Darwinism?

[DannyM]

Byblos are you there? Could you possibly delete my 'first' post, the all-over-the-place post? My last one I'd like to remain...Thanks, Dan

[DannyM]

Good grief there's about 4 posts that went wrong, one is the last post on pg 7, then there are more on pg 8...Please could a admin delete these horrid posts and leave my very last post on pg 8, the correct one, as it is...??

[Byblos]

Good grief there's about 4 posts that went wrong, one is the last post on pg 7, then there are more on pg 8...Please could a admin delete these horrid posts and leave my very last post on pg 8, the correct one, as it is...??

Which ones, Danny? All but the last one? Are you not able to delete them?

[DannyM]

Good grief there's about 4 posts that went wrong, one is the last post on pg 7, then there are more on pg 8...Please could a admin delete these horrid posts and leave my very last post on pg 8, the correct one, as it is...??

Which ones, Danny? All but the last one? Are you not able to delete them?

Yes please Byblos - I can only delete the last one, but that's the correct one, so is it poss for you to delete all the previous ones going back to the bottom post on pg 7?? Thanks Byblos

[Byblos]

Good grief there's about 4 posts that went wrong, one is the last post on pg 7, then there are more on pg 8...Please could a admin delete these horrid posts and leave my very last post on pg 8, the correct one, as it is...??

Which ones, Danny? All but the last one? Are you not able to delete them?

Yes please Byblos - I can only delete the last one, but that's the correct one, so is it poss for you to delete all the previous ones going back to the bottom post on pg 7?? Thanks Byblos

Done.

[DannyM]

Good grief there's about 4 posts that went wrong, one is the last post on pg 7, then there are more on pg 8...Please could a admin delete these horrid posts and leave my very last post on pg 8, the correct one, as it is...??

Which ones, Danny? All but the last one? Are you not able to delete them?

Yes please Byblos - I can only delete the last one, but that's the correct one, so is it poss for you to delete all the previous ones going back to the bottom post on pg 7?? Thanks Byblos

Done.

Phew, thanks Byblos!

[Proinsias]

Pro you bring up some good points.. But I think If the teachers of science would realize their job to teach students, to know and understand evolutionary theory, but not require their students to believe it, then much of this conflict would go away.. Sound education rests on conveying knowledge and understanding, not just certain beliefs… I think a lot of Darwinian evolution is not the full part of our reality. A lot of it is a belief system.. Evolution might make assumptions, that is true, but it is not always necessarily factual. Science does not exclude God. Neither does it include God, it's a very fine line.. If that could get across, you probably wouldn't even need to mention God for the most part.

Just a thought..

+1

[Proinsias]

I'll cherry pick a little from your post if you don't mind Danny.

But all the NS in the world, even taking into account the anti-empirical claim of, "given enough time..." could not produce these complex systems (because that's what we are in a 'technical sense': mind blowingly complex systems). It is simply speculation which has only survived due to the world view of some very insecure, umm, scientists...

No it couldn't, that's why they include mutation alongside selection. Davidson's notions of chromosomal mutation is simply another mechanism proposed to be a large factor in mutations above the species level. It's still just RM+NS, just a different mutation generator.
Everything's complicated in a 'technical sense'.

I know, it's just not sufficeient, is it?

Nope, but Newton and Einstein were not sufficient either, we need moar!

But we have laws which actually cannot be explained. Only the effects of these laws can be explained or measured. We start with the underlying assumption of total and complete order. But this has to be taken on faith as scientific 'laws' cannot be proven, only established by inference.

I don't tend to start with the underlying assumption of total and complete order, as a possibly interesting aside if you actually attempt to conceive of complete and total order in contrast to complete and total chaos they both begin to approach a completely even distribution of everything which is rather dull really.

I don't have faith in scientific laws, if they are useful use them, if they are not don't. When people start breaking really useful laws things get interesting - how will the second law of thermodynamics hold up against whatever comes out of the string theory/quantum problems? who knows, would be nice to see it break though.

The majority of science accepts the universe had a beginning. Everything else is pure speculation.

The majority of science accepts Darwinian evolution as sufficient to explain the diversity of life, but this does not seems to have much of an impact on you.

All sorts of unfounded speculation has been offered up in place of the big bang: multiple universes; our universe dropping out of a black hole in another universe; a natural selection of universes, posited by Lee Smolin, in which universes 'survive and adapt'... I mean, please!! It's all postulated to preserve the 'theory' of chance. Even Weinberg admitted, "These are very speculative ides, without any experimental support. Smolin said, "It is possible that all I have done here is cobble together a set of false clues that only seem to have something to do with eachother...There is every chance that these ideas will not succeed." You think?!

I'd expect theoretical physics to be full of wild, speculative ideas most of which will not succeed. Many of which will be tough to prove or disprove. Attempts to prove or disprove these notions often comes up with new and unexpected data to further fuel or dampen the wild and speculative ideas. Science that we now take for granted is often seen as completely ludicrous at the time of it's inception.

I'm not sure it's all done preserve the theory of chance but more that people begin to assume that every time we create a large set it turns out to a part of a larger set. Planets, solar systems, galaxies, super spirals etc. If someone says 'universe' it implies only one, to me it seems fairly natural to assume they may be wrong.

The astronomer Owen Gingerich said that anyone who can believe in multiple universes should have no problem believing in heaven and hell; just think of them as alternate universes, operating outside space and time according to laws that are inoperative in our universe. So the atheist who is willing to believe in multiple universes should then be perfectly able to envision a realm in which there is no suffering, no evil...as the realms they fantasise about would not be subject to the same laws that our universe is bound by... So atheists do believe in miracles...

I think the notion of heaven and hell really requires God.
If someone can imagine another universe they may still have serious issues in buying into one that has been explained to them. One should have no problem believing in Middle-earth, or Tralfamadore, if they believe in multiple planets.

Then we need to ask: where's the evidence?

Where you assume the beginning of the universe to be. How we get to and interpret the evidence is the tough bit. We can't just send guys with clipboards and labcoats into black holes.
We don't the have evidence, hence we have the wild speculations and billions spent on things like the CERN and the Hubble telescope.

But you are failing to see that "luck" would be a miracle in itself. Is that the miracle of choice for you, Pro?

Again it works both ways. One can easily say that what you call a miracle is in itself luck. Different people see things differently, I'm not sure one is more valid than another overall but certainly one can be far more valid to one person than another.

On anther note I find it strange that you get angry at seeing an evolutionist mention chance as he is mixing his philosophy/faith with his science but seem really interested and engaged when Davidson provides his Evolutionary Manifesto complete with chat about God and chance. He's mixing his science as much as the rest of them, those who mix science with philosophies you don't agree with should stop? In fact I'm struggling to find anything online which discusses this semi-meotic mechanism without a hint of Christianity.

Thinking again about his idea that Darwinist evolution is simply preparing us for extinction, he may have a point. If the environment remains fairly stable then Darwinian evolution may serve to make us more comfortable in that environment but we all know it's always dangerous to get too comfortable. Again I'm imagining them working in tandem - great environmental change creating the need for major mutations and a fairly sedate environment allowing Darwinian evolution to mould the newly spawned viable monsters so that they fit their new niche like a glove - until all hell breaks loose again.*

I warmed to his theory the first time I read it. I remember, sitting in genetics lectures, being shown colour coded chromosome maps and being told they were 80% similar, or whatever, and thinking - No! they're in a completely different order. Davidson's paper was the first one that made sense of this to me. Mix up the chromosomes and you've got a new life which at least has potential to survive, as it has the same info as its parent(s), and is markedly different from its predecessor.

And if we're going to be fair we should really wait for Davidson to start producing a myriad of new species in lab conditions as is demanded of the Darwinist. The Darwinist can walk into a lab and using something like e-coli will rather quickly demonstrate the processes upon which he extends onwards. Davidson cannot do this. Darwinism may not be able to produce new species in the lab but it nicely predicts mutations and inheritance under certain selective pressures.
As you said when you first linked to the paper - you seen sense and honesty being made. To convince the neo-darwinist you're going to need some viable monsters being produced under lab conditions and probably a slightly modified theory to attempt to explain the results - repeatable, verifiable experiments. How do you beat a Darwinist? produce a new phylum in the space of a few seconds and explain to them how they can do it all by themselves. That'll shut them all up. If you tell them there's a better kind of evolution which hasn't yet produced a new species either and is unobserved in the lab they may not be very interested. If you present yourself as an anti-Darwinist Christian they're going to demand the same sort of evidence you expect for Darwinism. One can conduct a Medelian pea plant experiment and see outcomes which match up with textbook examples. You may argue that these small changes will never add up to much but at least we can see, measure, predict, influence and even make medicine using the Darwinan/Mendelian/Watson & Crick framework.

* on reflection the phrase 'punctuated equilibrium' may better describe what I'm trying to say - with Darwinian evolution being punctuated by Davidson's evolution.

edit: it may be worth dropping the random and natural in RM+NS. Mutation and selection get the point across without adding extra baggage.

[DannyM]

Pro, I don't think we disagree on too much, and what we do disagree on we can agree to disagree on. So just a few points,

I don't have faith in scientific laws, if they are useful use them, if they are not don't. When people start breaking really useful laws things get interesting - how will the second law of thermodynamics hold up against whatever comes out of the string theory/quantum problems? who knows, would be nice to see it break though.

Ultimately you do take those laws on faith. How do you know that a scientific 'law' will be the same tomorrow as it is today? You don't. You can certainly be 100% confident that when you step outside your door this morning that your front foot will make contact with the pavement in an ordinary fashion, but you ultimately rely on this knowledge based on 100% inference, hence faith has to play a part in your 'knowledge' of how gravity will treat you this morning on the pavement outside your house.

The majority of science accepts Darwinian evolution as sufficient to explain the diversity of life, but this does not seems to have much of an impact on you.

And this is where honest science vs dishonest science comes into it. Anyone who seriously believes that impersonal, inorganic matter can somehow, over however millions of years you like, organise itself into organic matter is simply living in cloud cookoo land. Not only this, but then to believe this organic matter, in the form of the highly complex, information-heavy cell...to be the consequence of random, impersonal chance is to lose sight of one's senses... Nothing indicates that this could occur 'naturally' from inorganic matter...Nothing.

Again it works both ways. One can easily say that what you call a miracle is in itself luck. Different people see things differently, I'm not sure one is more valid than another overall but certainly one can be far more valid to one person than another.

But for anything to appear is surely a miracle, even if it appeared by 'chance'. That's my point.

On anther note I find it strange that you get angry at seeing an evolutionist mention chance as he is mixing his philosophy/faith with his science but seem really interested and engaged when Davidson provides his Evolutionary Manifesto complete with chat about God and chance. He's mixing his science as much as the rest of them, those who mix science with philosophies you don't agree with should stop? In fact I'm struggling to find anything online which discusses this semi-meotic mechanism without a hint of Christianity.

Ah but Davison is not doing that at all. He explicitly is not a Christian, although he admires the "Christian ethic", as he puts it. He says that for any biologist to dismiss the blatant evidence of "a plan" in the emergence and complexity of life is simply preposterous. Like the heretic Marcion of the 2nd century, he believes in two gods, one evil and one loving...To paraphrase "How else do we account for the good and evil in the world".

On chance, here's Davison, first quoting Grasse: "..."To insist, even with Olympian assurance, that life appeared quite by chance and evolved in this fashion, is an unfounded supposition which I believe to be wrong and not in accordance with the facts.”
Pierre Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms, page 107.

Dawkins is a gifted writer with a congenital atheist agenda which has completely blinded him to the realization that life could never have arisen by chance or evolved in that way."

There is no room for chance in Davison's mind.

To convince the neo-darwinist you're going to need some viable monsters being produced under lab conditions and probably a slightly modified theory to attempt to explain the results - repeatable, verifiable experiments. How do you beat a Darwinist? produce a new phylum in the space of a few seconds and explain to them how they can do it all by themselves. That'll shut them all up. If you tell them there's a better kind of evolution which hasn't yet produced a new species either and is unobserved in the lab they may not be very interested. If you present yourself as an anti-Darwinist Christian they're going to demand the same sort of evidence you expect for Darwinism. One can conduct a Medelian pea plant experiment and see outcomes which match up with textbook examples. You may argue that these small changes will never add up to much but at least we can see, measure, predict, influence and even make medicine using the Darwinan/Mendelian/Watson & Crick framework.

He does mention in the paper that experimental evolution is a great possibility still...I don't know what he's done about it.

on reflection the phrase 'punctuated equilibrium' may better describe what I'm trying to say - with Darwinian evolution being punctuated by Davidson's evolution.

edit: it may be worth dropping the random and natural in RM+NS. Mutation and selection get the point across without adding extra baggage.

But then we lose all sense of the Darwinian mechanism if we drop the random and natural. I'm happy if you are.

[touchingcloth]

I was challenging your assertion that the sole line of evidence for evolution is extrapolation from the fact that so-called microevolution takes place. If the common designer hypothesis is the more compelling interpretation of the evidence than the common ancestor hypothesis, then show how. Also, what observations would falsify the common designer hypothesis.

So your claim is that macroevolution is falsifiable? Then show me how... The fact is neither views are "truly" falsifiable.. However, if we use evolution to falsify the ID view, all a scientist needs to do is knock the genes out within an organism, then go to a lab and try to grow the bug for a long time to see if it reproduces it. If it reproduces it, then ID would be proven false on the general grounds that the scientist didn't invoke intelligent causes when purely natural causes would suffice.

I've been meaning to reply to this post for a while, but I've been mad busy sorry.
So for possible ways to (in principle at least) falsify evolution:

• A lack of existence of a mechanism for heredity that allows for mutations from one generation to the next (perhaps one of the first tests of the theory as Darwin understood it, as he lived before the discovery of genes or DNA)
• Multiple extreme violations of nested morphologies between animals (as an example - a mammal that could photosynthesize)
• Compelling evidence that the fossil record is uniform rather than graduated
• Observation of ex nihilo creation of species
• Evidence of mechanisms/phenomena that would constrain the extent of mutations of genotypes

I'll try and discuss the rest of your post (and read the rest of the thread!) when I've next got some free time

[Gman]

I've been meaning to reply to this post for a while, but I've been mad busy sorry.
So for possible ways to (in principle at least) falsify evolution:

• A lack of existence of a mechanism for heredity that allows for mutations from one generation to the next (perhaps one of the first tests of the theory as Darwin understood it, as he lived before the discovery of genes or DNA)
• Multiple extreme violations of nested morphologies between animals (as an example - a mammal that could photosynthesize)
• Compelling evidence that the fossil record is uniform rather than graduated
• Observation of ex nihilo creation of species
• Evidence of mechanisms/phenomena that would constrain the extent of mutations of genotypes

I'll try and discuss the rest of your post (and read the rest of the thread!) when I've next got some free time

Possible ways in principle?

Oh well sure, you could say that anything is falsifiable in that sense.. Again, both views are going to have it's problems..

[touchingcloth]

Possible ways in principle?

Yep - as in, if the theory doesn't hold, then those are some ways to falsify it. If it does hold then those are only ways to falsify it in principle as in practice none of those ways will ever falsify it.

I perhaps should have said "ways in which the theory is liable to be falsified" or words to that effect. Is the ID hypothesis falsifiable in principle?

[Gman]

Yep - as in, if the theory doesn't hold, then those are some ways to falsify it. If it does hold then those are only ways to falsify it in principle as in practice none of those ways will ever falsify it.

Yes but that is in principle. What I mean is that it truly has been falsified.. Alas, it hasn't.. Just like creationism..

I perhaps should have said "ways in which the theory is liable to be falsified" or words to that effect. Is the ID hypothesis falsifiable in principle?

Sure, I just gave you some but there are others..

http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/ ... esign.html
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/sh ... hp/id/1156

[touchingcloth]

Yep - as in, if the theory doesn't hold, then those are some ways to falsify it. If it does hold then those are only ways to falsify it in principle as in practice none of those ways will ever falsify it.

Yes but that is in principle. What I mean is that it truly has been falsified.. Alas, it hasn't.. Just like creationism..

I perhaps should have said "ways in which the theory is liable to be falsified" or words to that effect. Is the ID hypothesis falsifiable in principle?

Sure, I just gave you some but there are others..

http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/ ... esign.html
http://www.ideacenter.org/contentmgr/sh ... hp/id/1156

Well both of those resources discuss ways in which the ID hypothesis might be confirmed, neither touches on how it might be disconfirmed.

Also, the first resource seems to conflate "anthropomorphic" with "intelligent" (i.e. SETI isn't really a search for any and all intelligent signals, it's a search for signals as we know them).

[Gman]

Well both of those resources discuss ways in which the ID hypothesis might be confirmed, neither touches on how it might be disconfirmed.

Oh really? Show me where it didn't..

Also, the first resource seems to conflate "anthropomorphic" with "intelligent" (i.e. SETI isn't really a search for any and all intelligent signals, it's a search for signals as we know them).

Well if that isn't side stepping the issue.. Sure it's all relative..