I’m aware of the extra findings that came later under Dr thewissen, so the x% of bones was not my focus. It was the assumptions that came with it from the very beginning with the ones they didn’t have, and continued along the line at least with Ambulocetus with the top of the jaw bone not being found. The blowhole was placed in a position which was later confirmed to be false. This was i’m guessing based on a worldview the nasal opening was evolving to the top of the head. Thewissen referenced Kutchicetus suggesting the opening nasal passage for Ambulocetus was also at the tip of the snout as well.
Regardless of all that, my main position I am bring up is not the assumptions they made, but my position as a layman is I can only accept and believe what I am told about whale evo. I have no method to verify the claim. I can accept and believe it to be true, but that is all I can do. Unless I can verify the science explanation you and others have given me than that is all I can do with it. Accept and believe.
I don’t deny whale evolution being true, I just can’t verify it in a scientific manner and I can’t use observational science to verify it either. Trust in the scientist in this situation is a requirement would you say?
You seem to be using two words in ways that I think are unhelpful. The words are verify and believe. You’re saying, some things I can verify and others I have to believe. As you said of the whale example:
But my approach is to treat all knowledge as requiring both verification and belief. For example, here are some of the things that I believe:
I believe that 2+2=4.
I believe that God exists.
I believe that the boiling point of water at sea level is 100 degrees C.
I believe that I am married.
I believe that evolution is a rational description of species origins.
I believe that Julius Caesar was the first emperor of Rome.
I believe that the earth is round, not flat.
If you have problems with this, I suspect you won’t be the only one! The point here is that I am defining belief in a certain way. It is not about faith versus reason, as some people say. It’s not saying that when we have run out of reason we have to rely on (blind) trust. My definition of belief is: Personal appropriation of truth. In other words, the reality is that the earth is either round, or it isn’t. There’s no “personal preference” here. But not everyone has the same opinion. So belief is personal. It’s the conclusion I have reached on this particular truth statement. If I believe the earth is round, and it ultimately turns out to be flat, then I was wrong. And all of us are in the same boat. We all have to “believe”. We all have decide which truth statements we accept, and which ones we don’t.
Verification to me means the process by which I come to believe a truth statement. This verification will be equally necessary for all my believed truth statements above. But because the sum of all knowledge is so wide ranging, we should expect the tools of verification to be equally diverse. Verification will also be different for different people. Take the statement about my marriage. You can’t possibly verify that statement in the same way that I can. But we can both have a rational belief that my statement is true. You can research my marriage certificate; you can trust my testimony on the matter. Both rational responses.
Which is why I asked about your method of verifying, say, the adaptation of Darwin’s finches. I actually am gently challenging you on this. For example, if you are using a method of trusting knowledgeable scientists on this, my question would then be, why are you unwilling to accept whale evolution using the same verification method?
It’s true that we have more data for Darwin’s finches than for a whale. But we still need scientific wisdom. I for one don’t have the skills to interpret the finches. Which ones show variation within one species? Which ones are in fact two different species? I need to trust the experts in both cases, and I would say that my verification method is rational in both cases.
Personally I find it helpful to compare scientific knowledge with historical knowledge, because I know a lot more about that subject. The further back we go in history, the more we find gaps in our knowledge. So yes, I can be more confident about modern facts than distant history. But to the extent that we do have knowledge, we can trust and verify it in the same way.
You can verify 2+2 + 4 as long as we know the value of 2 & 4, & what + & = means. You can run that experiment as many times as you want and 2+2 will always =4. You don’t have to believe that equation will turn out that way, as it always will and you do the test yourself. That is verified.
I believe in God and I have my personal reasons for it, but I can’t verify if God is true. That is why John 3:16 is so vital. He who believes. It wasn’t written as who can verify or prove God.
Same with Water, as long as we understand what boiling water is 100 degree’s , then water will [I guess in most cases, allowing for some strange occurance], then water will always boil at 100 degrees’. It is observable ,testable and repeatable.
I just read you bit about your marriage, so we’re on the same page.
You don’t have to believe you’re married, you can verify it, the only thing you have to believe is if you were married legitimately, which is a different kettle of fish… but only I can believe you’re married. if I get to know you, and see you’re a trustworthy person, then I could change to verifying you’re married by seeing a marriage certificate etc etc, but there is always that grey area that I am being deceived, so trust also comes into it.
I never said it was an irrational description. I’m saying It is a belief, for me anyway, which you said you believe in.
I accept and believe those last 2 beliefs, though I could be wrong.
If it is just a truth statement, eg the earth is a sphere, than no we don’t have to decide. There is no where that says we have to decide. What would come of a person if they didn’t decide. That simply makes no sense at all. The one thing as you mentioned is if you accept the earth is round and it turns out to be flat, then you deal with that at the appropriate time. Whatever the actual shape of the earth is, the functioning part of it is all that is important, be it flat or sphere. The shape to me is not as relevant, but I accept and believe it is a sphere and I could be wrong on that too.
That is your own personal process there. Is everyone’s processes going to be set the same? and who is it that sets those processes?.Telling people that that is truth and that is not?
Darwin’s eg is repeatable and there are many eg of adaptation written about based on observation, because of that I am willing to accept and believe it as true, even though I haven’t seen it myself. I am also confident I could find other eg of adaptation that would verify my initial acceptance and belief of it and change it to a verified account.
With Whale evo. I don’t have the scientific knowledge to reproduce the experiments scientist do. I can’t reproduce a pakecetus and wait mill of yrs and watch it change. Therefore I can only accept and believe this to be factual. I have never denied the possibility of it, but I also don’t have to commit myself to it either. I have the right to choose and that is what I’m doing, but if you want to believe it, that is your right, as long as you understand that you are believing in it and not saying it is a fact, as it is something you can’t prove to anyone. All you can do is send science articles on it or drawing or cgi video’s.
That’s fair, I’m in the same boat, but we can still learn about adaptation and go and observe it in real time for ourselves. You can’t do that with whale evo, you can only accept and believe it happened that way and it certainly may of, but I can’t verify it the way I could with observable adaptation, speciation and hybrids.
If you are confident with that, then show me how you would verify whale evo, or do you just accept and believe it and trust the scientist have verified it with what they say about it?.
What is your own explanation? Did God simply drop new species of whales in the ocean? They are intelligent mammals requiring parental care, but these babies would be out of luck. And of course, God would have to be careful not to be observed.
We’re not talking about if God dropped whales into the ocean. Different topic of conversation. We’re talking about the fact I can’t verify whale evolution and my only course of action is to accept and believe it. You won’t find any denial of whale evolution occuring in my comments, just my inability to verify the claim. Thanks for your comment anyway.
Sure . I have seen many fossil of whale evo and I can also attribute those fossils to separate animals as well… Either way, I can’t verify if they were created or evolved. I can only accept and believe it. I don’t understand all the science and observational science is out’ve the question.
Thanks for that thoughtful reply. The key point I would want to make in return is: We are largely talking past each other, because we are using the same words but giving them very different meanings.
Here’s an illustration (admittedly unrealistic, but I hope it will help). Imagine us having a conversation about a tree. I say to you, That’s a tall tree. You reply, No, it’s a short tree. At this point we would have different opinions, but I would be satisfied that we understood each other.
But if you replied, No, it’s a palm tree, I would scratch my head in confusion. I would say to myself, what’s a palm tree got to do with tall or short? Did he misunderstand me? Did he mishear me?
That’s the position we’re in with believe and verify. If I understand you, you’re saying some things can be known to be true because they can be verified. We can prove them to be true. We can run an experiment to measure the temperature of boiling water. We can calculate the area of a triangle.
But other things can’t be proven. We just have to accept them by faith. (The existence of God; whale evolution.)
And I disagree with that whole model strongly. For me, truth is truth. Knowledge is knowledge. We live in a unified world and that world is rational. It makes sense. It doesn’t mean that we know fully and perfectly. But it does mean that we can expect to find a reasonable basis for every belief that we hold, every truth statement that we adopt. I don’t want to live in a world where my only choice is to believe in blind faith that God exists.
Of course not. First, I defined the word so that you understood what I meant by it (as with belief earlier). Second, how that works out for each person will differ significantly. And that’s ok. We’ve already given examples of that. My verification of my marriage is by personal experience. You would have to verify it by some form of second hand research. But for you (precisely because you are not me) that process will be different.
What I’m really talking about here is epistemology. This is the study of knowledge. Is it possible to know anything about anything, and how do we go about that process of knowing stuff? And in that setting, I would personally prefer not to use the word verify at all. I tried to use it because it was an important word to you. But I would use the word evidence. What evidence do we have to believe/know things?
That’s how I would approach whale evolution. I would look at the evidence for the statements that scientists make. And if it seemed reasonable to me, I would be happy to say that the statements about evolution were true statements. I’d also be relaxed saying that some statements were only possible, if the evidence was there but not strong enough to convince me.
Note that I would not expect the same kind of evidence for prehistoric evolution as for current species change. That itself would be unreasonable, because we are talking about different areas of knowledge. Just as I would not expect the same kinds of evidence for the study of modern American presidents compared with ancient Egyptian pharaohs. But in both cases we can find truths that are reasonable.
As explained in my previous paragraph. I would simply add that this is a good picture of our differences. I don’t agree that my only choices are between (1) verify, and (2) just accept and believe. I hope I’ve explained clearly enough for you to see why.
You don’t understand the science. You can only accept (or reject) it and believe (or disbelieve). That’s fine.
But that’s you. That’s not everyone. Many of us do understand the science, are aware of the evidence, and try to verify things. But it takes effort. Effort that you are unwilling to even consider. We don’t just sit on fora and demand others show us how to verify evolution, we get off our backsides and do the work for ourselves.
We do not announce that if we don’t understand something well enough to verify it, then no-one else does either.
(P.S. you’ve been shown how to verify that the Earth is round so that you don’t have to just accept it, but apparently you can’t be bothered to look.
P.PS. some of us paid attention in high school and learnt - among other things - that the boiling point of water varies according to pressure. You clearly didn’t (and don’t) pay attention, which is perhaps the root of your problem.)
That’s all I’m trying to clarify. You have confirmed my position I can either accept or believe or reject and disbelieve.
That’s good I’m pleased you do understand the science and trying to verify things. You don’t know what I’m willing and unwilling to consider and why.
I have?. yeah maybe I did miss that. When I do accept and believe the science r/e round earth, it is not enough. Interesting. I’ve looked at some of those Go pro video attached to a balloon. Looked convincing enough. Does that qualify?
An attack on my attention span during my school days. Interesting
I don’t know all different reasons for different boiling temperature for water, but I made allowances for that, just in case.
Here’s my quote.
The point of these eg in a previous comment, differentiating between you don’t have to believe that water boils at 100 degrees. It’s a fact bearing no unusual circumstances, so belief isn’t required. What makes water boil at different temperatures wasn.t relevant to the conversation. Thanks anyway.
That brings back a memory of a fun moment when I was a counselor for an Outdoor School: we were in a marshy area and one of the sixth-graders had caught some sort of salamander. Something I noticed was that its tail was narrow in width compared to the height. When one of the students noticed that as each was asked to make an observation, I asked why that might be, i.e. what function that shape served. I don’t remember the other guesses, but one girl said it was probably good for swimming. So, I asked, how do we find out? The girl asked, you mean how to test these hypotheses? After a minute of discussion, the kids decided they would have to put the salamander into water and see if it used its tail to swim.
A worldview starts with how to define truth, which you’ve been doing indirectly quite a bit. Since many people don’t really know what a worldview is, such a discussion would hardly be unwelcome!
Actually that is specified as being under normal temperature and pressure. I’ve been in a place where it was really easy to boil water; making hot chocolate on a camping trip once I got the water temperature close to 90° C and the water was starting to boil.
Fine. You do realise that your comments aren’t relevant to the conversation I’m having don’t you. If you wish to discuss different temperatures of boiling water then we can have that if you like, but not on this thread as it isn’t relevant to the discussion
This is a thread about whale evolution and the the discussion I was having with Peterkp at the time was what he was describing as a belief. His eg was He believes water boils at 100 degrees, with my response being you don’t have to believe that, as that is a fact [using the eg of placing water on a stove, just to be clear]. If you would like to join in on that discussion if it is a belief or not you are more than welcome to.
I’m actually avoiding the topic of a worldview as much as possible, but it can be difficult in these types of conversations. My main topic of conversation in this thread was seeing if I was able to confirm, verify or prove to myself, that whale evolution did in fact occur, or if someone who has done it if they can show me how they did it, or do I have to accept and believe the material that I read and watch.
Using your eg of the salamader, you are able to observe in real time what the tail does when the animal is in the water. This is a good example of good science. Observational science. This is something I can’t do with one animal changing into another, so plan B is to read scientific reports, watch cgi video or look at drawings of whales evolving. As I always say, yes, this might be true, but how can I verify the claim and prove it to be true, without having to accept and believe it.
As a believer in God, one thing that is very clear to me and that is what it means to believe in something and currently parts of whale evolution is on par with belief, [those unseeable parts] when from my understanding of things it shouldn’t, or is accepting and believing in whale evo ok?
I would call that a belief, and one that can get you in trouble: I tried making Christmas divinity candy one year and make a total mess because I was assuming a 100° C boiling point, which in the circumstances was 8° too high.
I would say more than difficult, I would say completely impossible!
Your latest comments are still based on your concept of a split between verify/believe. I won’t go on about it, because you can read my previous comments. But this is precisely the definition of a worldview issue. We have started in different places, so we will continue to land in different places unless we address the knowledge question.
True – the closest I can come to those would be the change of a strain of bacteria into a new species as observed by a wildlife ranger, or the chain of species of birds around Europe to (IIRC) Iceland, where population A could mate with B and sometimes C, B could mate with C and rarely D, C could mate with D and sometimes with E, but no population could mate successfully with any more than two groups before it. When I learned about this is an ecology class, there was an argument over which population was original, which I suppose by now has likely been resolved through DNA analysis.
I say it’s “ok” because I can’t find anything in the text of scripture to negate it. I don’t particularly care, though I do find the argument that DNA is similar because God used a pattern that worked, because that would make of God a prankster or incompetent given all the crap in DNA!
“Observational science” requires definition as well to be clear where you are drawing a line. If I go into a lab, mix some chemicals, and get a result, that seems rather observational. Yet I am probably doing that because of historical data about results that other people have obtained, which I cannot observe because they happened in the past. If I have a hypothesis about the fossils I collected yesterday, I can think of features that I hadn’t looked for before and check for those to see if they support my idea. Drawing a line is not easy.
New species of animals can be created essentially instantly through hybridization, if the hybrids are able to reproduce but not breed with the parents (such as in Campeloma snails). Wolbachia bacteria can also cause barriers to animal reproduction between populations practically instantly. More gradually, we are seeing a new apple fruit fly (not the genetics Drosophila fly group but Rhagoletis) develop in the New World from hawthorn flies now that apples are available in the New World as an alternate food source for the flies.
The assumption was the error, not the fact that water boils at 100degree’s. That is a huge difference. Once you correct the error, you can be sure that the water will still boil at 100 and you can readjust the temperature to the required level of 92 degree’s. The only belief that is going on now, is if you follow all instruction correctly at the correct temperatures your Christmas divinity candy will come out the way you want it to or so it should.
That is fine. Nobody has to agree with my pov. You have the right to disagree. I’m actually not that black and white. I’m just focusing in on a particular point.
I’m always assessing and reassessing my understanding of the world around me and how it interacts with me and vice versa and my own thoughts and thought processing. It seems to be always on the move, so as I talk to different people about different things I’m always learning new things about people and myself. In 6 months time my view point maybe different, as it has ebbed and flowed depending on what I’m looking into.
[quote=“peterkp, post:89, topic:43863”]
That’s how I would approach whale evolution. I would look at the evidence for the statements that scientists make. And if it seemed reasonable to me, I would be happy to say that the statements about evolution were true statements.
I’d also be relaxed saying that some statements were only possible, if the evidence was there but not strong enough to convince me.
This is the sticky part, and probably what I am pointing my finger at or requesting from people. Because you may seem a bit relaxed about a possibility because the evidence is a bit thin so to speak, but the next person comes along and is positive the evidence is adequate and the claim is a fact.
I think we are on the same page here, but maybe reading it from different ends of the page.
I agree I can’t blindly believe in God that way either, but I also accept that my beliefs maybe 100% wrong. That just comes with the reality of belief. My testimony gives me the assurance that God exist and is guiding me through all of this, but the reality is it could be just another part of the human evolutionary change into a spirituality phase… This is exactly how I see whale evo. The evidence is there, but not the confirmation. It could be something else completely different. I’m just open to it, whether I’m right or wrong I’m fine either way.
I’m skeptical of what one classes as truth though, how do we determine what truth is… Today, people have their own truths, whatever that maybe and we’re throwing out what was accepted as fundamental truths for personal truths.
I do agree, with knowledge is knowledge. Deciphering that knowledge is where things can get tricky though.
I think it’s rational enough that it allows us to continue living as a species and have a growing population, and in some places very comfortably and in others, not so comfortable, which then starts to not make sense or maybe not be fair.