There is no scientific theory of evolution

Faith & Science Conversation
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That’s an intellectually dishonest statement. The article to which I linked is thoroughly and robustly referenced from the relevant literature. Additionally, I gave you a second link to a page which likewise contains numerous quotations from the literature. You didn’t even comment on that. So once again we see what happens; you ask for X, people give you X, and you claim it doesn’t exist.

That’s not what you were given.

That isn’t true either. Both of them give citations for the theory. The Wikipedia article even describes it in summary form, presenting every different part of the theory.

Darwin did indeed explain how his claims could be tested. He explained them in such detail that later scientists were able to test them and either falsify or verify them.

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Wikipedia admits it isn’t an academic resource and it does NOT reference the actual theory. Talk origins doesn’t reference the actual theory either. You don’t know what a scientific theory entails

Then you shouldn’t have any problem posting those citations

Nonsense- he was ignorant of most of biology. And his falsification requires one to prove a negative

Wikipedia:Academic use - Wikipedia “Wikipedia is not considered a credible source.”

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But I strongly suspect that Swamidass was citing the whole paper, not the abstract. :slight_smile:

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Darwin’s work does NOT contain the alleged predictions of the ToE that have been posted in this thread.

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I’ve already explained this. Wikipedia cites academic references, and it explains the modern theory of evolution point by point. I even linked it for you.

Yes it does.

I already posted them; they’re in the links I gave. Here are just two.

  • Douglas J. Futuyma in Evolutionary Biology, Sinauer Associates 1986
  • Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology, 5th ed. 1989 Worth Publishers, p.974

Irrelevant. He explained in detail how his theory could be verified or falsified.

No it doesn’t. Scientists have already falsified some of his claims. Others have been verified.

So what? The academic sources cited in the article are credible sources. Here are the three citations for the theory of evolution as described by the modern evolutionary synthesis.

  • Huxley, Julian (2010) [Originally published 1942]. Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. With a new foreword by Massimo Pigliucci and Gerd B. Müller (Definitive ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51366-1. LCCN 2009014111. OCLC 317824678.

  • Mayr, Ernst; Provine, William B., eds. (1998) [Originally published 1980]. The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology. With a new preface by Ernst Mayr (1st Harvard University Press pbk. ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-27226-9. LCCN 98157613. OCLC 851069127.

  • Mayr, Ernst (1982). The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-36445-7. LCCN 81013204. OCLC 7875904.

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No, he did not. If you disagree then post what he said on how to test the claim the eye evolved. Seeing we still don’t know the details this will be interesting

Darwin on falsifying his claims:

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” [Darwin1859, pg. 175].

See- that is asking one to prove a negative

And those books don’t contain a scientific theory and they sure as heck don’t contain the predictions of the ToE posted in this thread.

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So they authored the ToE- is that your claim?

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Of course he did. That’s why scientists have falsified or verified his claims. Have you actually read what he wrote?

Well IDers believe they have already falsified this very statement, so please explain it to them. You’re claiming that the IDers are talking nonsense. You could falsify this claim even as stated, by showing that even an evolutionary process would take more time than necessary to evolve the organ (that’s one approach taken by IDers, though unsuccessfully). Anyway you can also equally falsify it by proving a positive, by providing evidence that these specific complex organs were designed. You know what is asking someone to prove a negative? The argument from irreducible complexity. Additionally, there are many other ways of falsifying evolution, like finding a rabbit in the Cambrian layer, or finding genetic evidence which disproves universal common descent.

Clearly you haven’t read them.

That is not my claim. You are deliberately ignoring what I wrote, and deliberately misrepresenting me.

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What an interesting comment. You ask a question, assume an answer (which is wrong) and then make a statement in the form of a question based on your wrong answer. Im not sure there is much point in continuing, but the fact is that we know exactly how many mutations it took to evolve a human from a non human. Plenty of literature on that. Google it on Pubmed. As for being able to predict using the formula, yes, as long as all the information is known. The formula has been very predictable when such information is known. Much like Schoedinger’s equation, which has been confirmed as the correct theory of quantum physics, and which cannot generally be solved for large atoms. As I said, (and as Joshua reiterated) this is the basic formula related to population genetics, there are many more complex derivations of the theory that explain more details.

What you (and to some extent, GJDS) need to understand is that biology is notoriously immune to simple mathematical analysis, which is why so many formulations of the ToE are textual. I provided this equation to you to demonstrate the error of your initial statement, and others have greatly amplified on that. If you want to persist in your mistake, that is your right. I dont see much point in continuing. Happy Christmas.

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54

Really? You must have a difficult time finding a date.

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…and illustrates the validity of the Theory of Evolution in the process.

Meanwhile, this thread reminds me why Poe’s Law exists.

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It is a common misconception that scientific theories provide detailed answers to real world questions. They can do so, but usually theories are based on models of reality. GJDS will confirm that a basic law of Chemistry, the “Ideal gas law” (PV =nRT) only works perfectly for ideal gases, not for real gases. It comes close, but there are much more elaborate formulas that take into account the real world situation for gases.

Does this make such a theory useless? Not at all. The basic gas theory says (correctly) that the pressure and volume of a gas are reciprocal, all else being equal, so the more pressure, the smaller the volume, and so on. For ToE, the basic theory says that the change in allele frequency (evolution) is proportional to the fitness of the various genotypes, which is where natural selection comes in. In most real world situations, (like real world gases) fitness might be hard to measure, changes in allele frequencies may be very complex, population assumptions might not hold. That is the nature of all scientific theories.

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This is an approach that often irritates non-biologists such as myself. Laws such as PV=nRT have been tested to the nth degree and we have classified ideal and non-ideal situations, and have shown the relationship is so robust that we can use it in complicated systems such as chemical kinetics of gaseous systems over a considerable temperature range.

I have gone through a portion of the supplementary information that Joshua mentioned, and in this you will find the method is a far cry from the wave equation and other insights of chemistry (or physics). I referred to the derivation of the wave equation - if you can show me how it breaks down for large molecules, I would be very, very interested. If you can demonstrate the derivation of the maths tools used by biologists, is as robust as the wave equation, you will earn a seat in many academic institutions.

Sy, you make a mistake all too common amongst biologists, which is the use of mathematical tools, is in some magical manner the same as the derivation of laws as mathematical and the theory underpinning such - PoS have discussed this at length and I have as yet, not found any of these well informed chaps disagree with the notion that ToE is autonomous within theories of the natural sciences (ie cannot be derived in a manner shown by physics and chemistry).

A pertinent expression that may be closer to your mistaken outlook may be to examine the Arrhenius expression often used for chemical kinetics of gaseous systems - this is derived from data, and also relies on a simplified view of such systems. It may not be a good approximation for complicated systems and chemists have spent years of effort to develop a more robust theory, despite the fact the former has proven very useful on many occasions. Chemists are not upset when the inadequacies of the simpler formula are pointed out - it seems biologists have a very negative response in situations involving doubt re their work.

The nature of science and all theories is to admit that when a theoretical outlook is criticised, prominent workers in the field regard that in a positive manner and do not become overly defensive.

My original point was a general one that has received attention from biologists (and not chemists) - it has proven extremely difficult to quantify a link between genome data and the end result, the phenotype - so much so that some appear to argue for another understanding of species, while others insist the classification is valid. Dismissing this fundamental problem as “this is how science works” is grossly mistaken, and I think you should focus on biology instead of “beating a dead horse” by discussing chemistry as analogous to biology.

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I think the first part of your reply is based on a misunderstanding of the point of my comment to Joe G. Of course, I am the first to admit that biology is woefully non mathematical, and have written about this quite a bit on my blog. And I was not comparing biology to chemistry, nor was I trying to suggest that the gas law is similar to biological laws. At least that wasnt my intent, regardless of how it came out. I was trying to counter Joe’s apparent argument that population genetics cannot predict evolutionary outcomes and is therefore not a theory. Perfect predictions are not what makes a theory, which relies on the availability of good models. Ideal gases are, in fact good models, and the problem with biology is the absence of such models.

I didnt write that the Schroedinger equation breaks down, but that it is difficult to solve for elements much heavier that hydrogen. My point was that increasing complexity does not kill a theory, but it can make it harder to apply to real world situations.

You last paragraph actually makes my point in a way. The difficulty in quantifying a link between genome data and phenotype, is due to the extreme complexity of phenotype characterization. Simplified to a single gene and a single protein, that difficulty is reduced greatly. We can of course easily and precisely relate genomes (nucleotide chemistry) to phenotype (protein chemistry) in this case. The problem is that (except for some situations like monogenic inherited diseases) a single protein is not usually a good model for an entire descriptive phenotype, like being a good hunter, or being fast or having a tail. Even worse is our current appreciation of the role of gene expression (in addition to sequence) in determining actual phenotype, which adds an entirely additional level of complexity.

So, no I do not believe that biology is analogous to chemistry. Far from it. I also dont believe biology is analogous to software engineering, or the physics of thermodynamics or anything else. This is why many anti evolutionists get biology wrong. But this thread is not about that. Its about a simple false statement that there is no theory of evolution. As many here have demonstrated in various ways, there most certainly is such a theory, and it is a very exciting theory indeed, because it is in the process of being continually improved, tested, criticized and strengthened. This kind of activity has gone on many times before in science (the 1920s in physics for example) and I think biologists are lucky to be active in this period.

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63

Darwin never said how to test his claims. I read his book and that is missing. If you think I am wrong then please post his methodology.

Also Darwin and both of your references endorse what Dawkins calls “blind watchmaker evolution” which is an untestable scenario. Even Joshua says it is nonsense. Any “theory” that makes untestable claims is not a scientific theory.

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You already quoted one.

Repeating this after you’ve been corrected many times by different people, won’t make it right.

But the theory of evolution is testable. You want to falsify it, go find a rabbit in the Cambrian.

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You have clarified matters and I have little to add regarding biology and chemistry. My comment(s) are not meant to be part of any debate about the obvious - of course evolution is the current paradigm of biology and I see no point debating this, nor am I inclined to tell biologists how to do their job.

My interests are related to what it is to be human and theological implications of science and faith. In this context I argue that ToE in whatever form it takes, cannot adequately address questions such as personhood, and yet, when I look through some papers on this, I run into seemingly endless claims in scientific papers, that read far more like an ideology. For example, some claim that once they provide a direct link between genome and phenotype, we will see evolutionary neurology, how humans became humans, explain consciousness, and many other claims. This strikes me as absurd, since the very notion of species is debated. Thus such discussions are put as scientific but in fact are wishful thinking and disguised ideology.

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I agree with you. I believe fairly strongly that most such predictions of imminent knowledge of the nature of human beings are doomed to fail. We biologists cannot have it both ways: we cannot proclaim the enormous complexity of our field, and at the same time imagine that there will suddenly be simple solutions to these complex issues thanks to some imaginary, hoped-for breakthrough. Needless to say, this is NOT a popular view among my colleagues, so please dont quote me. :slight_smile:

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78

I can prove evolution and disprove evolution…it’s kind of easy because the mere word “evolution” is merely a description of change over time and that’s a vagery I can jock about a lot. First I show no change over time…then I show circular change over time and brush upon how one might go about arguing “two are merely one and the same”. The showings are examples of no evolution and null evolution. Then I talk about evolutions theories being falsifiable and thus scientific. I then provide examples of how say “math” is not necessarily a good measure of the language of science…it’s just the “map” of reality.

Disproving evolution…finding a Devonian rabbit. Well, I have a mold of a skull of a “fox” from the Permian. It’s almost Devonian and almost a rabbit. I recall it is called “Dvina”, by those who sold it to me after I saw the original in the travelling display case guarded by very cross looking dosants.

Does that mold count as a, “Devonian Rabbit”? Not much change over time when I saw it. The thing is pretty rabbit like. or is our modern day rabbit a flashback to some older proto-mammalian example?

As to the larger issue of there being scientific theory of evolution…Let me attempt a hypothetical falsification based on lack of sufficient morphological change in say 240 million years…and lots of rock layers.

I say, there probably were “rabbits” a long time ago…at least in the Permian. We just haven’t found them yet. (Devonian…nah…give up…it is a stretch. You can barely find anything in the Devonian that has lungs). Anyway…the skull mold I have is something I bought from a travelling show of Russian fossils from Perm. It’s almost a rabbit. I set it side by side with a raccoon skull and claim they are the “same”. It confuses my friends who can’t imagine the Permian or convergent evolution. There are differences for sure…but me putting them next to each other isn’t very fair. I’m showing off.

What I show is mere circular evolution suggesting that evolution is a myth…certainly a contradiction in those who believe exclusively in “progressive” evolution. Convergent evolution does indeed happen. So…there is this niche thing that critters keep finding themselves going back to and occupying. God makes these “Gardens of Eden” and critters keep finding them and getting kicked out. Last time it was because we decided to think for ourselves…AND be immortal. God does not seem to tolerate both…so now we are mortal.

Anyway evolution is kind of like history. It’s there but it’s not there. Evolution is largely a historical reconstruction. It is barely scientific. The only way to show discovery is evolutionary is subject the sets to “falsification” (the real/Kuhn test of science) is if somebody else can try and go out and find more. If they can’t be found…the discovery is NOT scientific.

Is this math? Nope…math is merely a map of what is. Is it a theory…yup. The acid test is if somebody else can actually find the same evolutionary pair thing a long way away. See…evolution has it’s math (organizing methodology)…but it’s graphic…map like…

FYI… Real math-like studies of evolution are usually mere statistical comparisons of populations…in the same “layer” of rock and in different layers of rock. I’m not buying into statistics when we have GOD to consider. Recall the “God does not play with dice” statement by Mr. Einstein.

OK…back to the rabbit. My comparison is basically my pulling a rabbit out of a Devonian hat. Maybe someone will find a Permian skull that is more rabbit-like and we can call it LagoDvinia and we can say there were “rabbits” long ago because they pretty much do the same thing. Eat and hop about. Genetically and morphologically they may be pretty different but…functionally, if two critters walk like rabbits and talk alike…well they are effectively rabbits…I guess and presto…evolution isn’t.

Can we go the other way…prove evolution happens. Well…that’s hard because fossils don’t talk much…and because of this problem of geographic time. What happens vertically in a rock succession is a manifestation of what is occurring laterally. We are reading a book by nibbling at the edges of the pages of book chapters scattered all about creation. Macro-evolution is what we decipher from those nibbles. Heck…now we don’t even think dinosaurs are extinct. Sheesh.

It’s hard to keep these discussions on track because the language useage in most questions is kind of vague.

So…does the Devonian rabbit used to predict the demise of evolution have to be a true lagomorpha to be a rabbit or can it be just a teensy bit different…like being totally dead, 240 million years older and 5,000 miles away…(it being Russian and all).

I say evolution is god’s way of making us humble. The hammer of God “mantle plume” that popped out of the earth during the end Permian that trashed the world is a darn good Noah prequel. As the bigger issue…there being no so called scientific theory of evolution. I disagree. There is certainly a theory…trouble is that it hasn’t been codified into a law too well…unless you understand the laws of superposition and stratigraphic correlation and read the “works of god” manifest before us…not just the mere “words of god”…sacrilege as it may sound.