evolution, Darwin, religion, other musings

[Fraggle Rocker]

so if somebody for example were to say. "it is proven to be true" or "it is a fact" or "we have proof its true" thats not correct to say such things?

It is incorrect to say that any scientific theory has been proven true, in the halls of science. But we have to allow laymen to use different rhetoric that suits their practical purposes. So whether this statement is correct depends on where you heard it. In a science class it is wrong. In a newspaper it is permissible.

As for the word "fact," it's okay as a description of an observation. The ice caps are melting, the moon revolves around the earth... those are facts because they have been observed. Kangaroos give birth without placentas, gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance... now are those facts? These are more general statements. We have examined thousands of kangaroos and they reproduce without placentas, but can we assume that they all do? Every celestial body we've observed obeys the inverse-square law of gravity, but does that mean the ones we haven't seen yet also do?

The chance is infinitesimal that we don't understand marsupial reproduction or the movement of distant stars as well as we think we do. But it is not zero. That keeps scientists from calling them "facts," but laymen have different standards. "Fact beyond a reasonable doubt" works for them.

Facts will tell you Darwin made a prediction. That a hundred years after his observance those famed finches on an isolated island that a new species of bird would develop upsurping the previous in what he called natural selection.

Darwin was scratching the surface of an entire new discipline, evolutionary biology. Paleontology was barely a science in his day, people didn't really know what to think of the fossils they were digging up. The part of his theory about new species of vertebrates being able to develop in a hundred generations was wrong, but it turns out that that was not a particularly important part of the theory. The discovery that it actually takes hundreds of thousands of years--or millions depending on your definition of "species"--didn't affect the validity of the theory in any significant way. On the other hand, the discovery of DNA in the last century supported the validity of the theory by going deeper and beginning to explain the details of how evolution works at the microscopic level.

Newton's theory of physics likewise turned out to have an error in a detail. His equations require adjustment as the velocity of an object approaches the speed of light. Like Darwin, he had no way of realizing that was an issue. Darwin had no DNA and Newton had no nuclear reactors. But this didn't make Newton wrong.

More than a hundred years later not only have no new bird arose but the birds return to there original state. apparently unchanaged.

Surely you're educated enough to know that there is a vast body of evidence indicating that new species have indeed arisen, the process just takes longer than a hundred years. For you to fixate on the hundred-year hypothesis and ignore the rest seems like you're taking us on a time warp into the 1920s. There's an entire body of knowledge that you're ignoring.

The second thing to consider is that the defintion of "evolution" is perhaps the most obscure to define. Many scientist have different definition of what is evolution. Not only that but there is also problems deciphering exactly what constitutes a NEW spiecies.

This is semantics, not properly science. New species have arisen. Splitting hairs over exactly what point gives us a new species rather than a new population of an old one is not much different from the old chicken-egg question that first-year philosophy students amuse themselves with. A tiger is clearly a different species from the first primitive carnivore of which we have fossils. Whether the various forms along the way can be grouped into five intervening species or seven does not gainsay the process of evolution. Our new instruments are discovering traces of fossilized DNA so we may actually be able to answer these questions in a few years. Stay tuned.

Inherent to the problem of evolution which none have addressed directly is the improbablity of it's begin

Probability is irrelevant after something has already happened. By definition the probability is 1.0. Life began on earth. The fact that we haven't got all the details of how that happened doesn't invalidate our knowledge of what happened after it had already begun.

and process as well what drives evolution, which there is no consensus.

Just because we haven't figured out all the details of evolution doesn't mean we don't agree on the overall form. That's like saying we can't be sure we're at war because we don't know who's shooting the missiles at us yet.

Truely as long as there is such conflicts in the theory it really does not warrant "theory". It has yet to set it's self aside from it's original hypothesis.

That is simply not the way science works at all. You need to study it a little more. I think you're also exaggerating the "conflicts" among various mechanisms in evolution. We've made tremendous progress since Darwin and the theory continues to be consistent with all evidence. It has been refined and much detail has been added, but it's still sound.

I could not put any faith in the theory. It would be as believing in magic.

I'm sitting on the edge of my seat with anticipation wondering what exactly you do believe in, if not evolution. If this is a backhanded way of trying to insert religious fundamentalism or some other kind of woo-woo into a scientific discussion, I'll give you an infraction personally and not wait for the Biology monitor to do it.

[Yorda]

Evolution is a Fact like gravity... but the Theory of evolution like the Theory of gravity is nut fact. Evolution is a fact because it means change, and everything changes.

[Saquist]

As for the word "fact," it's okay as a description of an observation. The ice caps are melting, the moon revolves around the earth... those are facts because they have been observed. Kangaroos give birth without placentas, gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance... now are those facts? These are more general statements. We have examined thousands of kangaroos and they reproduce without placentas, but can we assume that they all do? Every celestial body we've observed obeys the inverse-square law of gravity, but does that mean the ones we haven't seen yet also do?

good point but Facts and predictions are entirely different. Facts are simply observed and reobservable phenomenon.

Newton's theory of physics likewise turned out to have an error in a detail. His equations require adjustment as the velocity of an object approaches the speed of light. Like Darwin,

I can not concur with this premise. Newton's observation were not simply from a perspective. It was mathematical. It was logic. In comparison nothing about what darwin suggested was true in the course of a prediction. And it still remains untrue today.


Do animals change? Yes. An observable Fact.
Do animals evolve? Never has this been observed.

And yet here is where all those differing defintions come into play..

For you to fixate on the hundred-year hypothesis and ignore the rest seems like you're taking us on a time warp into the 1920s.

The begin is always a delicate time. Returning to the roots we see intentions the process of reason why we believe the things we believe today. By looking back we can appreciate where we are. Do no underestimate the importance of the past.

There's an entire body of knowledge that you're ignoring.This is semantics, not properly science. New species have arisen. Splitting hairs over exactly what point gives us a new species rather than a new population of an old one is not much different from the old chicken-egg question that first-year philosophy students amuse themselves with.

I don't believe there is any KNOWLEDGE I have ever ignored. Evertything can be classified however relevancy and sematics are labels we adhere to arguments.

If there is one thing that I've learned from the respectful scientific perspective, is that the truth is in the details. It was Oppenheimer who split the atom in the name of war by the tool of science. That's it's purpose, Divide and examine in intimate detail...There is no magnification too small to view composition of matter any energy, likewise theres no detail too small and there is nothing insignificant in examining the origins of the theory itself.

-. Stay tuned.Probability is irrelevant after something has already happened. By definition the probability is 1.0. Life began on earth. The fact that we haven't got all the details of how that happened doesn't invalidate our knowledge of what happened after it had already begun.Just because we haven't figured out all the details of evolution doesn't mean we don't agree on the overall form.

According to The New Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Probable means:

apparently or presumably true (a~hypothesis) 2: likely to be or become true or real.

Thus probability of evolution bringing rise to life: evolution furthering life through biological boundaries is viable question. This becomes a practical consideration when we attempt explain the rise of life on the Earth.

Seeing as no one has never seen animals transform as evolution suggest it becomes the only question that matters. Is evolution possible?

Fred Hoyle:

"The big problem in biology isn't so much the rather crude fact that a protein consists of a chain of amino acids linked together in a certain way, but that the explicit ordering of the amino acids endows the chain with remarkable properites...If amino acids were linked at random, there would be a vast number or arrangements that would be useless in serving the purposes of living cell. When you consider that a typical enzyme has a chain of 200 links and that there are 20 possibilities for each link, it's easy to see that the number of useless arrangements is enormous, more than the number of atoms in all the galaxies and there are upwards of 2000 of them mainly serving very different purposes. So how did the situation get where we find it to be?

Hoyle then adds: "Rather than accept the fantasically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act."

A fellow on these forums named Ophiolite said that Hoyle was wrong and that his calculations were in error. However I confirmed these numbers on a T-89 Texas Instrument's cacluator. I must say I could track that many zeros.

Nor did I find any disagrement on the internet to Hoyle's works which have been in publication for some time.

Francis Cricks says of the origins of life. "there is too much speculation following too few facts."

Proffessor J.D. Bernal offered some insight in the book the Origin of Life: "By apply the strict canons of scientific method to this subject [the spontaneous genereation of life] it is possible to demonstrate effectively at several placees in the story, how life could not have arisen; the improbabilities are too great,, the chances of the emergence of life too small."

And the picture has not improved at all today.

Professor Maciej Giertych of the institute of Dendrology of the Polish Academy of Sciences says that Life is information.

"We have become aware of the masive information conained in the genes. There is no known way to science how that information can arise spontaneously. It requires an intelligence; it can no arise from chance events."

Now considering we've never seen evolution known as macro evolution nor were any of us present when life began and have yet to observer it's creation even today the probability of it have ever occured by chance are simply magical

It is simply not the way science works at all. You need to study it a little more. I think y0u're also exaggerating the "conflicts" among various mechanisms in evolution. We've made tremendous progress since Darwin and the theory continues to be consistent with all evidence. It has been refined and much detail has been added, but it's still sound.I'm sitting on the edge of my seat with anticipation wondering what exactly you do believe in, if not evolution. If this is a backhanded way of trying to insert religious fundamentalism or some other kind of woo-woo into a scientific discussion, I'll give you an infraction personally and not wait for the Biology monitor to do it.

I appreciate your enthusiasm but personally I've never cease to study science in every way. Further I remain current as I can to change. It is one of the reason I log on here to see others incite on science. But frequently I find people are more often in arguing there position. Failing to do that effectively, well...the conversation quickly descends into insults and outrageous ridiculing and....well other truely irrelevent comentary.

Truely in every other capacity science is super critical on any an every theory...however evolution is accepted without question and no criticism is ever tolerated by it's proponets. I've never saw that as fairplay.

Listen. I've done alot of research on this, I understand how you feel but once again I've heard no countering facts. Have a good one.

[EmptyForceOfChi]

It is incorrect to say that any scientific theory has been proven true, in the halls of science. But we have to allow laymen to use different rhetoric that suits their practical purposes. So whether this statement is correct depends on where you heard it. In a science class it is wrong. In a newspaper it is permissible.

As for the word "fact," it's okay as a description of an observation. The ice caps are melting, the moon revolves around the earth... those are facts because they have been observed. Kangaroos give birth without placentas, gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance... now are those facts? These are more general statements. We have examined thousands of kangaroos and they reproduce without placentas, but can we assume that they all do? Every celestial body we've observed obeys the inverse-square law of gravity, but does that mean the ones we haven't seen yet also do?

The chance is infinitesimal that we don't understand marsupial reproduction or the movement of distant stars as well as we think we do. But it is not zero. That keeps scientists from calling them "facts," but laymen have different standards. "Fact beyond a reasonable doubt" works for them.Darwin was scratching the surface of an entire new discipline, evolutionary biology. Paleontology was barely a science in his day, people didn't really know what to think of the fossils they were digging up. The part of his theory about new species of vertebrates being able to develop in a hundred generations was wrong, but it turns out that that was not a particularly important part of the theory. The discovery that it actually takes hundreds of thousands of years--or millions depending on your definition of "species"--didn't affect the validity of the theory in any significant way. On the other hand, the discovery of DNA in the last century supported the validity of the theory by going deeper and beginning to explain the details of how evolution works at the microscopic level..

ok i understand, its ok to refer to an observation that we can study first hand as a fact. ie the earth is a sphear. or humans need to breathe in order to survive. but we cannot refer to a theory as a fact or true untill we can observe it as we can other truths,

i knew this anyway, i was just confused as to why some people claim things as facts when they are still at theory level. but you explained that fully. i always feel kind of shamed when i reply to some of your posts, because you seem to lay down so much information and when i reply with a mere single paragraph it doesent seem just.

sometimes its like i am replying to a book of information rather than a person,


peace.

[James R]

I can not concur with this premise. Newton's observation were not simply from a perspective. It was mathematical. It was logic. In comparison nothing about what darwin suggested was true in the course of a prediction. And it still remains untrue today.

Newton was doing physics. Darwin was doing biology. They are quite different disciplines.

Do animals change? Yes. An observable Fact.
Do animals evolve? Never has this been observed.

What do you imagine the difference is?

Thus probability of evolution bringing rise to life: evolution furthering life through biological boundaries is viable question. This becomes a practical consideration when we attempt explain the rise of life on the Earth.

Evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis. I fear you may be confusing the two.

Seeing as no one has never seen animals transform as evolution suggest it becomes the only question that matters. Is evolution possible?

Nonsense. Look at the hundreds of varieties of dog, for example. Yet all were bred from wolves.

Or consider the many sequences of transitional fossils that we know about. We have excellent sequences for horses, for whales, for various kinds of shellfish etc. etc.

Then there are the direct observations of speciation in the lab.

This is to mention only a few things.

Fred Hoyle

Hoyle very much went against the grain of mainstream science, both in astronomy and in biology.

Francis Cricks says of the origins of life. "there is too much speculation following too few facts."

Context is everything. You have provided none.

"We have become aware of the masive information conained in the genes. There is no known way to science how that information can arise spontaneously. It requires an intelligence; it can no arise from chance events."

Where does he imagine "spontaneous" generation of information is required?

Truely in every other capacity science is super critical on any an every theory...however evolution is accepted without question and no criticism is ever tolerated by it's proponets.

Nonsense. Read any biology journal and you'll find endless debate about the details of evolutionary processes.

You won't find debate about the fact of evolution, because nothing in biology is as settled as that. It would be like opening a current physics journal and expecting to see a debate about the reality of Newton's laws of motion.

[iceaura]

Listen. I've done alot of research on this,

You haven't even done enough research - not even library research - to debunk Fred Hoyle, or put Francis Crick's statements in context.

When are you going to sit down and learn what the Darwinian Theory is, how scientific theories are established, and why arguments from authority don't work in this context? It's been years now, and you are still dusting off Fred Hoyle quotes as if they were information on the topic.

Evolution is observed every time someone takes a fossil sequence in Ordovician limestone deposits, runs a genetic tree on a widespread genus of butterflies, or sequences the genome of a radically adapted bacterium in a lab jar. Darwinian Theory predicts and explains these observations with great rigor and accuracy, which is why it enjoys the status it does.

[Saquist]

Newton was doing physics. Darwin was doing biology. They are quite different disciplines.

I concur. Newton was dealing with phenomenon that could be observed and reobserved. Darwing was attempting to predict the future.

What do you imagine the difference is?

One has been observed while the other has not. Animals change but we've no proof that animals evolve. A significant difference wouldn't you say?

Evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis. I fear you may be confusing the two.

Fear not I've confused nothing. You're assuming I meant them as one and the same.

Nonsense. Look at the hundreds of varieties of dog, for example. Yet all were bred from wolves.

Or consider the many sequences of transitional fossils that we know about. We have excellent sequences for horses, for whales, for various kinds of shellfish etc. etc.

Visual observation to establish relation has proven flawed and misleading to DNA evidence. It would be like convicting a man of rape and murder on the basis of a fuzzy surveilance camera.

We don't know what these animals were like except by the fossils.

Hoyle very much went against the grain of mainstream science, both in astronomy and in biology.

Yes, and for good reason. Scientist have become so fearfull of losing there reputation and status that many are prohibited from voicing there own opinions and finds or reaserch for losing there positions or the ridicule that has become the common theactric. Is that right? If the truth is not what you know right now, then how will you ever find it with blinders and bindings?

Context is everything. You have provided none.

Then read the book yourself. I can give you the refrence.

Where does he imagine "spontaneous" generation of information is required?

I imagine that would very presence of life.

Nonsense. Read any biology journal and you'll find endless debate about the details of evolutionary processes.

Of course. Strange how no one can agree how this fact occurs. Curious that they were able to establish the fact before the obserrvation.

You won't find debate about the fact of evolution, because nothing in biology is as settled as that. It would be like opening a current physics journal and expecting to see a debate about the reality of Newton's laws of motion.

No don't imagine that I will.

[Enmos]

Evolution in itself is a proven fact.
How, for instance, the human race evolved is theory and model. "Although its as near as you can get to fact without being there throughout I would say."

[Enmos]

Do animals change? Yes. An observable Fact.
Do animals evolve? Never has this been observed.

For me God has helped me to avoid self loathing. He taught me what love was when no one else would. He was more of a father than my father ever could be. He gave me a family larger than any I've ever could have dreamed. He gave me security and showed me fear is to be challenged.

Even though I wasn't my mother's favorite, God seemed to pay more attention to me than she. And I payed more attention to him. He was there fore me. I can attribute two jobs to his kindness, my best friends, and I'm thankfull that I've lost some "best friends", thanks to him.

I've made alot of mistakes and he's there listening, accepting me. Being forgiving. More importantly he gives me credit for trying, even if I don't always succeede.

Does God exist ? Never has this been observed.

[Fraggle Rocker]

Newton was dealing with phenomenon that could be observed and reobserved. Darwin was attempting to predict the future.

You're getting a lot of mileage out of Darwin's prediction about new bird species. But in practice biologists use evolution to understand the past, not to predict the future.

Predicting the future is a proper, useful scientific technique if you're talking about the future tomorrow when you run a slightly higher electric current through your circuit or toss a slightly different chemical into your mixture. But it's of very limited value if you're talking about the future a hundred years from now. I wouldn't exactly say it's "not science," but that's one hell of a long experiment and we won't live to see the results. This is the kind of science that astrophysicists and cosmologists will be practicing when they send out the first generation starship and their descendants have to wait several centuries to find out if there's life on the nearest planet.

Go ahead and beat up Darwin for making his silly prediction. But his theory is robust enough to survive with that rather minor correction: It takes far longer than a hundred years for a new species of vertebrate to evolve. He didn't have our knowledge of DNA nor our knowledge of the age of the planet so his error is understandable if not entirely forgivable. Now turn around and apply evolution theory to the past which is what all the rest of the scientific community is doing. It has proven to be consistent with every piece of evidence ever observed. That's a lot of evidence so it's a pretty good theory. Good enough to qualify as "true beyond a reasonable doubt" among laymen.

Animals change but we've no proof that animals evolve.

Geeze dude, how much proof do you want? We've got fossil records going back hundreds of millions of years. We've got DNA patterns that link species back to common ancestors in a remarkably well-ordered pattern. This isn't "proof" because as you know you can't "prove" a theory to be true so it's disingenuous of you to be using the word this way. But it's evidence and it's overwhelming. There's not a single bit of contradictory evidence that's withstood thorough examination.

I guess I didn't click on your other posting but once again you were disingenuous in your choice of a reference source for defining the word "probable." As a scientist you know fully well that we don't use that word the same way laymen do. "Probability" in science does not mean "certainty of occurence." It pretty much equates to "possibility" in colloquial speech. Probability is a value ranging from zero to one. Anything in between means, "It could happen or it could not." Nothing more, nothing less. The figure just gives you the odds. If the odds are high enough, you get "true beyond a reasonable doubt" and you can let the laymen trumpet it in their newspapers. One of the purposes of the scientific methods is to arrive at theories that have a very high probability, so you can build on your theories without having them constantly disproven and destroying the infrastructure of your discipline. Evolution has that. It may be wrong but the odds of that are negligibly small.

You also keep attempting to convince us that just because we don't exactly know how life began, that everything we know about evolution is not really certain. I don't understand your reasoning. Even if, for the sake of the argument, we accept the woo-woo about a race of supernatural beings having created everything, they created everything with a very elegant pattern and they created us with the ability to study and understand it. If you just can't sleep at night without wallowing in the unreasoned faith that one of these supernatural creatures jiggled a few molecules together in her laboratory one night and tossed the resulting blob onto our planet three billion years ago, that blob evolved into life as we know it. Nothing that we've learned about evolution disproves the existence of these supernatural biologists, and their putative and forever-unknowable existence does not invalidate or make useless our knowledge.

Larry Niven, one of America's most celebrated sci-fi authors, wrote a story with a plot of this nature about forty years ago, except as a good scientist he left the supernatural woo-woo out of it. A widespread galactic civilization was in the habit of turning entire barren planets into farms. Their nutritional needs were simple, so they just seeded the planet with one basic primitive lifeform that could reproduce by consuming the materials it found on the new planet. They'd come back in a few thousand years and harvest a petaton (or whatever the right prefix is) of their favorite food, which had by now grown to cover the whole planet.

Trouble is, something killed them off. War, disease, natural disaster, we may never know. They never came back to one of their farm planets. Three billion years later, their little food supply had evolved into us.

Origin of life on earth explained. Evolution not disproven. Woo-woo not necessary. Of course now we have to wonder how life began on that alien planet, but perhaps we'll find better evidence there. Or perhaps if their war or disaster three billion years ago did a thorough job of destroying them and their artifacts, it could be a mystery that goes unsolved forever.

Remember Sherlock Holmes's principle: When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, could be the truth. The probability of all those atoms combining in the way necessary to create life may be tiny, but it is not zero. This turns into an existential question. Since we are here, one of those very low-probability events has to have occurred. If it makes you comfortable to hope that low-probability event is the existence of an entire external universe of supernatural lifeforms that make a mockery of our human sciences, well then go for it. But you ain't convincin' nobody else. I'll go with the random combination of atoms. That seems to be a far lower order of improbability.

[James R]

Saquist:

I concur. Newton was dealing with phenomenon that could be observed and reobserved. Darwing was attempting to predict the future.

Have you read [i]The Origin of Species[i]? I guess not, since if you had you would realise that your statement is silly.

Animals change but we've no proof that animals evolve.

Unsupported assertion.

Visual observation to establish relation has proven flawed and misleading to DNA evidence.

Interesting comment. Tell me: what do you consider DNA evidence to be good for, exactly? What can DNA tell you about different animals?

Scientist have become so fearfull of losing there reputation and status that many are prohibited from voicing there own opinions and finds or reaserch for losing there positions or the ridicule that has become the common theactric. Is that right?

Not at all. One of the best ways to raise your profile as a scientists is to be controversial. If you can knock down a sacred cow of science, all the better.

Where does he imagine "spontaneous" generation of information is required?

I imagine that would very presence of life.

If you want to discuss this point further, you'll need to expand on your definition of "information". In what sense does life have more information than non-life?

Nonsense. Read any biology journal and you'll find endless debate about the details of evolutionary processes.

Of course. Strange how no one can agree how this fact occurs. Curious that they were able to establish the fact before the obserrvation.

With respect, you ought to read Darwin's original book. You're making yourself look stupid.

[Ophiolite]

Saquist:
With respect, you ought to read Darwin's original book. You're making yourself look stupid.

On a point of philosophy I wonder about the qualitative difference between making oneself appear stupid and revealing ones stupidity. I belive you may have misread Saquist.

[Saquist]

Does God exist ? Never has this been observed.

That's not exactly true. More true is that you've never observed it. However other have logged there testimony in time as to the existence of God. Do we presume to speak of them as lies and stories? Howe would we verify the truth or the lie?

[Enmos]

That's not exactly true. More true is that you've never observed it. However other have logged there testimony in time as to the existence of God. Do we presume to speak of them as lies and stories? Howe would we verify the truth or the lie?

I think its safe to say noone has ever observed God.

[Saquist]

You're getting a lot of mileage out of Darwin's prediction about new bird species. But in practice biologists use evolution to understand the past, not to predict the future.

Fraggle Rocker, do you really wish to tolerate from me what the others view as stupidity? If they're right you're wasting your time. However if I'm right then there is an avenue that is being ignored.

My position is not a conflagration of my own revelations. This topic is researched and divided and I've found the scientific process flawed in the case of evolution vs creation.

Quite simply we can't escape the unlikly hood of it ever of happening.

[Saquist]

I think its safe to say noone has ever observed God.

A contradiction you seem confortable with. Despite the evidence? or in light of the evidence?

[Enmos]

A contradiction you seem confortable with. Despite the evidence? or in light of the evidence?

At this point im not even debating wether God exists or not... he has never been observed

[Saquist]

I think its safe to say noone has ever observed God.

Since never is a word encompassing the past and the present I find it difficult to come to conclusion such as this. Impartiality is a desirable trait and science. But perhaps it's not desired by all.

[Enmos]

Since never is a word encompassing the past and the present I find it difficult to come to conclusion such as this. Impartiality is a desirable trait and science. But perhaps it's not desired by all.

Ok, what timespan are you suggesting ? And, if possible, give me a description of God by someone that observed him.

[Saquist]

Maybe I could understand your view of never if you were to perhaps isolate a span of time. Perhaps you mean our modern era?

P.S.
This is facinating topic to lead out on but the moderators might have a problem with a topic that diverges greatly from the thread topic. I suggest limmiting this line to a page on the thread and moving on.