Your “argument” amounts to “hocus pocus”. You’re too emotionally invested in this to realize how illogical your argument is.
You get to vote for your favorite political party, but not in science. In fact science is done by the outsiders by definition. But then again, since evolution is like tarot reading, you get to claim whatever you want. Especially about the remote past that no one can verify independently.
That’s not the gradualism I talk about - you know that very well but chose to ignore. And even those functions are made of 7 billions discrete individual points as of today. Btw, I see you also ignore ACGT. Nice!
How about the fact that 30,000 years of worldwide dog domestication has not resulted in anything resembling a cat, a rat, or anything other than a canid? How about the Lenski failed experiment that has produced nothing but e-coli starting from e-coli? How about the fact that a finch (Darwin’s or not) is still a finch and not a sparrow? How about the clear deciduous-evergreen separation (mix without hybridization)?
Wow, quite a bit to discuss with your last post.[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:56, topic:35830”]
In fact science is done by the outsiders by definition.
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What definition of science are you alluding to? Stipulating that science is only done by outsiders is an unusual assertion. Are you suggesting that you really don’t need to understand science in order to make significant breakthroughs?
I’m sure you know this isn’t true. As clever as your analogy to tarot reading is, it simply isn’t accurate.[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:56, topic:35830”]
Btw, I see you also ignore ACTG. Nice!
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I don’t think anyone is disputing that the DNA code consists of 4 different nucleotides. What point are you trying to make with this observation?[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:56, topic:35830”]
How about the fact that 30,000 years of worldwide dog domestication has not resulted in anything resembling a cat, a rat, or anything other than a canid?
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Lack of speciation in domesticated animals has been recently discussed. Two important things to consider are that 1) there is constant interbreeding and mixing of the gene pool, preventing reproductive isolation and 2) there is a very definite desire for dog breeders to keep producing dogs with reproductive viability. Losing reproductive viability would simply eliminate a particular line from the breeding pool.
Do you characterize the experiment has “failed” because a prokaryotic organism didn’t evolve into a new form of eukaryote? What would have to have happened for you to consider the experiment as a success? Although I haven’t read all of the primary literature that has been generated from the Lenski lab, I don’t think anyone was expecting it to generate entirely new organisms in the last 30 years.[quote=“NonlinOrg, post:56, topic:35830”]
How about the clear deciduous-evergreen separation (mix without hybridization)?
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Forgetting about evolution momentarily, deciduous and evergreen trees are extremely different genetically. I have no idea why you would expect them to hybridize, let alone think they’re lack of hybridization is a big problem for evolutionary theory.
I’m only trying to connect with you at a level you are comfortable on.
There’s a concept here, for anyone interested. The prototypical mammal didn’t evolve into anything other than mammals, certainly not into birds or back into frogs. The first vertebrate evolved into a variety of…drumroll…that’s right, vertebrates! Why would anyone expect a dog to not be a canid? Especially in only a few thousand years?
Thank you for these thoughts; I think the Lord would find your last sentence especially pleasing. I suspect some scientists are prone to intellectual pride and consequently, Scientism, but It sounds like you have not lost sight of “the things that matter most” and have a godly perpective on things.
When a biologist models various traits as a continuous, normal distribution, s/he gives up some precision. That seems to bother you. It does not bother the scientist, who is glad to give up some irrelevant precision in return for the enormous explanatory and predictive power that modeling over a gradient provides. So scientists are going to continue using those models, in spite of your protests.
This also applies to gradient models of genetic similarities and divergences. It is true that in a world where all biology research dollars were controlled by you, NonlinOrg, you could insist on purely discrete modeling down to the individual. Species would presumably be represented as clusters within in a hypercubic genomic space.
This research project would run into intractable problems, however. The math would become intractable over such a large number of observations. Moreover, you could never really build a model because you would not be able to gather genomic data from every individual organism in a species, much less every individual organism on the planet.
Given these intractable roadblocks to discrete mathematical modeling of genomics across the biosphere, biologists instead take samples and project them into the global genomic space using continuous mathematical functions. The genomic characteristics of a population are represented as a probability distribution function, which is necessarily a continuous function. There is no other way to perform genomic research, your preferences notwithstanding, NonlinOrg.
Moreover, modeling along gradients allows dynamic features to emerge. Observations of neutral drift, mutations, and selection in experiments such as Lenski’s and in numerous field studies can be applied across the biosphere over time, yielding insights into how life evolves over time. As a Christian, I assert that those biological insights are in fact insights into how God has created, shaped, and upheld the creation.
As discussed ad nauseum in a previous thread, Lenski’s experiments showed that the genetic profile of an E.Coli population changed in important ways over 40,000 generations. The speciating mice of Madeira have been pointed out to you. And speciation over the distance from finch to sparrow takes a very, very long time and certain selection forces in the environment. The examples you cite therefore do not conflict in any way with the theory of evolution.
The fact that you think those examples contradict the theory of evolution, when they in fact do not, suggests that you do not understand the theory of evolution.
In order to keep the discussion of Lenski’s experiment from progressing to ad infinitum, I am going to refer readers to my posts in the previous thread.
Indeed, for me personally and I think for many on this forum, that is one of the driving forces toward evolutionary creationism. When faced with the overwhelming evidence of an ancient earth, and the implications of that, along with the evidence for evolution, you are faced with either God being a liar and deciever in creation, or the historical scientific interpretation position is wrong. Ultimately, as the Bible declares that God’s nature and glory is seen through creation, to accept the young earth position means the Bible is wrong if you believe in a true and holy God.
I know your reply will go something like, “you are putting man’s word above God’s word,” but that does not hold up as creation is God’s revelation also, and even the Bible we read is the result of man’s interpretation.
Gotta to go to church, have a blessed day.
You are correct here, without a doubt! I think the Scient"ism" is what people often rightly object to rather than the science itself. However, most detractors find it very difficult to counter the ideology without attacking the science, too. But they are indeed two separate things.
Thanks for your kind words, @dredge. I realize that you are doing exactly the same thing as I am, just from a different perspective. I certainly appreciate that.
We don’t see it because there’s no reason that we should see it. The fact that you think evolution would produce horizontal gradualism suggests you have some kind of deep misunderstanding of evolution.
Fantastic. So, the only way you can be convinced is if no species ever went extinct … and all iterations of a population were still alive for your viewing benefit?!
Physicists know about black holes… but would you only be satisfied that they exist if we could make a black hole right here on Earth?
My dear fellow, you are arguing about something as ordinary and as reasonable as speciation. And there are already Young Earth Creationists who accept speciation.
So… please get with the program! Once you “confess” that Speciation exists, we can then move on to tackle the issue of large scale changes through speciation.
Naturally, the Creationists featured in the links below oppose Evolution. But they support Speciation. So when you have caught up with your peers in this matter, we can proceed to show why their views on Speciation are correct, but their views on Evolution are incorrect.
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A third link, which may not trigger a “box” around it:
Sorry, Lynn … no, it doesn’t help. I find creation to be a perfectly satisfactory explanation for what I observe in nature. Imo, the theory that all life shares a common ancestor is nothing more than a Godless creation story invented to meet the psychological needs of atheists. But it has managed to dominate the biological sciences to the point that it is now regarded as “fact”. Apparently, the vast majority of individuals who make up the scientific community have long been atheistic, so it should come as no surprise that their Godless belief system is the prevailing paridigm. As Lewontin used to say, they “cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Besides that, using ToE to explain an observation is not my idea of a applied scientific use. For example, if someome comes up with a theory that supposedly explains why “birds lay eggs and bats don’t”, of what practical use is that? This is no more than story-telling and “paper science”, as far as I can tell. (Incidentally, since birds do lay eggs and bats don’t, creation makes much more sense than common descent!)
In a discussion I recently had on another online forum, an atheist claimed that the theory that all life shares a common ancestor was useful in developing swine flu vaccine. I asked to explain how this is so, but no answer was forthcoming, neither from him nor any of his fellow-atheist posters.
You make a very bold statement by arguing that Common Descent has not been demonstrated… and that there isn’t any evidence for a mixing of kinds.
And here we have Lions and Tigers making fertile offspring of Ligers and Tigons.[/quote]
Lions and tigers and Ligers and Tigons are all still pussy cats - ie, they belong to the same kind.
When a certain field of science makes the claim that the evidence supports ToE, I strongly suspect that huge doses of wishful thinking, wild extrapolation and philosophical tendentiousness are involved. For example, the claim is made that Lenski’s mutating E-coli is evidence that supports the theory that all life shares a common ancestor (according to this logic, human beings will one day run the 100m-sprint in one second!)
Lots of repetitions of the mantra, “only evolution can explain this” always come in handy, too.
When scientists make claims about what happened millions or billions of years ago, I just tune out. They could be talking truth or they could be talking complete and utter nonsense - which is why I find listening to their theorising rather pointless and rather boring. Facts are so much more interesting than stories.
I am talking about predictions, not (primarily) explaining observations. The huge body of successfully explained observations is useful insofar as it tells us we can rely with confidence on the theory to predict future observations, like whether a drug will work the same and not be harmful across species. Or how similar their DNA looks and if it codes for the same proteins. It is the whole point of a good theory to have predictive power.
Huh? How so? Because it means flight would have had to evolve twice independently? Or counting insects and pterosaurs, four times. Considering how many gliding creatures there are to start with, that’s reasonable.
Which is entirely your right. What you don’t get to do is to then turn around and tell us that we’re engaging in “huge doses of wishful thinking, wild extrapolation and philosophical tendentiousness” when you haven’t paid any attention to what we’re doing or saying. (And don’t kid yourself that you’re here to learn if that’s what you’re doing.) If you want to engage the science, great – do the work to figure out what we’re doing and why we think what we think. [quote=“Dredge, post:69, topic:35830”]
Facts are so much more interesting than stories.
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Sorry, but there ain’t no such thing. Every fact, apart from simple sense impressions, exists only as a statement in a story, a story that humans have constructed to make sense of their world. Some you construct unconsciously – object permanence, the existence of other people – and some are constructed consciously and collectively. But they’re all part of stories – historical facts, geographic facts, scientific facts, all of them. If you’re using a computer and communicating by internet, you’re relying on theoretical stories that scientists have constructed. Your problem isn’t with stories rather than facts: it’s that you don’t like some of the stories, so you feel entitled to reject them out of hand.[quote=“Dredge, post:68, topic:35830”]
Lots of repetitions of the mantra, “only evolution can explain this” always come in handy, too.
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A gibe that would be more telling if you could offer something other than evolution to explain the data. You’re actually mocking people for accepting the best explanation available, when you have nothing better to give them?
So your argument goes something like this:
Premise: Scientists are atheists who need a creation story other than the biblical one for psychological reasons.
Premise: So many scientists are atheists that whatever the atheists think has to dominate scientific thought.
Conclusion: What atheist scientists believe for purely psychological reasons now dominates scientific thought and is regarded as fact.
But it is actually a myth that the vast majority of scientists are atheists. And you have multiple people on this website who are scientists and not atheists who have no psychological need for an alternate creation story. So it seems to me, your premises fail.
How are the multiple lines of converging evidence for an ancient universe not facts then? They are based on math and measurements. It is hard to get more objective than that. I don’t see how an atheist worldview plays into counting tree rings or ice varves. Or measuring red shift. Or calculating half lives of isotopes. You have to ignore piles of facts to think the earth is 6,000 years old and find the story that God created the world to look ancient even though it is pretty interesting.
Ah, @Dredge, I had such high hopes… I naively hoped that with enough assurance that Bible-believing, Christ-following, brothers and sisters with scientific experience agreed with the vast majority of evidence from multiple scientific fields that supports ToE, then you might open yourself up to scientific arguments. It appears I was sadly mistaken.
Who made this claim? I have never read anything from Lenski making such a claim. However, his data is very interesting and is useful for countering the argument that “mutations are never beneficial, only harmful!”. Here is the abstract from a very recent paper:
“Evolution is an on-going process, and it can be studied experimentally in organisms with rapid generations. My team has maintained 12 populations of Escherichia coli in a simple laboratory environment for >25 years and 60 000 generations. We have quantified the dynamics of adaptation by natural selection, seen some of the populations diverge into stably coexisting ecotypes, described changes in the bacteria’s mutation rate, observed the new ability to exploit a previously untapped carbon source, characterized the dynamics of genome evolution and used parallel evolution to identify the genetic targets of selection. I discuss what the future might hold for this particular experiment, briefly highlight some other microbial evolution experiments and suggest how the fields of experimental evolution and microbial ecology might intersect going forward.”
It contains nothing about common ancestry. You wouldn’t possibly be setting up a straw man, would you?[quote=“Dredge, post:68, topic:35830”]
(according to this logic, human beings will one day run the 100m-sprint in one second!)
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I really don’t know what to do with this other than point out that arguing in the absurd does NOT increase the validity of your argument.
Innovators always destroy the old dogma. Deeper understanding is damaging to previous shallower understanding. The old Darwinist dogma must go as the theory fails all five tests for scientific hypothesis: Observed? Replicated? Falsifiable? Predictive power? Illuminates other areas of science? “In the case of Evolution…well…no…no…no…no…and no” (Tom Wolfe); let me add “illogical”.
This makes no sense. 1) Pure breeds are kept isolated to stay “pure”. 2) Yes, so? How would this be different that “natural evolution”? 3) Breeders don’t want regular mutts but the craziest “most evolved” dogs - if possible, even dogs with wings, neon color, ultra smart, big as an elephant, etc. etc.
Before replying, read. It is presented as “evolution in action” - only there’s no evolution at all.
Yes they are very different and that’s the point: mix in transition regions, but no gradualism. Get it?
I don’t. You do! Remember “evolution”?
Please don’t insult by “explaining” modeling. Your problem is: modeling cannot contravene reality. And what modeling did Darwin do when he postulated gradualism? None whatsoever.
What does this fluff even mean? Bottom line, Lenski’s is sold as “evolution in action”, hence snake oil. What “speciating” mice? I searched and see more fluff that amounts to no evidence of anything. Besides, no such thing as species, remember?
Chris, your comments suggest that you gouge your eyes out to demonstrate that you don’t see how illogical Darwin’s evolution is. How does this look? And how about refraining from this type of comments?
A statement without support. Why am I not surprised? Better take some time to think through this horizontal-vertical gradualism.
What on earth is Lenski even saying? 1) and 2) Dude, you’re in a lab with conditions that you create - you are the “natural selection”. 3) Meaning what? Everything mutates all the time. What changed in the lab you control? 4) How do you know is “new ability”? What happens when you release these in the wild? Do they die or take over the e-coli universe with their dual metabolism? 5) Meaningless fluff.
