explanation, and your alternative explanation? What about vestigial genes (pseudogenes)? What is the creationist alternative "interpretation" (or is that just one of those mysteries it's arrogant to try and understand.)? Evolution has a pretty convincing explanation for these facts. --For ERVs too. I can't imagine how you work a flawless invisible creator into the explanation, however. Do tell.
Hamilton said:
Wow - Graeme Bird flashbacks. He came in here all cocksure that he and the rest of the world really knows that the theory of relativity is obviously wrong. He was so sure that he didn't find it useful to even argue the matter - it's so obvious that the theory is wrong.
He could somehow believe that more or less every single physicist can be incompetent enough to support an obviously wrong theory, but still perform well enough to give us nuclear power and GPS-systems - despite using the very theory that's so obviously wrong and proves that they are so incompetent.
Now our friend Hamilton here think that more or less every single biologist is incompetent enough to support a theory that is obviously wrong, but they are still good enough scientists to provide us with predictions (about things like Tiktaalik, for instance), medical advances and so on.
So, Hamilton, what is it? Are all biologists incompetent enough to miss something that is obvious to you? Or are they so dishonest and rotten that they would all collectively lie about it?
And before you answer, do you realize that the scientists who could overturn an extremely well-established theory like evolution would have every reason to do so? They would be famous, win scientific prizes and be able to sell as many books as they can write - they'd have no reason to lie.
So, what is it? Is every single "evolutionist" extremely incompetent (but still able to come up with good results) or extremely dishonest (against their own self-interest)? What's your thoughts?
Either the glass is completely full or it is empty.
For the record, I've been nothing but honest. I've tried engaging you on the arguments, but you won't actually bite.
This isn't an issue of morality, it's an issue of scientific validity. Where's the science supporting your position?
Of course, perhaps JohnHamilton wishes to argue that the scientific consensus that bats are in fact mammals and Calvin's assertion that they are bugs are both equally valid INTERPRETATIONS of what bats are.
If so, I would not dream of stopping him.
How dare those arrogant scientists think that "words" actually have "meaning"; that "facts" and "evidence" can only be interpreted in ways limited by logic and other known evidence ! Clearly "chiropteran" can mean anything anyone wants, including being nested phylogenetically within the arthropoda !!
Owlmirror #217
You neglected to state the report had a professional looking plastic cover.
I've always felt the existence of defence mechanisms in animals to be a simple (yet effective) argument against design - i.e. why do we see 'arms races' (of sorts) between predator and prey? Or one organism having to 'trick' another in order to pass on its DNA?
For the first a (cute but appropriate) example: why go to all the effort of making the clownfish invulnerable to anemones so they could shelter there to avoid danger when he could have just as easily made the other kinds of fish not want to eat them?
For the second: why make certain plants have to release scents to attract insects in order to cross-pollinate? Why not just make the insects want to do that?
Really, even if we hadn't discovered DNA or fossils or any of the other 'hard' evidence for evolution, there's a heck of a lot of stuff out there that tears giant holes in the idea of design by a perfect being.
An incompetent and/or asshole being, sure. But that's not the Christian god, is it?
Yes, John, what is it?
Are all the Natural History Museums, the Smithsonian, PBS, BBC, and biologists, archeologists, etc. all over the world--dishonest or incompetent? Why do they all speak of evolution as if it were as factual as germ theory and atomic theory and the earth being a sphere? Why do they all treat your creation story like creation myths of yore?
How is it that they have ignored the "interpretation" that could allow them to live "happily ever after"? What evidence have they missed that you have accessed? If there was such thing as an immortal soul whose happiness depended on something that the "soul owner" did or believed in this life, don't you think every scientist in the world would be refining and honing information on the subject? What could be more important? They wouldn't just be benefiting themselves and their own ETERNITY-- but also the ETERNITY of their loved ones-- plus they'd have people like you singing their praises and the Templeton Foundation would be flinging money at them. Who doesn't want to live "happily ever after"? How could they have missed what you think you've seen so clearly?
I disagree that these are necessarily separate, Kel.
Remember the point about science being a way to not fool yourself and not fool others?
Fooling yourself is not necessarily dishonest -- but not being willing to check if you are fooling yourself, or acknowledge that you are or have been fooling yourself and others, is dishonest.
And fooling oneself and others -- and/or not being willing to acknowledge doing so -- are what religious revelation, pseudoscience and science denialism have in common, and that's why they are fundamentally dishonest.
The scientific method is fundamentally honest.
Perhaps, though for the sake of argument that seems taking the argument back to beyond where it needs to go. If the scientific method is fundamentally honest, then evolution if its valid needs to adhere to it. If there are huge problems with evolutionary theory as JohnHamilton is suggesting, then he needs to demonstrate those holes within the scientific framework. Just as if Intelligent Design is a valid hypothesis, it also needs to operate within the scientific framework.
If JohnHamilton doesn't operate within science, then I agree that he's being dishonest about it. But the issue (supposedly) at hand is the scientific validity of evolutionary theory as it stands today, and the scientific validity of the Intelligent Design conjecture. The moral issue at play is in how the debate is framed, so if it is framed correctly then it really isn't necessary to make it a moral issue.
196, 199: Thank you, you're too kind. Too bad Hamilton didn't read a word of it. Or anyone else's comments.
Bravo, articulett. Well said, and a good argument that I have tried to put into words but never done so well. Thank you.
Er, John Hamilton? Guy? I assume you are a guy, anyhow. Do me a favor, eh? Take your shirt off and take a look at your chest. See those two round weird sorta-pointy things? Your...um...nipples? Why do you have nipples? Why did your designer put nipples on men?
Oh, for God's sake, man! Put your shirt back on! Nobody wants to see that!
The way I see it, there's only so many rhetorical diversions one can employ before starting over. Eventually JohnHamilton is going to fall into insipidity, have to actually engage in cogent argument, or leave in futility. The sad thing is that I'm betting out of this whole experience he has learned nothing at all.
Kel wrote:
Maybe he's learned that coming to a place like Pharyngula and spouting assertions based on nothing more than ignorant woo-soaked drivel is going to result in getting his stupid clown shoe ass kicked all the way up one side of the internet and back down the other one.
Then again, pissants like him usually require a couple of beatings (figurative beatings, for any obsequious Intersection squealers who happen to be reading this) before he gets the picture.
"It's kind of like how humans have "evolved" helicopters, jet planes, blimps, and other modes of flight... and all sorts of cameras too. Different paths can lead to similar places."
Agreed. It is a very good analogy.
It is human intelligence in action. If people accept that idea then we have the basis for a discussion.
Sorry, it is not intelligent or scientific. It is religious. So there won't be a scientific discussion, since the idea is unscientific. You must prove your creator separately from your inane idea. Show us your physical evidence or your imaginary deity, or do the honorable thing, and just go away. You are a pitiful evidenceless fool.
JH, the only thing stopping you from saying "this is what I believe, and this is the evidence to support it", is your cowardice. Craven cowards play your coy game, afraid to say something because they might be refuted. Grow a pair and actually say something that can be refuted. Then take your refutation, which will happen, like a man too. At some point you need to acknowledge your cowardice and deal with it, preferably by going away.
Assuming JohnHamilton will come back... he hasn't "threatened" to leave, so maybe he has actually left...
The scientific method consists of falsification and parsimony. Falsification: if an idea predicts that X will not occur under Y conditions, and X does occur under Y conditions, the idea is wrong. Parsimony: if several ideas explain all of the data, those that require the smallest number of extra assumptions must be preferred as long as they aren't falsified.
The existence of a Designer (or several) is a huge, complex assumption; any idea that can do without it, for instance the theory of evolution, must be preferred as long as it isn't falsified.
Well, yes. This is probably among the reasons why there are plenty of adult vertebrates that are considerably smaller than the smallest adult cephalopods. Furthermore, it is good evidence for a hypothesis that is already suggested by other data – that the first vertebrates were small animals.
But why do all vertebrates share this inversion, then? Why do cats, humans, lorises share it? Why do elephants and whales share it? Why do birds, all birds, share it? Birds have up to 3 or 4 foveae per eye (I forgot which it is), rather than the usual 1, but the entire cephalopod eye is a single fovea... no, better still, because the retina is arranged the right way around.
It is very easy to derive an answer to this question from the theory of evolution: the first vertebrates were small, and their larger descendants are simply stuck with an architecture that is stupidly disadvantageous for them.
Intelligent Design? The Designer wasn't intelligent enough to give big vertebrates eyes that are built the right way around? Or what?
Intelligent Design predicts that all vertebrates the size of a cephalopod or above have eyes that are built the right way around. That is not the case. Therefore, ID is wrong.
What have I overlooked?
I notice you never tried to defend this... laughable assertion. Do so or retract it.
Evolutionary epistemology: those who were not able to recognize and understand the world well enough have already died out.
The theory of evolution explains both why our senses and our reason are not always equally reliable, and in which situations they make which mistakes.
For instance, we're incredibly good at recognizing patterns. So good, in fact, that we often see patterns where there aren't any.
Well, if you see a leopard in the bush in front of you, and there isn't any leopard there, all you get is a bit frightened. A few seconds later, your life simply goes on. If, on the other hand, you don't see a leopard when there is one, you're dead, and that means you won't have any more children; this is called natural selection.
That's an old and tenacious idea, but wrong; arthropods and chordates clearly developed their up-down (dorsal-ventral) axes independently.
Mutation is random, but selection is not – it's determined by the environment.
Do you even know what you're talking about?
Dude, if we already knew everything, we wouldn't need science anymore.
I think you need to read about the relativity of wrong.
Perhaps.
Perhaps, on the other hand, such an assumption is utterly unparsimonious.
You make such an assumption; this means you need to show that it's not unparsimonious, that it's needed to explain data that cannot be explained more parsimoniously another way.
We're waiting...
Would you marry someone completely stupid?
Sexual selection...
What? How did you arrive at this... startling conclusion?
My will aligns with what Thomas Henry Huxley said over a century ago:
"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
Turns out he came back while I was writing! And again with an argument for either Stupid Design or evolution – what kind of designer would give the same type of eye to all vertebrates, while refusing to give it to any cephalopods?
Since Hamilton might be back, I have to make another attempt at asking a question I asked yesterday - just because I accidentally read one of his earlier comments again.
So, Hamilton, what is it? You imply that you are not against science. You haven't "shown" us the incorrectness of evolutionary theory, you have simply asserted it without any evidence or scientific argument. But I guess that's what you mean - so I'm guessing that the implication is that you do recognize that science works and you're saying that you trust it in general.
Then you say that when it comes to evolution, "simply an interpretation" isn't science. So I'm still so very curious - do you give the same "that's just an interpretation, that's not science!" when it comes to other areas of science?
It's always easy to come up with an alternative "explanation."
All we know about why a ball falls to the ground when we drop it are just interpretations - it could be invisible pixies pushing it down.
The accepted knowledge about how electricity works is just an interpretation - there could be demons running in the wires, giving power and sparks as they fly through at demon speed.
Our understanding about how germs can cause disease is just an interpretation - it might be voodoo curses at play, just happening to coincide with infections.
So, what is it? Do you go on about "it's just an interpretation! The supernatural explanation is just as valid!" in cases like those? Or is it just when it comes to evolution? How do you decide that evolution is "just an interpretation" while other science is not?
And before you say that the examples above are different because we have evidence for our interpretations in those cases, I want to ask you... Have you ever, with an honest and open mind, read about the evidence for evolution?
"And then a miracle happened" is not science.
"It's kind of like how humans have "evolved" helicopters, jet planes, blimps, and other modes of flight... and all sorts of cameras too. Different paths can lead to similar places."
"Agreed. It is a very good analogy.
It is human intelligence in action. If people accept that idea then we have the basis for a discussion."
People seem to have ignored the idea that helicopters, jet planes etc are the result of intelligence.
But I have other things to do so there is no rush.
Take your time. Think about it.
We already have. You are full of shit.
Now, either grow a pair and say "this is what I believe, and this is the evidence to back it up", or shut the fuck up. Your little inane mind game isn't going to work on this crowd, as ID isn't scientific.
Now this is what I would present as an example of why we should be careful with metaphors - like in the discussion about "Chapter one, verse one of Genesis" in regards to the LHC.
JohnHamilton has dozens of good, important questions that he could/should answer to defend the position that he came here to present. But he acts like none of it is there, because he found one little thing to latch onto. The mere mention of a process with intelligence behind it gets us the "Hah, humans design things with intelligence, you admit it yourselves! So people must be designed, even if it is done in an unintelligent matter! I don't understand the concept of a comparison with limited scope!"
Seriously man, we know that helicopters and jet planes are intelligently designed. It was just a comparison to show that there can be different ways to tackle the same problem, leading to similar things because they work in the same environment. All flying machines work in air with the properties of aerodynamics, so there is "convergent design."
This is not an admission that design is needed for life - it was just an attempt to make a point about convergence.
Now have you taken your time to think about any of the other dozens of comments directed at you? Have you been thinking about your alternative theory?
Have you managed to find some evidence to support your various assertions? Have you thought about why you treat "interpretation of facts" differently when it is about evolution than when it is about other science? Have you acknowledged that there is still a lot you don't understand about evolution and that you might be wrong?
Have you found any consistent explanation as to why an intelligent designer would do things that just barely work and are prone to malfunction? Have you thought seriously about the responses to arguments about why various parts of the human body are actually good design?
Take your time. Think about it. Be honest with yourself and really think about it, try to find out if you have been reading about the science of evolution with an open mind or if you have just been listening to creationist rhetoric.
And if you come back after all the other things you have to do, please try to reply to at least one of the questions posed to you by the people here, or at least reply to the refutations of your arguments if you think that those refutations for some reason do not stand. Coming in to give just baseless assertions and empty rhetoric while ignoring counterarguments does not make you any friends among the scientifically minded.
re: #238
1. Prior to learning about helicopters, jet planes, and blimps, we already had a prior, solid evidence, for the existence of humans. And we already knew that humans were capable of designing and producing things like helicopters, jet planes, and blimps. So it is legitimate to consider the possibility of intelligent design for helicopters, jet planes, and blimps.
Others have repeatedly told you this, but you seem not to comprehend, so I will repeat it. Produce evidence for a possible designer first. ONLY THEN IS IT LEGITIMATE TO CONSIDER DESIGN.
2. Helicopters, jet planes, and blimps DO NOT SELF-REPLICATE (god help us if they did!). Therefore, they CANNOT evolve. Thus evolution is never even in consideration when speculating about their providence. Others have said this repeatedly, but you seem to be unable to comprehend, so I will repeat it again. Technology or any other phenomenon that does to reproduce itself is an irrelevant analogy.
3. Helicopters, jet planes, blimps, etc, ALL have interchangeable parts. ALL are made of interchangeable materials, some of which were produced from IDENTICAL manufacturing processes. ALL take advantage of innovations originating from multiple disparate sources "lineages" of technologies, of you will.
They are CHIMERAS, as nearly ALL technology is. Chimeric design is an indication of intelligence (doesn't completely prove it, but is very strong evidence in favor). No one disputes that.
But, THERE ARE NO CHIMERAS IN NATURE. There are no bats with flight feathers, no mountain goats with bird lungs, no chameleons with cephalopod chromatophores.
Find a chimera, any chimera, and you have positive evidence for design. There's your research program, JohnHamilton. Go.
Platypus.
Wowbagger )M #223 wrote:
This is an excellent point, and has an even more general application. When you look at the kinds of things God is supposed to "explain," they're all considered to be wise solutions to problems. The antelope needs to run fast, so Someone made it so it can run fast. The fish needs to stay in the water, so Someone made it so it can stay in the water. Life needs certain conditions in order to exist, so Someone made it so the universe has those conditions.
In each case, the situation is considered in human terms: an 'intellect' is needed, to figure something out, and change the environment, so that a problem is resolved. But the difficult environment is also assumed -- in advance, as a preexisting condition to get around. We infer that God must exist, then, because we see a problem that was solved. It must take an intellect to shoot an arrow, and hit a small target.
But why is there a small target in the first place?
The God inferred from the Design Argument is just like a problem-solving human. But you can't have a God which solves problems that it makes itself. A Perfect, all-powerful, all-knowing God should not have, or make, difficulties. This is an anthropomorphic God, more akin to the kinds of Gods the Greeks believed in, than to the Transcendent Being that is the Ground of Being. Creationists are guilty of self-contradiction.
There is an acknowledgment that things like helicopters are the result of intelligence.
Progress!
Now think about "convergent evolution".
The words "convergent evolution" explain nothing.
Perhaps we can make further progress and have somebody acknowledge that.
No rush.
Read further fool, he refuted you. Illiterate.
The word "god" explains nothing either. Because "god" doesn't exist.
John Hamilton #244 wrote:
Are you implying that, prior to your arrival, the commenters on Pharyngula were under the impression that helicopters evolved naturally, and were captured in the wild, by their pilots?
Stop using the rhetorical trick of pretending that there's been a major concession, when there's been nothing of the sort. That doesn't work with people who aren't easily flummoxed by a show of confidence.
We are still waiting for your conclusive physical evidence, like an eternally burning bush, for your imaginary deity. Until you show that evidence, you are a delusional fool.
The talk about helicopters above reminds me of the Eagles Perch helicopter and its unintelligent design. It can serve as an illustration of evolution.
Two brothers had a desire to build a helicopter, but knew fuck-all about designing one. They had an idea that was new and different (kinda like a mutation), and just started trying to build it. They tried variations of everything (genetic variation and mixing) kept what worked and tossed out what didn't (like natural selection), and tried out new ideas and new variations until they had a working helicopter that was different in arrangement from every other helicopter, except of course it used many of the same parts and all the same materials.
There was a helicopter engineer in the same town who got wind of the layout the brothers were trying to make a helicopter in, and helpfully went over to explain to them why it would never work. He explained it all to the brother he found, and was asked to hang around to explain it to the other brother, "as soon as he gets back from flying the helicopter".
That helicopter was not intelligently designed, from the viewpoint of a helicopter engineer. It evolved through mutation and selection. It is weird looking, but it flies. It is different, but similar. And the helpful engineer is the business manager for the brothers.
(All events from memory about twenty years old.)
Yet there is no acknowledgment from you that this was never the point of the analogy.
Of course the person making the analogy knows that there is intelligent design behind things that are designed... The point was about convergence and how things doing similar thing in the same environment will have similarities.
Can you acknowledge that there is no analogy between the development and design of aircraft and the "design" of animals, since aircraft do not reproduce? Do you understand the difference?
There is no possibility for biological evolution of aircraft, therefore an analogy to aircraft will always be superficial. Now I thought that it was a good analogy and it points out some important things - but of course you latch onto something that is not in any way inherent in the comparison.
We know that aircraft are designed. We can see the designer, we know how it happens, we can follow the process of the design. And we know that they cannot evolve since they do not reproduce and there is no known process for evolution of things that do not reproduce.
We can see evidence of evolution. We can directly observe the evolution of short-lived beings. We know that living things can evolve since there is a process for it.
See the difference? Do you see that you are harping on a point that is stupid and just blind rhetoric?
There is an acknowledgment that things like helicopters are the result of intelligence.
Progress!
Praise be to the big sky daddy that JohnHamilton dropped in to teach the dim evolutionist a lesson. If only he could get a room full of biologists in order to teach them his extraordinary insights. They never heard of any of these objections.
Could JohnHamilton be getting credit from Demski? Is he the product of Patrick Henry University? Or did he get his degree from Patriot University?
John Hamilton says "Now think about 'convergent evolution'.
The words 'convergent evolution' explain nothing."
Um, actually, John, they do. You just don't understand them.
You say Platypus, John. I say aye-aye. Look it up, John. It's a lemur that evolved in an environment where there are no woodpeckers. So what happens? It develops long skeletal fingers ideally suited for finding, digging out and skewering fat, juicy grubs...kind of like a woodpecker's bill, but completely different. Environment shapes the genetics for success in the environment. All there is to it, John. A simple idea that not only explains, it also predicts. It predicted the characteristics of the genetic code decades before it was discovered. It has predicted with amazing accuracy when different species diverged. It has predicted transitional fossils, and on and on.
So, JH, got any predictions from your GODDIDIT theory?
A question for John Hamilton:
Here are two opposite situations. Which one ought to lead to the conclusion that God must have had a hand in the outcome?
1.) An animal which flies swiftly through the air is examined, and we discover that all the parts of this animal are well-adapted for swift flight.
2.) An animal which flies swiftly through the air is examined, and we discover that it has no parts which explain how it can fly at all, let alone so swiftly. It appears to have been kept aloft by magic.
Now, if you found that both those situations lead to the same conclusion, I think you need to examine your assumptions. They're opposite situations; they can't be switched with each other, and not shake an explanation. At the very least, one ought to provide a better case for the existence of God.
And if that one is a better argument, doesn't that take away from the emotional impact of the other one?
Are you offering this as a supposed chimera?
How ignorant are you?
Do you actually know anything about Monotremata, besides the fact that they are funny-looking?
Are you suggesting that the platypus was designed as a chimera?
How stupid are you?
The platypus is not a chimera. It is a mammal.
The "duck bill" is not a hard bird bill, it is a soft, flexible thing with electro-sensors all through it. Yes, that is strange, but it isn't a bird's bill, it is a rather closer to whiskered lips.
The eggs it lays are not hard-shelled, but soft, not that much different than the caul that covers some human babies.
The poison spurs are odd, yes, but not that much stranger than a skunk's spray.
All in all, platypi are not as bizarre as they first appear, and are most clearly not chimeras. They are an offshoot of earlier mammals, with a long time to evolve in their own way. (Notice that they are found in Australia, with marsupials and other "strange" animals on different paths.)
The platypus is not a stumbling block for evolution. It is an example of the "transitional species" that creationists babble about. It is, in short, the "crocoduck".
And everyone who studies evolution knows about the dear little things, and has figured out where they fit. Honestly, John Hamilton, is that the level of cognitive dissonance and stupidity that you accept as normal? You think that evolution is some damned weird cult with scientists ignoring the obvious? And that you are smarter than all those folks? If your world is so full of self-deluded time-wasters, John, you need to accept that you might be one.
Projection. Look it up.
Sure they do.
They explain superficial similarity in organisms when far deeper differences between those organisms exist.
Why should anyone "acknowledge" the trivially false?
So, JH, How 'bout if I try and help you out. Let's see if we can come up with a GODDIDIT prediction. I'm presuming you posit design by a perfect being, right?
Well, I'd presume that a perfect being is going to design beings that are pretty damn near perfect, wouldn't you? Wouldn't you judge a helicopter's design by how good the helicopter is?
Or does said being design in flaws--e.g. the pharyngeal flaws alluded to that kill thousands. Gosh, I thought your designer was a loving designer whose eye was on the sparrow. And yet, either he makes an error in design or he designs in a flaw--a booby trap.
It seems, JH, that if you have design, you have to either a very fallible designer or a malicious one. Which do you choose?
Of course, no such difficulties arise in evolution. Evolution doesn't care if a few individuals--or even a few thousand--die. What matters is passing on a sufficiently representative sample of the genetics that the population remains healthy. And gosh, that's kind of what the world looks like, isn't it?
But, hey, good luck with your choice on the designer.
Owlmirror:
No, the platypus is not a chimera. It is evidence of a stoner creator god! I mean, it's obvious that He was high as a freaking kite when he did that thing... Woo!
Oh wait, I'm confusing evidence with fanciful fantasy again, aren't I? Damn, been listening too much to JohnHamilton.
Oh, yeah.
The platypus bill looks like a duck's bill because of convergent evolution. Both evolved for feeding on bottoms of muddy waters.
This is the big sky daddy?
Just stumbled across this supposed quote from House, M.D.:
"If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people."
There is something which is considered to be a "chimera" -- but it doesn't help the case for God. On the contrary.
Sometimes a pair of fraternal twins will merge at a very early stage of development, and you get one person who has two different patterns of DNA. This has been discovered when a paternity test is done on a child, and they find out that it doesn't match the mother's DNA - and yet the baby was not switched at birth. Her eggs (and sometimes things like her liver) have different DNA, than the rest of her.
Of course, that's not the kind of chimera we're talking about here. But it does pose a problem for people who think that God ensouls individuals at conception. It's also rather difficult to come up with a "reason" God would have chosen to do something so bizarre and pointless. Two became one: was one twin 'naughty,' so she doesn't get to have the part of the body that has the self-aware identity?
The posts about platypus are very enjoyable.
Someone asked for an example of a chimera. That seemed to be a very important question.
"Find a chimera, any chimera, and you have positive evidence for design"
So I gave one. And people still do not acknowledge it. But please feel free to make up as many stories as you like.
I enjoy your creative stories.
Concerning #261
"Of course, that's not the kind of chimera we're talking about here. But it does pose a problem for people who think that God ensouls individuals at conception."
I am interested in leqrning from you about the ensouling of individuals at conception.
Could you say a little bit about that and indicate why the fraternal twins scenario you mentioned is a problem please?
We also enjoy your creative story that your imaginary deity exists. You know, the one you keep tacitly positing, but have absolutely no physical evidence for. Unlike evolution and its million or so papers in the peer reviewed scientific literature. Now that is conclusive evidence!
Typical arrogant godbot with illogical and inconsistent bullshit. Want to keep playing the attitude game?
No, you demonstrated your ignorance in what was being asked for, and in what it was you were giving.
Why should we "acknowledge" the trivially false?
Please feel free to continue being a disingenuous hypocritical moron.
John Hamilton #263 wrote:
I think that, for people who believe that souls are 'given' to individuals at conception, it is going to be hard to say whether the 'chimera' is now two people, or one. Do they have one soul, or two? Any answer, is problematic.
I see a pattern in how you choose what seems important. You thought that the "helicopters and planes"-analogy was very important, because you believed you had an answer for it. So you ignored all the other comments challenging you.
Now you continue ignoring the majority of the comments challenging you, because you believe that you have an example of a chimera - so you think that that's important.
But if you read some of the comments you see that you don't have an example of a chimera. You choose to not even address the science in those comments though. You just assert that they are "creative stories" instead of coming with any actual counterarguments.
More empty rhetoric.
Janine:
Yes, exactly. I know this because the platypus is evidence. And it is evidence because I say that it is. I will not explain my reasoning, since "there is no point in arguing this. Either people are honest about this or they are not."
And please note that my theory is Highly Scientific
Ah, I see, JH, has descended to the level of troll. Well that was predictable.
The flora and fauna of Australia and Madagascar must be proof of the big sky daddy's special creation for JohnHamilton. Just ignore the millions of years of isolation those large islands had from the rest of the world, thus giving the species time to fill different niches.
JohnHamilton, your arrogance and dismissive attitude stands in contrast to your utter ignorance.
Sastra.
If there is no longer room for two souls perhaps one returns to where it came from.
How do you understand the idea of a "soul"?
I ask because you have spoken about it.
amphiox #241 wrote:
You shouldn't have used the phrase "any chimera," because John Hamilton will, of course, take that phrase very literally, and not recognize that you're talking about a certain kind of extreme species-to-species chimera. There are what's termed 'chimeras' in nature, as quick check with Wikipedia will show. I suspect John Hamilton is getting his biology on the fly, by doing things like checking with Wikipedia. And he's not looking at the import of what's being said, but the actual wording. "You said ANY -- I win!!!"
The platypus is not a chimera, of course. Unless, I suppose, it's a chimera platypus.
Convergence has to be expected: when there are 4 ways to do something, and 10 groups evolve into a niche that involves doing that thing, several of them will hit the same solution(s).
Let's go back to the aye-aye for a second. Three ways for a climbing and/or flying vertebrate to get at insect larvae that live in wood are known:
The first is the solution used by woodpeckers and by a parrot that lives in the Solomon Islands where there are no woodpeckers.
The second is used by the aye-aye from Madagascar and the marsupial Dactylopsila from New Guinea, where there are no woodpeckers, as well as the apatemyid ?placentals which lived in the northern continents when woodpeckers hadn't evolved yet ( > 35 million years ago).
The third was used by the scansoriopterygid dinosaurs.
It's also interesting which fingers are put to special use in the last two solutions: the 3rd out of 5 in the aye-aye; the 4th out of 5 in Dactylopsila; the 2nd and 3rd out of 5 in the apatemyids; and the 3rd out of 3 (sort of the only one that was available) in the scansoriopterygids.
There is evidence from the fossil record that the spurs (though perhaps not the poison, that's unknown) is normal for mammals – just the marsupial-placental clade has lost it.
Incidentally, the platypus doesn't lay bird eggs. It lays specifically mammal eggs: normal, soft-shelled, amniote eggs (without the specializations found in lizards, crocodiles, birds and so on), plus special mammal features (the eggs are laid late and hatch early).
Your knowledge of that beast is very superficial, JohnHamilton.
The wonders of the messiness of placental reproduction. =8-)
JH, Sastra is an atheist. There is no soul, except as an irrational concept by those who are delusional fools like yourself and believe in imaginary deities. It is trap for your little mind. You still need to present physical evidence for your imaginary deity. As of the moment, you look like a raving delusional fool.
Perhaps it's time to rename the Dunning-Kruger effect the John Hamilton effect.
I await with palpable joy the part where Hamilton glibly dismisses any actual facts about animal anatomy and evolution, but goes on and on about the "soul", something no one has ever seen, heard, or detected in any way. Should be a very productive line of discussion, if you can call any kind of verbal interaction with John Hamilton to be "discussion".
John Hamilton #271 wrote:
But why would the Designer have put the soul there, in the first place? It's a very bizarre thing to do, if you assume it's all part of a deliberate plan.
My understanding is that "soul" is supposed to be composed of "spirit," and is the essence or identity of a person. The Christian version of Soul is somehow entered into the fetus, cohabits during life, is sentient, and is reunited with resurrected body at Judgment.
The soul or pneuma is the "creative in-breathing of God."
I am not a creationist. But I do work with the idea that there is intelligence involved in Nature.
The evidence I would provide are the situations you call "convergence".
I do not lack for evidence.
As was said, John Hamilton, the platypus is NOT a chimera. It is not a mammal with a duck bill--it is a mammal with a thing that looks like a duck bill, but is a much, much different bill in everything but looks, as is well known.
By the way, I mentioned earlier that both platypus and duck bills evolved FOR feeding on muddy bottom. I dislike the word FOR in that context, as it could be taken to imply a purpose. I will now say the bills evolved BY feeding, or some other word I haven't decided on yet. Yes, the bills are tools for that job, but I don't like the word FOR. They evolved THROUGH feeding works, too.
Sastra, thank you for post #276.
I work with the idea that if there is a higher intelligence that it still has to work within the uncertainties that are an unavoidable part of the physical world.
So for example, I would think in terms of the higher intelligence intending to provide twins with each having a soul but things did not work out at the physical level. So an adjustment would be made.
This does not have to be as hard as people tend to think.
Matter of opinion. You have cited no peer reviewed scientific literature (PRSL), which means no evidence as far as science is concerned. Alleged evidence outside of the PRSL means it does not touch/refute any scientific theory. Which is your problem. You have nothing to touch or refute evolution. So, why are you wasting your time here?
And still no conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity. Ergo, still the bullshitter. Present your evidence or go away.
John Hamilton #277 wrote:
There is a difference between saying that there is an intelligence behind Nature, which structured an original plan that has only to unfold -- and an intelligence which directly involves itself inside of Nature, tweaking and making little miracles here and there, to guide things along the way, lest they go awry.
While they could both, technically, be called creationism, only the second one is designated that way in common parlance. Young Earth Creationism, Old Earth Creationism, and Intelligent Design Creationism differ from "Theistic Evolution."
"This does not have to be as hard as people tend to think. "
It is pretty easy when you're just making stuff up.
Right, you can shut up at any time. You have nothing cogent to say, just your inane sophistry. No science there.
The evidence I would provide are the situations you call "convergence".
I do not lack for evidence.
If you do, whip it out and change the course of biology.
But if you lack in evidence, if you obfuscate enough, you could win a Templeton Prize.
You're a science denialist, no matter what you actually call yourself.
"Evolution is cleverer than you are." -- Leslie Orgel
Birds and bats both evolving flight is evidence that evolution is cleverer than you are.
You do lack anything more than a pathetic argument from ignorance.
if there's no room for two souls in a chimera, there's no romm for a soul in an embryo. wtf sort of stupid reasoning is that? just how much room does a soul need?
indeed. remaining ignorant of science and answering every question with "goddidit" is the lazy, easy answer. it's also been shown to be the wrong answer every single time someone who really wanted to know went out and researched the problem. everything that has historically been answered with "goddidit" has been shown to be an entirely natural process; nature doesn't need a god.
"There is a difference between saying that there is an intelligence behind Nature, which structured an original plan that has only to unfold -- and an intelligence which directly involves itself inside of Nature, tweaking and making little miracles here and there, to guide things along the way, lest they go awry."
Let's take your own intelligence.
Is it "behind" you or "inside" you? Or neither?
Or both?
Perhaps the question does not really matter.
John Hamilton #279 wrote:
'Unavoidable' even to God?
Does this mean that you don't believe that God is either All-Knowing, or All-Powerful? God encounters unexpected problems, his plan doesn't work out, so He has to do the best He can, and adjust?
I think this issue is going to be a lot harder than you think, if you want the higher intelligence to be Very High Indeed, and not just some darn clever space alien.
JH, if you have real science, I suggest publishing a manuscript in Science or Nature. I have linked submission information for you. If you aren't willing to go through peer review, you have nothing to offer us. In the meantime, it will be easier to wait for your manuscript to be published.
What?
What about
this? and this?
I thought these genetic homologs were best interpreted as an actual ancestral flip-over.
Or is this what you mean?
I guess I'd have to opine that if bilateral symmetry is homologous, and if before the protostome/deuterostome split there were already asymmetries in gene expression, then these were highly unlikely to have been functionless and that an animal with "a fairly indeterminate top/bottom" is wishful conjecture.
Fortunately nobody is trying to explain anything with those two words alone. Please identify an actual case of putative convergent evolution that you doubt, and we can talk about the specifics of the case. Did you know that modern biologists have things like microscopes and DNA sequencers that can offer knowledge unavailable to the average armchair observer of platypuses from afar?
(Of course the platypus is a weird, weird mammal indeed, but no chimaera. Your last common ancestor was something like 165 million years ago! Yes, we can know stuff like this!)
intelligence is a function of my brain.
are you positing some giant brain with invisible tentacles floating out there in space, tweaking nature? because there cannot be brain activity without a brain, and there cannot be action without physical contact.
And JH, still no conclusive evidence for your imaginary deity, without which a soul is a null concept. Absolutely no idea of how to present an argument.
So this "higher intelligence" is not omnipotent?
Do tell.
Why do you think they have a soul in the first place?
Because this "higher intelligence" has no power over the physical level.
What makes you think this supposed "higher intelligence" has anything to do with evolution, then?
Which means what?
Everything is easy when you can just make up answers with no test in reality.
But why are there unavoidabilities for your omnipotent creator?
He could have done any damn thing at all, but he can't make an appendix that works, or tuck my testicles safely inside?
Once you start looking at the physical world, and speculating on the nature and purpose and intelligence of the forces that shape it--truly looking--you wind up with evolution and without a god. And I mean truly looking, with an open mind and dedication to truth, sharing and checking your work with others and making a coherent picture...you know, SCIENCE!
John Hamilton, the scientific world started off where you are--intelligent designer, yap, yap, yap--and has gradually and carefully approached truth. The way that science works it must approach truth, it can do no other, from its very premises. If you want to disprove science and scientific methods, you must use science. Just whining that you don't like it is childish.
John Hamilton--The evidence supporting convergence: Two structures appear to be similar and are used similarly. Yet they are derived through different developmental pathways, are encoded by different gene complexes, and clearly evolve independently in the best supported phylogenetic hypothesis based on multiple characters/sources of characters. Even then, "evolutionary convergence" is always hypothetical--I suppose in your limited understanding of science this is what you would refer to as an INTERPRETATION. I'm sure that someone has already explained this, although I lack the endurance to search the thread thoroughly (this thread is painful to read, because the stupid burns so darkly). However, I thought I would put it as simply as possible, so that you might understand. There are volumes written about these things for those with an initial knowledge base similar to yours. You should find some of these books now, and leave the nice, smart people alone until you have some real questions.
John Hamilton #287 wrote:
I'd probably say that my intelligence is "inside" me, since it's an aspect or property of my brain.
Questions about what intelligence is, do matter when it comes to God, because God is supposed to be "an intelligence." But, intelligence is "the ability to achieve goals despite obstacles," as one neurologist defined it. This means that God is "an ability."
You can't talk about "an ability" as if you were talking about a thing, or a person. That's a category error. Something may have an ability: it can't actually be an ability.
Sastra.
Just for discussion sake let's take it as given that the physical level is somewhat messy. Accidents can happen. Plans can go astray.
And again for the sake of discussion let us say that a higher intelligence has to accept that reality. (If you like, you could say because it chose to set things up that way).
Now we have a much stronger model to work with.
Now we can use our own intelligence to see how this higher intelligence might operate.
You may not be interested in looking at things that way. That would be fine also.
anthropomorphism FTL. non-omnipotent, human-like deities are so Last Era
We fucking DID that! And we figured out that it operated through evolution through natural selection and that it had no intelligence at all.
We. Fucking. Did. That.
There is no model. You have presented none. What a fool.
What higher intelligence (god)? Your deity/intelligence is imaginary until you show the conclusive physical evidence otherwise. What a loser. No evidence whatsoever. Misguided theist sophist from the looks of it.
I remind people that when evolutionists offer up the phrase "convergence" that they have not offered up any explanation whatsoever.
Those situations are evidence for the idea of a higher intelligence.
So it is unnecessary for me to present new evidence. The evidence has already been identified.
Repeatedly.
Why do you think there even is a plan?
You're making a lovely case for this "higher intelligence" being nothing more than the process of evolution!
Yes, of course evolution has to accept reality.
Or rather, it has to deal with what it has.
Yes, we can see how evolution might operate. Science works!
Sastra.
Are you your brain or do you have a brain?
Are you your thoughts? Or do you have thoughts?
Who is this being that has a brain? that has thoughts?
I am not looking for a philosophical dissertation.
That flip-over business started with a question I had, and I appreciate all the info.
Something related that I thought of while reading Stephen Jay Gould on the Edicarian and all: At some time in the early development of life, while everything was still aquatic, the surface of the water would have been a good thing to have at your back, so to speak. There would have been no predators at all in the air. I saw a couple critters that looke like they took advantage of that safety.
Speaking of the water's surface: Have you noticed that there are no animals equivalent to human-built ships? There is nothing that floats permanently on the surface of the water except man-o-war jellyfish, and they just drift, they don't move themselves about. Everything else dives underwater, walks up on land or flies away, or two or more. Only us humans makes something that sits on the surface and goes nowhere else except around on the surface. How's that for intelligence?
You mean, you've ignored the explanations offered.
But then, you've been dishonest from the beginning, so why start being honest now?
Yes, if by "higher intelligence" you mean the process of evolution operating without intelligence, but constrained by reality.
You have presented no evidence that distinguishes this "higher intelligence" from the process of evolution operating without intelligence.
You've demonstrated your ignorance and dishonesty.
Repeatedly.
What? How? Explain. Choose one such situation to make it easier. We'll agree on the evidence, fine, and then you'll offer your INTERPRETATION about higher intelligence and I'll offer mine about well-known natural processes.
John Hamilton #97 wrote:
No; it's both a weaker model, and a stronger one.
It's weaker because you've changed it to meet the problems in a way that loses the important aspects of your original claim. Whenever this is done, it weakens a case.
example:
"I can prove that space aliens landed in my backyard, because they left one of their transporters behind -- and we have no such sophisticated devices on our planet."
"That's not a transporter -- that's an old refrigerator."
"Well then, maybe the space aliens left an old refrigerator."
The person has gone from having good, convincing proof -- to trying to rescue a theory.
But your model of God-and-the-chimera is now "stronger," because it's more familiar. We know what it's like when people have to work around problems. Because that's what happens, with us.
You're re-forming God in the image of man.
Meaning, it operates just the way we do.
Since I'm not already a theist, I'm not interested in finding ways to keep believing in something I don't want to stop believing in. Your way, is basically that of the guy who now thinks the refrigerator from next door might have been dragged there by space aliens, because it could have happened. Or, maybe they beamed some mind-control rays into the neighbor's head, and made him drag the old refrigerator over to someone else's house so it could be their problem, and not his. If they're from another planet, you don't know how they might work, or what they might be able to do.
It's the difference between taking evidence and trying to derive a conclusion -- and having a conclusion before you start, and trying to go back and see if you can figure out some way to fit the evidence into it. If you are either creative, or allowed to use magic-and-mystery, you will be successful.
Or, rather, it will be good enough, to those who want to believe.
you really have no fucking clue how science works, do you.
here's a hint: before you can posit extra-terrestial magical intelligences, you have to show that the null hypothesis is insufficient to explain the data.
here's another hint: if you only look at the evidence that might be used to support your point, you aren't doing science
and one more hint: evidence that supports multiple hypotheses is not conclusive evidence for any one of them.
We don't have to. You are the one making the claim, so the burden of proof (evidence) is upon you. You are wrong until you show you are right with scientific evidence.
Why keep lying fuckwit? Evidence is required, and you must cite the peer reviewed scientific literature to show the evidence to refute science. Which you have pointedly failed to do. What a loser. You have nothing but your unsubstantiated opinion. Which is worthless as evidence.
Sven, please feel free to choose one yourself.
But I know from experience that this exercise will not work out.
Because you will bring in magical properties in the environment such as "selection pressure" etc and other non-explanations. And you will expect everybody to just accept those non-explanations. But of course I won't.
selection pressure is magical? you're a fucking idiot; a proudly ignorant idiot with delusions of adequacy.
John Hamilton #303 wrote:
I'd say that I am a brain, in the sense that I could not have a "brain transplant," and walk away me. I'm the aggregate or collection of the thoughts I have.
Though you're not looking for a philosophical dissertation, you might really enjoy a book called The Mind's Eye: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul. It's "philosophical fun and games of a very high order" which deal with puzzles on what is self, and the problems with defining where "we" start, and stop. By Dan Dennett, and Doug Hofstadter. It's challenging, but fun. And, as I recall, it has no definitive, easy, simplistic answers. Life, is complicated and messy.
Yep, repeating your evidenceless lies and bullshit gets you nowhere. DUH.
Like what you call non-explanations.
As if we care what a delusional fuckwit thinks. You have nothing but your inane opinions. You must be or think you are a philosopher the way you avoid real evidence. Which means you are a practiced bullshitter. Your word is meaningless now. Hard evidence will be required.
Unparsimonious.
Again, convergence has to be expected from the theory of evolution anyway.
Perhaps the best way to say it is that those who didn't have such a bill weren't able to live on in this kind of ecological niche. Natural selection always boils down to "the others died or moved away".
Or in more general terms... reality is stranger than fiction.
Or in just as general but perhaps more impressive terms...
"Argumentation cannot suffice for the discovery of a new work, since the subtlety of Nature is greater many times than the subtlety of argument."
– Francis Bacon
That was a typical case of drawing conclusions from looking at too few taxa. IIRC, it'S cephalopods that completely trounce the idea – they have all the homologs but use them differently again. Looks like they didn't have such specific functions in the first triploblast, and the dorsoventral axis was specified in a somewhat different and simpler way.
of course I am my brain. personality, intelligence consciousness etc. are brain functions. I'm the function of my brain.
neurology; look it up sometime.
John Hamilton:
I'm going to post something rather long, but it might prove valuable. It's a cut-n-paste I stole from one of the other commenters, many moons ago.
Evolution doesn't rely on big, sweeping generalizations which have little detail, and invoke new properties. In fact, it can be simplified into 14 points. If you have a problem with the science in the theory of evolution, then there would be one -- or more -- of these points where you find a flaw. Something that is wrong, or makes no sense.
Could you glance through the list below, and then tell us the number of the point, which you think unsupported by evidence, or invalid or implausible inference?
VARIATION:
1) Variation exists in all populations.
2) Some of that variation is heritable.
3) Base pair sequences are encoded in a set of self-replicating molecules that form templates for making proteins.
4) Combinations of genes that did not previously exist may arise via "Crossing over" during meiosis, which alters the sequence of base pairs on a chromosome.
5) Copying errors (mutations) can also arise, because the self-replication process is of imperfect (although high) fidelity; these mutations also increase the range of combinations of alleles in a gene pool.
6) These recombinations and errors produce a tendency for successively increasing genetic divergence radiating outward from the initial state of the population.
SELECTION:
7) Some of that heritable variation has an influence on the number of offspring able to reproduce in turn, including traits that affect mating opportunities, or survival prospects for either individuals or close relatives.
8) Characteristics which tend to increase the number of an organism's offspring that are able to reproduce in turn, tend to become more common over generations and diffuse through a population; those that tend to decrease such prospects tend to become rarer.
9) Unrepresentative sampling can occur in populations which alters the relative frequency of the various alleles for reasons other than survival/reproduction advantages, a process known as "genetic drift".
10) Migration of individuals from one population to another can lead to changes in the relative frequencies of alleles in the "recipient" population.
SPECIATION:
11) Populations of a single species that live in different environments are exposed to different conditions that can "favor" different traits. These environmental differences can cause two populations to accumulate divergent suites of characteristics.
12) A new species develops (often initiated by temporary environmental factors such as a period of geographic isolation) when a sub-population acquires characteristics which promote or guarantee reproductive isolation from the alternate population, limiting the diffusion of variations thereafter.
SUFFICIENCY:
13) The combination of these effects tends to increase diversity of initially similar life forms over time.
14) Over the time frame from the late Hadean to the present, this becomes sufficient to explain both the diversity within and similarities between the forms of life observed on Earth, including both living forms directly observed in the present, and extinct forms indirectly observed from the fossil record.
--------------------
That's what Evolution IS. And this is the scientific consensus of the experts.
Now, tell us where it breaks down for you. And, your evidence for it being incorrect.
Hamilton:
Please explain why you ignore every comment that does contain an explanation. Are you being blind or severely dishonest?
And I'll have you know that it's fine (at least it's fine with me) if you disagree with the explanations offered. But if you do you have to somehow address them with your own counterarguments - otherwise you aren't having an honest, adult conversation.
If you keep just asserting that no explanations have been given when they clearly have, we must assume that you are nothing but a dishonest troll.
And seriously? Selection pressure is a magical non-explanation? Seriously? Selection pressure is very readily observable. Please, please provide any evidence you have for selection pressure being a myth. That ought to be entertaining.
Not that you ever present any evidence whatsoever. But still, it would be entertaining to see you try. Come on, educate me, please! I am yearning for the knowledge that you hold.
Convergence isn't an explanation, it's not a separate process. It's a conclusion. When two lineages evolve in a similar direction (because of similar environments – what else), that we call convergence.
Really, if you get confused by basic terminology, you haven't understood anything at all.
What "null hypothesis" means depends on the statistical test in question, but it's always something like "nothing has happened", "there is no correlation whatsoever; the data are the result of pure random", or the like.
Translation: everything I don't understand is magical!!!1!
Man, are you embarrassing yourself. If a population lives in water and needs to move around between food sources, there will be selection for the ability to swim, because those that can't swim will starve. It really is that simple.
Typo on a German keyboard – ' is Shift+#.
I am really not interested in a long discussion on "selection pressure".
It is an "abstract force". You believe in it through faith or you do not.
I do not.
Also note how some foxes turned out quite differently under exactly the same hypothetical "selection pressure".
"Selection pressure is a non-explanation used to support the non-explanation of "convergence".
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-selection-pressure.htm
Selection pressure is an abstract force that shapes organisms as they evolve due to mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift. For instance, a selection pressure on the ancestors of giraffes for longer necks led to modern giraffes. Selection pressures on small mammals living in open plains led to muscular legs and adeptness at running. Selection pressure operates over durations as short as a few generations, and as long as millions of generations.
A selection pressure can derive from practically anything, as long as it acts in a relatively consistent fashion over long timeframes, and actually impacts the reproductive or survival rates of a species. Potential sources of selection pressure may include availability of prey, presence of predators, environmental stresses, competition with other species (including humans), and intra-species competition. In the eyes of evolution, differential reproductive capacity is all that matters -- if a certain predator only consumes old animals that are already incapable of reproducing, the predator will have no impact on the evolution of the prey species whatsoever.
It is important to know that selection pressure has no intelligence, foresight, rhyme, or reason. The locus of selection is the individual, not the species. Thus, new adaptations do not appear "for the good of the species" -- new adaptations only become fixed in a population if they are good for each individual that has it, even if it collectively makes life worse for the species. New adaptations can be partially self-destructive, as long as their net effect promotes the inclusive fitness of the organism. Accordingly, animals like the Komodo Dragon bite down into their own gums with their sharp teeth when they feed, increasing their likelihood of lethal infection, but providing an advantage because their contaminated, blood-filled mouths poison prey.
Selection pressure can operate more quickly than one might think, and this is especially true under conditions of selective breeding, when the selection pressure is intelligently applied by humans. One of the most striking examples are seen in a series of experiments in the Soviet Union by scientist Dmitri Belyaev. The object of the experiments was to domesticate the silver morph of the Red Fox, which was achieved in just 10 generations of selective breeding. These foxes lost their distinct musky smell, wagged their tails like domestic dogs, and showed no fear of humans, even licking their hands to show affection. Less frequently mentioned is that these experiments also produced a group of highly aggressive foxes which would leap at their cage walls ferociously when humans walked by. In short, selection pressure can operate in significant ways over short time periods.
It is difficult to discuss these issues with evolutionists because you accept things on faith.
Then you are a fuckwit. As has been shown by your complete lack of scientific evidence.
If short, why not long, then your whole pile of sophist and evidenceless argument goes away, and evolution occurs. What a loser.
liar.
we have evidence, falsifiable hypotheses, and the scientific method. you have sophistry and ignorance.
stop projecting.
And their predators...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaucus_atlanticus
Which, incidentally, float upside-down.
false. you are really ignorant of science.
selection pressure is not a magical "force"; it's just a term for an observable occurrence in nature: things with advantageous mutations tend to die less and reproduce more than things without, or with deleterious mutations.
it's really that basic.
Wrong fuckwit. You can change my mind with the proper scientific evidence. Which you have totally failed to present, due to your lack of citation of the peer reviewed scientific literature. You have nothing but an inane idea and no hard (scientific) evidence. That makes you a bullshitter.
No; it's difficult to discuss these issues with evolutionists, because we are very specific on the mechanism and process -- and you want to stay at the level of wide generalities and speculations. You can't do that in science. Evolution isn't a science theory because it talks about biology: it's a science theory because of the way it talks about biology.
Evolution could have been falsified, over and over again, if we had not made the discoveries we did.
JH, keep in mind there are a million or papers in the peer reviewed scientific literature that support evolution, both directly and indirectly. The number of unrefuted papers for ID is in the single digits or zero. You must refute all those other papers to change my mind. Get cracking on producing the evidence...
Sastra.
I am not interested in showing the shortcomings of evolution theory. You had declined my offer to a discussion in the direction that interests me - I will decline your offer.
I know that people who accept things on faith like the people here are not open rational discussion.
John Hamilton,
Do you disagree that some traits possessed by some individuals are conducive to survival and passing on ones genetics while others are counterproductive to those ends?
There is no faith. The million+ papers in the peer reviewed scientific literature says otherwise. Compared to your lack of evidence, which requires faith. You are the one with faith. You are the one avoiding rational (evidence) based discussion. What a loser.
stop lying, both to us and to yourself.
"Magical", of course, meaning anything you don't like.
And "non-explanation" means anything you don't like and don't understand.
Because you don't want to be bothered with learning or thinking about anything you don't like.
Translation: I am not interested in learning!
Translation: It is something I don't understand and do not like !!
Translation: I do not understand what selection pressure is or means, so I assert that foxes turned out quite differently under very different selection pressures !!
[Editor's note: The ignorant moron does not realize that two breeding lines are being discussed: the aggressive foxes were bred using (obviously) different selection criteria -- not from the criteria of breeding for tame behavior.]
Translation: Have some false equivalence from me, who accepts a "higher intelligence" on faith!
You forgot their other predators, like the violet sea snail, Janthina, that lives under a raft of chitinous bubbles, and their relatives, like the By-the-wind-sailors, and sea buttons.
Or these pelagic goose barnacles that secrete their own buoys.
It is difficult to discuss these issues with evolutionists because you accept things on faith.
There you have it, JohnHamilton has to reduse everything to an issue of faith. When one does not have to know how anything works, one does not have to know any facts in any field in order to debated those who spent years studying and experimenting. Why spend time learning when all is just faith.
Once an opponent gives in to JohnHamilton's myopic view of existance, JohnHamilton wins. That is because his faith is unwavering, given from a "higher" being while the opponent is in quicksand because knowledge is subject to change because of new facts.
JohnHamilton is the product of ID. Behold, a being with the mental capacity of a brick yet is able to communicate.
I wish that JohnHamilton would lose faith in the knowledge of electronics and not use his computer. I also wish that JohnHamilton and Daniel Smith could get in a debate about the nature of science. Than again, maybe not. The shock waves of stupidity and arrogance could stunt the intellectual growth of nearby children.
It's an abstraction, not an abstract force. I think you're just trolling.
If you had actually read the stuff you quoted, you'd understand what you're talking about.
WTF. I guess it's true: "the only thing gastropods can't do is to fly"...
What "advantageous" and "deleterious" mean depends on the environment. Thus, different selection pressures on different starting points in different environments.
Come on.
You came in here saying that the theory of evolution is an insufficient explanation for what we see. It logically follows that you either put up or retract your claim.
"You're all wrong, but I won't even try to explain why, not even when asked"?!? How crazy can one be?
And it looks like he already did!
And I guess we can the platypus to the list of things John Hamilton is unable to comprehend and refuses to even try.
John Hamilton #328 wrote:
I did? I assume you're talking about ensoulment and chimeras.
IF we assume that God is not all-knowing and all-powerful, then would it make sense to explain human chimeras by saying that God would "take back" the soul He originally put inside a twin, when it became clear to Him that this twin was going to be absorbed by the other twin?
That is, can we now explain why God put in a soul, and then took it back, if we allow that God makes mistakes?
The answer is yes. Yes, we now have an explanation that works for people who believe in God, but see God as Someone who makes mistakes.
I would have thought that was a rather small group among creationists. Why Bad Things Happen to Good People was a popular book written by a liberal rabbi, and he took that basic approach. God is not all-knowing, or all-powerful, and He isn't in control of everything -- it's too messy and complicated. In the situation you're talking about, God is not even in control of cell division during conception -- a much smaller, and, one would think, easier venue over which to exercise control.
But this doesn't fit with denial of evolution. This liberal rabbi -- and the liberal Christians who found this theodicy comforting -- saw nature as often dominant over God, a fierce force which works on its own, and which God cannot always "fix."
I can't figure out how someone who doesn't think that nature unfolds in a way that cannot be planned -- would also be able to throw out a scientific explanation because it shows that nature unfolds without sufficient planning, and that can't be.
Are you really in the group of people, that think that God makes mistakes?
And if you are, are you then in what must surely be a miniscule group of people, who think that God makes mistakes, but intervenes in evolution with miracles which correct what would otherwise be nature's mistakes?
If so, it's very interesting.
Sastra, I hope you are done wasting your time on a fool who will not respect the intelligence and experience of other people.
Asshole, if you had any prove of any shortcomings of evolution, you would cause a revolution in the field. Whining that other people are not playing by your rules and claiming that the ball is yours and no one else can play with it proves nothing. Unless we take your vast wisdom and knowledge on faith.
And I guess we can the platypus to the list of things John Hamilton is unable to comprehend and refuses to even try.
JohnHamilton is unable to comprehend his own navel.
John Hamilton #328 wrote:
Aside from our tangent discussion on souls-and-chimeras, I thought that was what you came in here for.
Unless you mean that you weren't interested in showing the shortcomings of evolution theory, only in proclaiming them -- as a kind of announcement from the Mount, to all those who have ears to hear.
I think it's getting to be time to stop feeding this troll. He's said that he's not interested in evidence-based discussion. I think it is time to let him start talking to himself and watch as his personality disintegrates...kind of like ish.
Anyone up for joining the discussion of bacon, cider and lesbians over on the open thread?
Now, now, Janine, even someone who is as rotund as me can still contemplate my navel. (If I look in the mirror.) ;)
Yeah, I get the metaphor. JH is one idjit par-excellance...
There is probably a Nobel Prize, a statue in the Smithsonian, a Congressional Medal of Honor (if you're American?), a Knighthood and a reservation for a future spot in Westminster Abbey right between Darwin and Newton (if you're British?), a likely sainthood, several million dollars in a speaking tour and maybe several tens of millions of dollars in various endorsements for the man or woman who overturns the theory of evolution.
Hell, most of the above would be given to anyone who even just adds a single important and currently unrecognized mechanism to the existing theory of evolution, in addition to natural selection, genetic drift, endosymbiosis(?) and the rest we currently have.
Of course, intelligent design, even if proven true, cannot overthrow evolution - it would just add one more mechanism to the existing theory of evolution, and then we'd have to sort out its relative importance with respect to natural selection and the others.
Such a circumstance could even happen in the near future if humans obtain the ability (and choose to use it) to design synthetic organisms on a sufficiently large (foolhardy?) scale as to result in measurable ecological impact.
contemplate
1)to look at or view with continued attention; observe or study thoughtfully: to contemplate the stars.
2)to consider thoroughly; think fully or deeply about: to contemplate a difficult problem.
3)to have as a purpose; intend.
4)to have in view as a future event: to contemplate buying a new car.
–verb (used without object)
5)to think studiously; meditate; consider deliberately.
comprehend
-verb
1)to understand the nature or meaning of; grasp with the mind; perceive
2)to take in or embrace; include; comprise
I am sorry, Nerd. You were so asking for this. And I could not resist. JohnHamilton is fully able to contemplate his navel. Comprehend is a different matter.
Have you noticed what a strange definition of faith these science-deniers have?
They come in here again and again and just assert things without providing any evidence and very few arguments for their beliefs. Then, if we do not immediately blindly believe what they say, they claim that we "believe in evolution on faith."
Riiight. I get it. Trusting blindly in a random goofball on the internet = not faith. Trusting in a scientific process that has given mankind all the advances of the modern world and the multitude of articles and experiments done to show and explain evolution = faith.
It makes me sad - people like Hamilton really seem uneducable. I mean, ignorance doesn't make me sad, but this complete refusal to learn is really disheartening.
I was once extremely ignorant about biology and evolution. I like to believe that I am a bit less ignorant now.
I used to have those flashes of questioning all of evolution because I felt that something didn't make sense. I was so extremely ignorant that I even thought about some of the stupidest "challenges" to evolution that we know - like "if we came from monkeys why are there still monkeys?"
But unlike creationists I never stopped there. I never, ever assumed that I know and understand the world better than all the biologists of the world. I never assumed that I had, through a few minutes of thought, stumbled upon something that would give a scientist fame and glory.
Instead I sat down to read. Every time I had one of those stupid questions stuck in my head I'd read about evolution. Invariably there would be a facepalm-moment (when I realize why the question was incredibly stupid in the first place) and a moment of exhilaration when I learn something new.
And at one time, before I started talking with creationists on the Internet, I thought that was how people work. Now it saddens me that so many don't see the joy of actually studying something and truly understanding, instead of just assuming things. It just feels like you must feel somehow isolated when you must constantly fight (consciously or unconsciously) to keep out knowledge that would challenge your faith.
Hamilton accuses me of taking things on faith. I have never been so happy to see a creationist troll be wrong, because I so enjoy the feeling of not taking things on faith. I love the rush of studying the world and learning new things that challenge the preconceptions I had. I revel in the opportunity to learn and understand. With faith that process stops. With faith you can only proclaim "this is what I believe" and then nothing else follows.
Where does this intelligence come from? The problem with all teleological analogies is that intelligence doesn't exist ex nihilo. To think of this simply, yes a watch has a watchmaker but a watchmaker itself has a maker - the watchmakers parents. The design of the watch has only happened in the last few hundred years, it has taken hundreds of thousands (possibly millions) of years of R&D in order to be able to build a watch.
This is why you need to account for a designer in nature. The amount of order in the brain needed to be a designer is immense. So while we can account for helicopters and watches as being designed, it is only because there is a designer we know can account for them. Homo sapien! If we found a watch-like device in 100,000,000 year old rock, we would be at a loss as to how it got there. We'd have to posit aliens or time travel because there's no species even remotely capable of explaining such a device.
What designer is there in nature? Any analogy we give to design cannot apply to God because our familiarity to design is the complete opposite to what we propose for God (Read: David Hume - Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [section 5]). You are in effect trying to explain complexity and order by positing something even more complex and even more ordered. In order for you to make a simple statement, your brain is firing in a very precise and ordered manner.
So what are we left with? Well, there's aliens. There's always the possibility that there are aliens who have travelled to earth and have tinkered with the evolutionary process. But again, those aliens can't exist ex nihilo. They have to have come about somehow, and the same problem remains.
This is why I bring up the same two damn questions for an ID proponent to answer.
. Current evolutionary agents have a mechanism for action, it works purely within the confines of the laws of physics. If you want to believe that there is an intelligence acting in evolution, then you have every right to hold that belief. But if you want to have that view considered as science, then you need to turn it into a scientific framework - and this is done through making falsifiable predictions and looking for causal mechanisms.
You're just asserting it and we're expected to take your word for it? Did you not say this? If you come to realize that Darwinism can't explain the origin and development of species then perhaps you will turn and look for the answer.
So let me see if I have this straight. You're the one who is arguing against the consensus view among modern biologists. So instead of demonstrating why those learned men and women are wrong, you merely assert it and aren't interested in demonstrating it? Even though, if you are successful at overturning evolutionary theory, you'd be hailed as a revolutionary.
So it seems there are two options here. The first is that you really do know the flaws of evolutionary theory. In that case, why not share it with the world? You'll start a new biological paradigm, your name will go down in history, money and accolades will flow in. You'd be set for life! The second option (this I think is far more likely) is that you have nothing. You think evolution is wrong, but you speak out of ignorance. You make bare assertions because you have no idea how to defend them. You don't understand the basics of biology, nor of the philosophy needed. In other words, you're advocating a position you don't actually understand.
This is why I said for you to get an education on the matter. Not to be insulting, because you're so blindingly ignorant on the matter and at least an education could help with that. Read Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True. Read Neil Shubin's Your Inner Fish. Read Donald Prothero's Evolution: What The Fossils Say And Why It Matters. Read Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is. Read Ken Miller's Only A Theory. Read any Richard Dawkins, especially The Selfish Gene. At least familiarise yourself on the matter before continuing.
To be ignorant is nothing to be ashamed of, to continue to be so while arguing on a topic is. Earlier I asked you where you thought my ignorance lied and you didn't respond. Come on, show me where my knowledge on such matters is flawed.
Because you cannot.
And since you can't do that, why not just shut up?
You're not offering rational discussion, either -- instead, you're being the opposite of rational. And you're making hypocritical false accusations, too.
"It's kind of like how humans have "evolved" helicopters, jet planes, blimps, and other modes of flight... and all sorts of cameras too. Different paths can lead to similar places."
Because you latched onto this phrase, I'm going to expand on the idea with the hopes that you can get a clue. I know this is extremely unlikely because creationists (who claim not to be creationists) think they already know more than the very people who might give them knowledge so they would not be so clueless. I've never seen a creationist get a clue, myself, and I'm skeptical that it is even possible (though it must be, since I do know former creationists who now understand and accept evolution, --but I did not know them in their ignorant days as creationists).
--So--Why does our technology (like that mentioned above) get better and better with time? The atoms that make our flying machines existed when our earth was formed... why did it take so long for them to come together to make today's airplanes? Why does technology not devolve so that today's "flying machines" are the same as their prototypes? Why will tomorrow's flying machines be better? Selection pressure! It isn't imaginary. Flying machines don't reproduce, but humans copy and hone the designs for such things based on what works the best in the environment. We copy the best designs and "tweak" them to make them better.
Don't you see that nature is doing the same all the time? It's "allowing" for the copying of those that survive and reproduce best in the environment. The rest become obsolete--they are surpassed by the winners. And new mutations are "tweaks" that are then tested in the environment so that the winners keep evolving. In nature, if your aren't part of a species that is evolving, you are part of a species that is dying out. The environment is constantly selecting and culling.
Distorting facts, analogies, semantics, etc. in a manner that supports what you wish were true is dishonest--it's why creationists (who lie about being creationists) are reviled by the honest. You may be making a convincing case for something or other in your head, but to the readership out in cyberspace you are as arrogant and ignorant as any believer in any woo that posts here. Believers in supernatural things tend to lie to themselves and others in very similar ways.
I think it's becoming clearer and clearer to everyone here that talking to you about evolution is like trying to discuss calculus with someone who still hasn't mastered the mathematics basics such "borrowing" in subtraction.
Selection pressures aren't imaginary. They describe what we observe in the real world. Gods and souls are imaginary, however-- or at least they are indistinguishable from the imaginary. Invoking them in scientific explanations is the equivalent of saying "it's magic". You can't make them true by believing in them and you can't make evolution false through ignorance. Reality doesn't care what you think or want to be true. You need to prove that some sort of consciousness can exist absent a brain before anyone here cares what you have to say on the subject.
It's not clear exactly what your point is. You clearly "need" evolution to be wrong, but you've said nothing about your alternative explanation, and I think it's because you know we'd find it as risible as YOU find Greek myths, Scientology, or other superstitions. And for the same reasons. I'd say the fact that you've failed to make your point this far into the comments section means that you never are going to make it. You are just here to convince yourself that "science is wrong; therefore your "woo is true". And so you get the treatment of every other "woo" whose come here to play the same mental masturbatory game. We can't educate you, but we can use you as fodder for stress relief and amusement.
Does it matter to you that the the only person you are making sense to is you? In science we endeavor to delineate the truth that is the same for everyone. It's why we have strict standards for evidence while believers latch onto anything that confirms their bias. Tsk.
Oh, and you still haven't told us your alternate explanation for the less than optimal designs we observe in nature. Rest assured, our flying machines aren't optimal either. They will get better-- but that's because we are compelled to build upon that which works in the present-- just like nature. There is no top-down designer.
The irony being that several people here have brought forth rational discussion on the topic of evolution and JohnHamilton has not. Is this his way of saying that he holds his position because of faith?
I wonder if John Hamilton is one of those new-agey Deepak Chopra type creationists who imagines himself enlightened and on a mission to enlighten others--
Remember, the straight person gets top billing... *say goodnight Gracie* ;)
*Applause to Zabinatrix and Kel. Now, where's my lists*
No Kel. He is saying that faith is all he has. And that he wins because he does not need to change his mind. The joys of revealed knowledge, no fuss and no muss.
JohnHamilton, let me get this straight: you have the evidence to support the assertions you've made which means you can overturn evolutionary theory and over 150 years (and something like a million scientific papers on the topic) - but you won't present it?
Why not?
Remember, the straight person gets top billing...
But Costello was the brains of the operation.
He-ey Ab-bbo-ott!
(Damn. One could not escape those movies in Chicago in the seventies. The Bowerie Boys on 32 and A & C on 9.{At least I understood where Rick Neilson [Cheap Trick] got his look.})
*grumbles, and adds articulett to his lists.*
*blushes fetchingly*
Dang, looks like the twelve sided die again next Molly time (hint, hint, PZ), unless I come up with a different selection method.
*wheazy voice*We old farts must be on the lookout for new talent*/wheazy voice*
lol, I had forgotten about that!
One more thing to add regarding teleological explanations.
As others have mentioned earlier, watches, blimps, helicopters, etc. don't actually reproduce. These are structures that exist on their own. How else do you get a watch but through a watchmaker? How else do you get a muffin but through a baker?
But how do you get a watchmaker? How do you get a baker? Both are made when two people have sex, and the resulting offspring grows up and learns a trade. A watch indeed as a watchmaker, as does a watchmaker have a maker - the person's parents.
Think about that for a minute, because it is a really profound points. If you want a pet dog, you don't conjure up one from the dirt, you get two other dogs to reproduce and from that you get a puppy.
Now comes the important inversion of reasoning. When a man and a woman have a baby, do they know how to make one from scratch? No, they don't. They know how to have sex, they may know the consequences of sex, they may even have a basic awareness of the development of a foetus - but if you asked them to make one from scratch in a laboratory they would have no idea.
That's a very profound point. In order to make a baby, it's not necessary to know how a baby is made. Think about the implications of that statement. Angels don't fly* into a woman's uterus and cause structure to come about. The genetic code within determines how the process unfolds. The genetic sequence is responsible for the structure, and so all that needs to happen is the process repeated again and again and it can happen without anyone being the wiser as to how to make a baby.
Think about the implication for this, all that needs to happen from our point of view is getting a male and female to behave in a particular way from which new males and females come about to continue the process over again. A dog may or may not know that sex leads to babies, but they are more than capable of having sex. An insect may not even know that its having sex, but its behaviour means that sex results and the genetic code is carried on. Plants do not know at all, yet can reproduce and bring forth new plants.
So where does that leave life as distinct from cars and computers and other designed objects? Life self-organises for one. To posit a designer as being involved is to break the cycle. Meanwhile the evolutionary explanation is able to take us back to the first replicating protocells some 3.8 billion years ago. The complexity of life is inherent in the explanation for it, making the design hypothesis both unnecessary and intrusive. If we are positing a designer of life, we are positing a break in the life cycle.
So the strange inversion of reasoning that evolution seems to make is pointing out the obvious. You want a watch? Go to a watchmaker. You want a watchmaker? Have a baby then train it to make watches. Agency can and does beget structure, but not all structure requires agency. Sometimes positing an agent gets in the way of natural processes. And for what?
*subject to evidence to the contrary
Concerning #354.
Wowbagger.
The evidence is right in front of you. But there is no way that someone else can show it to you.
You have to make the effort yourself. The answer is not outside you. But as long as you are satisfied with the ideas you have now, then you have no incentive to go on a long search.
If the answer could just be given, it would have been given centuries ago.
This search is not for everyone. But that is also fine.
Not until you cite the peer reviewed scientific literature. What a loser.
More loser talk. You have to prove your case. Nothing, zip, nada, zilch, zero to date.
Only for delusional fools who don't understand evidence like we do. Which is all that is necessary to consign you to the dumpster as a dumbster.
And that's why it isn't science.
#360
"Life self-organises for one."
This is a statement of faith. It is not something that you or anyone can present evidence for.
Right?
Nerd - I'm not good at blushing in any sort of fetching way, but thank you kindly.
JohnHamilton.... Man. You're going to make me repeat myself again. Apologies to the rest of you, but hey, now I just have to try one more time.
So - you're saying that the answer is inside of us? The old "special way of know" thing?
That makes me go back to this: Do you acknowledge that science works? The process of science has given you modern medicine, electronics, etcetera - so it obviously works. All of those advances have come because we have learned about how the world works through the scientific method.
But in this case, just this case, you people are going "No... That can't work. You can't find the answer outside you through normal means."
Why? Why do you treat evolution differently? Can you in any way define why this special way of know applies to evolution but not to other areas of science?
Now be honest to yourself. Please, for both of our sakes, be completely honest, sit down and think about this question: Have you ever considered that you might be treating evolution differently than other science? If so, do you think that this can be because you've simply been taught that it is somehow different? What would it take for you to challenge your faith that evolution is not scientific?
Just think about it, with an open mind.
Wrong, it's observed every time new offspring are born. The mechanisms behind heredity are well established, as are means for new variation to arise.
It's not a statement of faith, it's a statement of stupidity to deny it.
John Hamilton #364 wrote:
What does this statement mean to you?
That is, when Kel gave an example of life "self-organizing," he was quite specific. You don't seem to have understood what he was saying.
Could you describe a hypothetical situation where life really is self-organizing, and then contrast that with a description of what it looks like, when it doesn't?
wrong. go take a biology class sometime. or at least learn that thing about the birds and the bees...
I'm not surprised at all, it's in his interests not to understand what I was saying. He just wants to call it a faith because otherwise he'd actually have to understand what he's talking about.
Having to understand what one is talking about is not for everyone.
{JAZZHANDS!}JohnHamilton.{JAZZHANDS!}
Then it's not evidence.
The evidence for evolution is both inside and outside of the human body.
Hypocritical liar. You're obviously satisfied with your "higher intelligence", and have no incentive to actually study that about which you know nothing, and yet claim you know something about.
Do you realize how ignorant that makes you sound, in more ways than one?
==========
It's a parsimonious inference. Pity you don't know what that is.
It arises from the evidence, and from logic.
Two things you don't know, and have no interest in learning.
#361:
In short, just make stuff up.
The only statements of faith have been made by you. We have evidence, not faith. You don't. Loser.
Shorter JohnHamilton:
Ignore reality. Make shit up.
JohnHamilton is a perfect example of what happens when extreme ignorance combines with extreme arrogance.
To someone like him, anything that he can't understand is obviously incomprehensible. The reason that he doesn't know an answer must be that that answer can not be known.
Yep, he's the walking argument from personal incredulity
Kel, #360
"life self organises"
In other words it organizes itself. How could someone disprove that idea?
Obviously you can't. Or prove your own inane ideas. Just like an evidenceless philosoph. Nothing but hot air. Time to shut the fuck up like an intelligent person who got in over their heads...
Will Not Engage Internet Retard...
SIWOTI and I Don't Care.
JohnHamilton wrote:
Do you know what the word 'evidence' means? As others have intimated, if you can't demonstrate it somehow then it's not evidence.
Not understanding evolution ≠ evidence.
Not liking evolution ≠ evidence.
Repeated unsupported assertions ≠ evidence.
Vague claims ≠ evidence.
Riddles ≠ evidence.
Does that help?
NOR,
I have yet to see a shred of evidence that JH qualifies as an intelligent person.
I was trying to appeal to his vanity, as he has little else. ;)
"Self organization".
Not an idea that can be disproven.
It is taken as an assumption. An unproven and unprovable assumption.
Which would be okay if everybody just admitted that fact.
If someone were honest and admitted that fact, we could then go on to look at the other unproven and unprovable evolution assumptions - like "convergent evolution".
You can't really, it's part of the life process. It's like asking to disprove that babies are born.
That's the elegance and power of the evolutionary argument. It's look at how life works and asking what would happen if the process was allowed to run. Logically evolution must take place.
JohnHamilton:
Could you define what you mean by "self-organization?"
Except, the only person here who has trouble with that is you. The non-scientist. The evidenceless philosoph. What else is new? Your ideas are not scientific. They are just inane opinions without solid backing. Philosophy without evidence is sophistry. Meaning worthless mental masturbation. You commit the intellectual crime of sophistry. Until you acknowledge that fact you will remain a loser.
Sastra.
Ask Kel. He mentioned the idea here.
If you are not familiar with the idea look it up.
Then please explain how similar-looking but unrelated organisms are supposed to be evidence of an unknowable, unapproachable Intelligent Designer who works in ways puny mortal researchers could never understand.
Or, you can stop babbling about things you are too lazy to understand.
at nearly 400 comments and JohnHamiltotallystupid is still harping on "convergent evolution" and providing absolutely no actual discussion of what his alternative "interpretation" of evolution is. Just vague word salad about "the evidence is in front of you", "no one can show it to you but yourself", "science is just faith". He has nothing to say and is not interested in what we say. He merely wants to see how many turds he can squeeze out in this thread. Goodbye John, you are a boring twit.
This will go on for a while with people doing there best to evade the point.
The point is that the underlying evolution ideas are simply unproven and unprovable assumptions.
When people admit that that is the case, we will have made some real progress.
But for some reason, evolutionists are very reluctant to admit the unproven and unprovable assumptions that underlie the theory.
JohnHamilton wrote:
Perhaps you should do the same for the word 'evidence'.
JohnHamilton #387 wrote:
I read his explanation earlier, and understood it. But I asked what your definition is. I want to understand what you mean, when you talk about the "self-organization" of life.
I don't know if both sides, mean the same thing.
No, it's an observed reality. It's an empirical fact as much as any fact can be. Do you not know anything about how you get from an unfertilised ovum and sperm to a living, breathing human?
re 390:
This will go on for a while with people doing there best to evade the point.
fap fap fap
You're wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! The reason people will not admit its the case is because you're completely and utterly wrong. And people here have tried explaining to you just how it works. Instead of actually engaging in the rational discussion, you've continued to make your wrong assertions, trying to get people to concede to a point that has been demonstrated repeatedly to be fallacious.
People won't concede the point because the point you want people to concede is incorrect. JohnHamilton, please get an education on the matter before continuing. Being ignorant is one thing, asking others to take your ignorance as knowledge is another!
That is you. You have no evidence, and we know it.
Your unsubstantiated evidenceless opinion. Which is worthless. What a loser.
Why are folks who understand the scientific process going to listen to an evidenceless loser like you?
Says the evidenceless idjit without the million or so scientific paper showing evolution is solid science. What a loser
JH, either put up the evidence from sources outside of yourself, or shut the fuck up. Since the can't do the former, the latter is your only option. But that requires intelligence to do. Which also leaves you out. Your are a dumbster.
Kel. How could self organization be disproven?
Failing...to...disengage...
Lots of info here you are ignoring JH...let's do this again
#295
What don't you understand?
Show solid and conclusive physical evidence for your imaginary deity/designer. DUH. What a loser.
I explained exactly what I meant, and not just in a single sentence either. I laid out carefully what I meant in several paragraphs. Do you need me to make it even simpler for you? Baby dogs come from adult dogs. Baby dogs gradually become adult dogs which in turn make more baby dogs.
It's really really really simple to grasp.
While Kel is pondering how one could disprove "self organization" perhaps somebody else could tell us how "convergent evolution" could be disproven.
John Hamilton #390 wrote:
Look, you do understand that the theory of evolution -- while it may hold implications on the existence of God -- does not directly address the existence of God, right? It is possible to accept the "underlying evolution ideas," and still believe that God is somehow guiding it, or working through it, or watching it. Evolution is not atheism.
Consider that long post of mine at #316, with all the small, little steps that evolution theory weaves together into one explanation. Which one of those small steps is the "underlying idea" which you think, is unproven or unprovable?
If you want to address the existence of God, that is a different argument.
... chiming in to add recommendation re Shubin's Inner Fish.
Palaeontologists should be viciously railroaded into doing anatomy courses more often. Apparently.
Oh, but said palaeontologists, don't even try to come looking for me as revenge for this. I'll just move to some actually habitable part of the world containing actual coffee shops, and you won't have a fucking chance at ever finding me... Suckers!
Okay, yes, I know this really isn't representative of all that discipline's fieldwork. But fuck, Shubin, seriously? Has that guy ever worked anywhere there were, say, other people present*?
(/*Northern Pennsylvania? Hrm... Well, I guess that sorta counts...)
The disproof of convergent evolution is synapomorphy, dingbat.
You must be the one to disprove it. Use proper evidence. Like cite the peer reviewed scientific literature, or shut the fuck up. What a loser.
Wrong.
You know we have made videos of embryos growing, don't you? From single cell to fully formed organism, the whole process has been observed, documented, and recorded, in real-time, with all external factors controlled for.
I guess we can add "self-organization" to the list of concepts you cannot or refuse to or pretend to be unable to comprehend.
I'm beginning to think that the concept of "faith" needs to be added as well, since you demonstrate a pretty fuzzy understanding of that, too.
While Kel is pondering how one could disprove "self organization" perhaps somebody else could tell us how "convergent evolution" could be disproven.
By sticking your index fingers in your ears and yelling at the top of your lungs; LA! LA! LA!LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA! LA!
The same way you disprove the existence of spiders. The same way you disprove that day and night occurs. The same way you disprove that babies are born. The same way you disprove the existence of dinosaur fossils.
Again, you're asking me on how to disprove an observational fact. Didn't your parents give you the talk about the birds and the bees? Do you think that babies are delivered by storks?
The facts are not up for debate here, they are the facts by which the theoretical framework works around. The theoretical framework explains the facts, and it the theoretical framework that makes predictions. This is where evolutionary theory comes in, and why you need to grasp what evolutionary theory is saying. It's in the predictions about the fossil record, the genetic code, in embryological development, in geographic distribution, in sexual displays, in behaviours, in morphology, etc.
Well in spite of themselves, people are slowly admitting that "self organization" and "convergent evolution" are unproven and unprovable assumptions. That is just a fact. There can be no dispute about the fact. The only issue is whether people admit it or not.
And as I have said, evolutionists are very reluctant to admit it.
So why are they reluctant to admit it and try to hide this fact?
Because it shows that underneath all the edifice of evolution theory and all the articles and all the stories, evolution theory is based on very odd assumptions.
The assumption that things just organize themselves.
The assumption that unrelated animals just happen to "evolve" near identical structures independently.
If these facts were made more open, more often, people would start to see that the theory is based on sand.
And then people would no longer be programmed and bullied and would start to look for more reasonable explanations. People would start to think for themselves.
JohnHamilton:
Would you also say that chemical reactions are not an example of natural organization? Or is there something special about life?
Self-organization is what we observe. Cells divide naturally -- unless someone in a lab cuts them apart with a small knife or something. I suppose self-organization might be falsified if we observed tiny little knives coming out of nowhere, or from some tiny little bug, cutting and arranging, and somehow we missed that.
The idea that there is a Giant Mind behind it all, willing things to happen in a way that not only looks natural, but can be broken down into smaller, comprehensible components, is an unnecessary and unfalsifiable hypothesis. The dull, boring, parsimonious position, is the default.
Have you actually been reading what other people are writing here? You really don't have a clue...
JohnHamilton asked:
By observing something that exists but which cannot be explained by self-organisation, i.e. a series of steps from simple to complex. Or, alternatively, evidence of a designer.
Have you any examples? Or just more wild assertions?
It is interesting also that when one compares technology like airplanes and the like with biology, the difference between the two very clearly demonstrates yet another fundamental example of "poor design" that is generally never directly mentioned.
Compared to technology, biology is remarkably impoverished in terms of the types of raw materials and processes it uses. It's almost entirely restricted to carbon-based and/or water-soluble chemistry.
Nothing made of metals. Nor anything that I know of made of glass. Not even obsidian.
Even among carbon chemistry, there is a huge selection of useful carbon polymers that biology has never exploited. No nylon. No kevlar. No plastics.
Biology never mastered fire, despite the fact that oxidation of carbon compounds was developed very early and became the dominant mode of energy generation.
No lighter than air ballooning, even though the production of hydrogen gas was also a very early development.
No macroscopic wheels (And thus no powered flight via the helicopter mechanism!). No jet propulsion in air either (and what cephalopods do that is often called jet propulsion in water is actually more akin to rocketry).
No steam engines. No electric motors. No silicon transisters (despite silicon being one of the most abundant elements in the earth's crust).
This is easily explained by evolution as a contingency of self-replication first appearing in systems of aqueous carbon-based molecules, leaving life constrained to these raw materials and processes ever since.
Kind of trickier to explain with an intelligent designer. One can't escape the nagging inkling that the designer missed a trick or two, some pretty simple ones, too. Not a higher intelligence at all, but one, in some very obvious ways, grossly and demonstrably inferior to even stone-age humans.
Only in your delusional mind. The evidence in the posts says otherwise. But you lying, par for the course.
Yes, the fact that you are wrong. What else can there be from an evidenceless fool.
Correct, can you admit you are wrong? Or is your ego to big to allow the logical gesture?
Hide what fact? You have presented assertions without evidence. You are not an authority. Ergo, you have nothing but hot air opinion like any loser.
Wrong again assclam. It proves, not disproves evolution. What an unscientific loser.
That's what the genes say. Where is your evidence loser? Nothing but hot air and attitude from the loser.
The facts are found in the peer reviewed scientific literature, found at institutions of higher learning world wide. What is your excuse for not knowing this?
You think for yourself. You think very badly, and ignore scientific evidence like any religious loser. No cogency to your statements, and no authority behind you attempt to pretend to be an authority. What a loser if that is all you have.
Sastra and Kel and the others here are hiding something. You are pretending to not understand something.
You pretend that simply observing something happening is the same as knowing that it is organizing itself.
You are mistaking observation for explanation.
And of course we all see that you are doing that.
So again it is just a question of whether people will admit it or not.
JohnHamilton, ask the wrong questions and you won't get any answers of value. Do you think for a minute that maybe the problem here is your own misunderstanding? Because from what I've seen of your posts, that would be the most likely scenario. You don't seem to understand the distinction between fact and theory. You don't seem capable of the difference between explanatory framework and predictive. You don't seem to know how falsification works and where to apply it. You don't even seem to grasp the basics of what other people are telling you, even when they spell it out in the simplest terms possible.
And this is the same person who is adamant that "Darwinism can't explain the origin and development of species". How can you say that when you don't even understand what the evolutionary explanation is?
John Hamilton #409 wrote:
No, those are not evolutionary assumptions; they are conclusions.
Once again, I'm going to ask you to please point to the specific step, in the list at #316, which you find problematic. Asking you to get specific, is not an unfair request. It is a very reasonable request, because science deals in mechanism. The direct how and why.
And we can't address your disagreement, unless we can all understand where you disagree. Saying you disagree with "self-organization" is just too vague -- especially since you don't seem to mean the same thing we do, because you can't be denying that dogs have puppies without sitting down and putting them together with their paws.
Look at the list, under VARIATION and SELECTION in particular. Give us the number of a sentence where you say "no, not right."
Regarding convergent evolution:
I went off to do something else a while, and don't know if this has been covered, but I did some thinking and want to write it out.
John Hamilton keeps saying that convergent evolution is evidence of design. Which is just loony, but reveals an underlying assumption that I was missing earlier. He thinks that evolution is random, and the results of evolution are random. He thinks that a shark, say, "just happens" to look like it does, and therefor that winding up with a dolphin looking much like a shark is impossible under random conditions. It's like rolling dice repeatedly--you will get a string of random numbers. But if you roll the same damned string of random numbers the next day, something is going on.
Stephen Jay Gould says if we re-ran evolution we wouldn't get the same results, but he means in a larger sense we might not get mammals and would never get humans. Evolution is random in that way, but that doesn't make John Hamilton right, because in examples of convergent evolution, we aren't re-running from scratch, and conditions are the same.
What I mean to explain is that in similar conditions evolution produces similar results. Dolphins, sharks, tunas and ichthyosaurs all look alike because they live(d) in similar conditions doing similar things. At about 200 pounds, a fast marine predator MUST be shaped like that for maximum efficiency. Heck, I was sketching an attack submarine once, figuring out the best location for control surfaces and stabilizers, and realized I had drawn that same damned shape.
A spindle shape with a dorsal fin, pectorals and a tail isn't random, it is what the laws of physics require of a vertebrate aquatic predator of that size.
There's more, but it's too long.
John Hamilton seems to assume that evolution is random, giving random results. If it were, getting the same results twice would be impossible.
But the level of randomness of evolution allows for the development of the best functioning shape within present conditions. And the best damned shape for a marine predator has been converged on from several different paths.
Convergent evolution is like all other evolution--converging on the best set-up for the situation.
Convergent evolution is proof, John Hamilton, not a problem.
What am I pretending not to understand exactly?
I explained how it is organised. The genetic code within. Scientists have been studying for decades about how the genetic code works during development. There's nothing controversial about such a statement, that the genetic code controls the developmental process is known fact. It's not an assumption, it's empirical reality.
No, you just have a reading comprehension problem. I'll explain again: the fact is that life begets life. Babies come from adults reproducing which in turn become adults and reproduce themselves. This is primary school education, just where do you think you came from?
Evolutionary theory takes this life-cycle and explains it in the greater context. Life begets life, so any variation that gives the organism an advantage will more likely be carried on into the next generations. Conversely any deleterious mutation will most likely not. So within the structure of a spider is the code to make baby spiders. In the code to make baby spiders is further code to make baby spiders. And so on and on and on.
The theoretical framework explains the facts. But the facts sit on their own. Asking me to disprove that a fertilised ovum turns into a baby is like asking me to disprove that dinosaur fossils have been discovered. It's the fact. The theoretical framework is what needs to explain the facts, evolution needs to explain how that process works - and it does very eloquently.
Until you grasp that distinction, you're going to be a deer caught in headlights.
No, again the only hiding is your ignorance. Your arrogance is front and center.
No, you are making the mistake. We know that. Loser.
No, the question has always been will you acknowledge your ignorance, presupposition, arrogance, and unscientific thinking. Due to your arrogance, no. What a loser.
"Dolphins, sharks, tunas and ichthyosaurs"
So whales should be the same shape. Right?
How can you tell which animals to include?
But I am not getting into a long drawn out argument with you providing a whole bunch of stories.
We both know the game here. You select those creatures that seem to satisfy the assumption and ignore the ones that don't.
You will get into talking about "ecological niches" and even how creatures in exactly the same geographical area can be in different "ecological niches".
I have been down this road before. It is a waste of time.
John Hamilton #421 wrote:
Hey! Progress!
Does this mean that now you're going to go back to the list at #316, and mention specific points of disagreement? Oh thank you.
Moron @415,
I think that this statement shows how little our latest troll knows about biology.
It seems to think that we simply observe a cell dividing and assume self organisation. It obviously doesn't realise how much is known about molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics.
It also doesn't realise that the reason we know so much about how cells work, is that we don't make assumptions about magic sky fairies. We actually study the processes involved. Self-organisation isn't an assumption it is a conclusion.
Why should we expect every animal to come up with the same solution? Again you're mistaking explanatory power for predictive power.
*facepalm*
it can't be disproven because it's true. it could have easily be falsified by complete failure of in vitro fertilization (i.e. life would have proven not to self-propagate if sticking live sperm and live ova in a medium didn't automatically result in embryos, or failure of bacteria to propagate, or whatever. "life self-organizes" simply means it propagates and grows without external input. this could have been falsified a million times, if it weren't true.
I suspect Hamilton is trying to pull an "if it floats" on us: if it cannot be disproven, it's not science, but if it can be disproven, it's wrong.
way to lie about/misunderstand falsifiablility.
Yep, you ask fuckwit questions, and we refute you.
Scientists and science looks at all creatures. Read the peer reviewed scientific literature if you think otherwise. It is obvious you are NOT acquainted with real science.
Yes, it is obvious that you can't fight reality of the peer reviewed scientific literature. No non-scientist can. It will trump your inane ideas each and every time. So why don't you stop pretending you have anything cogent to say with your unscientific ideas. You will get nowhere here because you can't present the required scientific evidence. And you have no idea of what scientific evidence really is.
It's a fascinating fact that when all you're doing is grinding an axe, and have long lost all interest in the reality of the world, you really can generate prose you personally believe is vaguely persuasive and meaningful completely without recourse to any single external reference. Nor any hope of ever convincing anyone who hasn't already swallowed the same bullshit you have yourself.
Indeed, through the use of heavily cliched and generally meaningless boilerplate phrases you are personally fond of, you can generate suprising volumes of it at the very drop of hat.
For example, one could argue that it is self-evident that John Hamilton blows goats. And that in spite of themselves, people are slowly admitting that it is perfectly clear that John Hamilton does now, and always has, blown goats.
And yet, oddly enough, John Hamilton himself, along with his long-suffering family, are reluctant to admit this.
So why are they reluctant to admit this fact?
Because it shows that John Hamilton blows goats. And there's a general concern that if this becomes more generally known, the goat farmers will either (a) run him out of town, or (b) move out of town themselves, and either way, he'll have to buy his own goats, for the purpose of blowing them. Which would inconvenience him. And show up in his chequing qccount. Thus leaving a trail.
Indeed, if these facts were made more open, more often, people would start to see that really, on balance, it's better off that John Hamilton be kept a long, looong way away from any goats.
And then people would no longer be programmed and bullied and would start to look for more reasonable explanations. Like: the goats are so skittish because John Hamilton keeps blowing them. And, apparently, he's stunningly bad at it.
Anyway, as seriously as this rube deserves, we are, at least, somewhat amused by his pretty little 'you are mistaking observation for explanation' bit. Nay, suckah. You are mistaking your own rhetorical, hilariously emptyheaded, childishly stubborn and generally facile rejection of an actually pretty comprehensible explanation--a rejection crafted just as transparently obviously to lead to your own pet idee fixee--for an actual counterargument. And no one else present is buying.
... Because, actually, he kinda sucks at persuasion, too. Which is a bad thing, when the position you're defending is so utterly silly that only the silverest of tongues has even the fucking faintest of hopes at success.
(/Shorter: need better trolls. Where's Soapy Sam? He still dead?)
"What I mean to explain is that in similar conditions evolution produces similar results. Dolphins, sharks, tunas and ichthyosaurs all look alike because they live(d) in similar conditions doing similar things."
And even more intriguing is the fact that there were a large variety of warm blooded, viviparous ichthyosaurs - with some that looked like whales and others that looked like dolphins.
And tunas are warm blooded.
But sharks are cold blooded.
Not an assumption. AN OBSERVATION.
You can posit millions of molecules each obeying the laws of chemistry and physics, or you can propose tiny invisible elves cutting, pasting, dragging and assembling with teensy invisible ropes and tiny invisible rivets, but either way the observation is UNCHANGED.
Not an assumption. AN OBSERVATION.
Seriously. How many people have already explained this to you? And you are still harping over this discredited canard. How thick is your skull? Or are you just pretending not to get it for rhetorical reasons? Because that is just despicable.
You're also wrong about the "near identical" part. The majority of the features that are considered to be convergent features only superficially resemble each other, and in fact much more similar to the homologous structures with which it shares descent.
A bat's wing is much, much more similar to a mouse's paw than it is to a bird's wing.
A platypus' "bill" (it's not actually a bill) is much, much more similar to any other mammal's lips than it is to a duck's bill.
A dolphin's torpedo shaped body is much, much more similar to a hippo's non-torpedo shaped body than it is to a shark's torpedo shaped body (the superficial torpedo shape is just about the only thing that is similar at all)
Even among some of the more spectacular molecular convergences, where there are the same amino acids in the same relative positions, the rest of the proteins in question are different, and each more similar to different related proteins with different functions.
You can explain this as the result of similar environmental challenges resulting in the similar differential survival of similar variants, among a limited number of possible advantageous solutions allowable by the laws of physics and chemistry, or you can dream up a designer with a peculiar penchant for doing stuff like designing a retina that he puts in every cephalopod but in no fish, and then designing a completely different retina, using a different organization and a different set of photosensitive cells, that functions exactly the same, and giving it all the fish, but no cephalods (and for some inexplicable reason NOT giving a lens to the poor nautilus, which lives in just the type of environment where a lens would be a MOST helpful adaption), or like designing a excellent wing that he puts on all pterosaurs and then turning around and designing another (in fact slightly inferior) wing with an entirely different construction and putting it on all the birds, and then doing it again with yet a third type of wing and putting it on all the bats. Or make a gene for vitamin C production, and then deliberately wreck it in all monkeys, apes and humans, but leave the rest of the gene and the rest of the enzyme pathway intact. And then also wreck the same gene, but in a different place, in guinea pigs.
And this is a pattern of behavior that is IRON CLAD CONSISTENT. The supposedly intelligent designer NEVER utilizes his own free will to choose to act differently.
I see no evidence whatsoever from JH. Nothing to refute science, nothing to get his ideas, whatever they are forward. It's like he's talking nonsense to himself at this point. Nothing cogent there. His grand plan to convince us fell totally flat and was ground into dust. He just can't go away.
John Hamilton is hiding something...
Is he blowing a goat right now1111!!!???
(/Cue faint, pained, bleating sounds...)
"Self organization" is claimed by one poster to be a conclusion and by another poster to be an observation.
In fact it is just an assumption.
An unproven and unprovable assumption.
Ironically it is presented by evolutionists as an explanation. And other evolutionists go along with the game.
And the same applies to "convergence".
JohnHamilton wrote:
From WikiAnswers: Actually, some sharks (like the Great White and the Mako) are partially warm-blooded. They can raise their body temperature above the ambient temperature of the water around them.
But that's not really the point.
Anyway, while we're on that, JohnHamilton - if sea creatures were designed, why would the designer choose both cold-blooded and warm-blooded creatures to do the same thing? That there are both doing the same thing is an argument for evolution - descent with modification, in order to survive better in a particular environment - not for design.
Mr Milne, it is grossly unfair, if not disgustingly cruel for you to assume that John Hamilton is a goat blower.
What horrible crime did goat blowers do to you deserve such odious slander?
Gah!!! GAH!!!
Your are treading dangerously near to my bailiwick, Hamilton, and I'm going to tell you where you're wrong now and get it over with. Nobody has any clue about the physiology of ichthyosaurs. Yes, they were viviparous. So are garter snakes. Dolphins are, quite simply, small whales. Tunas are endothermic--they raise their body temperature with heat produced metabolically--but so are lamnid sharks.
Please shut up about biology.
You don't know shit.
Only in your inane and unscientific opinion. Which means nothing to us. So, stop making the inane claim. It gets you nowhere.
Right, your inane and unscientific opinion is meaningless to us. You are no authority. You are an ignorant fool who needs to read some science. We don't listen to ignorant fools. Stop these claims. They just show your inanity.
"Anyway, while we're on that, JohnHamilton - if sea creatures were designed, why would the designer choose both cold-blooded and warm-blooded creatures to do the same thing? That there are both doing the same thing is an argument for evolution - descent with modification, in order to survive better in a particular environment - not for design."
Do you see that the point you are making applies to evolution theory in exactly the same way?
The notion that John Hamilton does not blow goats, natch, is presented by some posters as (a) silly, and (b) really, incredibly silly...
So, seein' as I can vaguely imply through my brilliant Rhodes scholar-level rhetorical skillz™ this is some kinda contradiction, eat it, suckahs! I win!!111...
(Looks shocked...)
Forgive me. I am a bad person.
(/Hangs head.)
This from an unscientific liar and bullshitter. Meaningless inane question. Expected from someone who can't cite the literature, or even explain his claims properly. DUH. Your word JH, is worth less than nothing at this blog. That is what you get for being wrong all the time. Your pretense of being right adds to your wrongness.
Again, where do you think babies come from?
Again, that babies come from adults is not the explanation. It's the observation that fits into the greater theoretical explanation. That the process of life begins by an ovum being fertilised by a sperm. That this starts a process of cell division and organisation, which over a process of about 9 months develops into a baby. That is the observation! The evolutionary framework explains why that is so.
That's the difference. You're mixing the observation with the explanation. The explanation explains the observation. You can't falsify the observation any more than you can falsify that there have been dinosaur fossils found. How embryo development and dinosaurs fit into evolutionary framework - well that's another story entirely.
This has been explained repeatedly to you. Do you have a comprehension problem?
So evolution theory is based on absurd assumptions like "self organization" and "convergence".
These assumptions are presented by evolutionists as if they were explanations.
It is a sleight of hand to present an assumption as an explanation. But evolutionists go along with the game. And let's not forget "selection pressure" as well.
It is quite a game all together. Make up a label and a story and pass it off as an explanation. That is what sets evolution theory apart from actual science.
Could you stop persisting with this straw-man please? It has been explained to you repeatedly in this thread the difference between facts and theory. Between observations in nature and the theoretical explanations of how / why that is.
Do you have reading comprehension problems?
um. sure. if no two critters shared a superficially similar feature that they didn't also share with a common ancestor, then convergent evolution would be disproven.
you do not understand falsifiability.
*whistles innocently*
your ignorant opinion and misunderstanding of falsifiability (and your mistaken belief that convergent evolution is a theory, rather than an observation) is not a fact. You do not understand the meaning of the word "fact" apparently.
this is an observation, not an assumption
"happen to evolve"? no. but then, you've already made it clear that you do not understand natural selection, and don't want to even try to understand it. you're wilfully ignorant.
um... no that's what you've been doing. self-replication and convergent evolution aren't explanations, they're observations. self-replication doesn't explain anything. various theories in organic chemistry and molecular bonding explain self-replication. self-replication itself is an observation. similarly, the Theory of Evolution explains convergent evolution, but convergent evolution itself is merely an observation. so is evolution itself, btw.
so which is it? is evolution supposed to be completely random, since you don't believe in selection, or completely deterministic, since you think all things living in the same niche have to come up with the exact same solution, even if 2 or 3 solutions are possible?
are you incapable of understanding that evolution is neither 100% random nor 100% deterministic, but rather random within the constraints of the environment?
that's because the ones that don't have similar features obviously haven't undergone convergent evolution. d'uh. this is not an either-or situation in which things either must ALL be convergent, or none of them are. convergence is a simple observed phenomenon, and obviously not present in every single animal within a niche, since most niches support more than one strategy. d'uh.
and so? one again, you're thinking in absolute either-or terms. a single convergent feature doesn't mean the whole animal is convergent. now THAT would be evolutionarily unlikely. different traits of an animal usually evolve independently of each other.
you don't know what any of the words in those two sentence fragments mean.
liar. we've been repeatedly telling you it isn't an explanation, but an observation.
of course not, because it doesn't. evolution is not teleological. it doesn't design for a purpose, and it can't design from scratch. when a coldblooded animal benefits from being torpedo-shaped, it's not going to randomly get warm-blooded just because other torpedo-shaped animals evolved from warm-blooded animals.
Is there anyone here who can distinguish between an observation and an explanation?
Kel seems to have trouble with this and others seem to as well.
The notion that John Hamilton does not blow goats is based on absurd assumptions like 'technically, we haven't actually seen him doing this' and 'seriously, that picture you provided of him doing so looks a lot like it was 'shopped...'
These are presented as if they were explanations. It's a sleight of hand to present an assumption as an explanation. But the non-goat-blowing people go along with the game...
And let's not forget that 'he was with me the whole time' gambit, either...
(/It's quite a game, altogether. That is what sets the 'oh come on, he does not blow goats; they wouldn't even let him' people apart from actual scientists...)
Only in your inane and unscientific opinion. A meaningless opinion that nobody here will take as anything other than a lie. And definitely not what professional biologists think DUH. You are very obtuse.
You aren't impressing us at all with repeating your previous lies and attitude ad nauseum. That reeks and smells of a desperate loser ploy, so you should stop doing it. Either put up the right evidence from the peer reviewed scientific literature, or shut the fuck up. That is what men and women of honor and integrity, like scientists would do, in your case. But then, with your baldfaced lies, we know you have no honor, logic, integrity or cogency.
wrong. evolution theory is based on the fact that critters have offspring, and on the fact that some members of a species have more offspring than others.
very basic.
everybody except you, evidently.
self-replication and convergent evolution don't explain anything. they're names for observed phenomena, that's all.
"that's because the ones that don't have similar features obviously haven't undergone convergent evolution. d'uh."
Well that explains it.
I am pretty sure this was not intended as humorous.
Hard to tell though.
No, I do not have trouble with this. You do. You're routinely asking for falsification on empirical facts. If you want to disprove an empirical fact, then you need to show that the evidence which is presented of the fact is invalid. In the case of dinosaur fossils, you need to show that the fossils are fraudulent.
The theory, the explanation for the facts, is where science lies. The observation that parents have sex to produce a baby, which in turn grows up with the potential to start that cycle over again is an observation. Why that is can be explained in the context of evolutionary theory. In fact, such a process should give particular genetic markers if it were true.
Stop projecting your personal ignorance onto me. Just because you misunderstand how science works, it doesn't mean that restating your ignorance time and time again constitutes an argument. Please please please please please go and read some books on the matter. Go and read how the process of fertilisation works. Go and read about the genetic experiments done. Go and read about how evolutionary theory works and what evolution predicts. Because until you do, all you can ever do is argue a straw man. Hence when people explain to you over and over where you are wrong, you will never see it because you don't understand what you are talking about.
Please look up: The Dunning-Kruger Effect. Then go read Your Inner Fish
But it doesn't. As always you clearly have no clue what you're talking about. Endothermic lineage evolves to swim and eat fish. Ectothermic lineage evolves (independently) to swim and eat fish. They share some similar adaptations--convergence--to fish eating and swimming (because certain traits benefit anything that sims and eats fish) and yet they still differ in lineage-specific ways. This is evolution--descent with modification. Why an intelligent designer would choose to create three or four different types of animals with similar lifestyles but different lineage-specific traits is not clear. Why it happens from evolution is clear.
About selection pressure. You are confused. Natural selection is a statistical correlation between variation in phenotype and reproductive success (add heritability--a genetic basis--to the phenotypic variation and you get evolution). This correlation is environment-specific, and "selection pressure" is just a way to talk about these environmental effects on the phenotype/reproductive success relationship.
It's not the meaningless abstraction you seem to imagine.
why should convergent evolution make all animals in a niche identical? that's a pretty anemic strawman, I must say.
Still no conclusive evidence from JH for anything. His opinion is unscientific trash. Attitude = desperate loser. And all he has left is attitude.
"self-replication and convergent evolution don't explain anything. they're names for observed phenomena, that's all."
That is exactly what I have been saying from the beginning. They are labels masquerading as explanations.
They are what I have called non-explanations.
They are intended to hide the fact that evolution theory cannot actually explain the phenomena.
I think we may be getting a little closer to the truth now.
"So evolution theory is based on absurd assumptions like "self organization" and "convergence". "
No, convergence is just one of the outcomes of evolution. And self-organization, again, is an observation. If you are going to posit that some magic man performs all of the cell divisions and developmental steps between fertilization and birth (and beyond), then YOU have to supply the evidence.
Stop trying to tell us what evolution is based on. You don't have a clue. Knowing what you think are important buzzwords doesn't make you an expert on the subject, it just makes you a weasel.
you're the only one who's insisting that some straw-scientists are using them as explanations. here in the real world, we know they're observations.
except that it does, regardless of what you call convergent evolution. the evolutionary theory explains animals in similar niches evolving some similar but not identical traits excellently. what evidence do you have that contradicts this?
More inane and unscientific opinions from the idjit. The lies and the attitude crop up again as a desperate loser ployu. Still no evidence you are anything other than wrong. Still no idea of what you are doing. Still no refutation of the science which requires more science. It's almost like he has taped responses, and the above idiocy is one of them. What a loser.
People are really having trouble distinguishing between observations and explanations.
It seems every poster trips on that.
But it is interesting that they all trip in the same direction. In a direction that hides the flaws of evolution theory.
But then we all know that people are just pretending.
>"self-replication and convergent evolution don't >explain anything. they're names for observed >phenomena, that's all."
"That is exactly what I have been saying from the beginning. They are labels masquerading as explanations. "
That's what he SAID. They're not MEANT as explanations.
I got Samuel L. Jackson in my head now. "ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT?!"
Evolution by natural selection is the explanation. Differential reproduction due to heritable traits that affect reproductive success in an environmental context.
Similar environmental contexts--"selection pressures" to use the metaphor you dislike without understanding--often yield similar adaptations (traits that evolve because they enhance reproductive success in an environmental context). When this happens, we call it "convergence." It's not an explanation--natural selection under similar environmental selection pressures is--it's an interesting empirical phenomenon.
What's your explanation, asshole? "Intelligence"?
No, you do idjit.
Only in your delusional mind. You have shaken nobodies confidence in the science of evolution with your inane and unscientific meanderings. If there are flaws, why are you afraid to publish a paper pointing them out in Nature or Science? Or, do you know you are a blathering unscientific idjit?
The only one pretending here is you. In a typical desperate loser ploy. You must certainly be desperate, and you are certainly losing.
Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. That there are convergent traits on different taxa is an observation. The question is whether or not that fits into the evolutionary framework. And then you're looking whether it can be explained in terms of the observed mechanisms.
This is what you fail to grasp. The observation is convergent traits among different taxa. The explanation is how those traits come about. In the case of the different predators in the ocean, the trait comes about because particular shapes are better for moving fast through the water. In the case of darkness dwellers, there's no need for sight so there's no selection either for or against sight and eyes can be knocked out.
Mimicry is a similar phenomenon. There are animals that look well camouflaged in their environment, that is the observation. Whether that is compatible with the evolutionary framework is the explanation. If a particular butterfly tastes bad, then predators will avoid eating it. Otherwise they will get the bad taste. So if another butterfly looks the same as the butterfly that is avoided, then it should pass on those genes.
The distinction you're missing is between the observations themselves and the explanation for such observations. There are plenty of observations that wouldn't fit into an evolutionary framework. Convergent evolution is not one of them. That similar solutions exist for particular environmental constraints is perfectly consistent with evolutionary theory. Feathered bats on the other hand are not. Centaurs are not. Cats giving birth to dogs are not.
You're mistaking the observation and the theoretical framework to explain said observation. Stop it!
you're the only one who can't tell the difference.
some animals who live in similar niches have some similar but not identical traits = observation
live replicates and grows without external input = observation.
The theory of evolution explains the former observation, but it is not based on it. i've already explained above that the ToE is based on critters having different survival rates and breeding rates, and that some of the vectors that cause these differentials are heritable.
which part of this are you disputing?
1)critters have offspring
2)some critters are have more offspring that survives to have offspring itself.
3)some traits are heritable.
if you're not going to dispute any of these three, I'll have to conclude that you accept evolutionary theory, since that's all there is to it.
You mean that you have misunderstood another comment.
Yawn.
JohnHamilton wrote:
Are you high? It's one of the thousands of smoking guns of evolution. I'll see if I can explain it to you; I am not, however, a scientist - no doubt one of the many regulars here who are can point out any mistakes I make.
Okay, so evolutionary theory says that the offspring of organisms will 'develop' (via natural selection) the means, through descent with modification, to survive better in an environment.
In this case we can surmise that at one point in time a set of warm-blooded ancestors and - at another point in time - a set of cold-blooded ancestors both found themselves spending more time in the water. Those offspring that survived better in the new environment bred more descendants. That there are certain common features - streamlined hydrodynamic shape and so forth - reflects the reality that physiology is bound laws of physics.
Hence the existence of superficially similar - but historically profoundly different - creatures in the same place in present day. It's why you'll find in the sea all kinds of vastly different organisms surviving in the same environment.
That's a far more parsimonious and therefore intellectually satisfying explanation than your alternative - that a mysterious superpowerful being created millions of different kinds of creatures for absolutely no reason whatsoever other than his/her own amusement.
If there were one kind of fish, and one kind of bird and all humans looked the same then maybe a creator would be responsible - but they don't. Evolution explains diversity perfectly; creationism does not.
Time for bed. I predict that JH will repeat his unscientific thoughts with arrogance, ignorance, saying nothing new, and probably saying it ad nauseum. Just like any liberturd.
"selection pressure" is a metaphor?
That explains a lot.
Is convergence a metaphor?
Is self organization a metaphor.
If that is all that is being claimed I have no problem.
But we are closer to English Literature (and marketing) than science.
JohnHamilton @ 444
- Observation is what is seen (observed). Thus, when someone describes an observed phenomenon (an event such as the division of a cell or the birth of a child, the characteristics of an object such as the structure of an organ, or the interactions between objects).
An explanation is a the application of a logical framework which can be used to interpret observations. Be careful, because 'interpret' here doesn't mean provide a personal opinion about the observation, but to place it in the context of the logical framework.
Thus, I observe JohnHamilton making unsupported assertions to an audience of scientists, and explain this as the parroting of well known creationist straw-men pending further observations which may reinforce or disprove this explanation.
Evolution explains both the diversity and the unity of life.
Palm trees, platypuses, toadstools, leeches, slime molds, kelp, and Salmonella share an identical genetic code, cellular organization, and many many other perimolecular similarities. Unity.
In organismal diversity.
I fucking hate literalist trolls.
no, "selection pressure" is not a metaphor. it's a name for a complex environmental process"; a name, a phrase, a term, a label, an abstract description.
Yes, John, "selection pressure" is a metaphor. There is no actual physical force applied to an actual physical area, you fucking moron.
Were you an English major, Hamilton?
"Observation is what is seen (observed). Thus, when someone describes an observed phenomenon (an event such as the division of a cell or the birth of a child, the characteristics of an object such as the structure of an organ, or the interactions between objects).
An explanation is a the application of a logical framework which can be used to interpret observations. Be careful, because 'interpret' here doesn't mean provide a personal opinion about the observation, but to place it in the context of the logical framework."
This pretty close to what I have been saying.
But I have never claimed that interpretation was personal opinion.
Now there is confirmation that evolution theory explanations are interpretations.
And the interpretations are based on absurd assumptions.
We are getting even closer to the truth.
It is good to get closer to the truth but the result will be that people here will become even more desperate.
We are getting closer to the things that evolutionists do their utmost to hide from others and even from themselves.
For one poster "selection pressure" is a metaphor and for another poster it is not a metaphor.
Perhaps we will find the same contradiction when looking at convergence and self organization as well.
lol, I didn't even think of pressure as a physical force (like atmospheric pressure, for example). I suppose with enough squinting, the pressure part of selection pressure is a metaphor of sorts.
What am I hiding exactly? This I find quite condescending. While people here have gone to great pains to explain to you the basics of what they've argued, you've repeatedly insulted them, made bare assertions and refused to even argue among those grounds.
From my perspective, you're the one being dishonest. I've put my arguments up to be criticised, what I hold to be true and rational is there for criticism by anyone who chooses. Yet instead of actually trying to take the arguments down, you just keep asserting that I'm hiding something. What am I hiding? Why can't you actually explain where the flaws in the evolutionary process are? I was good enough to put up how I felt teleological explanations fail. Where are the flaws in those arguments. I don't get that, just accusations that I'm hiding something and being told that basic empirical facts are just assumptions.
Are you ever going to be honest in this exchange?
Why is it the people who talk about "flaws of evolution theory" seem to be completely incapable of pointing to a single one?
ah, I've learned something. "selection pressure" is a "dead metaphor".
:-p
People are disagreeing on the application of english. It must mean that animals that blend in better with there environment don't really have a survival advantage over those who don't...
Are you honestly that petty and moronic that you're looking for disagreements among people here as to the invalidity of 150 years of accumulated empirical evidence?
JohnHamilton wrote:
Perhaps you should demonstrate for us the correct way to discriminate between the two. You have provided an observation - 'My understanding of evolution makes it unable to explain the diversity of life on this planet'; now you've a chance to provide the explanation for why that is.
there is no contradiction. I just wasn't familiar with the concept of a dead metaphor. Sven is right, it is a metaphor.
stop being a literalist troll
Re my #476,
JohnHamilton, your scientific illiteracy doesn't count as a flaw of evolution theory.
oops!
you forgot to mention what these absurd foundational assumptions might be.
Here are the necessary and sufficient assumptions for derivation of evolution by natural selection by logic alone. Call it the ontological argumant for evolution.
Reproduction
Genetics
Mutation (imperfect genetic replication)
Phenotypic consequences of genetic mutation
Environment-specific correlation between phenotypic variation and reproductive success
Now note that each of those "assumptionms" is also empirical fact, verified thousands of times over.
That's it. Evolution by natural selection must happen; does happen. Convergence is an interesting outcome, but not the only one.
None of this is very hard.
What don't you get, Hamilton?
"I suppose with enough squinting, the pressure part of selection pressure is a metaphor of sorts."
Perhaps you could squint at "convergence" and "self organization" as well and tell us what you see.
Do you see invisible forces at play?
Or do you not see invisible forces at play?
If things are metaphors what do you actually see?
Like it or not these are legitimate questions when you get right down to the guts of what we are talking about.
JohnHamilton @ 472
Not at all. Evolution is an observed and observable phenomenon. Evolutionary theory (by which I assume you mean natural selection) provides the simplest explanatory framework. Observations fit the framework, and thus it is generally accepted by the scientific community.
In order to refute this one must either provide verifiable observations that contradict the theory, or provide an alternative theory which accounts for the observations more aptly (with fewer assumptions). I can't see anything in your earlier posts that attempt either.
One more point to ponder - contradiction is NOT argument.
there are only four forces: he Electromagnetic force, the Strong nuclear force, the Weak nuclear force, and the Gravitational force.
everything else are names for various properties, observation, phenomena, etc.
example: peer pressure. also not a physical force, but rather a name for an aspect of social interaction among humans.
btw, I'm still waiting for you to tell me which part of the ToE you're disputing, Hamilton:
if you don't pick one soon, and explain what's wrong with it, I'm gonna have to assume that you actually agree with the ToE
Which assumptions are absurd?
"Evolution is an observed and observable phenomenon. Evolutionary theory (by which I assume you mean natural selection) provides the simplest explanatory framework. Observations fit the framework, and thus it is generally accepted by the scientific community."
You are again not distinguishing between observation and explanation.
Evolution is not an observed phenomenon. Things change over time - that is what we observe. Evolution theory is a theory that attempts to explain that change over time.
But you are not alone. Almost every evolutionist makes the same mistake.
JohnHamilton wrote:
I predict for his next trick JohnHamilton is going to insist the sun doesn't exist because we describe it as 'rising' - which is a metaphor.
By that reckoning, no-one has seen relativity either. By that reckoning, no-one has seen the orbit of planets around the sun.
Observations are made, and the observations are put against a theoretical framework. In terms of relativity, one should expect to see light being affected by gravity. This has been observed. Just as one would expect atomic clocks at the poles and equator to show different results. They do. In terms of planets orbiting the sun, we should be able to predict their position night after night relative to our own position around the sun. We do.
The theoretical framework of evolution predicts certain things. Through observations of nature, one can see whether they fit into the theoretical framework. Look at the Lenski experiment for example. By putting the bacteria into a particular environment, it was able to breed bacteria better suited for that environment.
"Which assumptions are absurd"?
I have explicitly indicated the assumptions.
Scroll up and take a look.
evolution IS an observable phenomenon. read up on the lenski experiment, or take a biology class with lab, and watch evolution happen with your own eyes.
The Theory of Evolution on the other hand is an explanation of how evolution happens.
evolution and the Theory of Evolution are two competely different things. the former is an observable fact, the latter is an explanation of that fact.
Yep, and there is the "I know better than the experts" card that inevitably had to be played. When you're going up against the consensus view of learned men and women, eventually you have to claim they are all making such a simple mistake that should be obvious to anyone...
Funny how all these "experts" have missed it. Perhaps that says something about the conjecture?
Change is an observable fact.
If that is what you mean then I agree with you. If you go beyond that then you are going beyond observation.
Again, JohnHamilton, you can save time by giving us an example of a scientific theory that is explanatory - rather than continuing to assert that evolution is not.
So, which scientific theory would you choose as your example?
I had heard that goat-blowing causes a person to be unable to distinguish an explanation from an observation. Those who blow lots-o-goats have trouble distinguishing an assumption from an observation as well. The most extreme goat-blowers will develop anosognosia because there's something about the ingestion of goat semen that crosses the blood brain barrier and makes a person stupid while being utterly unaware of his stupidity.
JohnHamilton @ 487
OK, something to agree upon - things change over time. This phenomenon we call evolution. The change from one form to another over time. You agree that evolution takes place (evolution being the change over time).
Now, the question is over the theory accounting for evolution. Can you either provide irrefutable evidence contradicting natural selection, or provide a substantial theoretical alternative that accounts for the observations equally well? Any peer reviewed scientific literature that does either of these things will receive serious consideration of its merits. Unsubstantiated assertion is not an acceptable alternative for this audience.
so, "none of the above" then? because none of the things you're arguing against are on that list.
so you Agree with the ToE then. ok.
JH,
I know you are impenetrable, but let's try again:
Evolution is the best explanation for the facts that we observe.
Unless you have a better explanation? Remember "magic" is not an explanation. (I understand that you have problems understanding what an explanation is.)
JohnHamilton has been told evolution is an observation and evolutionary theory is an explanation. He's pretending (or is too stupid to understand) the people telling him these two things are confused about the difference.
So which is it, John? Are you pretending or are you stupid?
OK, something to agree upon - things change over time. This phenomenon we call evolution. The change from one form to another over time. You agree that evolution takes place (evolution being the change over time).
You call it "evolution" and that is a trick that evolutionists play. Call it "change" and we have no problem.
You should have no problem calling it "change" because you have agreed that that is all we observe.
We do not observe "evolution" as that word is understood by scientists and by the general public.
We see CHANGE.