I did not use an antagonistic tone in my questions.
You are making a statement that nested hierarchies are manufactured (evolution verified by nested hierarchies and nested hierarchies are verified by evolution). You basically are claiming that scientists approach biological evidence in regarding evolution in bad faith.
One nice feature of science is that one can overturn it with better methods/models/evidence.
Please consider doing an analysis of at least 1000 different genetic elements (including adjust your analysis for each element with proper treatment in its own field). Then construct a model scientific model that has explanative, predictive power and is testable . Then make a statement about the certainty of ToE.
The gist I am getting (I may be wrong) is that you are embracing a slightly-near-complete literalistic interpretation of Scripture. Hermeneutic does not equal parable that is a non-sequitor. I mentioned your interpretative framework to Scripture and you provided a story-based element example.
Given the difficulties and nuances of Scripture, why are you interpreting something literally when it is written that Scripture all speaks about Jesus Christ and it is difficult to understand (that the unstable and untaught distort). Did the author of Genesis get and related word for word a literal account of Creation dictated by God himself? Is God altogether concerned about whether oxen are muzzled during their plowing? How is it that the rock that followed the Israelites in the desert was Christ?
Evolution is supposed to be random. How can that be predicted?
Forgive any perceived aggression, that is frustration talking.
May I make my intentions clear.
I am not claiming evolution is a load of codswallop. Neither am I proposing an alternative in any shape or form. I am just demonstrating that Evolutionary theory, as it stands, is not the dead cert it is promoted as and taught. And, that it has some basic philosophical and technical flaws that are being swept under the proverbial carpet.
Any good narrative has a basis in fact. The trick is to discern where the facts end and the speculation begins. TOE claims no speculation? I beg to differ.
You keep repeating that absurd mantra, no matter how many times it is explained to be wrong.
It is like saying that refrigerators are random just because it is based on thermodynamics using probability theory in the treatment of the stochastic (i.e. random) motion of molecules.
There is nothing random about thermodynamic laws despite the fact that theory is based on treating molecules as moving randomly.
In the same way, MUTATIONS are random, evolution is NOT!
But there is a huge difference between living organisms and refrigerators. The latter is a machine and the former is NOT. So while evolution is not random, neither is it deterministic or controlled. Not every result of evolution is about natural selection and survival. The driving force of evolution remains variation – something which is ironically selected for as advantageous for survival. Natural selection is a filter – and a fairly weak one at that, typically taking millions of years to see its effects. You like to chant “random” as if that were synonymous with “evil,” while others see more “creativity” in the process. And what is the difference between random and creativity? Creativity is subject to a filter of learning what works, exactly like we see in evolution!
Mutations are random with respect to fitness. Evolution is not random.
How can a casino predict they will make profits from a table game if the game is random?
The only thing you have demonstrated is your rejection of the scientific method and your ignorance of the theory of evolution. I can’t help you with the first one, but we can help you understand what the theory of evolution is all about and the evidence that supports it.
This was your reply to a case of a genetic similarity present throughout one group but not present elsewhere in a wider group. Perhaps the force of the inference for heredity in what @Paraleptopecten posted is more obvious with an analogy.
In 1 Corinthians 14, most ancient manuscripts have the verses arranged much as we see in our Bibles. However, some manuscripts place what we call verses 34–35 at the end of the chapter instead. It just happens that for the first three centuries, the texts of the Latin church (called Western texts) all have the end-of-chapter placement. Texts from all other areas (and later Western texts) have the normal placement.
What is the best explanation?
Each scribe chose their own order for the verses they copied. It’s just a coincidence that all those Western scribes chose one order and everyone else chose another order. They could just as easily have each chosen a different order.
An early Western scribe, for whatever reason, put those verses at the end. Their work was passed down by scribes in the same community for centuries. Elsewhere, scribes likewise followed the order already present in the texts they were copying. Only when Western scribes had greater access to outside texts did they change to the other ordering.
Do you see how descent is a natural conclusion of a shared difference, especially a difference that seems to be a mistake? It’s because of the inference to descent that we can even talk of families of texts for the New Testament. And it’s as productive a concept in textual criticism as it is in biology.
Although I appreciate the analogy, and can follow it fairly readily, I am not convinced that it works because it knows that there is copying involved. So the descendancy is already established, only the specifics are in debate. In terms of evolution it is the descendancy that I am querying not the precise route, because if there is no descendency there is no route. And this is what I am claiming. That the connections for the inheritance theories rely on the notion that there is already descendancy (ie evolution). Does that make sense to you?
But thank you for at least trying to do what I asked.
Biologists actually use math to test whether the hypothesis of nested hierarchy is valid in their genomic and phenotypic studies.
You are making the assumption that the scientists merely assume. Your assumption is based on your lack of familiarity with the mathematical methods they use. In other words, your assumption is wrong.
@RichardG - What level of expertise do you have with bioinformatics and the statistical methods used in biology? Have you performed modeling with pseudo-random algorithms, for example a MCMC? Have you done population genetics modeling using the Hardy-Weinberg and its derivatives?
I am trying to figure out whether you understand what it is you are criticizing. It seems to me that you have some big misunderstandings about how scientists do their work. And many of those scientists are your brothers and sisters in faith, whom Christ has called to serve Him in a field you don’t seem to understand very well. (I am assuming that you are a Christian; please correct me if I am wrong.)
You seemed to think your analogy was evidence. Are analogies no longer evidence?
If you think randomness makes systems unpredictable then you don’t understand randomness, modeling, statistics, and the scientific method. We can predict how long it will take for a mass of Uranium-235 to decay even though radioactive decay is random at the level of a single atom. We can predict the long term profits of a craps table, even though each roll of the dice is random. We can predict that heat will spread through a system even though intermolecular interactions are random at the level of single molecules. We can predict the number of neutral mutations that will become fixed in a population over time even though both mutations and neutral drift are random.
If you think any of my examples are wrong, then please explain why.
In a purely philosophical context I fail to see how any algorithm can be used to prove a theory based on random change. An algorithm can be used to imitate a random change. (answer to the casino comment above) I do not see how it can either find or define them. But that is pure mathematics not science.
As soon as evolution stops becomng random it has left the original theory behind.(IMNSHO)
Richard
PS I am a Christian but I am not criticising from a Christian, especially biblical, perspective.
The ball bounces randomly among the pegs as it falls to the buckets at the bottom. What you get is a Gaussian distribution which is a predictable outcome for this random process. This is a basic feature of statistics, and it is these basic statistical models that form the foundation of the biological sciences, and the foundation for science in general.
Random processes produce predictable patterns. That’s what you can’t seem to wrap your head around.
What you demonstrated had parameters that restricted the randomness and even biased the result. At any one point there is only a 50/50 optional chance. There is a cumulative probability. Does Evolution have parameters?
Natural selection is a result of finite organisms living on a planet with finite resources. Nothing in this world, esp.as complex and creative as natural selection, is unavoidable or inevitable. You might as well have said that humanity is the unavoidable consequence of natural selection.
Natural selection was designed by the One Who created organisms and created the environment in which the organisms live. It is designed so that death is not the end, but a new beginning for a new generation with new challenges. Natural selection makes the most of all the resources available, so waste does not poison the system (until humans came along.)
You might not say that natural selection is designed, but Darwin got the idea from human agricultural practices, and we need to replace current poorly designed ecological practices with well-designed practices. Natural selection is not accidental. It is the way a well-designed system works.
I see it as a strength of the analogy that copying is possible, but not guaranteed. Obviously scribes copy texts, but they also create texts and cobble together mixtures of earlier texts and their comments. So the analogy puts all the options on the table that you also think should be on the table in biology.
Scholars don’t categorize a manuscript as a New Testament text because they assume all a scribe could do is copy, but because they read it and see evidence it is a copy. Similarly, the Dead Sea Scrolls contain a mix of copied texts, original texts, edited texts, and commentaries on texts. Scholars can still tell what is what (even if the lines are blurry). They can distinguish an imperfect copy from an original creation. Just as in biology, heredity is shown by the pattern of similarities and differences, not simply assumed.
Sure, it’s true that now expectations are low that any particular genome is a novel work rather than an imperfect copy. But this is due to the accummulated evidence that biology, unlike scribes, eschews wholly creative productions.
It always was. But you and everyone else refuse to tell me what you think the process actually is and does.
And telling me where to look doesn’t cut it. (see my post elsewhere)
If you really know what you are talking about you would be able to summarise and explain it. And I don’t want a cut and paste job either. That only proves you can look it up. It doesn’t prove you understand a word of it.
Like Mr Dawkins, I want proof that you know the actual theory, and not just the popular and Internet-driven dogmas
Yes. One of those parameters is vertical inheritance. This means mutations in other species don’t cross over into another species. This results in a predictable divergence between species over time. It also produces a nested hierarchy if they share common ancestry.
