|
| quote: | | 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. |
I think when comparing evolutionary theory to other branches of science the way you do, it is certainly a bit of an unfair comparison, primarily because we are indeed dealing with a historical science that best attempts to describe past historical patterns toward what we see in the present. I think archeology would probably be a better comparison in some senses. Nevertheless, here’s a pretty long but detailed article by Wilkins on evolution and predictions. Since you seem to be a student in philosophy, it should be right up your alley:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/predict.html
Now in regards to actual predictions, that has been performed:
| quote: | 1. The difference in predictive power between evolution and other sciences is one of degree, not kind. All theories are simplifications; they purposely neglect as many outside variables as they can. But these extraneous variables do affect predictions. For example, you can predict the future position of an orbiting planet, but your prediction will be off very slightly because you can't consider the effects of all the small bodies in the solar system. Evolution is more sensitive to initial conditions and extraneous factors, so predictions about specifically what mutations will occur and what traits will survive are impractical. It is still possible to use evolution to make general predictions about the future, though. For example, we can predict that diseases will become resistant to any new widely-used antibiotics.
2. The predictive power of science comes from being able to say things we wouldn't have been able to say otherwise. These predictions don't have to be about things happening in the future. They can be "retrodictions" about things from the past that we haven't found yet. Evolution allows innumerable predictions of this sort.
3. Evolution has been the basis of many predictions, for example:
1. Darwin predicted, based on homologies with African apes, that human ancestors arose in Africa. That prediction has been supported by fossil evidence and genetic evidence [Ingman et al, 2000].
2. Theory predicted that organisms in heterogeneous and rapidly changing environments should have higher mutation rates. This has been found in the case of bacteria infecting the lungs of chronic cystic fibrosis patients [Oliver et al, 2000].
3. Predator-prey dynamics are altered in predictable ways by evolution of the prey [Yoshida et al, 2003].
4. Mayr predicted in 1954 that speciation should be accompanied with faster genetic evolution. A phylogenetic analysis has supported this prediction [Webster et al., 2003].
5. Several authors predicted characteristics of the ancestor of craniates. Based on a detailed study, the fossil Haikouella "fit these predictions closely" [Mallatt and Chen 2003].
With predictions such as these and others, evolution can be, and has been, put to practical use in areas such as drug discovery and avoidance of resistant pests (Bull and Wichman, 2001).
4. If evolution's low power to make future predictions keeps it from being a science, then some other fields of study cease to be sciences, too, especially archeology and astronomy.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA210.html |
I think the most obvious “prediction” here is the most sweeping – the fossil record. A progression of complexity is seen in the fossil record, with the simplest of organisms appearing earlier in the fossil record, and the more complex organisms appearing later. And indeed, this is exactly what we see as predicted over and over again:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html
Or vestigial appendiges, the phylogenetic tree, ontogeny, and a number of other topics give sound prediction to evolutionary theory. For a long-winded piece on the matter, read the 29+
Evidences of Macroevolution:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
The “fun stuff” starts here though:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html
And if you want some actual examples, here’s a pretty good article from New Scientist, by Paul Rainey (paid subscription required):
| quote: | 4 Is evolution predictable
THE late Stephen Jay Gould once famously suggested a thought experiment in which the tape of life is rewound and replayed. Would the repetition bear any resemblance to the original? Gould's answer was that it would not: each play of the tape would produce a different outcome. His answer stemmed from the fact that evolution proceeds from a continuous interplay of both random and selective forces. The existence of a random element (mutation, recombination and migration) and a stochastic component (daily chance events that determine the survival of individuals and the probability of finding a mate) suggest that evolution cannot be repeatable, predictable or even follow rules.
Yet, as Darwin so clearly saw, working hand in hand with contingency is natural selection, a most potent force that systematically sorts among variant types, favouring characteristics in organisms that give them a better chance of surviving. Indeed, Darwin's theory of natural selection makes a prediction - that organisms will adapt to their environment.
Importantly, though, any predictions based on Darwin's theory will be probabilistic: they require us to know the odds against particular events happening. The trouble is, we rarely do. But all is not lost. Although today's evolutionary biologists do not anticipate "laws" analogous to those in the physical sciences, as Darwin and other 19th-century biologists did, there is mounting evidence for the existence of certain fundamental rules of evolution. Our growing understanding of the mechanism of evolutionary change is providing tantalising hints that certain outcomes may be more likely than others.
The evidence stems from research on topics as diverse as language and learning theory, evolutionary and developmental genetics, biochemical systems theory and metabolic network analysis. What these all have in common is their focus on establishing the basic design principles of complex systems. It is becoming clear that such systems are often assembled from combinations of a few simple modules. The loose linkage that typically exists between modules allows a huge number of possible combinations. It also ensures that different combinations of modules have a high probability of generating biologically viable scenarios. In evolutionary terms, this suggests that even though there may be a limited number of successful solutions to a particular evolutionary challenge, there may be many ways of achieving the same end.
Fortunately, there is a way of testing some of these ideas. My colleagues and I study populations of the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens that rapidly diversify by mutation and selection into distinct types or "morphs" when you grow them in test tubes of nutrient broth. These experiments in test-tube evolution allow us to replay life's tape, albeit on a small scale, as often as we like.
We have found that when we seed our mini-worlds with genetically identical microbes and the population size is large (around a billion cells per millilitre), each "replay" results in highly similar patterns of evolutionary change. After just one week, P. fluorescens evolves into two new morphs that we call "wrinkly" and "fuzzy" spreaders. But this doesn't happen if we limit the mutation supply rate, reducing it by more than two orders of magnitude. Evolution only repeats itself if certain phenotypic innovations have a high probability of arising and are strongly favoured by selection.
By looking more closely at wrinkly spreaders, we have found that there are several different pathways to this particular morph. Although all wrinkly spreaders have a similar appearance and tendency to clump together on the surface, there is substantial variation. Genetic analysis reveals that there are many routes to becoming a wrinkly spreader, but that most are the result of simple point mutations in one of the components of a pathway that regulates the expression of adhesive factors. And the design of this pathway? It turns out to be modular with loose linkages between components: precisely the kind of genetic system we predicted would accommodate the evolution of new phenotypes, and possibly even facilitate it.
If bacterial colonies that start out as identical clones evolve down different routes to reach a similar end point, what about colonies that start off as distinct? Can they converge on the same solution to an environmental challenge, or will their evolution be constrained by their genes? To test these ideas we have deleted genes encoding critical components of wrinkly spreaders and then allowed these "defective" colonies to evolve. In all instances wrinkly spreaders eventually emerge by co-opting alternative genetic systems and structural components to bring about the necessary change. So, in the face of similar selective conditions, different lineages can find similar solutions to the same problems. Replay life's tape, then, and while Homo sapiens may not evolve there is a high probability that introspective bipedal organisms with binocular vision will.
Given historical contingency, it is impossible to come up with a definitive answer to Gould's thought experiment. But we can start to make predictions about the course of evolution based on our growing understanding of the fundamental architecture of biological systems and the way in which these work together under natural selection. We are already starting to predict how organisms will adapt to fit their environment. In the future we should be able to make quantitative predictions about the kinds of changes that will occur and the particular pathways leading to them
http://www.newscientist.com/channel...id=PAOGLCBAAGIN |
Other evolutionary predictions include fig wasps:
http://www.iob.org/editorial_displa....htm&cont_id=24
ant ancestry:
http://www.asa3.org/archive/evolution/199703/0021.html
Or just do a PubMed search on “Evolutionary Predictions”, and see the primary literature yourself (at least the abstracts):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...earch&DB=pubmed
| quote: | | 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. |
Based upon this criterion of falsification, I’m curious to hear exactly what predictions could be drawn from ID “theory”. As of yet I’ve seen none whatsoever. And I’ve personally never seen the definition of falsification entailing the necessity of prediction, though I do think prediction is of importance to both evolution as well as other sciences. BTW, did you get a chance to read Arbiter’s link on evolutionary algorithms? That opens up a myriad of doors for computer programs.
| quote: | | 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. |
That’s a terrible oversimplification to the point of absurdity. What Renegade was stating was a mere example of predictions that could be made between the fossil record and geological history. His example is one of many examples. And if you question the relationship between geological data and the fossil record, I suggest you read this paper:
| quote: | The SCI metric may also be summarized either as a mean value for each taxonomic group or as a proportion of cladograms that score SCI values of 0.500 or more, an indication that half, or more, of the branches are consistent with stratigraphic evidence. By both measures, fishes and echinoderms score better than tetrapods. Mean SCI values are: echinoderms (0.773), fishes (0.757), and tetrapods (0.701). Proportions of cladograms with SCI values $0.500 are tetrapods (100%), echinoderms (94%), and fishes (93%). For both measures, values for all three groups are indistinguishable according to binomial error bars (Fig. 3).
Within the sample of echinoderm cladograms, nonechinoids show somewhat better results than echinoids but not significantly so (Fig. 3). The mean SCI value for echinoids is 0.724, and for nonechinoids 0.849; moreover, 90%of echinoid cladograms have SCI values $ 0.500,compared with 100% for nonechinoids.
SCI values for fish groups are variable but not significantly different (Fig. 3). For mean SCI values, the order is as follows: sarcopterygians (0.904), teleosts (0.744), placoderms(0.741), agnathans (0.733), and actinopterygians (0.722). In all cases, all sampled cladograms show SCI values > 0.500. The rankings of tetrapod groups by both aspects of the SCI metric are comparable. Mean SCI values give this sequence: mammals (0.837), “mammallike reptiles” (0.729), lepidosauromorphs (0.714), dinosaurs (0.698), archosauromorphs (0.660), and turtles (0.586). The low value for turtles is significantly lower than the high values for synapsids, mammals, and “mammallike reptiles”. Proportions of cladograms with SCI values $ 0.500 give this sequence: mammals (100%), “mammallike reptiles” (100%), lepidosauromorphs (100%), turtles (100%), dinosaurs (86%), and archosauromorphs (78%).
http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/publs/...999SystBiol.pdf |
Why is the SCI so high? Why do cladograms & stratigraphy match on the whole if evolution is not indicative of reality? Given that cladograms & stratigraphy match relatively well, how do you explain this significant correlation?
Given there is a clear signal of "evolution" in the rock stratigraphy & morphology combined, it therefore stands to reason that where these phylogenies would infer large scale morphological change (Cetaceans, basal tetrapoda, & basal amniotes, for example), evolution can be reliably inferred.
| quote: | | 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. |
There are a number of very plausible reasons for historical instances such as the Cambrian Explosion (CA) which take “jumps” (if you wanna call 5 million years a “jump” in evolution I suppose). Prior to the CA, for example:
| quote: | (1) a distinct fluctuation of carbon isotopes around
the Proterozoic-Cambrian,
(2) a dramatic increase of the d34S curve,
(3) an increase of the global sea-level,
(4) a distinct rise of the phosphorite production,
and
(5) a slow increase of oxygen in the atmosphere from
late Proterozoic to early Phanerozoic times.
http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/palaeon...casu8.htm#explo |
Certain “jumps” are to be expected within the theory. It’s not as if it predicts a long, gradual, drawn out accumulation of changes at ALL times. As my two collegues here touched on, a given population undergoes mutation at all times – however, the selective process (i.e. natural selection) would entail whether or not a given isolated population, or even a subpopulation would be a better survivor in a given niche. If it is, that newly population will have a much higher chance of survival; if not, it dies off and gives way for the more successful critters. And if the more successful critters were the original population with little or no morphological changes, so be it.
| quote: | | 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.) |
I’m unfamiliar with his book, so I can’t comment on it at this time.
| quote: | 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: |
You don’t need to go that far to find valid criticisms of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe’s calculations:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html
| quote: | Problems with the creationists' "it's so improbable" calculations
1) They calculate the probability of the formation of a "modern" protein, or even a complete bacterium with all "modern" proteins, by random events. This is not the abiogenesis theory at all.
2) They assume that there is a fixed number of proteins, with fixed sequences for each protein, that are required for life.
3) They calculate the probability of sequential trials, rather than simultaneous trials.
4) They misunderstand what is meant by a probability calculation.
5) They seriously underestimate the number of functional enzymes/ribozymes present in a group of random sequences. |
And that piece on Archaeopteryx:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/arc...yx/forgery.html
It should be noted that IF we are indeed referencing pieces referring to abiogenesis and NOT evolution, then we should collectively be correctly citing it as such. Confusing these two unrelated issues (abiogenesis and evolution) is a favorite ploy often performed by creationists and IDers. Why someone like Hoyle, an astronomer, felt it necessary to disprove evolution by tackling something irrelevant to evolution, i.e. abiogenesis, is beyond me. Perhaps he should have stuck to his particular field of expertise. Unsurprisingly, we find this occurring a great deal in creationist circles – folks of backgrounds unrelated to biology or paleontology cited as “experts” in their skepticism on evolution. Dig no further than Philip Johnson being a lawyer, or Bill Dembski being a mathematician. Both couldn’t be more incorrect about their understanding of evolution.
Here’s another piece involving evolution and chance:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/chance/chance.html
| quote: | | 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. |
Not if you understand the fallacies in his arguments. Again I fail to grasp why he threw abiogenesis in with evolution.
But when we actually discuss evolution, a common fallacy of creationists is to only calculate mutation rates without involving natural selection. By itself this would certainly explain such high improbabilities with evolutionary processes. Unfortunately for them, natural selection is indeed, part of the process. So indeed, when you decide to include natural selection with mutation, then you find that evolution is actually much more possible than the pessimistic creationist mathematicians would want you to believe:
http://www.tranceaddict.com/forums/...on&pagenumber=2
| quote: | And something else needs to be considered about mathmatical models of past mutation events - we really don't have very good figures regarding "beneficial" mutations at all, let alone have enough worthwhile info. regarding past mutation rates and pop'n sizes. So any calculations on such past events are really more or less than inferred guesses from what we know of mutation rates today, which you seem to agree to as well. But let's take a look at Wright's calculations:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq...y.html#mutation
Here's the equation:
| quote: | | First a mutation occurs in an individual, creating a new allele. This allele subsequently increases in frequency to fixation in the population. The rate of evolution is k = 2Nvu (in diploids) where k is nucleotide substitutions, N is the effective population size, v is the rate of mutation and u is the proportion of mutants that eventually fix in the population. |
Now let's look at the beneficial mutations:
| quote: | | Most new mutants are lost, even beneficial ones. Wright calculated that the probability of fixation of a beneficial allele is 2s. (This assumes a large population size, a small fitness benefit, and that heterozygotes have an intermediate fitness. A benefit of 2s yields an overall rate of evolution: k=4Nvs where v is the mutation rate to beneficial alleles) An allele that conferred a one percent increase in fitness only has a two percent chance of fixing. The probability of fixation of beneficial type of mutant is boosted by recurrent mutation. The beneficial mutant may be lost several times, but eventually it will arise and stick in a population. (Recall that even deleterious mutants recur in a population.) |
So it comes down to a 2% chance of fixation. Seems pretty small at first. Well let's break it down to a hypothetical example. I can't take credit for this example, but I saved it from a blog a while back: Let's say I'm Joe Q. Organism. In my genome there's about 20,000 active gene sites, but since I have 2 copies of each chromosome, I actually have 40,000 mutatable genes. Adding up my conspecifics and me comes to one million organisms in my generation. That's 40,000,000,000 mutatable gene copies total in the gene pool.
Now according to Wright, every one of those genes has about a one in 10,000 to one in 100,000 chance of mutating. Let's go halvsies so we'll estimate that each gene has a one in 45,000 (that's half of the difference between 10,000 and 100,000) chance of mutating.
So far we have, on average, 888,888 mutations in the entire gene pool. Wright says that one in 1000 of those is benefical, so we have almost 900 beneficial mutations. Two percent of those will fix, so 18 beneficial mutations from that population will become permanent.
18 mutations out of one generation of one million conspecifics. Sure, that's not a lot. But in three years (for example), when this generation has hit sexual maturity, that million will have dwindled to maybe a tenth of that. Then they'll have another million children, or ten per organism. 180 of those individuals have the beneficial mutations from the last batch, and there's another 18 mutations this time.
Over 500 million years, it adds up. For our hypothetical population of organisms that's 3 billion benefical mutations. And you're telling me you don't think 3 billion benefical, permanent mutations are going to constitute significant evolutionary change to a population of organisms? I hardly think so.
And finally, the mutation rates measured within organisms is in line with the DNA differences seen between organisms. IOW, the rate at which mutations occur in an organism matches up with the span of time since common ancestory. Here's just one abstract that evidenced the mutation rate in fruit flies with the changes seen in the fossil record and with extant fruit fly species. The final conlusion is that the mutation rate is sufficient to result in the DNA differences we see between species:
| quote: | Mol Biol Evol. 2004 Jan;21(1):36-44. Epub 2003 Aug 29.
Temporal patterns of fruit fly (Drosophila) evolution revealed by mutation clocks.
Tamura K, Subramanian S, Kumar S.
Center for Evolutionary Functional Genomics, Arizona Biodesign Institute, and School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, USA.
Drosophila melanogaster has been a canonical model organism to study genetics, development, behavior, physiology, evolution, and population genetics for nearly a century. Despite this emphasis and the completion of its nuclear genome sequence, the timing of major speciation events leading to the origin of this fruit fly remain elusive because of the paucity of extensive fossil records and biogeographic data. Use of molecular clocks as an alternative has been fraught with non-clock-like accumulation of nucleotide and amino-acid substitutions. Here we present a novel methodology in which genomic mutation distances are used to overcome these limitations and to make use of all available gene sequence data for constructing a fruit fly molecular time scale. Our analysis of 2977 pairwise sequence comparisons from 176 nuclear genes reveals a long-term fruit fly mutation clock ticking at a rate of 11.1 mutations per kilobase pair per Myr. Genomic mutation clock-based timings of the landmark speciation events leading to the evolution of D. melanogaster show that it shared most recent common ancestry 5.4 MYA with D. simulans, 12.6 MYA with D. erecta+D. orena, 12.8 MYA with D. yakuba+D. teisseri, 35.6 MYA with the takahashii subgroup, 41.3 MYA with the montium subgroup, 44.2 MYA with the ananassae subgroup, 54.9 MYA with the obscura group, 62.2 MYA with the willistoni group, and 62.9 MYA with the subgenus Drosophila. These and other estimates are compatible with those known from limited biogeographic and fossil records. The inferred temporal pattern of fruit fly evolution shows correspondence with the cooling patterns of paleoclimate changes and habitat fragmentation in the Cenozoic.
(emphasis mine).
www.pubmed.com |
|
So yes, evolutionary rates are plenty possible, verifiable, and quite useful for research.
| quote: | | 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. |
I agree that researchers have ulterior motivations, primarily $ from grants and notoriety, but this isn’t to say that new hypothesis aren’t tested on an everyday basis. Let’s also keep in mind that evolutionists test evolution on an everyday basis too. And finally, let’s also keep in mind that it would be nothing shy of a geeky scientist’s wet dream to be able to have a sound, testable, and verifiable alternative hypothesis to evolution. As of yet, none have held water.
And one has to wonder, if you know anything about Intelligent Design’s primary “base” organization – Discovery Institute (www.discovery.org), they have promised for years to aptly demonstrate research work in their field. As of yet, no sound research has been published in any of the primary literature (unless you want to discuss Meyer’s Paper in Proceedings, which has been ripped up frontways, sideways, and pissed on all over. Big brewhaha how it got there in the first place – so much that the editor who allowed it was fired). Instead, they devote their $ to “wedging” out evolution in public schools and in state BOE’s. One has to ask oneself – why haven’t they done much with research instead?
| quote: | | 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). |
On the contrary, there are other means that could falsify evolution, such as:
1. a static fossil record, or a fossil record that isn’t in line with evolutionary prediction (such as fossils of man and dinosaur together).
2. true chimaeras; i.e. organisms which combined parts from several different and diverse lineages (such as mermaids and centaurs);
3. a mechanism that would prevent mutations from accumulating;
4. observations of organisms being created.
| quote: | | Therefore scientists can hold onto evolution with no special feeling of ethical misery. |
I’ll try to sleep better knowing that, thanks.
| quote: | | 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. |
I must disagree with your personal feeling, but it is one that’s commonly shared amongst creationists/IDers. Nothing could be from the truth:
http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm
Up to 40% of scientists believe in a deity of sorts who guided the process of evolution. Oh sure, it’s easy for Creationists to cite Dawkins or Haught as the pinnacle atheists speaking for evolutionists, but they fail to cite such evolutionists as Kenneth R. Miller (1999), James F. Haught, or Robert T. Pennock (1999). In fact, Miller’s “Finding Darwin’s God” and Pennock’s “Tower of Babel” happen to be 2 of my favorite books, and both guys are Christians. I highly suggest both books to anyone who’s interested in arguments against ID ideas.
We must also respect one of the most highly touted Christians out there whom has no problems at all with evolutionary theory:
The Pope.
Can’t get much higher than that.
| quote: | | 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. |
The reason is quite simple – there’s no verifiable, testable, falsifiable evidence that supports such religious theories. And I suppose some of that agitation is the result of these theories coming up over and over again in assorted flavors.
| quote: | 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 |
It has way too much evidence supporting the idea not to call it a theory. Sorry.
| quote: | | 2) it should not uncritically be assumed to explain all diversity of the species or genious "solutions" provided by Nature. |
It does rather well with this. And besides, no other explanation has come close with verifiable, testable, observable, and falsifiable evidence like evolution. Sorry again.
| quote: | | "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. |
Oh, you mean like antibiotic resistance (among other things I’ve mentioned previously)?
| quote: | | "2" because there are objections to that postulate which have not been refuted yet. (Dismissal and ridicule does not count as refutation IMO.) |
Incorrect again. The onus is on the skeptical authors to :
1. Fully understand biological evolution in it’s entirety:
a. Do not confuse it with abiogenesis
b. Understand the mutation mechanism
c. Understand the natural selection mechanism
These criterion were not met by Hoyle.
| quote: | | EDIT: And then it turned out to be a long post anyway |
It happens.
___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
Last edited by MisterOpus1 on Jan-18-2005 at 16:16
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How long do some of you PDD people spend here writing and reading?
