Denial of Evolution VI.

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by garbonzo, Jun 4, 2013.

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  1. IncogNegro Banned Banned

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    To this day no one can "know" evolution...

    Unless their is a designer who created us in order for himself
    To better understand "himself"...

    So he recreates humorous new methods of explaining very simple things to complex societies...

    But those are just some possibilities ...

    Others are chaos, scientific truthful objective jargon, ultimate simplicity... And all these are still just fractions of our own evolution. Not the evolution of vastly more complex structures than ourselves...

    Personally I see no need to reinvestigate any long standing notions and preconceptions.

    Just update the most extreme values we have today with the most simplistic and original efforts from the past.
     
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  3. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    i posted the source.
    anyone that wishes to purchase it may do so.

    is my veiw biased?
    i never did buy the "we came from nowhere" story, i don't think we "came" from anywhere, there is no cause.
    but then again i don't see how lifes diversity can be explained without gradual changes.
    i do not have the answers, but sombody does.

    symbiosis was mentioned awhile back.
    maybe certain dna patterns are reciprocals of one another.
     
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  5. garbonzo Registered Senior Member

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    I will say it once more; evolution is a theory and belief.
     
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  7. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Just as is Newton's 2nd Law of Motion, or Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle.

    So what?
     
  8. AlexG Like nailing Jello to a tree Valued Senior Member

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    Say it as many times as you like. Add up as many zeros as you please, you still add up to zero.
     
  9. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    garbonzo

    Your ignorance is noted, repetition does not improve the quality of your stupid statement, it's still false. Evolution is a FACT, the theories we develop to explain those facts(IE the THEORIES of Evolution)are subject to change but even if they are all false it does not change the reality that evolution is an observed fact. Accepting explanations for physical facts is not belief.

    I'll type more slowly for the...er, slower posters.

    Evolution is a FACT. It has occurred throughout the history of life on Earth and still occurs today. Lifeform populations change into other, different lifeform populations over time and that is the definition of evolution.

    Theories that explain the mechanisms of evolution may or may not be accurate. Science is the attempt to explain reality, what we think we know is always subject to change given new knowledge, evidence and understanding. Belief is not the concept that describes this process, beliefs are hard to change and believers ignore evidence that contradicts those beliefs. We call that religion. Science and religion(belief) are two different, and I think incomparable, ways of viewing reality. People once believed that thunder was Thor's hammer, today we KNOW(not believe)that thunder is caused by lightning turning air into plasma. You may BELIEVE your god created all life 6000 years ago over a busy week, but we KNOW you are incorrect.

    Grumpy

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  10. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    A "slow" poster writes......

    Observations are facts. The models science makes to account for them - and predict new ones - are theories. Theories in science are always provisional, because subject to the possibility that modification may be necessary to account for new facts that do not fit the model. This happens all the time in science, and if it did not, science would be a dead discipline. No theory can be proved, but it can be either confirmed, or shown to be inadequate, by new observed facts.

    The creationist (whether through obtuseness or obstinacy) thinks that theories are supposed to be proven facts and this is why he claims so gleefully that evolution is "only a theory", AS OPPOSED TO a "fact". The point is Evolution, like all other theories of science, DOES account for the observed facts and DOES successfully predict new ones. Creationism does neither - it is intellectually an utter dead end.
     
  11. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Scientists are notoriously bad communicators, and they have indeed been inconsistent in their use of the word "theory."

    However, when they speak properly, a theory is a hypothesis that has been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt. Relativity, Plate Tectonics, Evolution: all of these have been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt by application of the scientific method. This includes empirical observation, logical reasoning and peer review, in addition to its other less well-known principles such as Occam's Razor and the Rule of Laplace.

    So, to come up with a term like "String Theory" is idiotic. This hypothesis is nothing but theoretical mathematics augmented by arm-waving. Unfortunately blunders like this lead laymen to believe that a "theory" is merely hypothetical and may be overturned at any time.

    Although the majority of us on SciForums are laymen, we are expected, at a minimum, to respect the scientific method, which has been tested exhaustively (and often with great hostility) for half a millennium, and has never come close to being falsified. In other words, even the scientific method itself has been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt.

    So when a hypothesis, like evolution, has been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt and has taken its place in the canon of science, we are expected to use proper scientific terminology and refer to it as a theory, not a belief.

    Yes, "beyond a reasonable doubt" implies that there is always a slight chance that any scientific theory may be overturned in the future. However, this happens so rarely that the canon of science is never shaken to its roots; in fact theories are not so often falsified as simply elaborated, the way Newton's Laws of Motion were elaborated into the Theory of Relativity, without falsifying the applicability of Newton's work in practical circumstances for creatures who will spend their entire lives in a planet's gravity well and never travel faster than a tiny fraction of the speed of light. Oh, and by the way, when a scientific theory is elaborated or falsified, it is always by a great scientist, never by a layman. In other words, it takes an Einstein to find the flaws in the work of a Newton.

    This is not the same as a "belief," which is nothing more than a hunch, or worse yet, a Stone Age parable that has been passed down for 300 generations without ever being critically examined--such as religion, just to pick an example at random.

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    Still, there are, broadly speaking, two types of belief. One is based on rational faith. My wife has been kind, supportive, forgiving and faithful for 35 years. So it is rational for me to believe that she will continue to do so for another ten or twenty years until one of us dies; I have evidence to support my faith.

    The claims of religionists and other crackpots are based on irrational faith. They have no evidence to support it. Just wishful thinking, or reverence for the belief or their father, whose faith was based on reverence for the belief of his father... which goes back to some caveman whose father had a brain fart and woke up believing in gods and demons and people who rise from the dead.
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    There is not that clear a distinction between observation and theory - to a (surprisingly?) great extent, one must have a theory to record an observation.

    So biological evolution itself - the progression of change in the structures and natures of the living beings on this planet - is an observation of fact, if one accepts various physical and paleontological and geological theories of rock formation and time interval and glaciation and radiation and chemical reaction and so forth. The Darwinian Theory then becomes a theory explaining the observed fact of evolution. That it simultaneously has explained so many other observed facts of biological structure and relationship and so forth, expanded its explanatory reach into matters of interest in many non-biological arenas, and withstood more than a century of unpredictable discovery and unforeseen hypothesis verification, is part of how and why it has come to be a "The Theory", fundamental to modern science.
    Facts are also provisional, in that they depend on the theory used to record and describe - or even perceive - them. A thousand years ago the "fact" of "sunrise" was not at all what we record as that fact today - as seen in the very terms we use, which date back to the former facts as incorporated into English.
     
  13. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    Er, yeah, but different theories. It isn't like evolution is recursive, depending on itself! So the theory of evolution and the fact(s) of evolution are totally independent of each other!
    Not really. For the purpose of logic, you have to assume the facts to be true.
     
  14. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    Notice I merely asked you which of these is a belief:

    • A species is a population of organisms that interbreeds and has fertile offspring.
    • Living organisms have descended with modifications from species that lived before them.
    • Natural selection explains how this evolution has happened:
    — More organisms are produced than can survive because of limited resources.
    — Organisms struggle for the necessities of life; there is competition for resources.
    — Individuals within a population vary in their traits; some of these traits are heritable -- passed on to offspring.
    — Some variants are better adapted to survive and reproduce under local conditions than others.
    — Better-adapted individuals (the "fit enough") are more likely to survive and reproduce, thereby passing on copies of their genes to the next generation.
    — Species whose individuals are best adapted survive; others become extinct.

    You cannot honestly say that any statement above is an expression of belief, which is why we draw the line between science and religion the way we do.
     
  15. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    what does it mean when those facts come from a respected peer reviewed source?
     
  16. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    iceaura

    So one must have a theory to see the difference between dark and light? Non-sense, most facts are INDEPENDENT of our preconceived notions, facts are always true, they are always there whether we perceive, record or describe them or not, our notions...not so much. A bone you dig up in your garden is still the same bone if you think it is from a dragon or if you can show it is from an Apatosaur(usually by association with other bones, not other theories). The facts don't change, your understanding is what changes. The more facts you incorporate into your world view, the better your understanding. When Newton's concept of gravity was being replaced by Einstein's concept, apples did not suspend their downward trajectories pending consensus of the physicists. It was still a fact that they fell from the tree, just as they always had. When thunder booms it makes not one whit of difference whether we think it was Thor's hammer or not, the thunder still boomed.

    Grumpy

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  17. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    Indeed. My original point, however, pace subsequent discussion, was to distinguish between the observed facts of the apple falling, or, say, of planetary orbits sweeping out equal areas in equal times, and the theory of gravitation developed to account for these facts. That theory has since been shown to be incomplete, of course. Which is what I meant by theories in science being provisional in nature. But, as Judge Jones pointed out in the Dover trial, that does NOT make them "only a theory" in the colloquial sense of a mere hunch or guess, as our absurd creationist would like to maintain.

    Anyway, Grumpy, to cheer you up, I've found a nice description of the phenomenon underlying creationism. Apparently it has a name: the Dunning-Kruger Effect:

    http://psycnet.apa.org/?fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121

    I think you'll agree we have a textbook example before us.
     
  18. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    leopold



    Facts are the world's raw data, all sources must use those same facts. Peer review deals with hypotheses and interpretations, not determining what are facts, though techniques and practices are subjects that peers examine closely if the "facts" claimed in a paper are at odds with those established by others(peers). It is not unknown for "scientists" to claim bogus facts, it is especially prevalent in the pseudo-sciences of Creationism and Young Earth revisionist propaganda, but has exploded among Climate Change deniers, you really can't believe a word they say. Their preconceived conclusion(man cannot affect world-wide climate)blinds them to the facts(man is destroying our present climate and big changes are already occurring). That's not science.

    Grumpy

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  19. leopold Valued Senior Member

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    true, but we aren't talking about "a scientist".
    it was a conference with some of the biggest names in evolution.
    most, if not all, were not creationists.
    why is it that this topic ALWAYS degenerates into this "creationist" horseshit?
    i think we have discovered a new scientific law.
    i wonder how long it will be before hitler and nazi germany are mentioned.
     
  20. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    It means that the alleged facts are indeed true beyond a reasonable doubt. Facts are derived from observation, and it's been well documented that two observers rarely see exactly the same thing. To the point that eyewitness testimony is virtually worthless in criminal trials--although that doesn't stop the attorneys from presenting it as evidence.

    Sure, some phenomena have been so common for so long that most of the population has observed them. In this case quantity can substitute for quality: if all of the millions of laymen who walk past this tree every day agree that its leaves are green (at least during the spring and summer), we don't have to track down a respected scientist to corroborate their testimony.

    But in actual scientific research, facts are not so obvious and they are not observed by so many people. So we rely on the observations reported by respected scientists, who are respected precisely because their observations have always proven to be accurate beyone a reasonable doubt.

    You're confusing facts with evidence. They're not the same thing. A fact can be (and often is) an explanation for an observation of a bit of evidence, not the observation itself. This is the kind of fact that starts out as a hypothesis, gets tested and peer-reviewed, and ends up being a theory.

    That's not what happened, and it's important to understand this because this is a common misconception of laymen. BTW, you mean Newton's Laws of Motion, not his concept of gravity. Newton's Laws were not replaced by relativity. Relativity merely elaborated on them, adding new operators in the equations. For us Earthlings who will never travel at more than two billionths of the speed of light, the effect of relativity on our daily lives is completely undetectable, unless you count the nuclear power plant that runs your TV and fridge.

    Sure. But that only accounts for one category of facts, a small fraction of the total we deal with every day.

    If I take this pill, I will stop sneezing. If you don't stop for gas, the car will stall before you get to school. The vet can make the cat feel better. That suitcase won't fit in the back seat. -- These are facts too. But they need to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt before they are actually elevated from hypotheses to facts.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    There are many possible differences, not one "the difference", to see in such a contrast. In most cases, the "fact" recorded will be something like the size of a shadow or the shape of a dark object or the wavelength revealed by an interference pattern or the relative density of a region of bone, and such facts are not independent of our preconceived notions - only in something like the internal recordings of pixel values that begin the process of taking a digital photograph would +- differences ("the" difference) between dark and light be recorded (by the millions) as one's "facts", and that is an odd use of the term.

    You need theory to get facts from data.

    Hardly - the very existence of the theory, its justification and value, derives from and rides on its usefulness in explaining the facts recorded and guiding the search for others, which is about as dependent as can be.
     
  22. Russ_Watters Not a Trump supporter... Valued Senior Member

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    That they likely are true.
     
  23. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

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    6,152
    Which of the following statements was held in controversy at that conference?


    • A species is a population of organisms that interbreeds and has fertile offspring.
    • Living organisms have descended with modifications from species that lived before them.
    • Natural selection explains how this evolution has happened:
    — More organisms are produced than can survive because of limited resources.
    — Organisms struggle for the necessities of life; there is competition for resources.
    — Individuals within a population vary in their traits; some of these traits are heritable -- passed on to offspring.
    — Some variants are better adapted to survive and reproduce under local conditions than others.
    — Better-adapted individuals (the "fit enough") are more likely to survive and reproduce, thereby passing on copies of their genes to the next generation.
    — Species whose individuals are best adapted survive; others become extinct.
     
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