real life wrote:Hi Einherjar,
Sorry to have had to repeat myself in order to make my point.
Guess it means one of us is gettin' old. Couldn't be me.
Not at all, I understood you right away. It was Timber you were talking past.
real lifeQuote:farmerman wrote:
real life wrote:
]An alternate position would point out that the fish very likely could have been given various genetic variations to produce features as needed, as part of their initial design, so that perhaps no 'change' has really 'happened' at all.
. How do you propose to evidence this ? You would have to (by your own rules) rule out intermediate species because if they display too much non "fishness" they cant be valid data. Im concerned that youve painted yourself into a corner here.
Im afraid that evidence collecting isnt like fishin for catfish with an unbaited hook. Some effort is required of the one who poses the alternatives. Are you saying that youll just sit around and wait until some scientist goes out with your hypothesis in mind?
Genes may be economic but scientific research is quite penurious.Im not aware of the paleolinneage of sticklebacks (its unfortunately not an index fossil, its an environmental fossil). As far as there being a valid "other side" , Id like to hear it, so far your points are made with "what ifs..." and dont answer the topic of multifunctionality of genes. You need to go back and develop some sort of asynthesis that includes the sticklebacks penchant for descaling in fresh water and make the point in some sort of context. right now you are engaging in quote mining.
Well , hope y'alls have a Happy New Year eve. SOmebody keep an eye on spendi and put enough postage on him so they get him home.
farmerman wrote:
Im afraid that evidence collecting isnt like fishin for catfish with an unbaited hook. Some effort is required of the one who poses the alternatives. Are you saying that youll just sit around and wait until some scientist goes out with your hypothesis in mind?
No, not really.
I simply meant that just because evidence is collected by an evolutionist does not mean that the evidence can only be used to support his view and no other.
The data is what the data is, as you say, and his evidence is open to interpretation and inference from viewpoints across the spectrum, not just his own.
Einherjar wrote:real life wrote:Hi Einherjar,
Sorry to have had to repeat myself in order to make my point.
Guess it means one of us is gettin' old. Couldn't be me.
Not at all, I understood you right away. It was Timber you were talking past.
Since you understood my point that evolution is, by definition, purposeless --- would you agree that evolution is a process that is driven by blind chance?
I have taken some heat in this thread for making such a statement, but is it accurate in your view?
real life wrote:The data is what the data is, as you say, and his evidence is open to interpretation and inference from viewpoints across the spectrum, not just his own.
Fortunately, science weeds out inferior interpretations.
Quote: I simply meant that just because evidence is collected by an evolutionist does not mean that the evidence can only be used to support his view and no other.
The data is what the data is, as you say, and his evidence is open to interpretation and inference from viewpoints across the spectrum, not just his own.
I suppose its true but , to take someones work and try to force fit it into a Creationist view point is something that Im not aware has ever happened(as a successful argument). If you know of any such areas where thats happened , please bring them to our attention. As far as the sticklebacks, the mechanism described appears to have a function related to he fish's environment. Menhaden also "pitch scales" when a mass of them are attacked. Its been said that it throws predators off by providing a split second of diversions so the fish can escape.Perhaps theyll do some follow on work to determine which families have this ability. That may have ramifications about the evolutionary significance of this trait, especiallly if the genes and controllers involved are identified.
Off the subject but... ( I usually am off the subject these days) hehe
Happy New Year all!
http://www.quantumbiocommunication.com/consciousness/top-scientists-validating-the-supernatural-universe.html
The field or the "spirit"...
The Field <chuckle> - New Age meets Evangelical Christian Fundamentalsim would be a suitable subtitle for McTaggart's latest compilation of psuedoscientific twaddle. Rex, the folks who go in for that sorta stuff are well represented in the demographic which provides the core customer pool for faith healers and books on alien abduction.
timberlandko wrote:The Field <chuckle> - New Age meets Evangelical Christian Fundamentalsim would be a suitable subtitle for McTaggart's latest compilation of psuedoscientific twaddle. Rex, the folks who go in for that sorta stuff are well represented in the demographic which provides the core customer pool for faith healers and books on alien abduction.
The folks? Are you referring to quantum scientists? hehe
De 34:7
And Moses was an hundred and twenty years old when he died: his eye was not dim, nor his natural
force abated.
No, Rex, I'm referring to the folks who buy into McTaggart's leap-of-faith postulates, and who assume she knows what she's talking about. The Zero Point Field is nothing new, its an established principle in quantum physics, and has been the subject of considerable legitimate research. Nothing in an objective appraisal of that research lends any credence to any notion of support for any religionist proposition. Taggart asserts such "evidence" is there without in fact actually producing any. Best known for her shrill, hysterical diatribe against the medical profession, 1999's
What Doctors Don't Tell You, apart from being a best-selling populist writer with pretentions of scientific legitimacy, McTaggart is among the foremost proponents of
homeopathy. She does not report science, she manufactures what she purports to be science. Unfortunately, the undiscriminating market she serves is large.
real life wrote:Since you understood my point that evolution is, by definition, purposeless --- would you agree that evolution is a process that is driven by blind chance?
I have taken some heat in this thread for making such a statement, but is it accurate in your view?
Timber can offer his own view on this, but it's definitely not accurate to say that evolution is driven by blind chance.
Evolution is driven by many things, chance being one of them, but it is also strongly driven by natural selection, something which is inherently non-random.
As to your point about evolution being "purposeless", that's like saying that a waterfall is purposeless. When water reaches a cliff, it falls, that's just what happens to water in a gravitational field when it encounters a particular condition. Likewise, evolution is just something that happens to replicative biological systems in our Universe. I'm not quite sure how you can relate either of those things to "purpose".
Tsunamis and earthquakes are natural occurences of this planet; they are indiscriminate. If you believe a creator "runs the show," it isn't supported by geological science that explains these natural phenomenon.
What difference does it make for those killed if they believed in a second coming or eternal life? What difference does it make for the children that have no such belief in christianity?
Pretty much good with ros' post - natural selection, the success of failure of genetic changes as represented by the thriving or failure to thrive of the subject population determines what genes in what expression get handed down in what fashion; if it works - if a change conveys a beneficial trait or property, it spreads, if it doesn't, it doesn't. No "Design" necessary, thats just how it works - and why it works.
real life wrote:Since you understood my point that evolution is, by definition, purposeless --- would you agree that evolution is a process that is driven by blind chance?
I have taken some heat in this thread for making such a statement, but is it accurate in your view?
No, I would not consider it accurate.
I might agree to describe evolution as driven by "seeing chance", like playing with loaded dice. Some traits have a greater chance of spreading throughout the general population than others, due to being favored by natural selection, which means that evolution is not indiscriminate, or blind as you called it.
Also, what ros and timber said.
Einherjar wrote:real life wrote:Since you understood my point that evolution is, by definition, purposeless --- would you agree that evolution is a process that is driven by blind chance?
I have taken some heat in this thread for making such a statement, but is it accurate in your view?
No, I would not consider it accurate.
I might agree to describe evolution as driven by "seeing chance", like playing with loaded dice. Some traits have a greater chance of spreading throughout the general population than others, due to being favored by natural selection, which means that evolution is not indiscriminate, or blind as you called it.
Also, what ros and timber said.
Hi Einherjar,
Natural selection cannot take place (according to the theory) unless a chance event such as a mutation takes place first. It is my contention that blind chance is the "driver" (i.e. propelling force, originator, light switch..... choose your metaphor) of evolution/natural selection because the chance event must precede the selective process. You disagree?
Without a chance happening such as a mutation, there are no additional options to choose from, no?
Minor point maybe. I just find it rather humorous that most evolutionists get uncomfortable with ascribing their existence to blind chance, while their theory (it seems to me) demands it. It's part of the same idea which led to author of the article and Timber and many others to use language describing 'purpose' in evolution despite themselves.
Well, take care.
For whatever term the author or Timber may use, your use of "blind chance" is tendentious. By the use of that term, you hope to bring the concept of natural selection into disrepute, because you have an agenda to push the notion of a guiding intelligence, which regularly and frequently intervenes. Which is to say, you're trying to make the rather simple and obvious mechanism of natural selection look suspect, in order to tout the notion of a creation, and an engaged creator continually "tweaking" the system.
But that begs the question of existence altogether. People have claimed, in an equally erroneous manner, that there is serendipity (and an implied "designer") evident in the atmospheric modification by which plants convert carbon dioxide into oxygen--thereby supporting animal life. But aerobic life-forms, those which respire oxygen, would simply not exist were it not present. All of the anaerobic life forms which once populated the globe have either survived in oxygen-free refuges, or have died. Mutations will arise constantly, if for no other reason than cosmic radiation, which continually bathes the surface of the planet. Environmental chemicals can cause mutation as well. Nature is an indifferent "judge"--it matters not if ten thousand mutations confer no benefit, it matters not if five thousand mutations are harmful to the host organism. The "losers" in that equation will quickly be gone, and the evidence we will have to consider are those examples in which mutation does not harm, and in which mutation confers a benefit at some point at which environmental conditions are ripe for the mutated organisms' advantage.
You beg the question, you play word games--but you do nothing to support a silly contention about your imaginary friend, for whom you consistently fail to provide any evidence.
Don't all these arguments involve no conscious choice as is the case with all other life forms but us?
We have conscious choice.Are you saying we don't?
set wrote:
You beg the question, you play word games--but you do nothing to support a silly contention about your imaginary friend, for whom you consistently fail to provide any evidence.
That is also my contention concerning spendi. He plays word games, and sometimes it's not written clearly enough to be understood by most.
Wow, here we are in 2006 and were still hopping about definitions. Of course real life is pushing his agenda , but we knew that when we took on his questions. I smiled when I saw RL's above post. We had asked the question that, in effect, Is most evolution Adaptive? . We asked this waay back in abuzz days and got some really good stuff about genetic drift, pleiotropy, allometry and even weird autocorrelation of scads of data in multivariate analyses (implying that , with the data at hand, there was NO FrIGGIN WAY that Australopithecenes were the ancestors of humans)
I guess we are back at square one swince we no longer have to deal with the baggage of ID (thanks to wandeljw getting a Federal Judge to adjudicate his own thread)
(cf."Intelligent Design, Science or Religion?")
As Steven Gould and Richard Lewontin said many years ago while introducing the concept of "spandrels"
"In ntural history, all possible things happen sometimes, You never support a favored phenomenon by declaring rivals impossible, Rather, you acknowledge the rival but circumscibe its domain so narrowly that it cannot have any importance in nature"
Ive always been a supporteer of the adaptational nature of natural selection , since it requires NO MUTATIONS , it merely assembles adaptive ranges to new environments by the process of genetic diversity. By n By, as time go along (cf Remus, Uncle) mutations accumulate that direct the response of the population wherein changes accumulate individual by individual.
Most all major "jumps" in evolution seem to fall within boundaries of major edaphic changes (climate, continental drift isolates populations, mass extinctions etc). Now, where the non adaptational models fit leave us with some of our greatest challenges to understand the mechanics of evolution 'eg
When plants occupied the land, there was no major cataclysmic event nor any major change (that we presently know of) that favored the colonization of land. Yet, if we look at genomes of many oceanic plants and primitive (but still living ferns and cycads) we see these genomes are likely "spun off" one from the other.
Some scientists say that the evolution of primitive mammals from synapsid reptiles is another example of non adaptational evolution ( even though mammals arose in a time that bracketed an era that stood as the greatest natural wipeout era in prehistory).
I guess Im just smiling in amazement that weve come about 650 pages into this thing and we are still busting definitions and being told what evolutionary theory is, (or is not).
Well, Happy New Year anyway,
real life wrote:Hi Einherjar,
Natural selection cannot take place (according to the theory) unless a chance event such as a mutation takes place first. It is my contention that blind chance is the "driver" (i.e. propelling force, originator, light switch..... choose your metaphor) of evolution/natural selection because the chance event must precede the selective process. You disagree?
Well, a limited amount of evolution can occur based on genetic variation that already exists within a population, but that is beside the point. I believe ros did a thread on "evolution without mutation" a while back if you are interested. I think it was in Science and Mathemathics.
real life wrote:Without a chance happening such as a mutation, there are no additional options to choose from, no?
Minor point maybe. I just find it rather humorous that most evolutionists get uncomfortable with ascribing their existence to blind chance, while their theory (it seems to me) demands it. It's part of the same idea which led to author of the article and Timber and many others to use language describing 'purpose' in evolution despite themselves.
Well, take care.
You would find no argument in ascribing our existence to chance. You won't get away with blind chance as it implies/states that there is no guiding mechanism in evolution. It reeks of the strawman that is set up for the jet in a junkyard tripe.
And ditto.
