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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Yeah, I was just thinking about adding something but Opus pretty much covered it all...

That would be lovely... Having all four of the long-post source quoting evolution fans at my throat

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Originally posted by trancaholic I do not consider archeology nor any other historical science as science. I thought that was quite clear from my previous post where I lumped all work in the social and humanitarian sciences into the non-scientific category.

Well now I have to ask you how you define where you draw the distinction between scientific "hypthothesis" and scientific "theory". I think you are, in some part, diminishing the science of evolution by comparing it to the study of archeology or any other humanitarian science. I don't dismiss the fact that they bear similar characteristics in the fact that they both rely on historical evidence, however, one has sufficient evidence to begin formulative theory on evolutionary development while the other is solely based on historical analysis and cultural studies with so little data that predictive functionality is out of the picture. However, could archeology provide the knowledge base for us to accurately guage predictions? Eventually yes. After all, Psychology has advanced enough for us to accurately detail theories that are so universally accepted that they are adopted by our very own court systems. Given enough data and knowledge, archeology can most certainly be a "predicitive" science if that is indeed your necessity for "theory".

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Furthermore, scientific theories has as part of their essence that they should be usable no matter where or when in the universe you apply them. If evolution (also meaning evolution through mutation and natural selection in this post) is only describing what has taken place on Earth in the past, then it is a further incentive not to label it as scientific.

What you seem to be describing is a subjective evaluation of "theory" until it suits your needs. The Newtonian "theory" of gravity was adopted several centuries ago before it went through a thorough vetting process of new discoveries that ultimately resulted in the rejection of several Newtonian concepts in favor of some einstein postulates. Was Newtonian physics always a "hypothesis" as opposed to theory? Einstein "theory" undergoes continuous testing even today such as the Gravity Prove B satellite to verify that his theory was indeed "predictive," yet would you argue Einsteinian theory as mere "hypothesis" as opposed to "theory" at this point? The point is that you can regard all scientific theory as unpredictable "hypothesis" if you so choose (such as the laws of gravity in a black hole? The laws of gravity with respect to dark matter? What keeps us from applying such doubts to "normal" gravity?) the point is is that that scientific theory is not, and historically has not, primarily been derived from PREDICTIVE results (otherwise Copernican theory would have been a miserable failure) but from empirical results that provide direction and refinement to theory.

Anyway, I'll try to address the rest of your arguments tomorrow (although some seem beyond my field).

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Retro ...

A quickie before heading to work - may not be thought through.

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Originally posted by occrider Well now I have to ask you how you define where you draw the distinction between scientific "hypthothesis" and scientific "theory".

If it is falsifiable (in the sense I have tried to explain above - and which Popper has published several thick books on) and not falsified then I would use the "scientific theory" label. Otherwise, it's only a hypothesis.

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Originally posted by occrider I think you are, in some part, diminishing the science of evolution by comparing it to the study of archeology or any other humanitarian science. I don't dismiss the fact that they bear similar characteristics in the fact that they both rely on historical evidence, however, one has sufficient evidence to begin formulative theory on evolutionary development while the other is solely based on historical analysis and cultural studies with so little data that predictive functionality is out of the picture. However, could archeology provide the knowledge base for us to accurately guage predictions? Eventually yes. After all, Psychology has advanced enough for us to accurately detail theories that are so universally accepted that they are adopted by our very own court systems. Given enough data and knowledge, archeology can most certainly be a "predicitive" science if that is indeed your necessity for "theory".

Well, comparing it to archeology wasn't really my idea. With respect to the issue at hand Opus could have compared it to scuba diving or sculptoring for all I care. With regards to humanitarian sciences, they do have hypotheses - and my impression is that most researchers in these fields consider these "scientific theories". (Obviously, I disagree.) Therefore, I think the comparison to hypotheses in humanitarian sciences is a fair one. When talking about comparison to practices such as studying/researching/digging/reading, then you may be right in saying that I diminish evolution. However, that's mostly in the eye of the beholder. Remember I am talking about demarcation - not worth of the activity. For instance, unlike scuba diving, the hypothesis of evolution has definately been helpful in ousting religious considerations from scientific research - and I personally value the existence of it much higher than the existence of scuba diving. An analogy to this issue (as I see it) is determining whether a specific chopper is a car or merely a vehicle. By me stating that it is not a car only a vehicle, I do not express any feelings on the chopper's worth compared to all other non-car vehicles. It might even be a truely superior chopper that is preferable to most cars, but that still doesn't make it a car.

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Originally posted by occrider What you seem to be describing is a subjective evaluation of "theory" until it suits your needs. The Newtonian "theory" of gravity was adopted several centuries ago before it went through a thorough vetting process of new discoveries that ultimately resulted in the rejection of several Newtonian concepts in favor of some einstein postulates. Was Newtonian physics always a "hypothesis" as opposed to theory? Einstein "theory" undergoes continuous testing even today such as the Gravity Prove B satellite to verify that his theory was indeed "predictive," yet would you argue Einsteinian theory as mere "hypothesis" as opposed to "theory" at this point? The point is that you can regard all scientific theory as unpredictable "hypothesis" if you so choose (such as the laws of gravity in a black hole? The laws of gravity with respect to dark matter? What keeps us from applying such doubts to "normal" gravity?) the point is is that that scientific theory is not, and historically has not, primarily been derived from PREDICTIVE results (otherwise Copernican theory would have been a miserable failure) but from empirical results that provide direction and refinement to theory.

I agree with what you write here: All scientific theory is hypotheses. I only distinguish some of them as being scientific theories as well. The matter of demoting a scientific theory to merely being a hypothesis after it has been falsified, is an interesting one. I don't recall Popper giving it any special attention, but as his philosophy springs from a desire to let scientific theories be characterised as refutable ontological statements, I would say that rejected hypotheses wouldn't be scientific theories no more, as they are no longer refutable. So to take your concrete example of Newton's gravitational model, I would say that it has always been a hypotheses and during the 17th and 18th century it was a scientific theory as well. Today it's a rejected hypothesis.
Somewhat related to the "diminish"-issure, I wrote about above, we can see that even though Newton's model is no longer a scientific theory (unlike relativity theory) it is in fact a much more useful tool for engineers than relativity theory.
EDIT: I think my viewpoint is an aspect of my position that science is the business of uncovering how the world works (ontology). As we can never be sure of the validity of a hypothesis, the best we can do is to cut away all the bad ones - limiting the possibilities for how the world works. If we start allowing for hypotheses that are not falsifiable into our corpus of scientific theories, this corpus will start to build up drastically, with the main portion of theories ending up really being hypotheses that can never be eliminated from consideration - no matter what observations we may make.
This is also the reason why I detest pragmatic reasons for accepting hypotheses as scientific theory. It's ok for the public and governments to accept any hypothesis as being true (you could argue that it is in fact necessary) as with your psychology example, but it shouldn't be labelled a scientific theory for that reason. It's as dangerous as allowing religion or morals to influence the scientific quest.

Last edited by trancaholic on Jan-20-2005 at 09:54

Crap! I get sick for 2 days and this is the result! I have a little time this afternoon - I'll have a reply then.....

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

I am wondering at this moment about what exactly would you require for the scientific theory to be in order to be called a theory. The word theory is not equivalent to a mathematical theorem, it can never be explicitely proven with a 100% certainty. What a theory needs to have is the ability to draw conclusions based on observed phenomena, and it needs to have those conclusions and its postulates proved correct in some way. Hypothesis, on the other hand, is pretty much just an educated guess that still needs to be proven, both by its postulates and by the conclusions it makes.

Now, while theory of evolution does seem a bit vague in relation to hard science (math, physics, chemistry...)standards, it does make some basic and accurate predictions. You can predict, for example, that if you let a group of cats live in a swamp that they'll develop webbing between their toes in time. You can predict that if you domesticate an animal it will become dumber and less agressive. These predictions are vague and not explicit, but that's as good as you can get when you have almost infinite set of variables. Try calculating the motion of the stars in our galaxy for the next few billion years. The best you can come up with is that they'll keep rotating and attracting each other until they'll eventually all clump together into a big black hole. You can not possibly calculate movement of a specific star except by numerical approximations that reqire computers billions of times more powerful than we have now. With evolution, you have pretty much the same amount of variables, but you also have uncertanty and probability introduced instead of certainty. Because, unlike with stars for which you can always calculate exact sum of forces acting upon them, with animals there's only a varying degree of probability that determines whether they'll survive or not. In that way you can never determine with absolute certainty whether one exact specific mutation will appear, but what you can say is that there is a very high probability of one mutation from a set of similar mutations will happen. It's like radioactive decay. You can never guess the exact amount of atoms that will decay in a given time, but when you have a significant amount of atoms, you can determine the approximate number of atoms that have split up to a very high degree of certainty.

As for the theory of gravity poised by Newton, you can not say that it's been disproved by Einstein's theory, because when you look at Newton's theory you see that it is actually an approximation of Einstein's theory. That theory, however, still works in conditions that are not extreme and that do not require a great deal of accuracy. That is because the essence of the theory, that bodies, both stellar and terran, gravitationally attract each other is basicaly correct, and the laws that govern that attraction are very closely describing what actually happens. So while it is true that evolutionary theory may be modified slightly in the future to accomodate new potential problems, the essence of the theory is still the same, species change due to mutations and natural selection in order to better suit their environment. Those who manage to do so live on, those who don't die out. And while the exact mechanisms of that may be somewhat different than those we are currently proposing, especially in extreme conditions, the essence of the theory still stands. A hypothesis, on the other hand, can be proven to be absolutely wrong and erroneous, both in its postulates and its conclusions, and that's the primary reason why theory of evolution should not be called a hypothesis.

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1+1=10

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 I am wondering at this moment about what exactly would you require for the scientific theory to be in order to be called a theory. The word theory is not equivalent to a mathematical theorem, it can never be explicitely proven with a 100% certainty.

I'm getting a tad frustrated and am nearly giving up here. Once again, my criteria for a non-refuted hypothesis to be labelled a scientific theory: It should be falsifiable. I don't care about notions of provability, as that is impossible as you state and I stated in my previous post. Evidently I am extremely bad at communicating this falsifiability thing, so I really urge those of you who are truely interested to read Popper's book - he's an excellent writer.
[/QUOTE]

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 What a theory needs to have is the ability to draw conclusions based on observed phenomena, and it needs to have those conclusions and its postulates proved correct in some way. Hypothesis, on the other hand, is pretty much just an educated guess that still needs to be proven, both by its postulates and by the conclusions it makes.

Here is where we differ. I don't think that a hypothesis is just an educated guess that still needs to be proven. I don't think that anything can be "proven" with respect to hypotheses. It follows that I don't see how conclusions and postulates of a theory can ever have been proven.
I am curious, though, as to how you would define the "some way" conclusions and postulates of a theory should have been proven? If this thread is turning into an exercise in making me see the error in my definition of scientific theories, I expect you all to provide me with alternative ones, which do not hinge on vaguely defined terms such as "sufficient", "some way", or "practical".

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 Now, while theory of evolution does seem a bit vague in relation to hard science (math, physics, chemistry...)

Interrupting your sentence, just to state that I do not consider math (nor computer science nor logic) a science. This definition of mine is not born out of a wish to elevate my own profession and interests over those of others. Don't know if it makes a difference to state this - it sometimes do when I have this sort of debate with people from the humanities - but I guess it can't hurt.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 standards, it does make some basic and accurate predictions. You can predict, for example, that if you let a group of cats live in a swamp that they'll develop webbing between their toes in time. You can predict that if you domesticate an animal it will become dumber and less agressive. These predictions are vague and not explicit, but that's as good as you can get when you have almost infinite set of variables. Try calculating the motion of the stars in our galaxy for the next few billion years. The best you can come up with is that they'll keep rotating and attracting each other until they'll eventually all clump together into a big black hole. You can not possibly calculate movement of a specific star except by numerical approximations that reqire computers billions of times more powerful than we have now. With evolution, you have pretty much the same amount of variables, but you also have uncertanty and probability introduced instead of certainty. Because, unlike with stars for which you can always calculate exact sum of forces acting upon them, with animals there's only a varying degree of probability that determines whether they'll survive or not. In that way you can never determine with absolute certainty whether one exact specific mutation will appear, but what you can say is that there is a very high probability of one mutation from a set of similar mutations will happen. It's like radioactive decay. You can never guess the exact amount of atoms that will decay in a given time, but when you have a significant amount of atoms, you can determine the approximate number of atoms that have split up to a very high degree of certainty.

There's three differences between the stars example and the evolution example, one of them the inclusion of non-defined probabilities in evolution (as you nearly note yourself), the second that even when we take a step back and consider only outcomes from a statistical viewpoint, evolution still allows for several results: If we observe a million galaxies of stars and only 20% of them actually ended up as black holes, we would need to dismiss the "contraction theory" as it clearly stated that that should happen. If we throw a million populations of cats into a million swamps and only 20% of them ends up with webbing between their toes we do not abandon evolution as it provides for a lot of things that could have gone wrong and caused the cats not to develop webbing. As an example of this last point, consider my previous example of bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics. According to evolution this should happen, but it very very rarely does, yet evolution is not rejected.
Third point is that the problem in estimating the trajectories of the stars in a galaxy, and thereby their ultimate fate, is a practical problem caused by computational power and full knowledge of initial conditions. The problem of predicting by means of evolution is inherent in the hypothesis: No precise model of the evolution of the cats exists.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 As for the theory of gravity poised by Newton, you can not say that it's been disproved by Einstein's theory, because when you look at Newton's theory you see that it is actually an approximation of Einstein's theory. That theory, however, still works in conditions that are not extreme and that do not require a great deal of accuracy. That is because the essence of the theory, that bodies, both stellar and terran, gravitationally attract each other is basicaly correct, and the laws that govern that attraction are very closely describing what actually happens.

Before the predictive inaccuracies of the theory of gravitation became known, it was considered as the true explanation of the motions of the planets. It was a belief held so strong, that Kant was goaded into considering the possibility of truth being revealed to man through intervention of God because of it. The theory was the best guess humans had at the workings of a part of the world. When instruments became sufficiently accurate to repeatedly show flaws in the predictions of the theory, it was disproved as a true statement of the world. Whether it still is a fine approximation (and an excellent one under special circumstances) doesn't make a difference to its ontological status. Science is not engineering.

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 So while it is true that evolutionary theory may be modified slightly in the future to accomodate new potential problems, the essence of the theory is still the same, species change due to mutations and natural selection in order to better suit their environment. Those who manage to do so live on, those who don't die out. And while the exact mechanisms of that may be somewhat different than those we are currently proposing, especially in extreme conditions, the essence of the theory still stands. A hypothesis, on the other hand, can be proven to be absolutely wrong and erroneous, both in its postulates and its conclusions, and that's the primary reason why theory of evolution should not be called a hypothesis.

If you understand that my definition of scientific theory is based in ontology rather than pragmatism then it should be clear to you that I cannot agree with you on this last sentence, even though I agree with your belief that "species do change due to mutation and natural selection".

I’m going to apologize beforehand for making any redundant statements or ideas that have already been covered. Tranceaholic is seemingly becoming more agitated, and I in no way am trying to make things worse. Nevertheless, I do want to reply to his comments in full, so I’ll just say right off that I’m sorry but I haven’t read anyone else’s replies yet.

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I do not consider archeology nor any other historical science as science. I thought that was quite clear from my previous post where I lumped all work in the social and humanitarian sciences into the non-scientific category. Furthermore, scientific theories has as part of their essence that they should be usable no matter where or when in the universe you apply them. If evolution (also meaning evolution through mutation and natural selection in this post) is only describing what has taken place on Earth in the past, then it is a further incentive not to label it as scientific.

You’re certainly free to stick to your definition of science as you choose, however the definition of “science” is by no means under the same terms. I really try not to reference the dictionary as much as possible with such definitions, but I do deem this relevant:

sci•ence n.
1. The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.
2. Such activities restricted to explaining a limitied class of natural phenomena.

Paraphrasing, science is merely the study of natural phenomena. Evolution clearly fits this general term. I’ll further this definition with a bit more on my own – studying such phenomena via the hypothetico-deductive method (i.e. scientific method). Clearly evolution utilizes this methodology as well. Now as to “theory”:

the•o•ry
n. pl. the•o•ries

1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.

IOW, a statement that best explains observed phenomena, or in the case of science – observed natural phenomena through repeated tests, and consequently is used to make predictions about that given realm of natural phenomena. Again evolutionary theory clearly falls into this category.

So you’re free to stipulate more stringent definitions that clearly fall into those “hard sciences” such as math and engineering, but the evolution defined and understood does not need to be in such mathematical boundaries. The accumulation of evidence that supports it is more than enough to categorize it in the “sciences”, as well as call it a “theory”. I’m sure you’re also aware that by your definition, forensics would have to be excluded as well. And we should also throw in astronomy too, considering that we postulate in great detail about the past from present day cosmic phenomena, exactly the same as we do with evolution. And come to think of it, throw in geology and geography too. I hope you can see now that your narrow definition excludes a bit too much.

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I'm not a student of philosophy, but I do know enough about argumentation techniques to recognize good and bad texts when I see them. I think this reference is pretty awful, in essence relabelling explanation of past events by "retrodiction" and then claiming that it's the same as prediction.

Granted, his wording is a bit questionable, but his reasoning is quite sound in how evolution makes certain predictions of past events, such as what we should expect to find in the fossil record, which has turned up to be quite accurate to our predictions. Again, many other sciences fall into this same type of rationale, and you would unfortunately be excluding them with the same stroke. As one author states:

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we can make very strong a posteriori predictions about biological universals by combining common descent with what is known. As a scientific analogy, Newton's Theory of Universal Gravitation does not predict planets, nor does it predict the present trajectories of planets. But given the known measured trajectory of an existing planet, we can use Newton's theory to predict what the trajectory will be in the future and what it must have been in the past, and these predictions can be confirmed or falsified. Likewise, given the fact that we now know that all organisms studied to date, including bacteria and birds, have a very similar genetic code, we can use common descent to predict that all undiscovered or unexamined organisms that fit between bacteria and birds in the standard phylogenetic tree will also have a similar genetic code. Because of common descent, we predict this even though this prediction is not functionally necessary—many other equivalent genetic codes could function equally well. Because of common descent, we know that certain types of organisms will be extremely similar in the biological universals before we actually go and check the organisms to see what their structures really look like. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/camp.html

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Some of the other pages you referred to from the same site are also badly argued, with selective quoting of the arguments of others, loaded language, and red herrings.

Though a bit off topic, and perhaps even worthy of a separate thread, you’ll have to do a bit better than handwaving away without further explanation.

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Here are some "predicitions" courtesy of evolution: As the application of antibiotics in humans and animals is increased, the populations of bacteria should become resistant to it. As "natural habitats" of some species are gradually destroyed by humans, we should see the species evolving to meet the requirements/utilize the benefits of the new surroundings. As farmers use pesticide on their fields, we should see evolution of new species of parasite from the old ones. None of these happens in a large scale, even though we can argue that evolution predicts them to. However, as evolution rests on all too many uncertainties we do not dismiss it as falsified. Maybe that gives a clue as to what I mean by falsification? It may be that I have not been sufficiently clear in my explanation of Popper's ideas. Anyway, he continuously emphasizes that the conjectures we accept as theories should be made in boldness, with bold predictions being deducable from them. A bold prediction would be something like "under the following settings we should observe that 30% of chemical X is absorbed by chemical Y", "the particle X exists, and we should be able to observe it using technique Y under the settings Z", or "the spin of the boson X that we will measure tonight in the accelerator will be Y".

I’m beginning to understand a bit more of what you are defining by falsification. However, and admittedly I’m at a disadvantage by not reading more on Popper’s ideas, I think Popper and yourself must concede that if we exclude such uncertainties, or say extraneous unaccountable variables in making predictions of any given phenomena, we’re going to have to be excluding a great many other sciences in the process. In fact, I could be wrong, but all that seems to leave us with is chemistry and physics. Or perhaps I think to a certain extent quantum theory may also be questionable, so you might have to exclude both of these fields too. If you’re comfortable with such exclusion, that’s fine by me.

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Why the strawman? I haven't advocated ID, nor creationism. Please do not read any more into my posts than what is there.

You’re right, it was a bit offtopic here. I seem to remember, however, that we were having a conversation a while back about ID and evolution, and though you were not necessarily taking a standpoint of advocating ID, you were seemingly not necessarily dismissal of it either. I leave room to be corrected here, however, but my question was certainly not relevant at this time.

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I'll reiterate my position just once more, and if someone still is confused about what I mean (the original question posed by occrider, which I - so far in vain - have tried to answer) then so be it: [b]I do believe that evolution is happening. I do not advocate ID, creationism, life from space, or any other replacing or augmenting hypothesis. According to my philosophy evolution is not a scientific theory, and will never achieve the same status as, say, the theory of relativity by me.

Now admittedly my knowledge and education on cosmology and astrophysics is pretty weak, but I’m willing to bet you that there are a number of correlations that could easily between relativity and evolution, which utilize historical application of prediction (or “retrodiction” – that is a bad word!).

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The reason for that is that it is not falsifiable in my sense of the word. Furthermore, I think that evolution cannot itself explain the entire history of life on Earth. I do not propose any concrete mechanism or mechanisms to augment or replace evolution is explainer of this history, but I think that scientists should be much more open on the problems that is still to be tackled. I feel that some scientists are throwing overboard credibility in their stupid war on creationists by not being totally honest about the status of evolution as explainer of all.

I think you’re going to have to explain yourself a bit more here. Evolutionists certainly do NOT have all the answers to historical life on earth. And especially when we trace it back to the very beginning, you’ll see most evolutionists simply shrug and say, “I don’t know, yet. In fact, I may never know.” When we talk about abiogenesis, evolutionists tend to set their feet down and mark what they can state as certainty or uncertainty. Actually we can move even further up the timeline and state pretty firmly that most evolutionists do not have a very sound explanation on the evolution of from unicellular to multicellular critters. I think they’ve settled on the small handful of symbiotic relationship theories forming colonies of cells, which do not fit within the everyday evolution mechanism definition of mutation/natural selection (though not necessarily exclusive of it).

But I need not remind you, at least I hope I need not remind you that the reason scientists throw away creationist ideas is simply because the physical evidence simply does not and has never supported their ideas. Furthermore, it’s quite evident that creationist notions have never utilized scientific principles in any manner. Additionally, it doesn’t help the creationist cause to have a set of conclusions already in hand without any verifiable evidence to support such conclusions, but then attempt to find evidence to support such unverified conclusions. This is in stark contrast to what scientists do – IOW, instead of saying “I don’t know how this works yet, or I may never know how this works because we’re not technologically capable of knowing”, creationists simply conclude “Godidit” instead. Which is more reasonable and rational?

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I work within computer science/mathematics, and we frequently use GAs to search hypothesis spaces. I have myself supervised several student projects on application of GAs, so - at this specific point - I do claim that I am knowledgeable. However, GAs (due to the large number of problems they have so far not been succesful at solving) have undergone quite a development since their initial imitation of evolution. Today mechanisms are in place that allow for individuals to pass accumulated "knowledge" on to their offspring, distributes individuals into sub-populations according to their behavioural traits, etc. all in recognition of the basic operators of evolutionary operators are too weak, and that guidance is needed. Of course, this does not in itself speak about the need for "guidance" in the real world.

Granted.

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Of course it's an oversimplification. It was meant as a means to illustrate how Renegade and I differ in our perception of what a "prediction" is. I didn't in any way try to insult him, and I think that he knows that.

Oh I’m sure he does too, but my point wasn’t meant to imply that you were insulting him. Rather, that your oversimplification missed the point of his post in the first place. But we’ve already covered our definitions of predictions earlier, so I’ll not rehash.

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As I stated I do not claim to be an expert on paleontology, but only had the Norwegian book to refer to. However, the review you quoted in your fourth post (the one from skeptic.com) also mentions that evolution ought to happen in a continuous slow pace.

And it does, but the author was more or less referring to those moments of acceleration, but again static moments are to be fully expected within evolutionary theory if an organism is quite successful in that given niche. A common thought or notion, for example, is why we don’t see bacteria become human beings – why do they stay bacteria? The short answer is that they’re the most successful critters on the planet, and they have no “pressure” to become anything more than the little critters that they are, with some small though certainly not “minor” changes by any means. The only means of evolution via mutation and natural selection to occur is through the various ways of reproductive isolationism - whether it be geographic, intra-species (within a population but not entailing geographic barriers involved), behavioral as a consequence of numerous factors (geographic again comes to mind), and so forth (or a combination of 1 or more).

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Your's and Renegade's points on why evolution accelerates when environments change sound plausible, though I don't see why evolution should grind to a near halt when that's not the case.

Why not? If there’s no evolutionary advantage to certain mutations occurring to a given population or subpopulation, those morphological features are either:
1. Neutral and are more or less irrelevant to that given population
2. Detrimental and that population gets outcompeted by those populations that have a greater advantage of survival and reproduction. It’s really very simple.

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I haven't read it either - only the mixture of his points with that of Shapiro in the Norwegian book, and then from reviews on the net. Anyway a lot of what you wrote was rendered obsolete by the following: What is happening here is that we leave the definition of evolution I have been sticking to throughout my posts. What the review - and you - actually say is that Hoyle is at fault because he doesn't take into account genetic redundancy and sub-optimality. The review concedes that Hoyle is right in pointing out that there is a problem in explaining macro evolution, but rejects his own explanation (the outer space one), and suggests other - more plausible - mechanisms at play. I didn't know about the hypotheses on "mixed model on evolution" and "lateral gene transfer", but they sound interesting. However, you do realise that these are somewhat beyond "evolution through mutation and natural selection"? At least, I don't expect them to be tought in standard text books on evolution.

That’s the crux of the problem really – what would one expect to be taught in the standard HS textbooks of evolution? Obviously you’re aware, or at least becoming aware of the complexities of the theory itself, especially as we are advancing our techniques and further our understanding of evolution as a whole. As one HS biology teacher once told me – “hell it’s hard enough to get my kids to understand mytosis and myosis; how the hell would you expect me to be able to get them to understand the various intricacies involved in modern day evolutionary theory?”

IOW, there’s only so much that could really be taught and demonstrated well in a HS biology class. Unfortunately, some broad sweeping generalizations occur when it comes to broad topics such as evolution. Personally I’d love nothing more than to have HS kids being taught modern evo. theory in greater detail, but that’s simply not terribly realistic. I think this even stretches up into college Biol. 101 as well. Only when you move further into the Biology courses will you start to study the details in greater depth. Pretty much standard for most topics in the various fields of study, scientific or otherwise. I may be preaching to the choir here, but I feel that it’s point that cannot be overemphasized in this discussion.

But in regards to what the author stated, I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding here on citing a “problem” with macroevolution. As the critic states here:

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What happens instead is that standard mutations occur in regions of the genome (the ensemble of all genes) that regulate the functioning of a cascade of other genes. In this way, one small change actually has multiple, far-reaching, yet coordinated effects because of the way genes interact with each other throughout the development of an organism – a sort of domino effect with consequences that may or may not be negative.

Now I do think this topic – cascading genes, along with other topics such as lateral gene transfers, are not the end-all answer to the so-called “macroevolutionary” scale. Or if we want to explain further about the rates of macroevolution we see in the fossil record, we’ll have to throw in punctuated equilibria as well. These answers, however, are not necessarily the end-all answers to the “problem” of macroevolution. Rather, they merely try to explain certain accelerated periods of macroevolutionary events we tend to see in the fossil record. Or for that matter, what we see in the lab at times too:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...st_uids=8650581

Does this negate the notion of slow accumulated changes over time lending itself to new species via isolationism of some sort to explain other “parts” of macroevolution? Absolutely not, but there is certainly no logical reason to state that this doesn’t occur, given on what we’ve seen in the field and lab everyday, and given what we know about the rates of mutation and natural selection. The only real barrier that would exclude these slow, gradual movements of change is time. And as the research clearly demonstrates, hundreds of millions of years is no barrier to overcome at all.
And of course, none of these points of acceleration negates the mechanism driving evolution – mutation and natural selection.

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This long piece of calculation is based on an important assumption: That each positive mutation is reflected in natural selection, so that the individuals possesing the positive trait is more likely to reproduce.

This is no assumption. Again we have a wealth of molecular evolutionary research to support this. If you’re really that interested, I’ll supply some examples. I’m just a little pressed for time ATM, and I’m going in hurried mode.

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However, that is exactly the assumption that Hoyle contests. The following is a snippet from the review I linked to in my third post, so it may be familiar reading: quote: How far does the neo-Darwinian theory work? The largest part of the book consists of calculations of the core claims of neo-Darwinism: evolution works by the selection of rare advantageous mutations. These are the questions traditionally answered by population genetics. Studying the textbooks (Fisher) he got mad and calculated it all from scratch! The questions he tries to answer: * Can rare advantageous mutations indeed become established in a population, in the face of a flood of disadvantageous mutations? If so, how fast? At what costs? * What is the effect of population size and generation time of organisms involved? * What is the effect of asexual opposed to sexual reproduction? * How severe must selection be to have effect? * How long will it take that a population accumulates so many small deleterious mutations, that it will go extinct? My training in mathematics doesn't permit me to evaluate Hoyle's calculations. I hope professional population geneticists will check Hoyle's results. Nevertheless it's easy to notice if the outcomes contradict or confirm standard textbook knowledge. Hoyle builds up a tension: it is not easy to get rid of all the bad mutations, let alone to improve a species! His calculations culminate in the result that mutation and natural selection can only find advantageous protein variants at most two base substitutions separated from the current status. That means that if 'only' 4 - 6 substitutions (9) are necessary to transform one enzyme into another, although a small number, this is still forbidden by neo-Darwinism according to Hoyle. These are the limits of the power of natural selection to change existing genes. In orthodox neo-Darwinism there are no such limits. "What the mathematics shows is that nineteenth- century biologists were correct as long as they remained within the range of practical experience. Where the situation went wrong was in making a huge extrapolation ..." (p108). So Hoyle arrives at rather pessimistic conclusions compared with the usual optimistic textbook view. Next it is a small step for Hoyle to claim that the protein histone-4 could never be produced in small steps. Why? Histone-4 has a chain of 102 amino acids and the structure is extremely conserved in all eukaryote species (16). Bovine histone-4 differs in only 2 positions with peas! And that means extreme functional constraints must exist (17). Histones are necessary for chromosome condensation during cell division. The traditional neo-Darwinian step-by-step method must fail claims Hoyle, because it implies 100 non-functional steps. The alternative: a jump of 100 mutations of exactly the right kind would be highly improbable. The histone-4 case is in fact a case of Michael Behe's Irreducible Complexity long before Behe published his Darwin's Black Box, since the hand-written version of Mathematics of Evolution was 'published' in 1987. Hoyle is an Intelligent Design Theorist 'avant-la-lettre'. What makes Hoyle different is that he doesn't talk about 'the supernatural' and the 3-letter word. Hoyle indignantly rejects Neo-Darwinists' "retreat in the unknowable and untestable" (p103), when they claim that histone-4 historically had a different function and so could evolve stepwise. Hoyle would be right if evolutionists just claimed it without doing research. But the question is open to further investigation. Evidence can and has been collected. Histone-precursors can be found in ancient bacteria Archaea (5). However the origin of histones is far from solved. This is not reported in the textbooks. It isn't even mentioned, let alone recognised as a difficult problem (7). On the other hand: does Hoyle seriously believe that histone-4 came hidden in a meteorite and incoporated itself into every eukaryotic cell? Is that itself not a "retreat in the unknowable and untestable"? More generally speaking: why does extraterrestrial evolution escape the problems that evolution encounters on Earth? More time? More space? Favourable conditions? Tell me! It's also the same problem that Gell-Mann avoids/skips in his book by refering to gateway events: When a lot of mutations is required to go from one state to the other, and none of them brings any fitnes advantages individually, then the transition is very improbable. It may be that the mixed model or lateral gene transfer can in some way explain this, but as of now, I deem it unresolved - and at least unexplained by the definition of evolution I have used in this thread, and which I dare say is the layman perception of evolution.

There’s a number of errors in this reviewer’s assumptions, and since I have not read Hoyle’s book directly it may not necessarily be a direct criticism of Hoyle in of itself. Nevertheless, it all traces back to a misunderstanding of molecular evolution. In general, Hoyle’s argument as it seems is somewhat similar to the common ID argument involving mathematic calculations and probability on the supposed outcome from evolutionary pathways. The trouble is, these folks tend to view evolutionary pathways in a linear, step-by-step pattern of one beneficial “change” eventually giving rise to another “change”, and eventually adding to create a novel feature of sorts. Unfortunately for them, this is not how the process works, and is why their analogies and computations on evolution fall way short of the mark. Rather than a step-by-step process, evolution should be thought of more like a bush, where small incremental “steps” may or may not affect other “steps”, and accumulated steps not just move “upward”, but sideways, diagonally, downward, and every which way as well, not to forget moments of stasis or no movement. I think this is actually the crux of your problem in general with evolution – that it is impossible to put a mathematical model on the evolutionary history of a given organism, and be able to state precisely how it has occurred, or perhaps what’s more – predict where it will go. It seems this is what Hoyle had seemingly tried to do as well, and his answers given in such a linear fashion (as it appears at least) conclude that it’s just simply impossible to have occurred this way.

Well if such a conclusion is reached, that conclusion is correct – it is impossible for evolution to have occurred in such a way. But the problem is not so much the mathematics, rather it’s correctly understanding how evolution works and identifying the correct pathway of evolution, and somehow being able to sift out all the extraneous variables affecting this linear pathway as well.

And that’s simply impossible to perform. For example, what appears here is that Hoyle, or at least the reviewer on Hoyle, tends to neglect the fact that the big majority of mutations are neutral, and that it is not a necessity for an accumulation of beneficial mutations to create a novel protein or give rise to a new species. As Li here states:

quote:

However, acquiring a new function may require many mutational steps, and a point that needs emphasis is that the early steps might have been selectively neutral because the new function might not be manifested until a certain number of steps had already occurred. Li WH (1997) Molecular Evolution. Sinauer Associates, Sunderland, MA., p. 427

So the math becomes a bit conflated when we’re discussing the various different ways that can create a novel functional gene/protein/function/etc.

And Hoyle here uses histone-4 for his argument demonstrating just how conserved it is amongst Eukaryotes. How on earth does that disprove evolution in any manner? In no way does evolution declare that proteins are continually undergoing beneficial mutations over and over and over throughout time that results in some sort of change in structure and/or function. If that DNA sequence of that protein becomes more important to function and survival, it’s evolution will be slowed, to the point of being extremely conserved. DNA regions that are vital for survival, such as those that code for enzymes, aquire less mutations over time than non-vital regions because selection acts to homologise these vital areas.
(Westphal, S.P., 2004. Life still goes on without 'vital' DNA, NewScientist No. 2450, P.18.) Even within species, most amino acid mutations are functionally silent. For example, there are at least 250 different amino acid mutations known in human hemoglobin, carried by more than 3% of the world's population, that have no clinical manifestation in either heterozygotic or homozygotic individuals. But across species, this is demonstrated not just in histone-4 a peptide of approx. 600 mya old in conserved function, but we could also use other highly conserved peptides such as hemoglobin (5.5 mya) or cytochrome C (~20 mya) for that matter.

Do any of these peptides somehow disprove evolution because their functionality across so many organisms throughout the Kingdom are so similar and are conserved? Hardly. In fact, if anything it only enhances the evolutionary theory a great deal.

But again, that’s not to say that mutations don’t occur on amino acids, they just have very little overall effect on protein function and structure. Wesley Elsberry has probably a better explanation of this with cytochrome C, though some of the info. may not precisely pertain to my statements:

http://www.antievolution.org/people...p/sequence.html

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Agree with your text, but not what I expect to be the implication of your last sentence: That we should accept evolution as explaining everything because no other hypothesis explains it better. I'd rather that there exists within the scientific community clear awareness of what areas are yet to be considered fully understood.

Let me put my statement another way – by no means has evolution solved all “riddles”, or “gaps” as creationists call it in biological phenomena. It has certainly closed a great many gaps, but certainly many still exist. Evolutionists are extremely confident, as they should be, that the evo. theory will continue to correctly fill in those gaps, as it has done many times over in the past. They refuse to simply fill in those gaps with a “godidit” stamp, rather – they simply say “I don’t know, yet”. It’s much more plausible to do so. So this is what I was more or less referring to in bringing up alternative ideas to filling in those gaps.

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Again the strawman. How do you expect me to defend ID when I don't sympathize with it?

For fun.

Seriously, I just indulged myself further in explaining the motives of these groups with alternative theories. It was really not addressed at your points specifically. Sorry.

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Insolent sarcasm really doesn't further your points nor reputation.

Sorry, sometimes I forget that I’m up for my tenure here.

Seriously, I didn’t realize I was attempting to further my reputation. Regardless, I’m sure you’re aware that I lace my threads with sarcasm all the time. You quibbled your remark of falsifiability with “ethical misery”. I took a minor exception to that remark, so I felt a little jest was in order. Apologies if that bothers you in any way, but this minor case I felt a little sarcasm was a bit warranted. I mean really, “ethical misery?”
Anyhoo…

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Just because a scientist believes in God, that doesn't mean that he is willing to let religious interpretations and conjectures enter into the corpus of science. Sort of like that you can be a secularist and still practicing a religion.

No doubt, this probably has a certain amount of merit, but I’m willing to state that is the exception and not the rule. Nevertheless, it doesn’t negate my point about scientists in the field being able to dissociate their beliefs, Christian or otherwise, from their work. A belief without veracity and supporting evidence does not in any way have to hinder the work of utilizing supporting evidence in research. I’m not sure how one could, unless we enter the realm of creation “science”, where arbitrary beliefs are inserted arbitrarily.

___________________
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-20-2005 at 22:52

OMFG!!! The lengths of posts in here is crazy!!! I'm gonna try reading them all but I fully expect to get some form of qualification for the effort involved!

___________________
If you can read this, I'm seriously fucking bored.

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Originally posted by Dervish OMFG!!! The lengths of posts in here is crazy!!! I'm gonna try reading them all but I fully expect to get some form of qualification for the effort involved!

Well this one is quite interesting...been tagging along trying to keep up..its nearly the weekend and should have more time..dont give up Traneaholic...dont let him get to you..LOL

I have a little time before embarking on 48 hours of non-stop mixture of drinking, playing poker, eating and sleeping, so this will be the last post from me in a while. As I only have little time, I will be brief about or skip parts where consensus seems to have been established. Just thought I needed to show a lifesign before leaving.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 You’re certainly free to stick to your definition of science as you choose, however the definition of “science” is by no means under the same terms. I really try not to reference the dictionary as much as possible with such definitions, but I do deem this relevant: sci•ence n. 1. The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena. 2. Such activities restricted to explaining a limitied class of natural phenomena. Paraphrasing, science is merely the study of natural phenomena. Evolution clearly fits this general term. I’ll further this definition with a bit more on my own – studying such phenomena via the hypothetico-deductive method (i.e. scientific method). Clearly evolution utilizes this methodology as well. Now as to “theory”: the•o•ry n. pl. the•o•ries 1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena. IOW, a statement that best explains observed phenomena, or in the case of science – observed natural phenomena through repeated tests, and consequently is used to make predictions about that given realm of natural phenomena. Again evolutionary theory clearly falls into this category. So you’re free to stipulate more stringent definitions that clearly fall into those “hard sciences” such as math and engineering, but the evolution defined and understood does not need to be in such mathematical boundaries. The accumulation of evidence that supports it is more than enough to categorize it in the “sciences”, as well as call it a “theory”. I’m sure you’re also aware that by your definition, forensics would have to be excluded as well. And we should also throw in astronomy too, considering that we postulate in great detail about the past from present day cosmic phenomena, exactly the same as we do with evolution. And come to think of it, throw in geology and geography too. I hope you can see now that your narrow definition excludes a bit too much. ... I’m beginning to understand a bit more of what you are defining by falsification. However, and admittedly I’m at a disadvantage by not reading more on Popper’s ideas, I think Popper and yourself must concede that if we exclude such uncertainties, or say extraneous unaccountable variables in making predictions of any given phenomena, we’re going to have to be excluding a great many other sciences in the process. In fact, I could be wrong, but all that seems to leave us with is chemistry and physics. Or perhaps I think to a certain extent quantum theory may also be questionable, so you might have to exclude both of these fields too. If you’re comfortable with such exclusion, that’s fine by me.

I'm quite comfortable by such exclusions. The advantage of keeping things this way is that you do not include in the corpus of science anything which cannot be taken out again. Furthermore, the demarcation criterion is well defined with no reliance on subjective estimates when a hypothesis is up for consideration as being a scientific theory. The definitions from the dictionary do not posses this property. Take astrology, for instance, is it not observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena? How about mathematics (which you seem to consider a science)? Is is using experimental investigations? Furthermore, what does "theoretical" explanation means? The "theory" definition is even worse, I think: Does creationism itself not fit this definition perfectly? And what is this allusion to degrees of theoremhood: "especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted"? Further, is "repeatedly" the same as "at least twice", and who decides what "widely" means? As you hopefully can see, I consider the dictionary definitions practically worthless - or at least inferior to that of Popper's - for demarcation purposes.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Though a bit off topic, and perhaps even worthy of a separate thread, you’ll have to do a bit better than handwaving away without further explanation.

You're right. I'm lazy and stressed for time. At the time it seemed like a reasonable prioritization of effort. Maybe at sunday.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Now admittedly my knowledge and education on cosmology and astrophysics is pretty weak, but I’m willing to bet you that there are a number of correlations that could easily between relativity and evolution, which utilize historical application of prediction (or “retrodiction” – that is a bad word!).

I didn't quite get this on, so I'm hesitant to take the bet.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 I think you’re going to have to explain yourself a bit more here. Evolutionists certainly do NOT have all the answers to historical life on earth. And especially when we trace it back to the very beginning, you’ll see most evolutionists simply shrug and say, “I don’t know, yet. In fact, I may never know.” When we talk about abiogenesis, evolutionists tend to set their feet down and mark what they can state as certainty or uncertainty. Actually we can move even further up the timeline and state pretty firmly that most evolutionists do not have a very sound explanation on the evolution of from unicellular to multicellular critters. I think they’ve settled on the small handful of symbiotic relationship theories forming colonies of cells, which do not fit within the everyday evolution mechanism definition of mutation/natural selection (though not necessarily exclusive of it). But I need not remind you, at least I hope I need not remind you that the reason scientists throw away creationist ideas is simply because the physical evidence simply does not and has never supported their ideas.

The disagreement is then on the behaviour of evolutionists. It is not my impression that they are open and honest about the unresolved issues, open problems, riddles, or whatever term we should use, when they make statements in media concerning evolution. Actually the evolutionists I see in media is pretty confident, maybe because that any signs of weaknesses or admittance of problems would be claimed as a victory by creationists...? Anyway, that's my view of the matter, and the reason why I call the continued debate between cretionists and evolutionists "stupid".

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Furthermore, it’s quite evident that creationist notions have never utilized scientific principles in any manner. Additionally, it doesn’t help the creationist cause to have a set of conclusions already in hand without any verifiable evidence to support such conclusions, but then attempt to find evidence to support such unverified conclusions. This is in stark contrast to what scientists do – IOW, instead of saying “I don’t know how this works yet, or I may never know how this works because we’re not technologically capable of knowing”, creationists simply conclude “Godidit” instead. Which is more reasonable and rational?

Well the first course of action of course. I don't see it happening in the media and in relation to educating the public though.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 That’s the crux of the problem really – what would one expect to be taught in the standard HS textbooks of evolution? Obviously you’re aware, or at least becoming aware of the complexities of the theory itself, especially as we are advancing our techniques and further our understanding of evolution as a whole. As one HS biology teacher once told me – “hell it’s hard enough to get my kids to understand mytosis and myosis; how the hell would you expect me to be able to get them to understand the various intricacies involved in modern day evolutionary theory?” IOW, there’s only so much that could really be taught and demonstrated well in a HS biology class. Unfortunately, some broad sweeping generalizations occur when it comes to broad topics such as evolution. Personally I’d love nothing more than to have HS kids being taught modern evo. theory in greater detail, but that’s simply not terribly realistic. I think this even stretches up into college Biol. 101 as well. Only when you move further into the Biology courses will you start to study the details in greater depth. Pretty much standard for most topics in the various fields of study, scientific or otherwise. I may be preaching to the choir here, but I feel that it’s point that cannot be overemphasized in this discussion.

So we agree that there are phenomena not explained that well by evolution, and that that matter is not taught at schools. I agree that it would be too much to introduce students to current cutting edge research on how these holes may be closed, but I still think that teachings of evolution shouldn't neglect to mention that the holes exists.

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Originally posted by MisterOpus1 But in regards to what the author stated, I think there’s a bit of a misunderstanding here on citing a “problem” with macroevolution. As the critic states here: Now I do think this topic – cascading genes, along with other topics such as lateral gene transfers, are not the end-all answer to the so-called “macroevolutionary” scale. Or if we want to explain further about the rates of macroevolution we see in the fossil record, we’ll have to throw in punctuated equilibria as well. These answers, however, are not necessarily the end-all answers to the “problem” of macroevolution. Rather, they merely try to explain certain accelerated periods of macroevolutionary events we tend to see in the fossil record. Or for that matter, what we see in the lab at times too: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...st_uids=8650581 Does this negate the notion of slow accumulated changes over time lending itself to new species via isolationism of some sort to explain other “parts” of macroevolution? Absolutely not, but there is certainly no logical reason to state that this doesn’t occur, given on what we’ve seen in the field and lab everyday, and given what we know about the rates of mutation and natural selection. The only real barrier that would exclude these slow, gradual movements of change is time. And as the research clearly demonstrates, hundreds of millions of years is no barrier to overcome at all. And of course, none of these points of acceleration negates the mechanism driving evolution – mutation and natural selection.

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 This is no assumption. Again we have a wealth of molecular evolutionary research to support this. If you’re really that interested, I’ll supply some examples. I’m just a little pressed for time ATM, and I’m going in hurried mode.

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 There’s a number of errors in this reviewer’s assumptions, and since I .... http://www.antievolution.org/people...p/sequence.html

All of this I'll have to get back to when I have a time to read it and the sources referenced.

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Let me put my statement another way – by no means has evolution solved all “riddles”, or “gaps” as creationists call it in biological phenomena. It has certainly closed a great many gaps, but certainly many still exist. Evolutionists are extremely confident, as they should be, that the evo. theory will continue to correctly fill in those gaps, as it has done many times over in the past. They refuse to simply fill in those gaps with a “godidit” stamp, rather – they simply say “I don’t know, yet”. It’s much more plausible to do so. So this is what I was more or less referring to in bringing up alternative ideas to filling in those gaps.

I agree with what you write, but at the same time have to ask you what you mean by "evolution" - is it simply the antithesis of "Goddidit"? If evolution is any kind of non-deity explanation which includes mutation and natural selection as well, then of course there's little debate as to whether it is true or not.

Very little time today, but did come across a little tidbit on Popper that I hadn't known before. Are you aware that he recanted his views on evolution? It appears that he examined evolution in greater detail and realized he had misunderstood it a bit:

"I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation" (Dialectica 32:344-346).

I think this is pretty telling.

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