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Evolution - Who wants to KNOW?

 
 
Bibliophile the BibleGuru
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 02:35 pm
rosborne979 wrote:
Of course not. What makes you think that something must be observable before it can be considered a scientific fact? I didn't observe the tree outside my window growing, but I can deduce that it did grow based on extensive evidence to that effect.

Likewise for Evolution, it's a scientific fact. Unless of course, you are using a different definition of scientific fact.

Please provide the definition of "scientific fact" which you are using to make your arguments.


Tell me, Ros, how is Evolution a "scientific fact" in the light of the standard scientific terms that I posted previously. By the way, they're not my words.
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rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 03:09 pm
Bibliophile the BibleGuru wrote:
rosborne979 wrote:
Of course not. What makes you think that something must be observable before it can be considered a scientific fact? I didn't observe the tree outside my window growing, but I can deduce that it did grow based on extensive evidence to that effect.

Likewise for Evolution, it's a scientific fact. Unless of course, you are using a different definition of scientific fact.

Please provide the definition of "scientific fact" which you are using to make your arguments.


Tell me, Ros, how is Evolution a "scientific fact" in the light of the standard scientific terms that I posted previously. By the way, they're not my words.


The definition you provided didn't use the word "observable".

Evolution meets the standard of scientific "fact" based on the definition you provided.

Thanks for finding the definition again.
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Bibliophile the BibleGuru
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 03:13 pm
You must be kidding!

How can a scientific law/fact be "tested" (as the definition requires) unless it is observable?

You clearly haven't understood the standard scientific terms!!
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rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 03:24 pm
Bibliophile the BibleGuru wrote:
You must be kidding!

How can a scientific law/fact be "tested" (as the definition requires) unless it is observable?

You clearly haven't understood the standard scientific terms!!


My position is not the one in conflict with standard scientific knowledge here Bib, yours is. It would be more accurate to say that clearly you don't agree with the standard definition of "testable".

I guess we now have to get a clearer understanding of how "testability" is treated in science.

I believe that a scientific theory is considered testible, if it makes certain predictions which can be directly tested by observation, but I don't believe that observability is a requirement of every level of the test. A preponderance of evidence of related predictions is also considered a test.
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Bibliophile the BibleGuru
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 03:29 pm
rosborne979 wrote:
I believe that a scientific theory is considered testible, if it makes certain predictions which can be directly tested by observation, but I don't believe that observability is a requirement of every level of the test. A preponderance of evidence of related predictions is also considered a test.


Your statement is tautologous. You cannot test something without practically observing or tangibly monitoring it. You're now thinking in the realms of metaphysics!!
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rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 03:35 pm
Bibliophile the BibleGuru wrote:
rosborne979 wrote:
I believe that a scientific theory is considered testible, if it makes certain predictions which can be directly tested by observation, but I don't believe that observability is a requirement of every level of the test. A preponderance of evidence of related predictions is also considered a test.


Your statement is tautologous. You cannot test something without practically observing or tangibly monitoring it. You're now thinking in the realms of metaphysics!!


You missed the point by limiting yourself to a single level of testability.
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Bibliophile the BibleGuru
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 03:39 pm
A Scientific Fact can ONLY be established by following the process listed from hypothesis to theory to law - this IS a totally observable process.
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rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 04:09 pm
Bibliophile the BibleGuru wrote:
A Scientific Fact can ONLY be established by following the process listed from hypothesis to theory to law - this IS a totally observable process.


As I said, we have a difference of opinion as to what constitutes "testability".

However, it's pretty easy to show that your treatment of scientific testablilty is unreasonable. For example, using your definition we could not say that it's a scientific fact that the Earth even existed before the oldest person alive today, because it could not have been observed. Obviously this is not the way science works.

It is however possible to test the theory that the Earth existed before that time by making certain predictions and then testing them with observability. I do agree that at some level observabilty must happen, but it does not have to happen at every level.
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farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 06:10 pm
WE CAN TEST THAT A PLANET IN A DISTANT GALAXY EXISTS BY ITS OCCULTATION OF ITS SUN. WE CAN TEST THAT CLIMATE WAS WET IN 1000 BY OBSERVING TREE RINGS. THERE ARE MANY THINGS IN SCIENCE THAT ARE CONCLUDED BASED UPON EVIDENCE.

"A PREPONDERANCE OF THE EVIDENCE CONCLUDES"

YOU ARE FAMILIAR WITH THAT PREVIOUS STATEEMENT ARENT YOU BECAUSE YOU FAIL TO DISCUSS ANY EVIDENCE THAT SUPPORTS YOUR POSITION. YOUR POST STARTED WITH A QUESTION THEN TURNED TO A DIATRIBE, AS IF YOURE STANDING ON A PINNACLE.


A THEORY IS TESTABLE BY EVIDENCE, IN THAT ALL THE EVIDENCE SUPPORTS IT AND NO EVIDENCE REFUTES IT. NOW YOU SHOW ME ONE PIECE OF SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE THAT REFUTES DARWIN (OTHER THAN YOUR OWN ATTEMPTS AT SOPHISTRY)
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El-Diablo
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 06:28 pm
Well let's say that refutes evolution because,since darwin was only posing a theory, probably was not 100% correct similar to how Copernicus wasn't 100% correct on the heliocentric theory though he had msot right.
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gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 06:45 pm
There are basically two things you need to know about evolution:

1. It's junk science. It has been overwhelmingly disproven over the last 100 years and yet keeps popping up in new forms and new guises, such as "punk eek".

2. It's dangerous junk science. It was the most major philosophical cornerstone of naziism, communism, and the various eugenics programs of the last 120 years or thereabouts.

Moreover, it is totally incompatible with Christianity and the bulk of Western religion and philosophy. A man could no more be a Christian and believe in evolution than he could be a Christian and a Nazi at the same time. Sir Arthur Keith (Evolution and Ethics) put it best:

Quote:

." Here a question of the highest interest is raised: the relationship which exists between evolution and Christianity; so important, it seems to me, that I shall devote to it a separate chapter. Meantime let me say that the conclusion I have come to is this: the law of Christ is incompatible with the law of evolution as far as the law of evolution has worked hitherto. Nay, the two laws are at war with each other; the law of Christ can never prevail until the law of evolution is destroyed


Long, but well worth the trouble to read:

http://www.designeduniverse.com/evolutionandethics.htm
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farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 07:08 pm
i SEE THAT YOUR DINOSAUR FOSSIL EATING A HOMINID FOSSIL WAS A FAKE. IF EVOLUTION IS TTHE SHAM, WHY ARE THE CREATIONISTS TRYING TO FAKE THEIR FIELD DATA?

IF IGNORANCE WERE TRULY BLISS, GUNGASNAKE WOULD BE IN HOG HEAVEN.

ARE YOU CALLING MAINSTREAM CHRISTIANS UNBELIEVERS? MOST CHRISTIAN FAITHS HAVE EMBRACED EVOLUTION , THERE ARE ONLY A FEW EXTREME SECTS LIKE THE WITNESSES, THE DUKABORS, EXTREME EVANGALISTS (THE SNAKE HANDLERS) AND THE SOUTHERN BAPTIST CONFERENCE THAT STILL DENY SCIENCE.

IF YOUR GOD GAVE YOU A BRAIN , WHY DOES YOURE RELIGIOUS BELIEF DENY YOU THE RIGHT TO USE IT?

IM JUSTT CURIOUS
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rosborne979
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 07:12 pm
gungasnake wrote:
There are basically two things you need to know about evolution...


Ya, right. And Rudolph pulls the sleigh and the moon is made of blue cheese. Confused

If you're going to make up something completely outlandish, at least make it something interesting, like alien nephilim from planet x or something.
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farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 07:35 pm
Very Happy GUNGA-- ABOUT 200 NOBEL LAUREATES PRESENTED AN "AMICUS" DOCUMENT IN 1987 TO THE US SUPREME COURT IN ITS DELIBERATION ABOUT TEACHING CREATIONISM IN LOUISIANA SCHOOLS. THE OVERWHELMONG EVIDENCE IS QUICKLY TURNING YOUR CREATIONIST VIEW INTO AN AMUSING FOOTNOTE OF HISTORY. YOUD BETTER FIND SOME EVIDENCE TO TRY TO REFUTE IT BEFORE YOUR SIDE BECOMES EXTINCT.
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El-Diablo
 
  1  
Reply Fri 21 Jan, 2005 07:53 pm
Quote:
A man could no more be a Christian and believe in evolution than he could be a Christian and a Nazi at the same time.


Yet nazis were christians so evolutionists can be chrisians too. :-)

Quote:
2. It's dangerous junk science. It was the most major philosophical cornerstone of naziism, communism, and the various eugenics programs of the last 120 years or thereabouts.


And religion was the cornerstone of such atrosities as the Inquisition, Naziism (as well), countless holocausts, bigotry, blindness to the truth, and various other evils THROUGHOUT TIME.

Quote:
1. It's junk science. It has been overwhelmingly disproven over the last 100 years and yet keeps popping up in new forms and new guises, such as "punk eek".


Would you be so kind as to provide us with links to this "overwhelming" evidence. I would also recommend using several links for one point since, after all, people could post whatever junk they want on the internet and some would use it as truth.
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farmerman
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Jan, 2005 07:04 am
Youll find that this is where gunga usually bugs out. Hs never been able to substantiate his beliefss in CreationScience. Hes like all tthe res, all vines and no taters
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gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Jan, 2005 07:50 am
The basic reality of evolutionism is that it's been disproven so many ways that a newcomer has a bewildering assortment of disproofs to choose from.

The one I'd recommend is the one involving fruit flies; one description resides here:

http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/10mut10.htm

This one amounted to a laboratory disproof of the entire thesis.

The "theory of evolution" amounts to a claim that microevolutionary changes (the existence of which nobody disputes) will, given enough time, add up to MACROEVOLUTION, i.e. produce new KINDS of animals; that is, will produce animals with new organs and new basic plans for existence.

And so, for several decades in the late 1800s and early 1900s, scientists experimented with fruit flies by exposing them to everything known to cause mutations, and recombining the mutants in every imaginable way, precisely as the theory of evolution calls for.

Now fruit flies breed new generations every few DAYS, so that running thexe experiments for a few decades amounted to more generatinos of fruit flies than there have ever been generations of humans on this earth. They exposed them to gases, electrical shock, heat, cold, blast, radiation, and everything which has ever been observed to cause mutations, and they recombined the mutants in every conceivable way. Again, this is how evolution is supposed to operate, by a combination of mutations and "natural selection", whenever mutation causes some "beneficial change".

In theory they should have seen new kinds of insects, but they didn't. In reality, all they ever saw was fruit flies, sterile freaks, and creatures which returned, boomarang-like, to the norm for fruit flies when re-bred to a next generation.

Which is precisely what the breeders told Charles Darwin was all he'd ever see when telling he was full of **** back in the 1860s.

In real life, "natural selection" is a destructive force and not a constructive one. It is an agency of stasis and not of change. It weeds out everything an iota to the left or right of dead center for the norm of a given animal species, allowing the occasional microevolutionary change, a difference in color or beak size for instance, but that's every bit of it.

In real life, mutations all have names, such as Down's syndromne, Tay-Sachs, "cri-du-chat syndrome" etc. etc. etc. Ever watch the women going door to door collecting for the Mothers' March of Dimes? Ever notice that they are ALWAYS collecting money for research to PREVENT mutations, and not to CAUSE them? Think there might be a reason for that?

Scientists in the early 1900s fully expected the fruit fly experiments to produce new kinds of insects. When they didn't, a number of the scientists were so disillusioned as to drop out of Darwinism, including the famous case of Goldschmidt who thereafter devised his "Hopeful Monster" theory and described other biologists treating him like the ugly duckling or the target of the "two minute hate" events described by Orwell in "1984"
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gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Jan, 2005 07:53 am
Microevolution and Macroevolution
Diversity within a species-that is, variation-they called "microevolution," and the hypothesis of the development of new species was termed "macroevolution."
variations can never create new genetic information, and are thus unable to bring about "evolution." Giving variations the name of "microevolution" is actually an ideological preference on the part of evolutionary biologists.

The impression that evolutionary biologists have given by using the term "microevolution" is the false logic that over time variations can form brand new classes of living things. And many people who are not already well-informed on the subject come away with the superficial idea that "as it spreads, microevolution can turn into macroevolution."
In fact, nowadays even evolutionist experts accept that the variations they call "microevolution" cannot lead to new classes of living things-in other words, to "macroevolution." In a 1996 article in the leading journal Developmental Biology, the evolutionary biologists S.F. Gilbert, J.M. Opitz, and R.A. Raff explained the matter this way:

The Modern Synthesis is a remarkable achievement. However, starting in the 1970s, many biologists began questioning its adequacy in explaining evolution. Genetics might be adequate for explaining microevolution, but microevolutionary changes in gene frequency were not seen as able to turn a reptile into a mammal or to convert a fish into an amphibian. Microevolution looks at adaptations that concern only the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest. As Goodwin (1995) points out, "the origin of species- Darwin's problem-remains unsolved.34

The fact that "microevolution" cannot lead to "macroevolution," in other words that variations offer no explanation of the origin of species, has been accepted by other evolutionary biologists, as well. The noted author and science expert Roger Lewin describes the result of a four-day symposium held in November 1980 at the Chicago Museum of Natural History, in which 150 evolutionists participated:

The central question of the Chicago conference was whether the mechanisms underlying microevolution can be extrapolated to explain the phenomena of macroevolution. Â…The answer can be given as a clear, No.35
34 Scott Gilbert, John Opitz, and Rudolf Raff, "Resynthesizing Evolutionary and Developmental Biology", Developmental Biology, 173, Article no. 0032, 1996, p. 361. (emphasis added)
35 R. Lewin, "Evolutionary Theory Under Fire", Science, vol. 210, 21 November, 1980, p. 883.
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El-Diablo
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Jan, 2005 10:24 am
Interesting read Gunga but I pose this as a retort

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

It gives many examples of new speciation as well as what constitutes speciation, including fruitfily speciation. :-)

Quote:
Some of the most studied organisms in all of genetics are the Drosophila species, which are commonly known as fruitflies. Many Drosophila speciation events have been extensively documented since the seventies. Speciation in Drosophila has occurred by spatial separation, by habitat specialization in the same location, by change in courtship behavior, by disruptive natural selection, and by bottlenecking populations (founder-flush experiments), among other mechanisms.


This taken from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section5.html#speciation_stages
and an interesting look at "missing links"
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates_ex1

And the homepage if you are interested
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

One might also infer that man-made speciation will never be as effective as gradual natural speciation.
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gungasnake
 
  1  
Reply Sat 22 Jan, 2005 10:33 am
No experiment with fruit flies has ever produced anything other than fruit flies.

Other than that, talk.origins is a known hotbed of reactionary and dogmatic darwinism and their "FAQ" library is not the ultimate answer to all questions related to origins:

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