Thanks for bringing that up. That is great news. The fundies are about to get another bitchslapping in Dover, PA pretty soon here too. There's a big reason why the ID institutions like Discovery.org are backing off there - it's lookin' more and more like they just might label ID as "creationism" in the courts. If that happens, the '87 Supreme Court case will deem it illegal to teach ID anywhere in the science classroom (they ruled creationism = religion).

All positive outlooks, but it would be foolish to underestimate the fundy movement.

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Wow, thats one county away from me. Its not in my textbook as well

quote:

Originally posted by josh4 Scientists, several of whom testified in the case, say the sticker confuses the scientific term "theory" with the word's common usage and inappropriately combines science with personal religious belief.

Actually, if "theory" is used as according to scientific understanding, the sticker would be much more acceptable to science (meaning that evolution is a pillar of modern scientific explanation of the world). If it is used as it is probably meant - as meaning "hypothesis" - it is much more offending to the hardcore atheistic evolutionists, so this quote really makes little sense.

No matter how ridiculous it is to force a book to carry a sticker, the fundamentalist fools behind the act is correct in asserting that evolution is a hypothesis, and not to be confused with a precise scientific measurement. Authors writing about evolution sometimes forget that fact in their awe of the beauty of the theory.

quote:

Originally posted by trancaholic No matter how ridiculous it is to force a book to carry a sticker, the fundamentalist fools behind the act is correct in asserting that evolution is a hypothesis, and not to be confused with a precise scientific measurement. Authors writing about evolution sometimes forget that fact in their awe of the beauty of the theory.

Evolution is merely a "hyothesis" and has not undergone a sufficient level of scientific examination to reach the status of being scientific "theory" yet? Care to elaborate?

___________________
Retro ...

Of course, though it will be a little short.
First, let me state that by "evolution" I am referring to evolution through mutation and natural selection, just to ensure that we are on the same page here. The reasons why I do not consider evolution as more than a hypothesis are:

1) The hypothesis fails the Popper test. It is used for explaining some phenomena, but clear predictions cannot be drawn from it, and hence it cannot be falsified. This is the most important point to me, and puts the hypothesis outside what can be considered scientific theory.

2) The hypothesis is most often portrayed as explaining all diversity of the species as well as all of "Nature's ingenuities". However, as it stands today (at least according to my knowledge) it does not explain convincingly the jumps in evolution that fossil evidence suggests is happening. Nor have I seen a decent explanation of how the complexity found in some species today was evolved, when probability calculus asserts that it would require much more time than the period with life on Earth.
I do believe that evolution is happening, and am aware that the problems outlined above are only connected to the way the hypothesis is presented to laymen. When it is put forth as a be-all and end-all explanation, I think that is wrong. And when hardcore atheistic evolutionists choose to overlook or belittle these problems the hypothesis as such looses credibility and gains an unfortunate air of religious conviction.

I hope that added a bit of sense to my first post.

Here's a good place to get started when it comes to the math behind evolution:

http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/Mirrors/ft...ife/www/top.htm

quote:

Originally posted by trancaholic 1) The hypothesis fails the Popper test. It is used for explaining some phenomena, but clear predictions cannot be drawn from it, and hence it cannot be falsified. This is the most important point to me, and puts the hypothesis outside what can be considered scientific theory.

Well I may not be educated of the specifics of the "Popper test" but my understandng of Popper's philosophy was that logically, no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can confirm a scientific theory, but a single genuine counter-instance is logically decisive. I don't recall that Popper ever required that exact predictions were to be derived from theory. But what predictions were you looking for? Predictions of species mutating in a direct response to environemental conditions? I think you know that that is not what evolution dictates.

quote:

2) The hypothesis is most often portrayed as explaining all diversity of the species as well as all of "Nature's ingenuities". However, as it stands today (at least according to my knowledge) it does not explain convincingly the jumps in evolution that fossil evidence suggests is happening. Nor have I seen a decent explanation of how the complexity found in some species today was evolved, when probability calculus asserts that it would require much more time than the period with life on Earth. I do believe that evolution is happening, and am aware that the problems outlined above are only connected to the way the hypothesis is presented to laymen. When it is put forth as a be-all and end-all explanation, I think that is wrong. And when hardcore atheistic evolutionists choose to overlook or belittle these problems the hypothesis as such looses credibility and gains an unfortunate air of religious conviction. I hope that added a bit of sense to my first post.

What jumps in evolution that fossil evidence has excluded? There have been quite a few transitional fossils that are indicative of "macro" evolution (as if it were any different than "micro" evolution). Simply because we don't have volumes of fossil evidence that illustrate each and every minutia of every transitional phase is hardly a gunuine counter-instance. For example in as little as 200 years ago the passenger pigeon population numbered in the tens of billions. Single flocks alone numbered in the millions. Yet as of the early 1900s the entire species became extinct. To the best of my knowledge there is not one fossil record of their existence, but does this conclusively prove the species never existed? As for probability models that negate the possibility of the complexity in species we see today, I would like to see such models.

___________________
Retro ...

Do people actually refuse evolution that much? Weird, here even in religious schools evolution is accepted... where in the world can you find similar problems?

___________________
Indiana Clones Upcoming Sets
[ I May Upload Something Someday ]

quote:

Originally posted by trancaholic 1) The hypothesis fails the Popper test. It is used for explaining some phenomena, but clear predictions cannot be drawn from it, and hence it cannot be falsified. This is the most important point to me, and puts the hypothesis outside what can be considered scientific theory.

It is falsifiable though. If it were clear that genetic mutation was impossible or prohibitively rare, that the principles of natural selection could not be observed amongst living animals, or that there was no observable speciational gradiation amongst fossils in all sedimentary layers, then it is quite clear that the theory would need to be scrapped or revised. The fact is though, all these things exist as we would expect them to in the event that evolution were true. If the facts didn't fit the theory - as creationists assert - then, quite simply, we'd have a different theory that did fit the available evidence. That's how science works.

If there is anyone out there with a more viable scientific theory of the origin of species - or even just valid evidence of the fallibility of the current theory - then they're giving up fame and fortune by remaining quiet.

quote:

2) The hypothesis is most often portrayed as explaining all diversity of the species as well as all of "Nature's ingenuities". However, as it stands today (at least according to my knowledge) it does not explain convincingly the jumps in evolution that fossil evidence suggests is happening.

Firstly it's a prediction of the evolutionary theory that species will not evolve other than through necessity. Animals like sharks and cockroaches, that are well adapted to their environments, have hardly changed over the past 500 million years for instance. However, when environments do change fairly drastically, we find two things in the fossil record - large scale extinction and rapid speciation. Even going back to the most recent drastic climate change just 15,000 years or so ago - the receding ice age - you'll find exactly this. Take the mammoth for instance - once the ice melted away, the niche it had filled (large, cold tundras presumably) were no longer there so, in some cases where the population was isolated for long enough, it evolved fairly rapidly through necessity (into the modern day African and Asian elephants) and in other cases it simply died off (where they once roamed freely through Europe, they no longer could once the ice shelf receded). Now keep in mind that all this occurred in the space of just a few thousand years - the blink of an eye in geological terms, where tens of millions of years of the Earth's history can be compressed into a few feet of rock.

Secondly the process of fossilisation is quite rare and only occurs under a series of specific conditions (such as rapid sedimentation) that means, depending on the sort of environment the animals were living in, some species will be very uncommon or difficult to find in the geological record. Also, much of the geological record has either been destroyed (think about all the rock that must have been weathered away or melted in the Earth's core over the past few billion years) or is completely inaccessible to human beings (we're sitting on about 8km of evolutionary history - none but the top couple of hundred metres at most are accessible to us). Therefore, the fact that we are able to find enough fossils to construct such a complete evolutionary tree at all is amazing in itself.

So, while geologically it may seem that the the gradation of speciation is rather sharp in places, keep in mind that the space of time between the occurance of species is likely to be at least several thousand years (when even a few hundred thousand years is, for all intents and purposes, geologically insignificant), that speciational evolution usually only occurs during sudden or siginificant environmental change and that the rarity of fossilisation means that it will be impossible to ever construct a complete evolutionary tree where can trace every single transitional form from species to species.

quote:

Nor have I seen a decent explanation of how the complexity found in some species today was evolved, when probability calculus asserts that it would require much more time than the period with life on Earth.

What complexities are you talking about? How does this "probability calculus" challenge the belief that such complexities could have evolved naturally?

quote:

I do believe that evolution is happening, and am aware that the problems outlined above are only connected to the way the hypothesis is presented to laymen. When it is put forth as a be-all and end-all explanation, I think that is wrong. And when hardcore atheistic evolutionists choose to overlook or belittle these problems the hypothesis as such looses credibility and gains an unfortunate air of religious conviction.

The trouble is that the "evidence" cited against the evolutionary theory is usually either inaccurate or formulated in ignorance of how the process actually occurs (not referring to you here btw) and thus does not have any foundation to it at all. If there were any serious complaints, with any scientific viability, that could be levelled against the evolutionary theory, then - as I said before - then we'd have a different theory and a very rich and famous dissenter. The scientific community would stand to gain nothing by protecting a theory that was innaccurate and would be giving up a rare spot in the history books by doing so. The overwhelming silence amongst the scientific community about the "fallibility" of the evolutionary theory - without wanting to seem like I'm making an appeal to authority here - should tell us something.

Now, on the other hand, if we tell school-children that "evolution is just a theory" (which is wrong), that there is evidence which contradicts the theory (which is wrong), or that there are gaps in our knowledge of the theory (which is a gross exaggeration and misrepresentation of the facts) while teaching it alongside theistic theories of intelligent design, then what do you think is going to happen? Is an adolescent more likely to believe a theory that is virtually impossible to conceptualise - even amongst those knowledegable in the field - due to the vast amount of time and complex biological processes involved, or the simple, all-encompassing theory that "God just did it"? Which is easier for them to understand and which theory are they more likely to want to believe?

The trouble with teaching ID alongside the evolutionary theory - apart from the fact that there is 100 quadrillion times more evidence supporting the latter - is that you're presenting the illusion to the students that there are two competing theories (there aren't) that have equal credibility amongst the scientific community (they don't) and that are equally viable, satisfactory explantions for the origin of species (which they aren't) where one is simply - as much as it pains me to say it - easier and more comfortable to understand. While I'm never one to be dogmatic and I believe that everyone has an equal right to be heard, there are occassions such as this one - where one side of the debate is controlled by conniving, manipulative liars with an agenda to push through - that, for the good of society, the truth has to be propogated via the suppression of the opposing point of view. There is simply no way that the evolutionary theory can be taught adequately if these politically active creationsits - who subscribe to completely batshit insane theories with absolutely no basis in science whatsoever - are allowed to present the illusion that their ideas are grouded in any perceptible degree of sanity. This is not to shit on any and all deistic theories of intelligent design, just those of the young-earth Christian strain and those taught as valid, competing theories to that of evolution.

Theologies need to be kept out of the science classroom and I applaud these teachers for standing up for what is right.

___________________
http://eschatonnow.blogspot.com/

oh no not another creationist thread. where's TTA?

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GIGANTIC CUNT

Occrider & Renegade: This will be brief considering the usual elaborations these debates instigate, and I cannot currently follow any pointers to books/web-pages in very much detail. For that I am sorry, but I really do have a lot of work and moving related things taking up my time this month and the beginning of February. Maybe one of the other non-religious anti-Darwinism PFTAs will help me out here...

quote:

Originally posted by occrider Well I may not be educated of the specifics of the "Popper test" but my understandng of Popper's philosophy was that logically, no number of positive outcomes at the level of experimental testing can confirm a scientific theory, but a single genuine counter-instance is logically decisive. I don't recall that Popper ever required that exact predictions were to be derived from theory. But what predictions were you looking for? Predictions of species mutating in a direct response to environemental conditions? I think you know that that is not what evolution dictates.

I was refering to the criterion of falsification aka Popper's solution to the problem of demarcation - figuring out what constitutes (emperical) science. In the last couple of sentences you yourself hint at the problem: The hypothesis of evolution does not allow predictions of events in the future - no matter what is predicted, and what is observed, the hypothesis is sufficiently vague and relying on imprecise notions such as fitness and randomness to allow for the alternative outcome as well. In contrast most theories proposed inside the fields of physics, chemistry, molecular biology, geology, etc. allows for deduction of specific postulates about hypothetical settings, which can then be confirmed or denied by experiments. Evolution is no more a scientific theory than Freud's "theory of the human psyche", Kuhn's theory of paradigm shifts in scientific institutions, Marx theory on the worth of labour, and (all?) other frameworks in the social or humanitarian sciences. (Let me add that I do not think (much) lesser of the social and humanitarian sciences - their results are useful in many cases, but they are not science.) If you read Popper's "Conjectures and Refutations", you can read more about the thoughts leading him to the falsification criterion.

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade It is falsifiable though. If it were clear that genetic mutation was impossible or prohibitively rare, that the principles of natural selection could not be observed amongst living animals, or that there was no observable speciational gradiation amongst fossils in all sedimentary layers, then it is quite clear that the theory would need to be scrapped or revised. The fact is though, all these things exist as we would expect them to in the event that evolution were true. If the facts didn't fit the theory - as creationists assert - then, quite simply, we'd have a different theory that did fit the available evidence. That's how science works. ... Firstly it's a prediction of the evolutionary theory that species will not evolve other than through necessity. Animals like sharks and cockroaches, that are well adapted to their environments, have hardly changed over the past 500 million years for instance. However, when environments do change fairly drastically, we find two things in the fossil record - large scale extinction and rapid speciation. Even going back to the most recent drastic climate change just 15,000 years or so ago - the receding ice age - you'll find exactly this. Take the mammoth for instance - once the ice melted away, the niche it had filled (large, cold tundras presumably) were no longer there so, in some cases where the population was isolated for long enough, it evolved fairly rapidly through necessity (into the modern day African and Asian elephants) and in other cases it simply died off (where they once roamed freely through Europe, they no longer could once the ice shelf receded). Now keep in mind that all this occurred in the space of just a few thousand years - the blink of an eye in geological terms, where tens of millions of years of the Earth's history can be compressed into a few feet of rock.

You may have a softer interpretation of falsification than me, but I don't think that the ability of a hypothesis to fit the available evidence is sufficient to deem it falsifiable. For a hypothesis to be falsifiable, it should be possible to draw predictions from it and I don't see that it is possible here. The examples you have given on drastic adaptation immediately following a catastrophe and the non-evolution of sharks seems to me to be very general "predictions". I would say that they are facts that have helped form evolution rather than predictions drawn from evolutionary teachings. I mean nobody looked at evolution and said "Hey if we go examine fossils of ancient sharks they should reveal a species nearly identical to the modern one because that would be a consequence of evolution", and then came out triumphantly with a verification.

quote:

Originally posted by occrider What jumps in evolution that fossil evidence has excluded? There have been quite a few transitional fossils that are indicative of "macro" evolution (as if it were any different than "micro" evolution). Simply because we don't have volumes of fossil evidence that illustrate each and every minutia of every transitional phase is hardly a gunuine counter-instance. For example in as little as 200 years ago the passenger pigeon population numbered in the tens of billions. Single flocks alone numbered in the millions. Yet as of the early 1900s the entire species became extinct. To the best of my knowledge there is not one fossil record of their existence, but does this conclusively prove the species never existed?

and

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade Secondly the process of fossilisation is quite rare and only occurs under a series of specific conditions (such as rapid sedimentation) that means, depending on the sort of environment the animals were living in, some species will be very uncommon or difficult to find in the geological record. Also, much of the geological record has either been destroyed (think about all the rock that must have been weathered away or melted in the Earth's core over the past few billion years) or is completely inaccessible to human beings (we're sitting on about 8km of evolutionary history - none but the top couple of hundred metres at most are accessible to us). Therefore, the fact that we are able to find enough fossils to construct such a complete evolutionary tree at all is amazing in itself. So, while geologically it may seem that the the gradation of speciation is rather sharp in places, keep in mind that the space of time between the occurance of species is likely to be at least several thousand years (when even a few hundred thousand years is, for all intents and purposes, geologically insignificant), that speciational evolution usually only occurs during sudden or siginificant environmental change and that the rarity of fossilisation means that it will be impossible to ever construct a complete evolutionary tree where can trace every single transitional form from species to species.

I'm no expert on paleontology - nor on evolution litterature - but I can point you to a book by a Norwegian physicist and philosopher of science, Ragnar Fjelland, who by the way takes no stance on evolution: "Innføring i vitenskapsteori" (Introduction to the Philosophy of Science". I don't have any English sources. The book states that "fossil evidence suggests that evolution of the species have taken form of jumps" (the feeble translation of Norwegian into English by a Dane). As an example the Cambrian explosion is mentioned.
Perhaps of bigger interest to you is the book "The Quark and the Jaguar" by Murray Gell-Mann. Gell-Mann is a convinced Darwinist (neo-orthodox evolutionist, hardcore atheistic evolutionist,... whatever), and he acknowledges that there appear to be jumps in the evolution of life on Earth. (He "explains" it by the way of gateway events, but they seem to rest on a foundation where "latent" genes somehow are allowed to survive several generations without giving the hosting individuals any advantages at all.)

quote:

Originally posted by occrider As for probability models that negate the possibility of the complexity in species we see today, I would like to see such models.

and

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade What complexities are you talking about? How does this "probability calculus" challenge the belief that such complexities could have evolved naturally?

Again I would refer you to Fjellands book, which gives a decent explanation (too long for me to quote here). He quotes the points to be based on scepticism by Robert Shapiro, Chandra Wickramasinghe, and Fred Hoyle. Basically, the point is divided into two: First, the virtual impossibility of what we call life developing through evolution, and second the practical impossibility of a population maintaining "latent" genes for enough generations to become effective through interaction with other genes. (The last point is basically what is ignored by Gell-Mann in his explanation of jumps in evolution by means of gateway events.) For clear mathematical models you would apparently have to go to Fred Hoyle's book "Mathematics of Evolution".
I did a quick googling on the names of these authors (to find english sources and refutations) and stumbled upon this site:

http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/

which seems to offer a non-religious non-pro-ID balanced review of points and litterature regarding anti vs. pro Darwinism. Two pages of particular interest in this matter are

1) http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho46.htm

which reviews Hoyle's book (in what I would call an objective manner) and

2) http://home.wxs.nl/~gkorthof/kortho46a.htm

which gives a short summary of the criticism that Hoyle's arguments have recieved so far. It is most noteworthy that his mathematical argument so far has not been tried disproved. (Also see site 1 at the very bottom, "Population genetics revisited", where über-Darwinist John Maynard Smith in a paper from 2000 urges others to confirm/disprove Hoyle's calculations. Indicates to me that he himself has been unable to do so.)
This brings me to:

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade If there is anyone out there with a more viable scientific theory of the origin of species - or even just valid evidence of the fallibility of the current theory - then they're giving up fame and fortune by remaining quiet. ... The trouble is that the "evidence" cited against the evolutionary theory is usually either inaccurate or formulated in ignorance of how the process actually occurs (not referring to you here btw) and thus does not have any foundation to it at all. If there were any serious complaints, with any scientific viability, that could be levelled against the evolutionary theory, then - as I said before - then we'd have a different theory and a very rich and famous dissenter. The scientific community would stand to gain nothing by protecting a theory that was innaccurate and would be giving up a rare spot in the history books by doing so. The overwhelming silence amongst the scientific community about the "fallibility" of the evolutionary theory - without wanting to seem like I'm making an appeal to authority here - should tell us something.

I would say that you are a bit optimistic in this respect. If you study site 1 I linked to above, you will see that the scientific community has not taken Hoyle's points seriously. When he is quoted the focus has been on a metaphor presented on a radioshow, rather than his calculations. The book by Gell-Mann even neglects to mention Hoyle at all. To a large degree this is probably because Hoyle's alternative theory is very weak, but even so his mathematical arguments against Darwinism ought to be taken seriously, I think.
Your faith in the scientific community to objectively analyse new hypotheses, and re-evaluate old ones in the light of new arguments, is commendable, but it is very far from what I observe in my daily life (which is at a university, at conferences, and in correspondance with other researchers). Researchers are motivated by greed and pride as much as everyone else and won't accept new hypotheses unless totally clear evidence exists that the old ones were somehow at fault. In the case of evolution, the hypothesis is not falsifiable, so no argument can clearly disprove it (Hoyle's argument only make it very probable that some other mechanism, or mechanisms, is at play). Therefore scientists can hold onto evolution with no special feeling of ethical misery.
Personally, I have the feeling that some scientists hold onto evolution so dearly because most of them are atheists and it blocks out the existence of a God. Whenever the scientific community states that some phenomena are not fully explained by current theories, religious lunatics are at the ready to offer their explanations instead. If these are believed by the general public (or maybe even scientists themselves) it would open up the possibility of a return to the middle-ages where religion was a reliable source of ontology. A state of affair no scientist could ever aprove of. At least you must acknowledge that Darwinists are much more agitated by sceptism than proponents of other hypotheses in science - for some reason.

quote:

Originally posted by Renegade Now, on the other hand, if we tell school-children that "evolution is just a theory" (which is wrong), that there is evidence which contradicts the theory (which is wrong), or that there are gaps in our knowledge of the theory (which is a gross exaggeration and misrepresentation of the facts) while teaching it alongside theistic theories of intelligent design, then what do you think is going to happen? Is an adolescent more likely to believe a theory that is virtually impossible to conceptualise - even amongst those knowledegable in the field - due to the vast amount of time and complex biological processes involved, or the simple, all-encompassing theory that "God just did it"? Which is easier for them to understand and which theory are they more likely to want to believe? The trouble with teaching ID alongside the evolutionary theory - apart from the fact that there is 100 quadrillion times more evidence supporting the latter - is that you're presenting the illusion to the students that there are two competing theories (there aren't) that have equal credibility amongst the scientific community (they don't) and that are equally viable, satisfactory explantions for the origin of species (which they aren't) where one is simply - as much as it pains me to say it - easier and more comfortable to understand. While I'm never one to be dogmatic and I believe that everyone has an equal right to be heard, there are occassions such as this one - where one side of the debate is controlled by conniving, manipulative liars with an agenda to push through - that, for the good of society, the truth has to be propogated via the suppression of the opposing point of view. There is simply no way that the evolutionary theory can be taught adequately if these politically active creationsits - who subscribe to completely batshit insane theories with absolutely no basis in science whatsoever - are allowed to present the illusion that their ideas are grouded in any perceptible degree of sanity. This is not to shit on any and all deistic theories of intelligent design, just those of the young-earth Christian strain and those taught as valid, competing theories to that of evolution. Theologies need to be kept out of the science classroom and I applaud these teachers for standing up for what is right.

On all of this we agree (although I don't feel the same strong hatred of the fundies as you do), and I think I said so in my initial post. My point is that evolution

1) should not be taken to be a scientific theory, and
2) it should not uncritically be assumed to explain all diversity of the species or genious "solutions" provided by Nature.

"1" because that label should be reserved for things like superstring theory, the theories on the functionality of the organs in the human body, etc. "2" because there are objections to that postulate which have not been refuted yet. (Dismissal and ridicule does not count as refutation IMO.)

EDIT: And then it turned out to be a long post anyway

Last edited by trancaholic on Jan-17-2005 at 19:11