Guest opinion; Dr. Tim Ball
Most of the loudest and most vociferous responses to my last article were predictable. Several topics trigger immediate, irrational, and emotional responses. The mention, or at least the questioning, of Darwin’s Evolutionary Theory, is one of them. All I got was arm-waving and references, but not one piece of empirical evidence to prove the theory. This is the same response you get when you ask for empirical evidence to prove the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW).
There is another parallel between the two. Many call AGW a hoax, but it is not, partly because a hoax has a humorous component and there is nothing funny about the deception and its impact. A real and very effective scientific hoax involved the obsession with proving Darwin’s theory. It is called the Piltdown Man Hoax after the quarry in which the event occurred. As a traditional hoax, it was designed to prick pomposity, to underscore the weakness of unjustified and arrogant claims, to open eyes closed by obsession. The irony is the victim of the hoax, Charles Dawson, was determined to find the so-called ‘missing link. He sought the empirical fossil evidence that would provide the final link in the evolution of man from apes.
Dawson was so obsessed with his search and the belief that such a fossil existed that he was easy prey. It is this kind of blind obsession that is the sad situation with all those arm-waving supporters of Darwin’s theory. What is amazing is that the academic and professional world of museums and societies believed Piltdown for 41 years. There were doubters, but they were brushed aside. Eventually, in 1953, the hoax was revealed when it was shown that the Piltdown skull comprised a cleverly aged mandible and some teeth of an orangutan and the cranium of a human.
A major problem with this search for human ancestry is the entire fossil record more than 1 million years old fits on a dining room table. It is as sparse as the data for anthropogenic warming. However, this is only one part of the entire problem of determining evolutionary theory from the fossil record.
Estimates indicate that on average it takes 15 million in a species for one to survive in the fossil record. How many of today’s species will show up in tomorrow’s record? Don’t forget that is in species that have parts that can become fossilized. A remarkable discovery put this entire issue into perspective in a quarry called the Burgess Shales. This is on the boundary between the Canadian Provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Ironically, the original discovery by Charles Walcott occurred in 1909 before the Piltdown hoax. He recognized the importance of the discovery because it consisted of soft-bodied creatures that rarely survive in the fossil record. Unfortunately, the full significance of these fossils was not recognized until 1962 when Alberto Simonetta re-examined the fossils and realized the full extent of their significance.
Today, we are no further ahead because we have no idea how many species exist on our planet. Of course, that does not prevent the fanciful speculators who will do what Mark Twain said,
“There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”
Consider the fact that we don’t know how many plant or animal species exist. A 2011 estimate said approximately 8.7 million, 6.5 on land and 2.2 in the ocean. This sounds definitive until you learn that the error range is ± 1.3 million. In a recent ten-year span more than a million new species were discovered. How many remain undiscovered? PLoS Biology suggests,
“…a staggering 86% of all species on land and 91% of those in the seas have yet to be discovered, described and catalogued.”
In 2012, a story appeared with the headline, “One Million New Plankton Species Found.” The expedition led by Dr. Chris Bowler was actually looking at the uptake of carbon dioxide in the oceans. Bowler said, “It’s the first time that anyone’s done this expedition looking specifically for plankton life, and that’s why we found so many.” How does that change the formulae for CO2 cycles in the Earth’s system?
It is not just about small species. There are stories all the time.
• 2010 report said, “30 unknown species found in Ecuador’s highland forests by a team of U.S. and Ecuadorian researchers,”
• 2010 report said, Over 200 New Species Found In Papua New Guinea. The lead scientist said, there are, “large areas of New Guinea that are pretty much unexplored biologically.”
• 2012 report “New species of monkey identified in Africa.”
The importance of the Burgess Shales event entered the public awareness with Stephen Jay Gould’s book, “Wonderful Life” and a cover story in National Geographic. The discovery pushed the origin of the earliest species back 50 million years before the previous estimates. It also seemed to indicate a different evolution scenario than the Darwin tree of life. It suggested that there was an explosion of life with a multitude of species most of which became extinct. In other words, it was a decreasing number of species, not increasing. By the way, it was Darwin who likened his ideas to a tree. In his comments on Alfred Russel Wallace’s work he said, it was nothing new and “Uses my simile of a tree (but) it seems all creation with him.” But more of that later.
I was always disturbed by the number of biology students who didn’t know the definition of species. The Oxford English Dictionary provides this definition.
A group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g., Homo sapiens.
That sounds clear and concise, but it is not the case even among today’s species. It is even more difficult in the fossil record. For example, we know that mules and horses cannot produce viable offspring. If we found such similar species in the fossil record, there is no way of knowing. How many other natural hybrids exist today or in the fossil record?
The designation of species originated with the system of classification developed by Carolus Linnaeus and known as the Linnaean System. Classification systems are a wonderful idea for trying to make sense out of a plethora of data. The trouble is, like all structures, they are rigid and fail to accommodate new discoveries. The classic example that challenged the Linnaean system was the Platypus. Not surprisingly, and appropriate to our story, many scientists considered it a fake and a hoax. Just like with Piltdown some believed an Asian taxidermist sewed a beak onto a water-dwelling mammal. The reality is the Linnaean Classification is a fanciful, arbitrary rigid system that determined most thinking about evolution.
Some of the more fanciful, such as birds evolving from dinosaurs illustrate the problem (Figure1).
There is no empirical evidence to support this supposition. A good deal of this is based on the fact that some creatures look alike. This is clear in the case of humans and apes (Figure 2).
I don’t mind being descended from a gorilla. They are better than some of the relatives I have, however, many people do. That resentment speaks to the issue Darwin knew about but never dealt with effectively.
Alfred Russel Wallace published a paper on natural selection in 1858, a year before Darwin’s Origin of Species. Some say it pushed Darwin to publish. Others say it caused Darwin’s supporters to push for publication. Wallace’s paper challenged Charles Lyell because it opposed his idea that species were immutable.
The ongoing Wallace and Darwin debate is not over the idea of natural selection. It focused on the place of humans in the pattern of evolution. Wallace publicly supported Darwin’s work. In 1889, he published a book titled, Darwinism. His differences with Darwin emerged from a different area, the large gap between humans and all other species, especially apes. He said a theory must include an explanation for that difference and Darwin evolutionary ideas didn’t. Darwin tried to address the issue twelve years after Origin in his book The Descent of Man. He failed. He did not explain how humans are superior to every other species. His ideas led to the satire about how if you had a number of chimpanzees working on typewriters they would eventually type Shakespeare’s plays (Figure 3).
Figure 3
Former genetics professor David Suzuki provides a good example of the bizarre thinking when he said,
“Economics is a very species – chauvinistic idea. No other species on earth – and there are may be 30 million of them – has had the nerve to put forth a concept called economics, in which one species, us, declares the right to put value on everything else on earth, in the living and non-living world.”
He is incorrect about the number of species. He is wrong about putting a value on things. All animals put a value on everything. Can I eat it? Only humans put other values on things. No other animal could even think of a concept like economics. Instead of realizing that humans are achieving success and adaptability better than any other species, as Darwin suggested, he considers these as failures. He doesn’t even see the philosophical contradictions in his view.
The question is what is really behind all of this illogic and attacks on anyone who questions Darwinism or the prevailing wisdom of his Evolutionary Theory? The gap between humans and any other animals is one of them. It is so great Wallace had the audacity to introduce the idea of what we now call “intelligent design.” His challenges are part of the questions today that speak about the origin of the Universe. The problem for Darwin and the Big Bang theory people is that the ultimate question remains. Who or what created the material for the bang and who triggered it.
Then there is the problem of accurate dating. I recall at a conference on the fur trade, a historian presented a paper about a sequence of events he claimed changed the pattern of exploration. His sequence derived from entries in the Hudson’s Bay Company journals prior to 1752. He didn’t know that in September of that year the government removed eleven days to the change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Hubert Lamb devoted a large section of his Volume 2 Climate Present, Past and Future to discussing the methods, limitations, and importance of both absolute and relative dating. The problems exist across all attempts to reconstruct the past, from climate to fossil records.
Incorrect dating makes any attempt to determine cause and effect impossible. Relative dating is when you have a specific date for a known event and can say whether something occurred before or after. Absolute dating is when you have a specific natural measure such as rate of conversion of radioactive material from one form to another. The two most common are radiocarbon and Potassium/Argon (K/A) dating. This has caused problems in climate reconstructions before. For example, the Milankovitch sequence indicated ice conditions in a region of Alaska then radiocarbon on fossilized trees indicated they were growing at the same time. This was a major reason why Milankovitch, who was initially accepted, was later rejected. In my early career mention of Milankovitch immediately triggered derision. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that I attended a conference and Milankovitch was mentioned and nobody reacted. climate conference. Of course, it turned out the fancy new ‘scientific’ measure of carbon dating was wrong because it assumed a constant rate of solar energy output. As recently as 2012 a new calibration method developed to provide more accurate reconstructions. Then, in the first week of June 2018, we learn,
Archaeologist Sturt Manning and colleagues have revealed variations in the radiocarbon cycle at certain periods of time, affecting frequently cited standards used in archaeological and historical research relevant to the southern Levant region (Israel, southern Jordan and Egypt). These variations, or offsets, of up to 20 years in the calibration of precise radiocarbon dating could be related to climatic conditions.
The problems with K/A dating are more profound, especially for the fossil record. A study in Hawaii gave an age for rock of 2.3 ± 0.3 million years. I don’t care about the specific age except that it is relatively recent geologically. What troubles me is the ± 0.3 million years. That is 300,000 years or a full error range of 600,000 years. How much happened in the last 600,000 years? Of course, as you go back in time the error increases. A one-million-year error range is not unusual.
It is interesting that when you search the web for information of accuracy of geologic dating methods, several appear that are sponsored by religious groups. Some specifically identify themselves as creationists.
I am not arguing for creationism, but it appears to influence science so that there is irrational and blind determination to confirm Darwin’s Theory. Ironically, we witness belief in the environment and AGW taking religious, blind belief, positions. So it is with Darwin. The minute you even raise the topic you get hysterical arm waving responses, with no empirical evidence to support their position.
People outside of science have warned about these irrational reactions. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, speaking through his character Sherlock Holmes wrote,
“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.”
Alternatively, as Mark Twain said,
Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.
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Dr. Ball,
What exactly would the evidence you’re looking for, that would satisfy you that evolutionary theory is correct, look like? What would it take to convince you?
Given that Darwinian gradualism has been refuted by the fossil record (evidence for “punctuated equilibrium”, Niles Eldredge, Stephen Jay Gould et al.), and by the ever increasing preponderance of convergent structures (Simon Conway Morris, Eva Jablonka et al.) – all of them atheists – and been rendered less plausible by annual discoveries of intricate molecular machineries, compelling evidence for the aleatoric emergence of new “baupläne” probably could only be furnished by Richard Goldschmidt’s “hopeful monster”. Gerd B. Müller and his ilk are exploring the Evo-Devo route towards this miracle – but it yet has to happen, or at least made conceivable.
R.F.
What an outrageous falsehood. You’re dead wrong about everything.
Gould was not only wrong, but even he didn’t say he had falsified natural selection. Morris is a Christian.
Clearly you’ve never read the works of any of the people whom you cite.
How dare you presume to comment upon topics about which your’e totally ignorant?
Isn’t it correct that theories can never be shown to be ‘correct’? The most that can be done is to show that they are the best idea that we have at the moment.
Agreed, as far as you consider Neo-Darwinism a theory to be tested. Exactly this is negated by confessing Darwinists. Apart from population dynamics dealing with micro-evolution hardly any undisputable empirical evidence does corroborate Neo-Darwinism. Whether you consider this “best” is any ones choice. Nevertheless, “The Science is settled!”
R.F.
Note that Origin of Species was published around 90 years before Gould–the Magisteria for Marxism guy–was even born.
Gould manufactured a non-existent controversy, branded it, then sold it to a naive and gullible public not versed in the primary literature. He did this because he had a huge ego, but nothing new or interesting to add to the discussion.
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/CEP_Gould.html
At least nobody talks about his”spandrels” anymore.
Agreed. Gould contributed nothing lasting to evolutionary theory, but was motivated by Marxism. That sometimes evolution works rapidly and sometimes gradually is simply an observation, not a grand reimagining of evolutionary theory.
His take on the Burgess Shale is also hogwash.
You assert things that are patently not true. Darwinism is up for refutation any time anyone can refute it with empirical evidence. Unfortunately no one can.
Science doesn’t work by evidence corroborating a theory, it works by predictions made by that theory coming true, or not.
If not its refuted.
The science is not settled and no one claims it is. Its just the best theory out there right now.
Yes. That is the essence of part of Popper’s discourse.
We can’t discover what is true, only what is not.
And that statement is ubiquitous and 97% of people would instantly deny it, without thinking about it, because if you do, you have to accept it as the one and only exception to the rule that ‘the truth is unknowable’
The truth is that only the statement ‘the truth is, apart from this statement, unknowable’ is true.
🙂
We can’t discover what is true, only what is not.
The truth is that only the statement ‘the truth is, apart from this statement, unknowable’ is true.
I’m thinking about it. I think, “What a particularly contradictory (i.e., useless) belief system, where the only true statement can’t be true at all because it’s contradicted by the first premise of the system itself?”
Why would I adopt such a nonsensical system of belief?
No evidence could satisfy me that any theory is correct.
Theories have no truth content, only functional effectiveness.
Theories have no truth content, only functional effectiveness.
Is that your theory? If so, based on the following don’t you contradict yourself?
No evidence could satisfy me that any theory is correct.
🙂
sy, Leo does not contradict himself. For example, the following statement if made by Leo would not be contradictory: No amount of laundry detergent could satisfy me that any theory is correct” Any form of this last statement is true, because the underlying logical form is that of an implication. (Evidence implies correctness) The conclusion of the implication is irrelevant (indetermanate) because “correctness” is not a property of a theory. Any implication with a false premise is true by the definition of implication
oops……typo (not false conclusion) should be false premise, the conclusion is indeterminate..
Wow, love this edit feature.
Hey I missed this but great try Keith! I’m looking forward to a response to my objection below:
Your example contradicts Leo’s definition of a theory, hence it can’t apply.
Theories have no truth content, only functional effectiveness.
The proposition, “No amount of laundry detergent could satisfy me that any theory is correct,” has no functional effectiveness in the real world, since laundry detergent can’t possibly verify “any theory.”
Now, “laundry detergent” might satisfy one or a number of other theories depending on the theory. But those aren’t the theory you’ve postulated.
Tim
– your information on radiometric dating methods is a bit out of date. K-Ar dating was the first widely used method because potassium occurs at levels in the percent range in most igneous rocks, so analytical techniques in the 1950s and early 1960s were able to measure the K-40 (the radioactive isotope) and Ar-40 (the decay product) with moderate accuracy and precision. The big problem with K-Ar dating is that argon is a gas, and it doesn’t take much for minerals to start losing argon if they are heated above about 300°C. Hence giving younger ages than the actual age of formation.
When I was a student in the 1960s, two superior methods were being developed and widely used. Rubidium-strontium and uranium-lead. Both give much more precise dates than the K-Ar method. Since then a dozen or more radiometric dating methods have appeared like rhenium-osmium and neodymium-samarium.
Things have got to a fair level of accuracy. In the Archean, which is where I mostly work, I’m always seeing published ages in the 2,700 million-year range with estimated errors of ±1 to ±5 m.y. For igneous rocks only, of course.
The point of this comment being, that radiometric dating has improved hugely during my lifetime and yours, as would be expected in any branch of science that depends on chemical analyses. For a climatologist to not be aware of those improvements is nothing to be ashamed of. Live and learn!
I also have something to say about natural selection, but not quite ready to post a comment yet.
There are those questions that need answers:
Who, What, Where, When, Why and How?
Science provides answers for What, Where, When and How?
Science will never answer the Who and Why.
Science only uncovers more questions.
The Who and Why is the realm of the theologians.
E.g. See In the beginning was Information by Werner Gitt
“Goddidit” is not science. It’s intellectual laziness.
Hans Erren
So, where the difference lies in between “Goddidit” or “Mandidit” or “Manndidit”?
Seems like the point made by Dr. Tim Ball.
As Darwin puts it in his Theory “Evolution comes through variation”…thus the question arising “what kind of hypothesis or wanabe theory the AGW-ACC consist as”…..maybe as not evolutionary in principle?! (after all) ;
Like, man creates man’s “climate change”!!
Would not that be intellectual laziness?
cheers
Man(n) exists, God does not exist.
God does exist…I have proof! Why else would hops exist? They are not good for anything except flavouring beer….ergo….God must exist, as he created them to flavour our beer. Seems obvious to me!
I see you haven’t read ‘the Sirens of Titan’
A small component on Salo’s spacecraft breaks and strands him here in the Sol System for over 200 millennia. He requests help from Tralfamadore, and his fellow Tralfamadorians respond by manipulating human history so that primitive humans evolve and create a civilization in order to produce the replacement part. Rumfoord’s encounter with the chrono-synclastic infundibulum, the following war with Mars and Constant’s exile to Titan were manipulated via the Tralfamadorians’ control of the UWTB. Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China and the Kremlin are all messages in the Tralfamadorian geometrical language, informing Salo of their progress.
As it turns out, the replacement part is a small metal strip, brought to Salo by Constant and his son Chrono (born of Rumfoord’s ex-wife). A sunspot disrupts Rumfoord’s spiral, sending him and Kazak separately into the vastness of space. An argument between Rumfoord and Salo moments before concerning the contents of Salo’s message, left unresolved because of Rumfoord’s disappearance, leads the distraught Salo to disassemble himself, thereby stranding the humans on Titan. It is revealed that the message was a single point, meaning ‘Greetings’ in Tralfamadorian. Chrono chooses to live among the Titanian birds; after thirty-two years, his mother dies and Constant manages to reassemble Salo. Using the part delivered so many years previously by Chrono, Constant repairs the Tralfamadorian saucer. Salo returns Constant to Earth where he dies of exposure in wintertime Indianapolis while awaiting an overdue city bus and as he passes away, he experiences a pleasant hallucination secretly implanted in his mind by a compassionate Salo.
“So it is with Darwin. The minute you even raise the topic you get hysterical arm waving responses, with no empirical evidence to support their position.”
I read through many of the comments to that previous article and there were a lot of calm, reasoned, dispassionate responses that pointed out some of the many lines of evidence that support evolution. Darwin may have started the ball rolling (pun intended) but there have been many additions and refinements to the original. It is now better described as Evolutionary theory. Evolution was not a new theory proposed by Darwin, many earlier thinkers had speculated on the relatedness of life before The Origin of Species including Erasmus Darwin, Charles’ grandfather. Darwin added the motive force, natural selection. He proposed, with evidence, that the selection of traits could be natural not just artificial as in the agricultural breeding of plants, horses and dogs. Darwin made little attempt to give a mechanism for the beginnings of life (the warm little pond) and made no attempt at all to explain the creation of matter. Nor did he have to explain it all. We do not have to apply Sherlock’s dictum to science and have all of our facts before we begin to theorize. Speculation about the facts we know, leads us forward. We hypothesize new experiments that will further refine our understandings.
Darwin’s Origin has been a very robust theory, sure there have been modifications and additions but considering the time it was written, a half century before genetics became a science, it is surely a work of genius.
“All I got was arm-waving and references, but not one piece of empirical evidence to prove the theory. ”
In that former thread I pointed to a case of speciation that was observed as it happened: Spartina anglica in the 1870’s. That apparently did not count as “empirical evidence”. What would count under your rules?
“Some of the more fanciful, such as birds evolving from dinosaurs illustrate the problem
There is no empirical evidence to support this supposition. ”
In a way you are right in this case. Birds didn’t evolve from dinosaurs. They are dinosaurs, albeit rather specialized ones. And thanks to Jurassic konservatlagerstätten in Liaoning (Northern China) we have very good information on how this specialization occurred, and know that feathers were widespread among dromaeosaurs.
Liaoning is Early Cretaceous, but there are Jurassic konservatlagerstätten, such as in Germany, which also show the evolution of birds from maniraptoran theropod dinosaurs.
The oldest part (Tiaojishan fm) is Late Jurassic.
You’re right. For example, Anchiornis.
Dinosaurs fall into two basic divisions: 1) Saurischia or reptile-hipped–also lizard-hipped; and 2) Ornithischia or bird-hipped. What’s interesting is that today’s birds apparently evolved from the lizard-hipped branch and then developed bird-hips.
(Felix will probably tell me I’m full of it again.)
Jim
No, you’re right on.
There is a newly suggested taxonomy of dinos, grouping theropods with ornithischians instead of sauropods, but it’s almost certainly wrong.
Not just feathers but the similarity of avian and dinosaur lungs, the existence of airsacs etc. clearly indicate the relationship.
Every possible line of evidence shows that birds are dinosaurs. There is no argument against that observation. Noted ornithologist Feduccia had an argument, based upon finger development, but this last gasp has been shot down.
But even he recognized that birds are at least archosaurs very close to dinosaurs.
“Who” created the universe is a false premise. The creation of the universe by “god” is the ancient’s way of explaining something they didn’t understand. The unverse was created by physics. I know science tells us that the universe will expand forever, but what if it does eventually collapse back into a sigularity? You have the material to manufacture the next universe, big bang, start again. Things that seem to work best in nature are those that operate in cycles.
You are just repeating the author’s point – wave of hand denials.
By what authority can you definitely state that “Who created universe is a false premise?” Were you there? Your statement alone is akin to proving a negative.
Scale of 10 for scientific evidence of the two – Evolution = 7, Creationism = 0. So who’s doing the arm waving?
Frog + kiss = Prince
Frog + 300,000,000 years = CAGW
Evolution is a 10, ie an observation, hence a scientific fact.
The level of correctness of the current body of theory explaining that fact might rate as low as a 7. But in that case the theory of universal gravitation must rate only a 5.
You miss Geoff’s point.
Assuming that a God, Whatever or Whoever That might be, created the universe isn’t a scientific question. The God conjecture isn’t a scientific hypothesis, because it can’t make testable predictions capable of being shown false. It’s not subject to the scientific method.
Anyone can believe that his or her God made the universe, but that’s a supernatural faith, not a scientific proposition. Science seeks natural explanations for observations of nature. Science is based upon doubt, not faith.
The only assumption in science is that the same physical laws have applied throughout the history of the universe. If by the scientific method that can be demonstrated not to be the case, then even that “faith” would be overthrown.
Indeed my Baptist religion, the most radical Calvinist denomination, requires that God remain hidden. If His existence could be demonstrated empirically, then where is the value of faith?
As Early Church Father Tertullian wrote, c. AD 203, in De Carne Christi, “Prorsus credibile est, quia ineptum est”. Freely translated, this means, “I believe precisely because it is absurd”.
The founder of Protestantism, Luther, similarly wrote, “In order to be a Christian, one must tear the eyes out of his reason”.
Thus, at least in Protestantism, it’s a grave theological error, as well as antiscientific, to try to mix religion with science. Even the Catholic Scholastics, who sought “proofs” for the existence of God, recognized that He remains hidden. Some scientists have said that they pursue science to know the mind of God, or some similar sentiment, but that’s not what creationists do.
Felix
Maybe I am wrong, but from my point of knowledge the word “believe” is far much more used in modern scriptures of science than it is used in the Holy Bible and Torah put together…
And when it comes to English, the word “faith” does not necessarily mean theological or religious , for some weird reason….
Science isn’t scripture. I never use the word “believe” in scientific writing. Science isn’t about belief. It’s about your hypothesis being confirmed or shown false.
If you’ve counted up the instances of usage of “believe” in a statistically significant number of scientific papers and books, then you’re way ahead of me.
Of course the authors of scripture don’t talk about belief much. They expected readers to believe. But St. Paul talks about faith often. Protestantism is based upon the passage in Romans about justification by faith rather than “works”.
Faith is to act as if you had certainty when you have none
It is sometimes a useful tool.
It is the flip side of the precautionary principle which tend to say when you don’t know, do nothing.
But the world is more full of people who, finding themselves in deep water, struck out and reached a bank than people who, finding themselves in deep water and not knowing whether there was a bank or where it was, simply did nothing for fear of making it worse.
Faith has its uses. Don’t knock it. Just don’t think it has any more truth content than science
Felix: you are a modern day Renaissance man. I have really enjoyed the breadth of your comments.
I think that one who has faith does so because logic doesn’t steer them in the direction they want to go.
Thanks. Misspent youth.
Your thought about the basis of faith might be right for many, if not most believers.
But also IMO it seems that some are inclined to accept the gift of faith, while others aren’t.
Also IMO, it’s better to ascribe to a traditional religion, as long as it doesn’t condone murder, slavery and the subjugation of women, than to a fake substitute like CACA.
Felix
Let me ask you a silly stupid question, in the prospect that it remains as such, as otherwise it could end up to be disturbing.
How real are your own memories to you, Felix?
(the memories of your own life, actually what consist as your own life from your point of address)
My point here is, that maybe you bound to bent them according to your feelings or a temporary view point , if no faith there!
Only a silly question, no need to be upset about it.
cheers
Not sure where faith comes into it. Faith in the reliability or reality of my memories?
I rate the reliability of my memories as I do military intelligence reports, ie A, B or C.
At this late date, some of my memories may be memories of memories.
I think that one who has faith does so because logic doesn’t tell him WHICH way to go, just that staying here is probably not so good.
The probability of abiogenesis has been modeled and found to be utterly improbable over all combinations of the entire universe at the fastest possible rate over all time. Objective experiential evidence for Jesus’ resurrection provides evidence for the alternative.
Your biblical evidence only works if you imagine that the New Testament can be taken at its word, equivalent to observation of the natural world. Most people in the world don’t share your faith.
Such “models” of abiogenesis are far worse than climate models. They make absurd, unphysical assumptions. Again, you’ve been lied to by crooks taking advantage of the credulity of people who haven’t studied biochemistry.
The scientific fact is that the monomers of life’s molecules self-assemble, to include amino acids, constituents of proteins, and nucelobases, sugars and phosphate groups, constituents of nucleic acids. So do lipid vessicle, ie proto-membranes.
All these building blocks of life form spontaneously not only on Earth but in outer space. They arrive here on meteorites.
As I’ve said, the crux of origin of life research now is on how polymerization occurred before biological enzymes. Various fruitful avenues are being pursued.
@Felix: Can you please provide such examples of self-assembly? I googled Lehninger biochemistry textbook, but found very little support for your assertion:
https://books.google.com/books?id=5Ek9J4p3NfkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lehninger+biochemistry+self+assembly&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjX1NWr-IDcAhU8HDQIHaemAh4Q6AEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=self%20assembly&f=false
ha another Calvinist, who knew.
The only assumption in science is that the same physical laws have applied throughout the history of the universe. If by the scientific method that can be demonstrated not to be the case, then even that “faith” would be overthrown.
There’s a lot more assumed than that actually.
The existence of a material world, space, time and causality for a start on which science can be practised and observations made.
The assumption that the observed behaviour of the aforesaid world is governed by natural laws that are immutable – i,.e. do NOT change with time and not by the capricious whims of sentient but incorporeal entities would be another.
The only difference between Ariel and Gravity is that Ariel is sentient, and is mutable, and gravity is immutable and mathematical. Both are otherwise ‘spiritual’ entities…
And we already are coming to understand that these human scale assumptions are at best deeply dodgy, if not downright erroneous.
Cosmology and the big bang presents us with the issue of whether time could be said to have existed ‘before the Big Bang’. The consensus is that no, it didn’t. and therefore causality cant be applied to the Big Bang. Its a singularity that explains where we are now, but has nothing to say about its own existence.
Likewise at the sub nano scale quantum physics is revealing deeply disturbing questions about our assumption that the world exists independently of our perception of it. In the case of Schrödinger’s cat, as far as we can tell the probability wave cannot be said to resolve itself into a dead or a live cat until we open the box. Or find some other way to peer inside. Polarised quantum particles can be detected that violate relativity, in that information appears to be transmitted instantaneously between them as quantum entanglement implies that instantaneous action at a distance is the norm!
These are such serious issue that most particle physicists simply ignore them and carry on as ‘instrumentalists’ It is forcing home the idea that a theory isn’t ‘true’ – it just has to generate the correct answer.
However it seems to me that a simpler way to resolve all these issues is easily apprehensible if we simply dispose of the assumptions on which the above classical view of the world is made.
If we assume that time space and materiality and causality are nothing more or less that pretty abysmal attempts by human beings to account for the world that they seem to find themselves in, and that something else entirely is really going on, then everything takes on a new set of relationships. We don’t need ‘many worlds’ just like this one to explain schrödinger’s cat, just one where we only have limited perception of one solution to a multi solution equation.
It is said that the photoelectric effect was the single thing that led to the destruction of classical physics and the start if quantum theory. I suspect that the big bang and quantum physics will be two things that lead to the destruction of the classical world view of the world as a material entity in space and time, and with its replacement by a far more strange – almost supernatural and godlike entity, that is somewhat malleable to our consciousness.
But that means challenging and discarding – or at least transforming and reducing from ‘immutable and ubiquitous’ – many of the very useful assumptions that make up the world of the classical scientist, and few are ready for that.
Ultimately classical science and religion have both proved inadequate: We need a new view and some new tools.
The real point is that the language that forces us to structure the issue as ‘created the universe’ is inadequate for the task. If the universe is, by definition, everything that there is, there could have been no one or nothing to ‘create’ it.
Once you realise that even framing the question is a moronic extrapolation of ‘language created by one ape to tell another ape where the best banana tree was’ and not express the Totality of the Cosmos, the problem and the stupidity of the question vanish in a puff of sanity.
Stuff is.
The rest is stories we tell to each other and ourselves about it. At a human scale, causality is a concept that has utility. At a cosmic scale its above it’s pay-grade. It has no meaning.
The jury is still out on expansion forever.
The consensus among cosmologists is that the universe will expand forever, but skeptics also have a case.
The jury is out on the entire field of cosmology… It wouldn’t be cosmology otherwise.
What’s up with the odd links? They look like links, but I see no destination URL when I hover on them, and clicking them does nothing.
One of the things I love about evolution through natural selection is that you can “see” it happening within definite time frames. One example I really like is called “industrial melanism” and I first read about it in an article in the Guardian (back when it was called the Manchester Guardian and it had a lot of good science – sigh).
In and around the “dark satanic mills” of northern England, where everything was coated in soot, whole ecosystems of insects and spiders developed that were no different from their country cousins, except that they were all black. Obviously, they hadn’t decided to make themselves black, but equally obviously, any small variation that made an insect darker would slightly enhance its chances of not being eaten by a bird and so passing its genes on to the next generation. And over multiple generations that would lead to whole populations being essentially black. And the time frame is established as starting around 1750 or so.
The black insects of industrial England started to stand out when older buildings (many of which were architectural gems) started being cleaned up and sand-blasted. They’ve probably all mutated back to their “pre-industrial” coloration now.
Another thing I love about natural selection is that you can do thought-experiments with it. One thought experiment I would recommend for doubters is trying to devise answers to “how could evolution by natural selection possibly NOT happen?”
Moth evolution has been disproved. See Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells
No, it hasn’t. Please stop spreading blatant lies.
http://what-when-how.com/insects/industrial-melanism-insects/
In 1896, the prominent lepidopterist Tutt proposed bird predation to explain observed industrial melanism in moths.
In the 1950s, Kettlewell tested this hypothesis, and found it valid. The link above takes up the story:
“Since 1998, the case of the peppered moth has been attacked by antievolution lobbyists, who have emphasized both weaknesses in Kettlewell’s experimental procedures and differences in opinions between scientists who have worked on or commented on the case. The case has thus been at the center of the evolution vs. creation debate, with calls being made, particularly in the United States, for it to be removed from biology text topics. It is notable that the focus of these criticisms is almost invariably the well-known experiments of Kettlewell, whereas later independent experiments in which improved protocols have been used, and which have led to the same basic deductions as Kettlewell’s work, are not cited. The controversy took another turn in 2002, when a journalist, Judith Hooper, published a topic in which she makes thinly veiled accusations of data fudging and scientific fraud aimed at Kettlewell, and a conspiracy of silence aimed at the scientists who have conducted the experimental work on the peppered moth.”
“The controversy over the peppered moth case has engendered new interest in the case, with scientific historians examining the accusations of fraud aimed at Kettlewell. The conclusion of these examinations is that there is not one shred of evidence to support Hooper’s accusations. In addition, a new series of experiments have been undertaken to address the flaws in Kettlewell’s experiments and address other issues raised by the antievolution lobby. In brief, these have shown that (1) the peppered moths do rest by day on the bark of deciduous trees, most commonly on the underside of lateral branches (Fig. 4) but also sometimes on the trunks; (2) that bats feeding on peppered moths at night do not differentiate between the forms of the peppered moth, refuting the suggestion that they, rather than birds, could be the agent of selection; (3) that greater levels of bird predation of carbonaria, compared with typica, in a 6-year period from 2002 to 2007, is entirely sufficient to explain the observed decline in carbonaria frequency in Cambridge, England, over this period. This work fully supports Tutt’s differential bird predation hypothesis.”
Interesting! Worldwide there are likely dozens of similar short time scale natural selection examples related to human activity (aside from intentional selection).
One example that I have observed is that which is related to the common dandelion evolving ultra short flower stems to avoid being decapitated by lawn mowers. This occurs in long-established urban areas that are isolated from the open areas where their long-stemmed cousins flourish. My guess is that it takes less than 50 generations to adapt.
My lawn in the San Francisco Bay area was more than 95% of the short stemmed variety. Newly established neighborhoods bordering the countryside have lawns that are plagued with the long stemmed dandelions.
Under such heavy selective pressure, you bet they’ll shorten up.
Next they’ll evolve resistance to Weed-B-Gone.
Are you referring to the Kettlewood Pepper Moth hoax?
It was not a hoax. Please read the link I provided, with real science, not a pack of shameless creationist lies.
I’m not interested in arguing about evolution which I think is probably an accurate description of how life developed. It’s a religious question whether evolution was directed or not. Arguing about religion is insane. Nobody can provide evidence to prove or disprove religious claims like that.
What seems relevant to me though is to point out that CAGW adherents behave like religious zealots. They have articles of faith that they cannot abide anyone questioning. They twist and torture evidence to make it fit the dogma.
“I’m not interested…..”
===========
For someone who is not interested, you sure show an interest 🙂
What position am I accused of taking? Am I guilty of accepting the likelihood that evolution is an accurate theory, or of accepting that the question of evolution being a directed process can’t be disproven?
I’ll readily plead guilty to both charges.
I’m not trying to be judgmental, just trying to pull the thoughts out of another WUWT commenter.
Sorry for the method.
No harm no foul
As a Christian with 45 years of faith and Bible study invested, here’s my two-penneth.
I don’t subscribe to the traditional view of ‘Creationism’ ie that God made everything in the last 6000 years.
There is something called the Gap Theory – between Gen 1.1 ‘In the beginning God created ..’ and Gen 1.2 when ‘the earth became formless and void’. ‘Formless and void’, Hebrew ‘tohu and bohu’, are only used in the Bible in the case of God’s overwhelming judgemental annihilation of a wicked people. The gap between 1.1 and 1.2 allows for any length of time you can imagine, several billions of years in fact between the geological creation (inc dinosaurs) and the much more recent entrance of man over the last few thousand years (not necessarily 6000). This also suggests the existence of a pre-Adamic race of humanoid beings.
Furthermore, days and years recorded in the old testament are not necessarily the same as our 24 hours and 365 day systems of today. When we try to interpret the Bible ‘literally’ we adopt a form of omniscience, assuming we know exactly what the writer meant, the language and numbering system he used, and the context of the account. The error is to read modern thinking into ancient culture and language.
Regarding the evolutionist, they have more faith than I. I believe God created man and the animals. They believe a chain of events occurred involving elements, gasses, mud, cells, fish, lizards and monkeys and hey presto, man appeared. They can’t prove it, neither can I. But on the balance of probability I’m happy with my decision that an eternal, omnipotent and omniscient Creator spoke it into being.
Neil, I think the other error is in thinking it’s over….evolution is still going on and so is God
you still ok with owning humans like your god promotes ?
If God created evolution….and evolution is on going…then God created a way to evolve past that….and guess what, we did
Ah yes cjw, the Christians are notorious for their desire to restore chattel slavery. It’s what jumps immediately to mind when I think of Mother Teresa for example.
I suppose that your self-image is one of being tolerant of others? But no space in the public square for Christians apparently.
mother Teresa was as evil as they come . no compassion for a dyeing person. suffer for your so called sins.
I have no tolerance for any faith based religion. they hold us back.
cjw—Without tolerance there is nothing left but to start the killing. Is that your ideal? You have no tolerance for the beliefs of billions of people, likely the vast majority? Yet many of them would pray for you.
Fortunately you have no power.
Faith conquers fear, but faith also blinds.
Science doesn’t do “proof”. But we can show that the history of life has followed the path which every bit of evidence showed occurred. We don’t yet know with a high degree of precision when eukaryotes arose, when sex began, when the first true multicells (animals, fungi and plants) appeared, but our knowledge increases all the time, and we do know the general sequence of main events.
There is simply no way to make the two irreconcilably contradictory creation myths in Genesis 1 and 2 agree with each other and observed reality. Any attempt to do so, such as the “God of the Gaps”, is doomed to ignominious failure.
The attempt makes for bad theology and even worse biology.
Men and women evolved together, unlike in Genesis 2, where first there was a man made of clay, then animals, then a woman made from her mate’s rib bone, for but one instance out of many.
Felix,
Where you get wrapped around the axle, it seems to me, is in thinking that religion is primarily an alternative cosmology when in fact it is primarily a question of moral theology.
As a scientific theory of the origins of life, the majority of Christians would most likely concede that the Bible’s stories are not literally accurate, and acknowledge the physical process of evolution. Your appeal to Occam cannot rule out that the mutation events are directed, as you are aware.
I understand that you want to contest the claim that there is no evidence for evolution, which is fine. But extending that to the claim that there is no God is an unnecessary overreach that you can’t support except by taking it on faith.
When did I ever claim that there is no God?
I said that God’s existence isn’t subject to the scientific method, so must therefore be taken on faith.
” .. an eternal, omnipotent and omniscient Creator spoke it into being.”
OK here’s my unprovable/unfalsifiable hypothesis.
An omnipotent being created the universe last Tuesday afternoon, together with utterly convincing evidence of a multi-billion year prior history.
(omnipotent, remember).
Life is but a dream Stefan. But I think we ought to stop wasting time on this irrelevant argument. What is the public policy proposal being made in light of evolution that threatens to devastate the ecomomy and redistrbute wealth and power into the hands of the policymakers? Instead of pointless disputes over traditional religion, can’t we get back to debunking the dangerous new religion of CAGW?
That is pretty much the Creationist position
It is logically unassailable.
It is however not very USEFUL.
Personally I prefer to consider that the universe of my perceptions is an artefact created at the surface of intersection between consciousness and something so weird I can’t even think about it let alone describe it.
This makes it possible for my perception of the world to change as I know it can without it becoming entirely a creation of my imagination, which despite many attempts to emulate Harry Potter, it has always failed to be.
Many theories from the past have been shown to be false.
Example 1: the element phlogiston (the fourth form of matter [that is plasma])
Example 2: spontaneous generation of life
Example 3: winds are the responsibility of various Gods
Example 4: discretionary bleeding eases a fever
Example 5: the Sun will soon go dark, as it will run out of oxygen
I could go on. There are many more facts which are now known not to be true.
Questions about the evolution of life:
1. How did cellular membranes evolve to contain a cell? Would not the primordial soup dissolve two molecules as soon as they had latched?
2. How did the DNA / mRNA cycle develop? One needs mRNA to read DNA; one needs DNA to construct mRNA
3. How did chlorophyll develop? Quantum tunneling may be happening here.
4. Our industrial civilization is founded on thermodynamics, especially the increase of entropy. Life decreases entropy by producing organization. Huh?
5. How do beneficent changes occur in both male and female simultaneously in order for the change to be heritable?
6. Why have none of the induced mutations of the fruit fly proven advantageous?
7. post hoc, ergo propter hoc has long been known to be a fallacy.
8. I would really like to know how the Krebs cycle evolved. Seems like a lot of changes are needed at once for this to work.
9. Most violins look the same. Did they all evolve from one ur-violin? Or was it just a good design?
10. It seems like every trip into a rain forest or into the ocean abyss comes up with new life. How many beetle species are there now? Oops, still counting.
These are just a few “innocent” questions about Evolution of Species by Natural Selection. It certainly selects for the best bull to lead a herd. I grant that. But no species change is involved.
1. No mystery about membranes. Fatty acids naturally form spherical vessicles in lipid bi-layers, due to having water-loving and water-hating ends. Please see the work in the Szostak lab on membranes.
2. RNA came first. It’s able to act as both a library of information and as an enzyme, thanks to its ability to form complex shapes. The sugar in DNA lacks an oxygen molecule, so it forms the more stable double helical structure. This makes it work better as a library. Short chains of RNA nucleotides form spontaneously in aqueous solution. The trick in kick-starting life is to keep them forming longer chains (polymers) without today’s enzymes.
3. The evolution of chlorophyll was detailed 22 years ago.
http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/93/5/1930.full.pdf
4. Life increases entropy in a closed system, not an open one, as should be obvious. Organisms decrease their internal entropy at the expense of free energy obtained from their surroundings.
5. Again, as should be obvious, beneficial changes can arise in either sex and still be passed on. A beneficial mutation might occur at only one locus, but be dominant, hence expressed in the adult. But more than one individual in a population might well enjoy the same mutation. Every human is born with on average four mutations, and we acquire more as we age. If the new, beneficial mutations are in eggs or the cells which produce sperm, they’ll be selected for.
6. Researchers didn’t care whether the mutations were beneficial to fruit flies in the wild, or not. They just wanted them to be obvious and not lethal.
7. Not sure about your logical point. I’ll guess that you mean because we observe changes in living things over time, we conclude that natural selection or some other evolutionary process was the cause. We do so because that’s what the evidence shows. We now have the ability to see the genetic changes underlying observed phenotypic changes.
8. The Krebs cycle appears to have evolved repeatedly, but converged via selection on the similar forms in which it’s now observed. The origins of key reactions in the citric acid cycle are found in the more primitive ancient anaerobic organisms. Two branches of the Krebs cycle, the oxidative and the reductive branches can be linked by the 2-oxoglutarate oxidoreductase system.
This discusses hypotheses to explain the evolution of these pathways:
https://www.news-medical.net/life-sciences/Metabolism-Evolution.aspx
9. Designers of violins converged on a similar form because of acoustics.
10. Why does the discovery of nondescript organisms make you doubt the fact of evolution?
Slam dunk! Knowledge beats ignorance 10-0…
We need to define evolution.
Random iteration constrained by selection criteria towards a more appropriate form to meet the criteria.
The short version is Darwin’s (who didn’t use the term “evolution” in “Origin”): descent with modification.
Various longer versions are preferred by workers in one scientific field or another, but they all know it when they see it.
As a genetics student in the early ’70s, the standard definition was change in allele frequencies in a population over the generations. This view reflects the “modern synthesis” (1920s-30s) of genetics with evolutionary theory.
Paleontologists and geologists generally emphasize phylogeny, the sequence of succession in the fossil record, as new species and higher classifications replace older.
>>
4. Our industrial civilization is founded on thermodynamics, especially the increase of entropy. Life decreases entropy by producing organization. Huh?
<<
First off, the Second Law of Thermodynamics only applies to isolated systems. (Even Stephen Hawking knew this. See page 102 of his: "A Brief History of Time.") Closed systems (and open systems) need not obey the second law. In fact, if a closed system couldn't violate the second law, then nothing would ever cool down or lose heat.
Second, don't confuse information entropy with Thermodynamic entropy. The two are not the same. The second law only applies to Thermodynamic entropy.
(http://entropysite.oxy.edu/shuffled_cards.html)
Jim
Most violins look the same. Did they all evolve from one ur-violin? Or was it just a good design.
They evolved from one Ur-design, into the Cello, the viola, the double bass, the guitar the harp, the banjolele, the Fender stratocaster….
Most design is evolution not revolution.
A while ago I read a report on an early AI attempt to ‘evolve’ a design. It was aeronautics in play, and they started with a cube, and varied each point on it until they got a better lift to drag ratio and more stability. Then they did it again..and again.. Within the constraints of being possible not to collapse at 5G as a real world structure. And they simply let the program run until it couldn’t come up with a better shape.
What came out looked remarkably like a seagull…
I suspect that almost no people who ascribe to intelligent design have ever designed anything in their lies, the amount of sheer guff they talk…
THIS is intelligent desigm…
Dr. Ball,
You write, in reference to your prior post, that, “All I got was arm-waving and references, but not one piece of empirical evidence to prove the theory”. This is not true. Clearly, you didn’t read the comments or check out any of the references. So I guess I have to repeat myself and the replies of others, in hopes that this time you’ll read and respond, rather than ignoring our efforts.
You got reams of empirical evidence. All the evidence in world demonstrates the fact of evolution. There is no evidence against it. In biology, “evolution” means two things, as does “gravity” in physics. One meaning is the observations of evolution all around us, all the time, in nature. The other is the body of theory explaining these observations.
In the comments, instance after instance of speciation and the formation of new genera observed in the wild, as per Tty’s example of a new grass, or made in the lab, were provided. Hundreds of thousands such instances have been observed in the wild, and numerous created in the lab.
There are around 300,000 known species of seed plants. An estimated 30 to 80% of them arose in a single generation due to polyploidy, ie the multiplication of all or part of the genome. The most common is complete duplication. Sometimes the daughter species are capable of limited reproduction with the parent species, but they are still valid species. The most recent estimates are the highest, but even if only half of seed plants arose via polyploidy, that’s around 150,000 instances.
You might consider the observation of evolution of new species by polyploidy to be an inference rather than an observation. But in that case, you need to explain how these species came to be, which have the same genome as their most closely related species, only double.
Other instances of rapid speciation have been observed in the wild and created in the lab via hybridization. In the case of South American butterfly species (and maybe others about which I don’t know) the same hybrid species have been made in the lab as occurred naturally in the wild, due to successful mating between different species.
It takes more time to make new species in the lab via artificial selection, or recreating natural selection, but it has been done repeatedly, using species with short generation times, such as insects and microbes. The fact of MRSA alone should tip you off to the reality of natural selection.
The point of your discussion about the number of species is obscure. Their number tends to increase with time, but of course this tendency has been interrupted by mass extinction events. Not knowing how many species exist with any precision says nothing about the fact of evolution.
A dictionary definition of the word “species” doesn’t cut it in biology. There isn’t a hard and fast scientific definition of “species”, for the good and simple reason that not all groups of organisms can easily be arranged into this classificatory category. It’s especially difficult with microbes. The basic concept for sexually-reproducing organisms is a group capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. But even that doesn’t draw a bright line, since some related species are able to produce fertile offspring, but for one reason or another don’t. They may have behavioral differences, or be geographically isolated. If they’re reproductively isolated long enough, they will accumulate differences and become indubitably separate species.
But even with microbes, it’s often possible to determine when one species has evolved into a new one, by whatever definition. Sugar-eating bacteria evolve into nylon-eating bacteria in a single generation, thanks to a simple point mutation. Cosmic rays must have made this mutation countless times before nylon entered the bacterial environment, but it was always lethal until humans provided this new food source.
I guess you might consider the new bacterium species just a variety, but it’s functionally genetically distinct from its parental species, and obviously in metabolism. Same applies when sap-sucking insects evolve into blood-suckers.
I’ll respond to other aspects of your post when I have time. I hope that this time you’ll have the courtesy to reply directly, rather than engaging in vague, hand-waving denials.
Felix @July 1, 2018 2:31 pm
Excellent post.
“… I hope that this time you’ll have the courtesy to reply directly…”
Science makes predictions. I predict that he won’t. My guess probability that he does < .01.
I concur in your estimation, but I hope for my prediction to be shown false.
Felix,
None of your “references” show what you apparently think they show. Your confident assertions do not make your assertions true! But your confidence is a great example of why it’s called a “con game!”
Hybrids are not new species.
I carefully checked all of the “references” you provided last time Tim brought up this issue.
None of your links provide any evidence of new species.
Your favorite link, a 1995 blog post “Observed Speciation” is especially ludicrous. He blusters and bloviates, provides multiple lists of experiments that altered traits, and hybridized species, and finally can’t even convince himself that he even knows what a species is.
Again, evidence for a species “evolving” into another species, please.
No hand-waving allowed!
Hybrids and polyploids are most certainly new species.
Had you ever studied biology you’d know that if a sexually reproducing daughter species can’t produce fertile offspring with its parent species, then its a new species.
Deny reality all you want, but you should know that you’ve been lied to by professional liars.
Evolution is a result of reproduction.
No hand-waving allowed!
Then dont eh?
He blusters and bloviates, provides multiple lists of experiments that altered traits, and hybridized species, and finally can’t even convince himself that he even knows what a species is.
Hand waving
Leo,
Did you read Felix’s “Observed Speciation” link?
Try it. Read it carefully and critically.
The author blusters and bloviates.
That’s not hand-waving. That’s describing the author’s dilemma.
You obviously have no clue what constitutes a new species or genera.
Every year more speciation events are observed or created. Since 1995, they’ve been legion, including those made by me.
You’re blinded to objective reality by your false faith.
Felix,
Do tell…if you’ve created “legions of new species,” why in heaven’s name is your proof of new species a link from 1995?
Please share–entirely new species–as required by the theory–slime mold to man–with intermediary species in between. Please share just one of your legion of new species, you big miracle-worker, you!
“You’re blinded to objective reality by your false faith.” And can you stop with your ad hominems? You’re quite tiresome and juvenile.
You’re sort of making yourself foolish by constantly asserting that I’m an easily fooled rube.
Just let me know, and I’ll share some of my case studies of frauds I’ve exposed. Say the word, big talker!
Thanks.
I haven’t made legions myself. One genus and some species, the number of which depends upon your definition of species.
The 1995 link was but one list of many instances of new species both observed and made in labs. Not that there’s anything wrong with examples from before that time.
We are watching many in the process of evolving right now, around the world in the wild. A new lizard species, for instance, is evolving on an Adriatic island, which has evolved new organs no present in its ancestral species.
As I keep pointing out, for instance, and you keep ignoring, it’s common among plants for new species to arise in a single generation via polyploidy. Among ferns, it’s practically all of them. These are often new species in the strictest possible sense, ie unable to produce fertile offspring with their closest relatives.
Hybridization also makes new species and genera in one generation among both plants and animals. In the case of hybrid South American butterflies, the process has even been reproduced in the lab:
https://phys.org/news/2006-06-hybrid-butterfly-scientists.html
A single passing cosmic ray can and does make new microbial species.
Transitions to new families, orders, classes, phyla, kingdoms and domains is typically more gradual.
Many major transitions in the history of life are well-documented, such as prokaryotes to eukaryotes; from unicells to multicellular kingdoms, as in plants, fungi and animals; from simpler animals to more complex; from radial to bilateral symmetry; from protostomes to deuterostomes, from invertebrate to vertebrate; from jawless to jawed fish; from cartilaginous to bony fish; from lobe-finned fish to tetrapod; from amphibian to amniote; from synapsid to mammal; from egg-laying to placental mammal; from insectivore to primate; from prosimian to simian; from simian to ape to African great ape to human.
Sorry, but evolution is a fact. Deal with it.
So, if you’ve created new species, why are you not providing a link to evidence of your creations? Again, do tell…would love to see your handiwork!
Read the 23 year old link you provided numerous times–it’s ludicrous. No new species, just variations and hybrids. And the guy is confused as to what a species is. No evidence of a new species anywhere. And it ends with…”I’ll update this as new evidence appears…” But it was never updated! I don’t think your link says what you think it says.
“Many major transitions in the history of life are well-documented, such as prokaryotes to eukaryotes; from unicells to multicellular kingdoms, as in plants, fungi and animals; from simpler animals to more complex; from radial to bilateral symmetry; from protostomes to deuterostomes, from invertebrate to vertebrate; from jawless to jawed fish; from cartilaginous to bony fish; from lobe-finned fish to tetrapod; from amphibian to amniote; from synapsid to mammal; from egg-laying to placental mammal; from insectivore to primate; from prosimian to simian; from simian to ape to African great ape to human.”
Documented?
What do you think “documented” means?
There are fossils and evidence of the various species–but there is NO “documentation” of one species changing to become another.
Every one of your “major transitions” is a Just-so story, created by “scientists” to explain the evidence. Conjecture and hand-waving, vivid imaginings and
I guess you could call the reams and reams of written verbiage of the Just-so stories “documented.” But I don’t think that’s what you’re using “documented” to mean.
Scientists put the fossil Iguanadon’s thumb on its nose, and told a Just-so story about it–hey, it’s Science! Believe it!
http://from-bedroom-to-study.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-dastardly-doings-of.html
They “documented” their science. Is that what you mean by “well-documented?”
Blizzards of words do not make things true.
Evidence please. A species “evolving” into another species.
Thanks.
Kent, your request for evidence has been granted. You’ve been recommended to read “The Greatest Show on Earth” before. It has thorough, comprehensive evidence. If you don’t want to read it, fine. But stop asking for evidence if you are going to refuse it when it is offered. Don’t you see how illogical that behavior is?
There’s not a single mention of ring species. I would think they alone are indicative of how variation can lead to new species.
Jim
Dr. Ball,
Now to address some other aspects of your verbiage. Others have already commented on many of your grievous errors, so I’ll just touch on those.
You say you’re not arguing for creationism. Please then state whence you imagine new species to come, if they neither evolve nor have been created somehow. Thanks!
1) Your statement of what constitutes empirical evidence is sorely wanting. “Empirical” means “based upon experience”, hence includes not just formal experiments but observations of nature. Experiments are tests of predictions made on the basis of an hypothesis. Experiments testing the predictions made on the basis of evolution are confirmed. Upon creationism, never.
Numerous lab experiments have demonstrated evolution both via selection and stochastic processes. But much more frequently, evolution has been observed in the wild. As noted, probably most plant species arose in a single generation via polyploidy. Other plants, fungi and animals have also evolved in “overnight” via hybridization.
But gradual evolution has also been observed. Did it not happen, then MRSA wouldn’t have evolved. Resistant pathogen strains is what convinced the devout Catholic Pasteur that Darwin was right about natural selection.
So evolution has most certainly been repeatedly found valid empirically. It is better understood than gravitation.
2) Most if not all scientific disciplines show instances of fraud and hoax.
At the time of the Piltdown Man hoax, two models of human evolution competed, but there was as yet insufficient fossil evidence to decide between them. Piltdown Man appealed to those who thought that our bigger brains evolved first, followed by upright walking. Darwin’s colleague Wallace had argued (correctly, as evidence would show) way back in the 1860s that bipedalism came first.
So, yes, those who favored the brains first hypothesis were easy suckers. That hardly means that evolution isn’t a fact.
3) I’ve already commented on species. The Linnaean system has been superceded by cladistic taxonomy, based upon phylogenetic relationships among natural groups, but it still has its uses. Again, a dictionary definition isn’t a scientific definition, “Species” are hard to define in many cases, such as ring species, where those subspecies closest to each other can interbreed and produce fertile offspring, but those at the two ends (geographically or genetically) can’t.
4) That birds are dinosaurs is shown by every single line of evidence. All of them. You name it. Paleontology. Comparative anatomy. Physiology. Biochemistry. Embryology. Developing bird embryos grow “hen’s teeth”, then resorb them. Same with the long tails, which fuse into the “parson’s nose”, ie pygostle. The three fingers, with claws, of avian ancestral dinos still exist in some birds, in young or adults, rather than two being fused. The “thumb” is still free to act as a leading edge slat, the alula, ie “little wing”.
Conversely, “early bird” relative Archaeopteryx had the second sickle toe characteristic of maniraptoran dinos, ie “raptors”, as did other members of the group Avialae, which includes modern birds and their nearest dino relatives.
Nor are birds the only dinosaurs with feathers. Most, if not all, coelurosaurs had feathers. Plus other theropods and even ornithischians. Maybe even pterosaurs, should their “picnofiber” integument be shown related to feathers. The beta keratin of feathers is the same as in crocodilian scales. Theropod and sauropod dinosaurs had air sacs, so breathed like birds. The list of shared, derived traits is long and overwhelming conclusive to anyone with an open mind.
Cladogram showing shared, derived traits en route to modern birds from their closest dino ancestors:
5) Your view of evolution is cartoonish. Humans did not evolve from gorillas. Both genera are African great apes and share most genes and such proteins as blood groups. But humans split off from our common ancestor with chimps several million years ago. The common ancestors of chimps and humans, on the one hand, diverged from the ancestor of gorillas around ten million years ago.
6) Your geology is hopelessly out of date. As Smart Rock has shown, radiometric dating has progressed greatly since you were in college. Also, as I mentioned in your prior post, geologists have known for decades that there have been dozens of glaciations in the Pleistocene, not just four.
All the empirical evidence in the world demonstrates the fact of evolution, ie descent with modification, common descent, production of new species, genera, etc, via natural selection and stochastic processes. The body of theory explaining these observations is more robust than the theory of gravitation and other comparable scientific theories. There is no evidence against the fact of evolution.
So to compare evolution with “climate science” is ludicrous, preposterous, outrageous and only confirms the alarmist slur against skeptics that we are “anti-science”.
Zeroing in one birds among the maniraptorans:
I’m glad I scrolled down this far well worth the read Felix. I took Evolutionary Biology in university and have only loosely kept up with it in the past decades. Thank you for the refresher. Can you point us towards a website or two or some additional references?
Gosh, the Web abounds with good sites on recent advances in evolutionary biology. There are lots of good lectures on YouTube, for instance. The most popular evolution blog used to be Pharyngula, but its host, PZ Myers now seems more interested in promoting atheism than science.
The PBS Eon series, while sometimes erroneous, has interesting topics related to evolution.
Or you can just search the Net for topics of interest to you, from scholarly papers to popularizing videos.
“PZ Myers now seems more interested in promoting atheism than science.”
He’s been that way for a long time. And don’t show a hint of CAGW skepticism there. You’ll be called all sorts of nasty names.
True. But about a dozen years ago, at least he mixed in some new findings with his preaching.
The post starts out by defining empirical evidence as that relating to or based on experiment. That is only a partial definition. Empirical means relying on or derived from observation or experiment. I don’t intend to read any further, since the premise of the post is erroneous ab origine.
Jub. Tim starts from a total misunderstanding of science and terms like ’empirical’ and uses false assumptions to produce a case that is nothing to do with the reality of the science.
He may be a climate skeptic, but if he is is for all the wrong reasons…
In the late 19th century, as I’ve read, it was not uncommon for scientists to think that “we” were close to explaining everything in the universe.
Then there was Michelson-Morley.
Now it’s mysteries all the way down.
I love it, and I’m so happy to have lived in this age of inquiry.
Which is now under siege from the neo-Lysenkoist climate cabal.
“Who or what created the material for the bang and who triggered it.”
Ah yes, perhaps we need the wisdom of Lazarus Long. There is so much to choose from. How about this?
Robert A. Heinlein
I always prefer the story of the the man who searched the universe looking for the Creator, and then finally cornered him jn a dingy bar on an obscure planet..
“Why were we all created to suffer and to die!??” he demanded.
There was a pause whilst the Creator finished his drink and put down the glass.
Then he looked him in the eye and said: “Why not?”
“I don’t mind being descended from a gorilla.”
Very sorry to see you say that, Dr. Ball —because it’s one of the most common objections to Darwinian theory, and it just ain’t so.
Darwin posited that hominids, including chimps, gorillas, orangutans and humans, evolved from an ancient common ancestor.
https://www.quora.com/Did-Darwin-ever-argue-that-humans-descended-from-monkeys-or-apes-Is-this-historically-accurate-Where-does-the-allegation-that-the-theory-of-evolution-says-humans-descended-from-monkeys-come-from-Is-it-completely-a-misconception-or-slander
“Humans and apes are closely-related, and doesn’t mean that we descended from apes. We both share a common RECENT ANCESTOR, with its evolutionary lineage at the point of divergence split into two main paths, namely humans, and apes. Our two species have thus diverged over the course of millions of years ever since, resulting in what you now observe as the modern man, and the various species of great apes.”
If you’re still carrying around that kind of misinformation after all these years, it’s no wonder you’re so skeptical.
It could be postulated (but impossible to prove) that when exposed to an external energy impact e.g. a powerful gamma radiation burst from our or a nearby galaxy, some creatures’ would have had their DNA ‘fatally’ affected by destroying reproductive ability and soon after became extinct an mass.
Certain other creatures being more resistant or shielded by their natural habitat may have parts of the DNA only partially damaged, with damaged helix strands naturally fusing together, producing a somewhat different or even substantially more complex DNA strand, which is subsequently transferred to the immediate offspring now appearing as a new species of similar or even more advanced kind.
This could explain large diversity e.g. of ‘singing birds’ species (of the same complexity) due to the ‘minor’ natural DNA reconstruction or for that matter sudden jump from primates to the humanoids due to a major natural DNA reconstruction process.
Thus the ‘evolution’ is not a slow transition, but a sudden qualitative step sideways or upwards (no, not ‘quantum leap’ that widely misused term).
When I see a book, the one thing I know is that it has an author. When I see programming code, I think the same thing. DNA is essentially code, though I’ve never seen an evolutionist explain how such order came into being – for this reason, they wisely stopped claiming the evolution explains how life began, but the view skips life’s first moments and rather tries to explain how species arose through differentiation. The view necessarily accepts that humans became more ordered and sophisticated through mutations that they can now devise theories such as ECON. That means we are gaining order, though death/disorder is our physical end.
Evolution is about changes in the genetic code over time, not about how it came to be in the first place.
Other scientific disciplines seek to explain how the genetic code came to be.
One thing I know, is that when see a creationist, I will find someone creating a God in the image of themselves.
As a design engineer, I cannot ultimately believe in creationism. If I created a God in the image of myself he would have done a WAY better job, with far less arrogance and unnecessary suffering.
Assuming he actually loved mankind. Frankly I would say that if God created Man in his own image, then he is a evil, twisted, malicious, jealous, narcissistic SOB.
The general idea is that you don;t try to prove a theory only falsify it – as in the dubious Einstein quote about no amount of evidence can prove a theory correct.
When people demand empirical evidence to “prove” a theory I suspect they don’t want to accept it and will reject any evidence on the grounds that it doesn’t prove the theory.
I’ve seen this a lot with creationists – there’s a huge amount of evidence supporting the theory of evolution, but this can always be rejected as not being definitive proof. All you can really do is show that the evidence supports evolution and doesn’t agree with any other known theory. Unfortunately as the other theory is “God did it” that is an unfalsifiable theory as any evidence to support evolution can be dismissed as a fraud on the part of God.
Chimp DNA is a very close match to modern human DNA. Also, the hypothesis that birds came from dinosaurs came from observing the similarities such as pelvis structure, egg laying and beaks. There is compelling fossil evidence for the links between humans and apes as there is between birds and reptiles. Using the variety of methods for determining the age of things has shown the immense age of the earth and allowed us to make sense of the fossil record by organizing this evidence into chronological order, thereby indicating evolution. Whether change happens slowly or not at all it depends on what is going on. I think that life as a whole finds ways of perpetuating itself, which also includes changing if required, and this can be slow or fast or not at all. The Coelacanth hasn’t changed since it first showed up in the fossil record maybe because it didn’t need to. The Polar Bear hasn’t changed because it’s just turned up and evolved from the Brown Bear. Based on fossil evidence the Polar Bear first turned up about the time of the last inter-glacial. Anyway, this does assume there are no other bones out there that are older!
Either way, the poster child for AGW is actually the poster child for Evolution. It’s a funny old world.
Modern coelacanths are quite different from their Mesozoic ancestors:
https://ecologicablog.wordpress.com/2013/08/24/coelacanths-are-not-living-fossils/
welp… this is why we can’t have nice things.
it doesn’t dry up like a raisin in the sun.
the stupid suppurates and runs.
Dr. Ball writes: “All I got was arm-waving and references, but not one piece of empirical evidence to prove the theory. This is the same response you get when you ask for empirical evidence to prove the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW).”
When you live on a planet with chaotic unforced (or internal) variations in climate, it is impossible to obtain absolutely conclusive OBSERVATIONS supporting the theory of anthropogenic global warming. With a massive reservoir of very cold water at the bottom of oceans and chaotic currents bringing that water to the much warmer surface, the temperature of our planet can and does change without any apparent “cause”. El Ninos are partially due to a slowdown of upwelling of cold water off of South America. When GMST can rise and fall up several tenths of a degC within one year, observational evidence can never “prove” or “disprove” AGW. So let’s STOP PRETENDING we can ever “prove” or “disprove” AGW using a problematic temperature record several decades long and a century or so of more dubious data.
The IPCC acknowledged this problem in the FAR, but has since relied upon AOGCMs to simulate unforced variability. Since AOGCM’s are parameterized, such models can’t provide scientifically rigorous evidence “proving” the theory of AGW.
However, AGW theory is merely a consequence of two well-accepted theories: the law of conservation energy and quantum mechanics. We don’t need to waste time proving that they apply to our planet. Quantum mechanics and the IR spectrum of CO2 predict that rising CO2 is going to slow down the rate at which our planet radiatively cools to space. The law of conservation of energy demands that such a reduction must cause our planet to warm. It will warm until our planet again emits as much energy as LWR as it receives as SWR.
Dr. Ball has a PhD and has been involved with climate change for decades. He understands perfectly well why quantum mechanics and conservation of energy predict that rising CO2 will cause some warming (and that the crucial issue is how much). And he understands the chaotic nature of our climate and one shouldn’t look to observations for “proof”.
For example, many accept that neither energy nor mass is not conserved and that the interconversion of energy and mass is given by E = mc^2. Emulating Dr. Ball, I could ask: “Where is the observational evidence that support the theory that E = mc^2 ????” I refuse to believe it without observational proof!
We know that the sun is currently powered by converting H to He, and we know how much power it puts out every second. Unfortunately, there is no way to measure how fast H is being converted into He and how much mass is being lost. Have we exploded an atomic bomb and measured how much U235 ends up as other nuclei that weigh less? No. Calculating how much energy should be released by using various techniques to compress a critical mass and hold it together long enough to fission is an incredibly challenging calculation (assigned to Feynman’s team at Los Alamos). Those calculations depend on quantum mechanics and laboratory measurement of the cross-section for U235 to absorb a neuron – just like the radiative forcing of CO2 depends on laboratory measurements of the cross-section of a photon by CO2. We don’t prove the existence basic phenomena like E=mc2 and the conservation of energy and the interaction of IR and CO2 by studying very complex phenomena like our climate or an atomic bomb. The behavior of complex systems is derived from the study of simpler systems.
Have we exploded an atomic bomb and measured how much U235 ends up as other nuclei that weigh less?
No, but we can measure the weights of isotopes of atomic fission or decay. And we can measure the rough energy released by an atom bomb, and the concentration of the fallout to determine how much U235 or Pu238 DID fission, compute its weight loss and…compare.
And people have done that and not challenged Einstein.
“Quantum mechanics and the IR spectrum of CO2 predict that rising CO2 is going to slow down the rate at which our planet radiatively cools to space. ”
It must depend of how much CO2 has been added. AGW proponents will show a graph of the increase of atmospheric CO2 in relation to itself, showing an increase of 30%. In relation to and as a proportion of the atmosphere the increase in CO2 has been 0.01%.
More to the point, it’s also a small increase in total of so-called GHGs, of which H2O remains far and away the most important. Its absorption bands also largely overlap with those of CO2.
Water vapor and CO2 are the main molecules that influence radiative cooling to space. Nitrogen, oxygen and argon (99+%) don’t absorb or emit an appreciable amount of thermal IR, so the small % of GHGs in the atmosphere are is irrelevant. One only needs to ingest a few ug of Vitamin B12 every day, but that smallness of that quantity or percentage is irrelevant. A very thin layer of PABA (far fewer molecules than CO2 that OLR passes on the way to space) can prevent sunburn. Quantity is part of the story, but potency is equally important.
Water vapor is clearly the more important GHG near the surface, but CO2 absorbs mostly different wavelengths. Higher in the atmosphere, cold has precipitated most of the water vapor, leaving CO2 as the most important GHG. (Near the tropopause and in the stratosphere, there is about 5 ppm of water vapor and still 400 ppm of CO2.
The current increase in CO2 is 42% (400/280 – 1), which is half of a doubling of CO2. 1.42^2 = 2.0. The effect of CO2 depends on the log of the change in concentration: 1, 2, 4, 8 represents three doubling. Log2 of 1, 2, 4, 8 is 1, 2, 3, 4. 400 is halfway on a log scale from 280 ppm to 560 ppm.
When you live on a planet with chaotic unforced (or internal) variations in climate, it is impossible to obtain absolutely conclusive OBSERVATIONS supporting the theory of anthropogenic global warming.
Actually it is impossible to obtain absolutely conclusive OBSERVATIONS supporting the theory of ANYTHING. In ANY situation, and it is erroneous to believe that you can.
All we have is the possibility first and after a few decades the incontrovertible facts of observations that more or less completely REFUTE the theory of (catastrophic) anthropogenic global warming.
That is, climate change has moved more or less completely INDEPENDENTLY of the variations in CO2. One doesn’t need to deny that climate changes, nor yet to deny that CO2 has some effect, to sit there, point at the data and say ‘whatever effect CO2 may have on a changing climate its COMPLETELY SWAMPED by something else that is absolutely NOT CO2.
That is enough to refute CAGW, even if it leaves AGW as a bit part player.
Thanks for the correction, Leo. We never prove that a theory is correct by experimentation, we simply fail to invalidate that theory when observation are consistent with the theory.
In the case of climate, we can postulate an ECS (or range of ECSs) and combine it with the observed ocean heat uptake from ARGO to obtain a postulated TCR. Then we can convert current forcing (or range of forcing) to a predicted amount of warming. (Or, one can take observed warming and ocean heat uptake and determine and ECS. This is what energy balance models do, and ECS usually comes out between 1.5 and 2.0 K/doubling.) However, in both cases, we assume that all temperature change is forced temperature change, an assumption we know isn’t true. Unless we have some way to quantify unforced variability in climate, then we have no way to invalidate a hypothesis that ECS is (for example) between 2.5 and 3.5 K/doubling. The IPCC gets around this problem by considering the unforced variability produced by models.
you can’t. everybody else who does it can.
your problem. but go ahead and project your failure.
it’s what you do. project failure. you raise kids this way?
“Actually it is impossible to obtain absolutely conclusive OBSERVATIONS supporting the theory of ANYTHING.”
can you prove that or is this a divine revelation?
nope- it’s a self contradiction = it is a lie.
you are a liar. lie some more. it’s what liars do.
Which toe did I step on?
The only true statement is that there are, apart from this one, no other true statements about induction.
Let me give you an example.
1. The world was created 6000 years ago by a god who decided to test the faith of Man, by designing it in such a way that it was *impossible* to distinguish from a world created by a big bang N billion years ago, with one exception. He gave Man a Book that told him the only Truth there is, the Truth of God.
2. The world was created by a big bang N billion years ago. The Book is a load of cobblers.
3. We live in a computer simulation created by pan dimensional white mice, who have created it as a laboratory experiment to see how stupid we all are.
All of these narratives explain the world we live in, EXACTLY. Which one is ‘true’?
The ONLY truth there is is DEDUCTIVE, i.e. conditional
IF A THEN B.
Deduction is how we test Induction.
IF we are living in a computer simulation THEN IF we can find a way of disconnecting ourselves the world would disappear.
But since we cant, we can’t test the Inductive theory
All ‘facts’ can be explained by any amount of theories. Some of these will meet Popper’s criterion of falsification, and be shown to be false, some will
meet Popper’s criterion of falsification, but fail to be found false.
So out of 1000 wackdoodle theories, we have 100 that haven’t been shown to be false.
Doesn’t make any of them true.
“The only true statement is that there are, apart from this one, no other true statements about induction.”
everything you say is a lie except that.
can you be any more puerile with the sofistry?
“…there are, apart from this one, no other true statements about induction.”
Which statement is the true statement about induction again?
Careful. If we disprove evolution all those crims convicted on DNA evidence might have to be set free.
I’ve been told by many, that if you believe that God guided evolution, rather than everything being nothing more than blind chance, this is the logical equivalent to believing that God created everything some 5000 years ago.
I guess once you have convinced yourself that God cannot exist (as much of a statement of faith as is the claim that he does exist) then anything that invokes God is all nonsense and there is no need to differentiate between levels of nonsense.
Another infantile claim is that since God doesn’t measure up someone or others standards, that they have proven that God doesn’t exist. One can’t judge whether a plan is good or not without knowing the entire plan. If God is infinite, with the power to speak the universe into being, isn’t it possible that any plan he comes up with is larger than human minds can comprehend?
Mark,
Of course you can inject God into the history of life on Earth at any point, which is what I told my fundamentalist students when I taught genetics at a traditionally Baptist college.
It’s just that there is no need for supernatural “explanations” at any point in that history. Natural processes can explain all observations made to date. Assuming divine intervention isn’t warranted in the evolution of any trait yet observed.
Evolution explains observations of the natural world. Positing that “God did it!” explains nothing. Biology obviously doesn’t “prove” that God doesn’t exist. It’s just that it works fine without resorting to Him.
As the devout Orthodox geneticist Dobzhansky observed, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution”.
Mark wrote: “Evolution explains observations of the natural world. Positing that “God did it!” explains nothing. Biology obviously doesn’t “prove” that God doesn’t exist. It’s just that it works fine without resorting to Him.”
I disagree. “God did it” can explain anything we see. However, that is a hypothesis that can’t be tested (and developed into an established theory), because no experiment can disprove the existence of an omnipotent God. So, we have moved away from the domain of science as a way of learning what is true into other ways of learning; religion or “revealed truth”, postulate, or philosophy. So, “God did it” isn’t a scientific hypothesis. Science can’t answer lots of questions, but the answers it has provided seem very reliable.
One may ask why an omnipotent God would create man to look like a species that could have evolved from an common ancestor of all primates. However, theologians have given up asking some questions about the motivations of an omnipotent God: For example, why does evil exist in a world made by God is considered to be an unanswerable question for humans.
The Bible says that God created evil.
But you’re right that God or a Designer who made the world to appear as if it were 13.7 billion years old and that humans are apes would be a deceptive deity. Also cruel and incompetent.
But the Bible doesn’t try to answer the question of why God created evil. If I understand correctly – and I may not – it says some things are beyond the understanding of man and are the exclusive province of God.
The study of that question is known as ‘theodicy.’ Modern approaches assume that God is not fully present in this dimension set, possibly for reasons having to do with maintaining our free will.
“I disagree. “God did it” can explain anything we see. However, that is a hypothesis that can’t be tested…”
In other words, it’s a cop out.
It if “explains” everything, it explains nothing.
Evolution explains observations. Genesis is made up stories, prescientific “explanations” for such natural phenomena as the rainbow.
Jeff says: “In other words, it’s a cop out.”
It is a cop out if you think the scientific method is the ONLY way of learning anything about the world. The scientific method may be the best way to gain reliable information about the world, but you must be aware that mathematicians start with a set of axioms and follow with logical deductions. They may devise a hypothesis or conjecture, but they don’t believe that testing conjectures experimentally proves anything. They don’t use the scientific method. Can how many lines can be drawn through a point not on an adjacent line and never intersect the line? That question is the subject of axioms, not experimental testing! Philosophy and religion are systems for learning that are further divorced from science. I don’t think mathematics, philosophy, religion, or simple authority always deserve to be called “cop outs”, but they are certainly have nothing to do with the scientific method. Science may be providing you (and me) personally with the more convincing explanations for the origin of man and whether the Earth is at the center of everything, but I don’t feel a need to insult those who rely on other systems. It is far better to point out the many great things the scientific method has produced and convert others to paying more attention to science. Take AIDs. The scientific method has produced treatments that keep victims alive indefinitely and information useful for preventing its spread.
you are so nuts.
that’s all you have left when you abandon reason.
why do you preach these lies? are you so desperate to recruit more idiots? how foul.
Please state to whom your comment is addressed.
Thanks!
Felix. you have a sapiens badge. So you know that ‘the scientific method’ is simply REASON, which is the application of LOGIC to make DEDUCTIONS.
You know that this is the only way to know anything.
Are we good?
https://principlesofscience.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/principles-of-science-and-ethical-guidelines-for-scientific-conduct-discuss-it-here/
Well if REASON, is the application of LOGIC to make DEDUCTIONS. then we don’t know ANYTHING for SURE because ALL knowledge of any real use is INDUCTIVE.
We TEST it with DEDUCTION, but that doesn’t tell us if its TRUE, only if it’s FALSE.
There are a BILLION possible explanations for EVERYTHING, of which maybe half can be shown to be FALSE.
That doesn’t make any one of what is left over TRUE however.
Since you don’t know anything for sure, wtf are you babbling?
and stop waving your wee ‘we’.
frikn amateur hour for the mystics here today… sheesh.
Well if REASON, is the application of LOGIC to make DEDUCTIONS. then we don’t know ANYTHING for SURE because ALL knowledge of any real use is INDUCTIVE.
Then WHY are you COMMENTING on THAT which you CANNOT say for SURE?
DON’T you…after ALL…CONTRADICT…yourself?
man’s primary distinction and means of survival is his reason.
a creature which struggles to contradict it’s identity and survival is a monstrosity.
leo is declaring war on humanity’s greatest virtue.
he’s a self harmer but he’s not content to harm himself alone. he wants to mangle others. we know this because that’s what he is employing his time and best effort to do.
he’s a self harmer…
Bah…he’s not a self-harmer…see this is what gets me.
I guarantee you this, when Leo wakes up in the morning he lives his life just exactly like the rest of us do, despite the nonsensical belief system he claims to espouse.
For example:
1) He does NOT walk out into TRAFFIC before LOOKING both WAYS because he KNOWS it’s objectively TRUE that he might be KILLED if he DOESN’T.
And this despite the fact that his belief system tells him that he can’t know any such thing before he tests the theory to see if it’s false if he does.
The Practicality of Popper is as much Peculiarly Pathetic as it is Patently Preposterous!
The scientific method is not simply “reason”.
The whole history of the philosophy of science has been away from “pure reason” (a critique thereof) toward experience, ie empiricism. Cue Francis Bacon.
Aristotle concluded on the basis of “reason” that the moon and higher spheres were perfect, in his “theory of gravity”.
Galileo showed by experiment that this “reasoning” was wrong.
The scientific method requires making hypotheses based upon observations, then making predictions upon the hypotheses, capable of being tested and found false.
The scientific method is not simply “reason”.
What the __________ does the scientific method have to do with whether or not one is going to be killed if one doesn’t look both ways before crossing the street?
I know it without testing the theory, because I’m not a moron; the same as I, my dog, my cat, my horse, my [name your dumb animal] know(s) by instinct that jumping off that 50 story cliff onto the rocks below is likely to kill me, hence I’d better not do it.
Are you unaware that gnomish is critiquing a particularly impractical and useless system of truth or do you really believe he’s critiquing the scientific method?
I wasn’t responding to Gnomish, but to Leo.
My bad for not addressing him in my comment. Present formatting requires that.
I hadn’t read Gnomish’s comment, because he hadn’t yet made it when I started writing my comment at 6:16 Pacific Time, but was interrupted by dinner, then returned to finish the comment.
I wasn’t responding to Gnomish, but to Leo.
Oops…sorry for the harshness there guy.
🙂
No worries.
Had I seen Gnomish’s comment, I’d have addressed mine to Leo.
It wasn’t just dinner. It was Taco Tuesday at my high school classmate’s restobar, so lasted longer than dinner would normally have.
Normally, my cousins don’t come by until 6:20 to go to TT, but they were early, so I had to drop my comment in midstream. My wife is South American, but loves tacos.
In her country, they don’t know from tacos. They call triangular tortilla chips “nachos”, because that’s the form in which they first encountered them, instead of “totopos”, their name in Mexican Spanish.
I had to explain to her that totopos with cheese and salsa were invented during WWII by a chef on the Mexican border with Texas named Ignacio, ie “Nacho”, when US Army wives arrived at his restaurant hungry, but all he had left was totopos, queso y pico de gallo.
sorry this is turning into a turing test, but nope:
your argument will be presented using logic and reason.
your investigation will be decided by application of reason.
your conclusions will be derived by application of logic.
your proof will depend on logic.
your hypothesis doesn’t pop out of the clouds.
you can’t know anything without conceiving it and validating it by logic.
you won’t claim to know something you can hot prove.
so stop quibbling. what i say is true and you know it.
sometimes, though, you need to know that you know it.
i suggest a good dictionary. then you won’t have these rhetorical obstacles to clear thinking..
the philosophy of science can never leave reason behind – that would make it mysticism.
as you know, since you are considerate enough to credit me with some intelligence and follow the link i provided, everything i have said has been extensively studied and documented so you know my comments are not mindless babble.
right?
furthermore,, you will not be able to show a single flaw in my reasoning because to reason is human and i’m a very good human.
you can never ever use logic to disprove logic.
you can never ever use reason to devalue reason.
so just don’t try. it’s purely a losing proposition- only for you.
there is no need for supernatural “explanations” at any point in that history.
Cf William of Occam. If you don’t need it don’t introduce it., He was a monk too.
Doesn’t mean there is no god. Just means it is – from the point of construction of a hypothesis that works, not any use.
isn’t it possible that any plan he comes up with is larger than human minds can comprehend?
As possible as me just having been touched by his noodly appendages. Sure.
In the end ‘god guided evolution’ is just another way of saying ‘god created natural laws’.
Its a way of saving the God theory that adds nothing to science.
God theories are not anti-science and science is not anti-god. They are different metaphysics, that’s all. Alternative narratives for different purposes.
The mistake is in believing that either one of them is the One True View.
Both are stories.
One is a story that is successful at predicting the future, the other is a story that is successful in making people feel good about themselves and play nice.
Dr Ball,
I usually enjoy your work, but not this time. There is a planet full of empirical evidence that life on earth has undergone an evolutionary process!
I’m not hand waving, there is just not the place and space to elaborate here. Your use of that kind of terminology is too dismissive of the depth of the issue.
It seems to me you are doing to evolution what the AGW crowd do: Focusing on small details and ignoring the big picture. They talk in hockey sticks and ignore the millions of years of climate.
Don’t get bogged down in the minutia of details, look at the pattern of life and life forms, geology, and geological structure/s; fossil layering and it relation to the geologic column, so called.
I am with you on climate change, but I am not with you on the evolution thing for the same reasons I joined your side of the climate debate:
Empirical Evidence.
+42
+6×9