Why is the theory of evolution questionable?

@prothero,

prothero;120976 wrote:

Explain how are you using the term "nature" and how are you using the term "god" and the relationship between them?

I'm using the term "Nature" to represent what was quoted. A symbol representing what he said, which was "nature".
I'm using the term "God" to represent what many people have said decides and enforces how all things will proceed.

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@prothero,

prothero;120916 wrote:

Prior to Darwin's time the dominant notions about the earth and life on earth included:
-A young earth; a few thousands of years old.
-Special creation and fixity of species- each species was created in its current form via a special act of the creator (god).
-Man was made uniquely in god's image- the crowning glory of all creation in fact the purpose of all creation..
-The notion that the earth was the center of the universe and the heavens were perfect orbits and planet eternal celestial spheres had just recently in human worldview terms been overthrown.

I think this is a fairly nice summary of where the western world was at the time of Darwin, though I think it's important to note that geological conceptions of time did exist before him. Aristotle had proposed some of the ideas about evolution millennia before Darwin, and Gallileo's challenge to geocentrism was centuries before.

In the Orient Shintoists and Hindus were pretty comfortable with timescales of millions of years, and didn't tend to rely on such literal readings of their holy books, which is perhaps why evolution isn't such a controversial topic to followers of those faiths as it is with Christian or Islamic literalists/creationists (though I know of Hindu creationists who argue that science points to Brahma churning a sea of milk on a giant snake in the same way that the ID lot insist the fossil record proves a worldwide flood - but they don't seem as common).

---------- Post added 01-19-2010 at 07:49 AM ----------

sword;120933 wrote:

We should realize that there are real calculations that can be proven and there are theoretical calculations that are not really proven. The methods to date the age of the Earth or life such as the ones based on carbon, potassium or argon, according to which the fossils would have million years of antiquity, although they are mathematical calculations they are still theoretical because only a being that may have lived lived x million years could confirm if really those calculations are correct.

By the same logic I suppose only someone travelling at lightspeed can be an authority on relativity.

To discover what occurred in the past you need to engage in a detective story.

Clues such as radiometric dating, dendrochronology, ice cores, magnetic shifts and their corrolation build a picture of an Earth that is billions of years old.

Doubting that picture is possible - but on what basis?

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Not entirely true - there was knowledge of fossils of sea creatures on mountaintops and the like - so some process of geological upheaval was speculated upon. The theory of tectonics doesn't override the theory of evolution - it just explains in detail how the upheavals occurred.

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By the way a few years ago samples of lava flows of 1949 and deposits of an avalanche that happened in 1954 were taken. The samples were taken to the Geochron laboratories in Boston for a complete dating and the results were more than surprising: To the majority of the samples they gave an antiquity that fluctuated between 270.000 years up to 3, 500.000 years. And they were 20th century samples !

Well the avalanche wasn't - for a start - if I take a bunch of rocks and roll them down a hill they don't get younger do they?

A rock at the top of a hill is 3,500,000 years old.

It rolls down.

It is still 3,500,000 years old.

As for the volcano, I'd like to see the study. I suspect that it's a trap laid for radiometric dating like those sprung by Kent Hovind.

For example he sent some fossils off for dating wrapped in shellac - which contains recently formed carbon which contaminated the samples - and then announced that carbon dating didn't work when it came back with a result of a few hundred years old.

And such deceitful tricks are often pulled by creationists to mislead people into thinking that scientists are frauds.

Kent Hovind is currently in jail for being a fraud.

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that way we can notice that, as time goes by, the theory of the evolution is becoming more hypothetical and less scientific.

No.

Quite the opposite.

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@memester,

memester;120974 wrote:

What is this thing "Nature" that you are talking about which decides about all kinds of things ? Are you using the bed-time story things as explanations ? rather disgusting to present this as explanatory work. It merely replaces "God - which is what I say it is - everything past and future - said so".

Heh, no I was merely mocking the whole time. Why would nature decide if something were cute?

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@sword,

I appreciate your comments; however, that is not everything. The mathematical possibility that the universe and life may have been developed by chance is so small that is practically nonexistent. Even accepting the supposed 16 billion years of antiquity that is attributed to the universe, that time would not be sufficient for all the complex universal order that surrounds us to become real. In the world of statistics, when the probability that something happens exceeds certain limit of zeroes against it, it`s just considered impossible. For that reason some optimists assert that sooner that we think the scientific community will recognize publicly that embracing the theory of the evolution has been one of the greatest errors in history.
Of course before the evident failure of the theory of Darwin there appear other curious hypotheses like the one called "punctuated equilibrium" but they are like signs of despair of someone about to be drowned; they try to cover the sun with a finger, in fact it just has no scientific foundation.

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@sword,

sword;121138 wrote:

The mathematical possibility that the universe and life may have been developed by chance is so small that is practically nonexistent.

How do you know? It was given only one chance and here it is. That's 1/1 so far. So as far as we know, the universe and life have successfully come into being by chance every single time the opportunity has been there.

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@sword,

sword;121138 wrote:

I appreciate your comments; however, that is not everything. The mathematical possibility that the universe and life may have been developed by chance is so small that is practically nonexistent.

What alternatives are there?

And what are the mathmatical probabilities of the alternatives?

And how did you work them out?

Unlikely things happen every single day.

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Even accepting the supposed 16 billion years of antiquity that is attributed to the universe, that time would not be sufficient for all the complex universal order that surrounds us to become real.

How so?

How long do we need and how did you calculate that time?

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Of course before the evident failure of the theory of Darwin there appear other curious hypotheses like the one called "punctuated equilibrium" but they are like signs of despair of someone about to be drowned; they try to cover the sun with a finger, in fact it just has no scientific foundation.

Well, punctuated equilibrium isn't an alternative hypothesis to evolution, it's just a (tiny) suggested alteration to a single facet of the theory.

Prior to Punctuated Equilibrium (PE) evolution was depicted as a steady process - organisms were thought of as tending to change gradually but steadily at the same sort of rate regardless of circumstance.

Stephen J Gould and some other paeleontologists noted that this steady change wasn't mirrored in the fossil record.

He put forward the idea that certain populations change very quickly under the right circumstances.

So if - for example - a meteor hit Russia and wiped out most of the organisms there - new organisms colonising Russia would change relatively quickly in order to take advantage of the unoccupied ecological niches they discovered there - according to PE.

PE is NOT a major revision of evolution - nor was it hypothesised in order to account for an "evident failure" of Darwin's (and other scientists) thoughts on the topic. PE is a revision of a tiny aspect of the theory - evolution will be much the same whether or not PE becomes accepted by biologists as a gestalt (and I can't see why it wouldn't - it's a perfectly good hypothesis with lots of evidence to support it).

You're maybe falling into a common trap - which is to look at a revision of a theory and say "it needed revised - therefore it's wrong".

Numerous problems with this attitude:

You're assuming PE overturns evolution - it does not - it supports it.
You're assuming that PE has been accepted over evolution - it has not, and it wouldn't supplant evolution if it was.
Compared to evolution other scientific ideas - such as gravity - have undergone major restructuring. Yet gravity does not get called an "evident failure".

All science starts off as unproven hypothesis and works it's way into accepted theory through demonstration, evidential support, peer review and debate, etc...

What is unusual about Darwin isn't how shaky his ideas on evolution were - but on how much he theorised or speculated upon that was shown to be relevant. Moreso than the ideas of people like Newton - which have needed major revisions/addendums.

But even if many of his ideas were overturned - it wouldn't make a modern conception of evolution wrong.

So it's a strawman to attack "the theory of Darwin" - when modern biologists know much more about the subject than he did (even if much of what they now know affirms speculaton made by Darwin, Wallace and their contemporaries).

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@sword,

Dave,

As you know the problem here is absolutely not that Sword wishes to contradict the science behind evolutionary theory. If so, he would be talking much differently.

He's coming at this from the point of view of faith -- and there's nothing in the core beliefs of any faith that talks about probabilities, punctuated equilibrium, potassium-argon dating, fossils, or DNA polymorphisms.

So he's falling into the trap of taking large, somewhat blind swipes at evolution, and in your erudition you're taking him on at the level of science. But it's not going to solve the problem -- you could put a mountain of studies in front of him and he'd never even open them.

I wish that people who don't believe in evolution because of faith would just acknowledge that -- it's a much more credible argument than pretending to understand the state of the art in evolutionary science when that is easily disabused.

1 Reply

@Aedes,

Aedes;121180 wrote:

Dave,

As you know the problem here is absolutely not that Sword wishes to contradict the science behind evolutionary theory. If so, he would be talking much differently.

Yeah I know.

I mainly post to remind myself/practice the real facts of the matter and - possibly - impress the facts upon an observer who isn't so far gone.

For example - the fact that some biologists are impressed with Punctuated Equilibrium might suit some as evidence that the theory of evolution is on shaky ground.

It's an argument I've seen before. The Rabbi Boteach tried it on Christopher Hitchens (and proceeded to have his own **** served up to him).

So I think it's worth articulating, even if it's ultimately only to my own benefit, why it's a false argument.

Because Punctuated Equilibrium exists within the framework of evolution and upholds evolution apart from a teeny tiny facet that was always up for debate anyhow.

---------- Post added 01-20-2010 at 09:04 AM ----------

Aedes;121180 wrote:

I wish that people who don't believe in evolution because of faith would just acknowledge that -- it's a much more credible argument than pretending to understand the state of the art in evolutionary science when that is easily disabused.

Because even whilst undermining science they want to associate their beliefs with the credibility of science.

Hence creation "museums", discovery "institutes" and the like.

They know science has a popular reputation for accuracy in terms of things like technology, or medicine, or chemistry.

So they will dress their critiques of evolution, or climate change, or cosmology, up in scientific language in order to attain some of science's credibility.

Which is another reason why I think it's important to show that they don't really know what they're on about when they say things like "punctuated equilibrium has ousted evolution as a theory".

Plus there's probably a language barrier, in this case.

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@sword,

sword;121138 wrote:

I appreciate your comments; however, that is not everything. The mathematical possibility that the universe and life may have been developed by chance is so small that is practically nonexistent.

You obviously don't understand the math that you are referring to. But let me put it into perspective for you. The chances that I would find this website are just as unlikely as life arising in the universe. If you were to add up all the possibilities that would have distracted or misdirected me from arriving as a member of this site, it would seem to squeeze out any possiblity of ever happening. This is the same thing you are doing and can't realize that in our universe rare events happen often.

On any given night, if you were to hold up a dime at arms length to the sky, the area of the sky that would fill the dime has so many stars within it that you can see (doing the math) ten super novas. That means every night you could pick a new spot in the sky and witness ten stars explode. Need I mention that exploding stars are a rare cosmological event? Yet because space is vast and many stars are far away, that time almost becomes irrelevant and rare things happen often. The reason I mention stars exploding is because, it spits out the elements that make up life. Meaning that elements that allow life to arise is being blown out into space more than ten times a night. (remember the small area) Just imagine how many total are happening? Not to mention that when we witness these exploding stars, they happened long ago.

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@sword,

The main failing of the argument that our current world world be statistically impossible to form spontaneously is that it ignores the denominator of time. The probability that I will be here essentially unchanged one microsecond from now is astronomically high. The probability of me being here like this from the vantage point of 13 billion years ago is astronomically small.

But whatever the universe was like 13 billion years ago, the probability that it would be incrementally different a microsecond later was astronomically high. And there have been a hell of a lot of incremental microseconds between then and now.

After all this time and all this magnitude of error, we happen to be here like this in this second, but there were basically infinity minus one possibilities that did NOT happen.

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@Aedes,

it might clear things up a bit if we were to ascertain what we mean by "Evolution".

If it is "allele frequency change in a population" that doesn't even mention mutation, and mutation is not necessarily part of any frequency change. No novel trait appearing simply with allele frequency change

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@sword,

Honestly, for the purposes of this discussion, it would suffice to call it a biologically-mediated ontogeny and diversification of species. We can hash out what the biological unit of evolution is in some other thread.

---------- Post added 01-20-2010 at 12:56 PM ----------

ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE:

Sword started this thread. He gets to decide its agenda. Off topic posts moved to a new thread.

http://www.philosophyforum.com/philosophy-forums/secondary-branches-philosophy/philosophy-science/7371-definition-evolution.html#post121244

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@sword,

the truth is the truth no mater who may say it. More and more it is been clear that the theory of the evolution is a pseudoscience because to be considered as science the theory of evolution would have to be proven according to the scientific method that the same materialists (atheists) defend but, as we have seen, the attempts to turn the theory into true science have been a failure because they never will be able to prove in a laboratory something that supposedly happened x million years ago. By the way the British zoologist Leonard Matthews, worried about his colleagues, asserts: "The fact that the evolution is the spine of Biology, and that Biology is in the peculiar position of being a science founded on a theory nonproven, turns it into science or belief?".

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@sword,

sword;121243 wrote:

attempts to turn the theory into true science have been a failure because they never will be able to prove in a laboratory something that supposedly happened x million years ago

A lot of science, not just evolution, requires that we use small scale models to explain big concepts.

That's the difference between the "truth" you're describing and "truth" as understood by science. Truth as determined by science is the best explanation based on current evidence. There's never anything absolute about it, and that's just as true for gravity and thermodynamics as it is for evolution.

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@sword,

sword;121243 wrote:

the truth is the truth no mater who may say it. More and more it is been clear that the theory of the evolution is a pseudoscience because to be considered as science the theory of evolution would have to be proven according to the scientific method that the same materialists (atheists) defend but, as we have seen, the attempts to turn the theory into true science have been a failure because they never will be able to prove in a laboratory something that supposedly happened x million years ago. By the way the British zoologist Leonard Matthews, worried about his colleagues, asserts: "The fact that the evolution is the spine of Biology, and that Biology is in the peculiar position of being a science founded on a theory nonproven, turns it into science or belief?".

I fear that me, and all the others in this thread, who have acknowledged this by replying are going on a wild goose chase. However, I will say, to politicize (as it seems you do from your tone) and polarize the "issue" of evolution, as if your particular beliefs on the subject put you into a different class of people is wrong. Completely wrong. You will no doubt disagree, but I will not reply any further to entertain this kind of ignorance.

I am in no way a supporter of selfish "natural selection" when applied to society. I do not, and would not, endorse such "Darwinian" concepts as an Aryan race. But, biologically speaking, evolution is the best explanation currently available - and seems to have worked pretty well, as the research spawning from it has kept you, me, and everyone else reading this alive and eliminated biological weapons of mass destruction we take for granted.

In other words, without the theory, you wouldn't be able to get on your baseless soap box because you'd be in a casket.

1 Reply

@bmcreider,

bmcreider;121255 wrote:

I fear that me, and all the others in this thread, who have acknowledged this by replying are going on a wild goose chase. However, I will say, to politicize (as it seems you do from your tone) and polarize the "issue" of evolution, as if your particular beliefs on the subject put you into a different class of people is wrong. Completely wrong. You will no doubt disagree, but I will not reply any further to entertain this kind of ignorance.

I am in no way a supporter of selfish "natural selection" when applied to society. I do not, and would not, endorse such "Darwinian" concepts as an Aryan race. But, biologically speaking, evolution is the best explanation currently available - and seems to have worked pretty well, as the research spawning from it has kept you, me, and everyone else reading this alive and eliminated biological weapons of mass destruction we take for granted.

In other words, without the theory, you wouldn't be able to get on your baseless soap box because you'd be in a casket.

so he'd have been born regardless, but he's have died and be in a casket without the theory. that's nonsense.

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@sword,

sword;121243 wrote:

the truth is the truth no mater who may say it. More and more it is been clear that the theory of the evolution is a pseudoscience because to be considered as science the theory of evolution would have to be proven according to the scientific method that the same materialists (atheists) defend but, as we have seen, the attempts to turn the theory into true science have been a failure because they never will be able to prove in a laboratory something that supposedly happened x million years ago.

It can't be proven in a lab that an object the size of the moon will react with other objects like the Earth in the way it does according to Newtownian mechanics.

Is gravity therefore pseudoscience?

Or are lab experiments used by scientists to build a picture together with other observable facts that are used to demonstrate what is likely to have happened outside of the limitations of the lab?

Furthermore - a picture of natural history assembled through our understanding of the fossil record is not, in and of itself, evolution.

Though it's not pseudoscience either.

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@memester,

deleted post ******************************************

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@sword,

I know this may not be very popular among some intellectuals but should we stop sharing what we know because of that? Many think that evolutionism has a purely rational and scientific origin but when analyzing history we see another thing. There are some who blame the religion for the delay of science in the Middle Ages, nevertheless they forget that in those years the Bible was a closed book, practically prohibited, for that reason it is that pseudoscientific superstition took the place of science. There were intellectuals who studied the Greek philosopher Aristotle looking for ideas about science. They thought, for example, that the universe turned around the Earth and still they thought that frogs and fish formed in the sky during the storms and that soon they would rain on the Earth. Aristotle thought that the same nature is a force and that humankind is linked in a mystical union with rocks, trees and animals. When accepting the ideas of Aristotle people at heart adored nature in some kind of pantheism; and because they did not understand nature they feared it. Their pagan superstition and fear concerning nature prevented them from studying it scientifically. Therefore the theory of the evolution somehow is inspired by the esoteric, Buddhistic or pantheistic idea that says one can evolve by oneself. Then Darwin somehow, inspired by God knows what spirit, transferred the occultist idea of the spiritual self-sufficiency and turned it in the self-sufficiency of the universe that is what the theory of the evolution deep inside postulates. And since there is no more credible lie than the one that is disguised in science sadly it was accepted by the world.

1 Reply

@sword,

sword wrote:

know this may not be very popular among some intellectuals but should we stop sharing what we know because of that?

Continue to share - but if your contributions include comments along the lines of "Punctuated Equilibrium is a new version of evolution" you can expect to have people who know what that means attempt to explain it to you.

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Many think that evolutionism has a purely rational and scientific origin but when analyzing history we see another thing. There are some who blame the religion for the delay of science in the Middle Ages, nevertheless they forget that in those years the Bible was a closed book, practically prohibited, for that reason it is that pseudoscientific superstition took the place of science.

Well the 19th century was a lot later than the middle ages. What's the relevance? Victorians were not strangers to scripture were they?

The first bible in (old) english was produced circa 675, by the way. The catholic church didn't approve - by any means - though literacy, rather than heresy, was the real reason it maintained it's stranglehold on 'the message'.

Still, what happened to the Lollards was by no means nice.

Why were Christian authorities so keen to mutilate and kill those who sought to produce an english bible?

Because christianity was a business to them, as it is to many people today, and they were protecting their monopoly.

To most literate europeans a latin bible was not a 'closed book' anyway.

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Then Darwin somehow, inspired by God knows what spirit, transferred the occultist idea of the spiritual self-sufficiency and turned it in the self-sufficiency of the universe that is what the theory of the evolution deep inside postulates.

Weird how none of this made it into his writing isn't it?

Were did you get this from?

The prejudices of those who wish to smear Darwin?

Self-sufficient universe? What on earth does a self-sufficient universe have to do with a theory explaining variety in organisms?

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And since there is no more credible lie than the one that is disguised in science sadly it was accepted by the world.

Who is the one who has been bearing the most false witness in this thread Sword?

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Why is the theory of evolution questionable?

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