Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

The British are always stumbling onto things. In the mid-1700s, in order to cut back on the amount of rum consumed on voyages, the Royal Navy began to cut the rum with either lemon or lime juice and sugar. (Supposedly where the term Limey came from) The stuff was called grog. You've heard of it, but I never thought about it's effect on scurvy until I read about it in a book whose name escapes me now.

"Six Drinks that changed the World" or something. Interesting stuff to listen to while I trot around the park.
Then the Limeys took a liking to tea and all that boiled water made things a lot more sanitary going down their wretched gullets.

Not science, just a need to pinch back on the good stuff and the fact you can't make decent tea in cold water.

Joe(Found it/ History of the World in Six Glasses) Nation

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@Joe Nation,

During the American Civil War the south couldn't get suture silk so they boiled hair from horses tails to make them soft and pliable enough to use for suturing wounds. Inadvertently they sterilized them in boiling and the festering of wounds after surgery was significantly less in the south than in the north.

Surgeon's of the time were concerned as this was before the germ theory was proposed and the festering of wounds was considered normal.

Rap

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@farmerman,

Lack of alcohol and tobacco causes literary scurvy.

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@raprap,

I love stories like that. We should have a Connections thread. Are you familier with that old program? Full of the consequences, intended and unintended, of history.
Joe(not Uncle Fester)Nation

1 Reply

@Joe Nation,

The really interesting stuff is how champagne was refined to perfection by monks.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

In view of your continued insistence that evolution is "just a belief," i strongly suspect that you have a religious agenda, but that you're being dishonest about it. I really have no interest in continuing with you your "yes it is--no it isn't" game here.

Ok...Let's just assume that evolution is not a "belief"...With that being the case, then can you honestly claim that every single conceivable answer concerning evolution can be answered with an overwhelmingly vast and unquestionable amount of proof? Can you also provide the same amount of evidence to completely disprove every single idea, belief, faith, etc, in which contradicts evolution in any possible conceivable way? If that's the case, then why are people still researching everything that has to do with evolution? Why are we still looking for answers to questions that we already know? That's the whole point, in order to consider something proven, there has to be 100% proof without any doubt what-so-ever! You could have 99.9999999999999999999999999999999% proof...but that's still not 100%. You would still have that 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% that you're lacking.

The point I was trying to make, is that even if you DO have 100% proof, it wouldn't matter. The only way you could be able to convey that proof to it's full 100% would be to know every single thing about who you're presenting the information to. You would basically have to know that person better than anything else, including themselves. You would also have to know every single thing about yourself. Without that, it would no longer have it's full value and things would be lost in the translation.

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@Chights47,

Quote:

I'm definitely going to have to side with Farmerman on this one.

Best of luck then.

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@spendius,

Going back to the Pure Visitor notion of not having a worldview.

Rabelais defines the position in Book 3, Chapter 37. It is that--

Quote:

...a man must forget himself, rise above himself, rid his senses of all earthly affection, purge his spirit of all human solicitude, and view everything with unconcern:.....

fm couldn't manage one little bit of that.

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@Chights47,

Quote:

Can you also provide the same amount of evidence to completely disprove every single idea, belief, faith, etc, in which contradicts evolution in any possible conceivable way?

IF YOU CAN VERBALIZE A QUESTION< PERHAPS WE CAN TESTTHIS OUT> IM WILLING TO GIVE A TRY

Quote:

If that's the case, then why are people still researching everything that has to do with evolution? Why are we still looking for answers to questions that we already

know [/quote]YOU ARE DISPLAYING IGNORANCE OF WHAT RESEARCH IS GOING ON. PRESENT RESEARCH IS LOOKING TO FILL IN UNKNOWNS AND DEFINE MECHANISMS.YOURE BEING TOO SIMPLISTIC IN YOUR ASSERTION.WEKNOW WHAT CAUSES FUSION BUT WE STILL CANT DUPLICATE A SUSTAINED FUSION REACTION.
IN EVOLUTION, WE UNDERSTAND THE ORIGIN OF FEATHERS < WE JUST DONT KNOW HOW.OTHER AREAS AND UNKNOWNS ABOUND

Quote:

there has to be 100% proof without any doubt what-so-ever

YOU ARE CONFUSING EVIDENCE WITH PROOF. PROOF IS A MERE CONCLUSION BASED UPON EVIDENCE> EVOLUTION IS A PREPONDERENCE OF EVIDENCE. RELIGION CLAIMS INERRANCY WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE AT ALL. EVOLUTION HAS MADE DAMNED GOOD CASE BASED UPON EVIDENCE THAT HAS NOT BEEN REFUTED IN ANY FASHION

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@Chights47,

Quote:

You could have 99.9999999999999999999999999999999% proof...but that's still not 100%. You would still have that 0.0000000000000000000000000000001% that you're lacking.

You are losing any argument here. All of life is a studied series of statistics. Would you invest money in a 22 decimal 9's after 99.9? (HiNT---I think you would). In science , we dont have anything "proven" to a certainty. It only works becaiuse IT WORKS in all cases so far. If you demand more, youre rather foolish or youre just some Creationist who doesnt know how to argue with science in your face.

ALL SCIENCE presents its data and evidence wrt a statistical base. Its usually presented as a scatter graph or a spread of results that cluster about some value that we accept as "correct". We live in a world of tolerances and diminishing series.

Quote:

The point I was trying to make, is that even if you DO have 100% proof, it wouldn't matter. The only way you could be able to convey that proof to it's full 100% would be to know every single thing about who you're presenting the information to. You would basically have to know that person better than anything else, including themselves.

WHAAAAAAA???.You are buying a car with a GPS. Do you "believe" in the GPS? or do you just read the instruction manual and accept the results?
Your use of belief is cockeyed thats all Ive been trying to say nicely(up till now). I "Believe" that youre smarter than what youre conveying, however, based on eviodence from your last coupla posts, Im beginning to see petulence at those who disagree with you rather than intellectual curiosity.

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@farmerman,

Bloody hell Chighty.

You can't verbalize a question, you are displaying ignorance, you're being too simplistic, you are confusing evidence with proof, you are losing any argument here and you're rather foolish or you're just some Creationist who doesnt know how to argue with science in your face.

As I said--best of luck.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Actually I was pushed for time quoting Rabelais earlier which is why I didn't finish the sentence. They send search parties out for me if I'm late for the pub.

The rest of it reads--

Quote:

: all of which are commonly supposed to be symptoms of folly.

Now folly is not something one would accuse fm of. Right? Hence his superior tone on worldviews is pure bullshit. He doesn't know his folly from his worldview.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

YOU ARE DISPLAYING IGNORANCE OF WHAT RESEARCH IS GOING ON. PRESENT RESEARCH IS LOOKING TO FILL IN UNKNOWNS AND DEFINE MECHANISMS.YOURE BEING TOO SIMPLISTIC IN YOUR ASSERTION.WEKNOW WHAT CAUSES FUSION BUT WE STILL CANT DUPLICATE A SUSTAINED FUSION REACTION.
IN EVOLUTION, WE UNDERSTAND THE ORIGIN OF FEATHERS < WE JUST DONT KNOW HOW.OTHER AREAS AND UNKNOWNS ABOUND

So you're admitting that there are holes...

Quote:

YOU ARE CONFUSING EVIDENCE WITH PROOF. PROOF IS A MERE CONCLUSION BASED UPON EVIDENCE> EVOLUTION IS A PREPONDERENCE OF EVIDENCE. RELIGION CLAIMS INERRANCY WITHOUT ANY EVIDENCE AT ALL. EVOLUTION HAS MADE DAMNED GOOD CASE BASED UPON EVIDENCE THAT HAS NOT BEEN REFUTED IN ANY FASHION

Ok I gotcha, now it makes a little more sense, it seems as if our main disagreement is just a conflict of definitions. What you call "belief" I call "faith", and what you call "proof" I call "belief". Religion, at it's very core, has a great deal of ineffable "proof". It's outward appearance makes it ridiculous because it is. Christianity (to me) is nothing more than tradition about what's ineffable. People believe in religions (mainly the ones with deities) because they "feel" something, something in which can't be explained. When they try to explain it, it comes out completely ridiculous as "psychics" and "auras" and crap like that. You can disprove those explanations, but you can't grasp the concept of what happened...unless it's fake.

I'm also not a "religious nutter" (as set seems to think). As far as religion goes, specifically, I would consider myself and apathetic agnostic. I don't doubt that there MAY be some sort of deity, but I really don't give a crap either way.

1 Reply

@Chights47,

Quote:

So you're admitting that there are holes...

Of course, dont be purposely obtuse. I think youre smarter than that. THere are many holes in a bagel yet its existence int denied,. There are holes and there are HOLES. In evolution theory we are looking for the mechanismms and the times and the disconnects between clades. The theory itself is robust and has not been refuted by any "competing one"

Quote:

I'm also not a "religious nutter" (as set seems to think). As far as religion goes, specifically, I would consider myself and apathetic agnostic. I don't doubt that there MAY be some sort of deity, but I really don't give a crap either way

I surmised as much. The words that have meanings forwign to scince are words like "proof" and "belief". As I said before, beliefs require faith, and cant stand evidence and science lives only on evidence,prediction, experiment, and further, relies on the falsification of itself and evidencing competing hypotheses to be false.
Weve been on these threads so long as to maybe talk in code. Do you know what we mean when we toss around the concept of "falsification"?

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@farmerman,

To piggy-back on farmerman, many of those previous holes have been filled in, while others are being investigated for their veracity. That's what science does. I'm sure you understand all this basic stuff.

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@Chights47,

I know what the intended purpose of your drivel is, you need not have wasted all that time and space to run through your silly contentions again.

1 Reply

@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

If you demand more, you're rather foolish or you're just some Creationist who doesnt know how to argue with science in your face

That's all I wanted, and that's it, I was only discribing that "more" in which you're talking about. I won't argue any further on the topic (although I know I could) but it would really only be nit-picking. I also won't go into a scientific debate about all the various specifics because I highly doubt that I know more than everyone here...or at least not enough to counter the various details with enough merit to really overcome anything.

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@Setanta,

Setanta wrote:

I know what the intended purpose of your drivel is, you need not have wasted all that time and space to run through your silly contentions again.

I don't agree with the "silly contentions" part, in order to discuss what I'm talking about further would be to just go in circles and just say the same thing I've been saying.

1 Reply

@Chights47,

And as what you're saying is of no relevance to the topic, i sxee no reason to rehearse it with you.

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@Joe Nation,

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the theft in office in the English government was breath-taking. The kegs of "lime" juice they purchased at the Admiralty were often what was then known as "sophisticated," meaning that it was heavily adulterated. So much so, that even men who drank their daily grog often eventually showed signs of incipient scurvy. Some men traded their grog for tobacco, with the other men in their mess (each mess was eight sailors and rations were cooked for a mess of eight men at a time, and the grog mixed and served out on that basis). When scurvy did break out, the men who habitually traded the grog for tobacco or food were the first to show signs of scurvy.

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Don't tell me there's no proof for evolution

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