Atheists believe in miracles more than believers

[Valjean]

You've already defined all religious beliefs as "superstition" remember? Of course there can be no legitimate arguments from superstition. You've defined scientific arguments as reasonable so of course state of the art is most likely to reflect reality. Therefore there are an infinite numbers of pyramids built with an infinite number of ramps through simple substitution. Pure logic defeats you.

You should try this substitution to see the vast nonsense it generates.

Just because "Evolution" could be correct and seems to reflect most current knowledge simply doesn't change the fact it could be most sincerely wrong. There are numerous ways it could be wrong and still seem to explain the evidence. Experiment suggests it is wrong while no experiment shows a gradual change caused by fitness. Hence I believe it is wrong.

All experimentation I'm aware of has been confirmatory. Evolution is one of the best and most consiliently evidenced theories in all of science.
What evidence suggests it's wrong?

 

[Valjean]

You don't get to define any word. You can use any definition you choose and then expect people to parse it that way but the meaning of no word is fixed and assigning definitions as you did reflects ONLY your belief.

"Superstition" still means; "2 : a notion maintained despite evidence to the contrary" and this still applies to scientific beliefs too.

Scientific beliefs are dropped or modified when there is evidence to the contrary. They are not superstitions. They track the evidence.

This is the definition many people intend when they use the word. Indeed, most people are not saying that all religious beliefs are superstitions when they use the word. Most people are usually referring to ideas like ghosts and goblins. I personally believe all certainty of any type underlies superstition. But then like with everything, I might be wrong and everything I believe might apply only some of the time even when I'm right.

The world is not a clockwork and is chaotic. Everything is most highly complex and our feeble science despite being the only tool in town is reductionistic and dependent on experiment. Every new discovery is greeted with a chorus of "At last we know everything" and we forget that science is continually being revolutionized. Like reality and species and all individuals it changes suddenly in fits and starts. Time don't fly, it bounds and leaps. Everything we know will be wholly rewritten in a century or two. Only by maintaining the status quo can this be avoided but the status quo leads to extinction.

You do realize that there are some really good unabridged dictionaries out there. There are many many definitions for "superstition" and they are each legitimate. There are an infinite number of interpretations for every one of those definitions. Indeed, we each create our own definition every time we use any word. Using definitions that make us holier than thou is semantics. Nobody has ever become a saint or holy by just using words. Everybody talks and no one listens. Semantics obscure communication and never facilitates it.

We communicate through language. Without semantics there is no language; there are no words.

 

[cladking]

No. We used to do that, and we got nowhere. It wasn't till we abandoned untested belief and adopted the scientific method that real progress and understanding took off.

Ah, yes. The miracle of science that allows all believers in science to see all of and only reality.

Do you also believe reality itself changes at funerals?

inductive science

There's no such thing.

There is science performed by individuals inductively and/ or deductively. Science is a methodology defined by its metaphysics.

There is no magic and no miracles in science. Each individual builds his own models and all of these models vary from individual to individual. You keep forgetting that all experiment must apply to every observation and be applied to every event and anomaly at all times. You are taking reductionistic science and applying it piecemeal. You have adopted extrapolation and interpolation as beliefs.

Yet this superstition has rarely led to consensus, or to useful technology or understanding of the world.

Another miracle of science; CONSENSUS. This is state of the art and is unchanged until the very next funeral (when it would seem reality itself changes to reflect the new paradigm). How can you ignore every point and go on repeating what you believe and why you believe it?

Isn't experiment an important part of the scientific method?

Ya' got it!!! For every practical purpose where "practical purpose" is the advancement of human knowledge, the ability to invent, or devising new experiment, experiment is science. And no experiment has ever shown gradual change in species caused by fitness. Yet we see sudden change in species caused by bottlenecks quite often. I believe almost all change in species that isn't caused by mutation results from typical individuals dying at bottlenecks. Why is this not addressed? What happens to those agricultural species without the continued efforts by man? I'll give you a clue most of them revert to their original characteristics virtually overnight. This is the nature of all life at all levels; change is sudden. Indeed, this tends to be true in nature as well where life isn't involved. You are imaging a gradual change and once you imagine that it's easy to imagine some individuals are more fit than others.

 

[YoursTrue]

Every organisms died, none live forever…there are no exceptions to that natural law…whether it by old age, disease, killed (either by other organisms or by accident), and so on.

The fitness that you are referring to as “survival”, is misunderstanding Evolution. As I said every organisms died, without exception…the fitness is not about being strong, fast, intelligent, etc, but it is really more about reproducing and maintaining the population…those with traits that more suited to changed environment, will more likely reproduce successfully and past the traits to succeeding generations.

What you have repeatedly mistaken, is thinking the “survival” is about the individual organism, but really evolution is about the survival of the population for succeeding generations.

While it is true, that different organisms will have different lifespans, some live and will die sooner than others, while others will live longer.

For instances, some families and species can live for centuries…some even thousands of years. Take for instance the Great Basin bristlecone pine (species Pinus longaeva), grown in western US states, Utah, Nevada & California. One of them, nicknamed Methuselah has been dated 4855 years old.

This species (Pinus longaeva) is those of individual trees, non-clonal, trees that each have a single root.

There are some groups of vegetation, including trees, of which they covered acres of land, but actually all shared a single root, and they can be great deal older than Methuselah.

What clonal tree means, a clonal colony is a single root can grow dozens, hundreds or thousands of trees, each one is genetically identical to each other, eg identical DNA, because they are all clones, that grow from one root. Each trees may lived a couple of thousands of years, and then died, but the root itself many times older than a non-clonal tree like methuselah. New trees can sprouted from the root.


I found out about these clonal plants when I was looking at the oldest living trees, when I was googling for the oldest trees, and found about clonal colonies. I had never heard of them before

An example of clonal tree. I would suggest that you look up Pando (nickname), which is a grove of quaking aspen colony, where one root has more 47,000 trees or stems (all clones), in one of the national forests in Utah, that grow around 106 acres of land.

This 80,000-Year-Old Aspen Grove Clones Itself

Not only is this organism one of the oldest on Earth, it is also a contender for other extreme titles.

www.treehugger.com

If you think blue whale is the largest animal in the world, which is true, these clonal trees are the largest living organism, Period!

Interestingly, the Bible has an account of this at 1 Corinthians chapter 15. I quote some passages pertinent to this discussion: "35But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36You fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37And what you sow is not the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or something else. 38But God gives it a body as He has designed, and to each kind of seed He gives its own body."
So verse 36 brings out that seeds die but God gives a body. Similar to a resurrection. We all face death now as humans, but that will not always be the case, according to what the Bible says. And I believe it.

 

[cladking]

Individuals don't evolve. Populations do. Beneficial changes gradually increase as a percentage of a population.

You're right. Virtually everything in existence living, dead, or never really alive changes suddenly. One day a carefree young man finds he's going to have a baby and soon enough he has a family, more mouths to feed and progeny. Before he knows it he's a granpa ALL OF A SUDDEN.

This is the nature of reality itself but most especially the nature of life. We should think of life as reality on steroids. Of course it is robust and undergoes sudden changes before it suddenly dies but just like everything in reality life is individual. There's no such thing as "rabbits" but ONLY individuals most of whom closely fit the characteristics we (homo omniscience) call "rabbits". Planets aren't made of green cheese and rabbits don't miraculously spring into existence because somebody invented the word.

This is not complicated.

 

[cladking]

We're not talking about conscious, adaptive choices. We're talking about physical differences that would be reflected in an organism's genes. Differences that could be inherited and passed down to one's offspring.

Darwin separated consciousness from life. He separated the individual from consciousness and vice versa. This is improper methodology and it's still going on and still improper.

Life is consciousness. It is not species. If species weren't an abstraction it still wouldn't be conscious. It still wouldn't evolve. Species don't evolve at all. Rather the individual consciousness we call "species" suddenly changes just like every single individual who ever lived of any species at all.

 

[gnostic]

So where's the scientific method showing how fish evolved eventually to be humans.

no fishes became humans.

you still on this stupid one-track?

Not all fishes developed articulated bones in their fins, not all fishes can support their weights. Not all fishes developed working lungs.

The fishes that develop the limb-like fins and lungs come from class lobe-finned fishes (Sacropterygii) of bony fishes Osteichthyes (superclass). Most families & species of the Sacropterygii, including the genus Tiktaalik.

The Tiktaalik are indeed fishes, and they are not true tetrapods, but they are referred to as clade Tetrapodomorpha, meaning they have some physical traits are tetrapod-like. The Acanthostega, and then Ichthyostega have more pronounced development of limbs and fingers than the earlier Tiltaalik, with the later, the Ichthyostega can actually support it body weight and moved out of the water.

Ichthyostega have numbers of features similar to the early (but extinct) and true tetrapod amphibians, but they are classified as Tetrapodomorpha fishes, still sacropterygians.

True amphibians most likely evolved from the Ichthyostega.

you keep ignoring what types of fishes that the tetrapods evolved from.

 

[Valjean]

Well we do observe “small changes” caused by “lamarckian mechanisms “does that mean that Lamarkinian evolution is true? Does that mean that we evolved through the mechanisms proposed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck? ……did the human eye evolved by Lamarkinian Evolution?

The primary driver of phenotypic change is natural selection. Epigenetics resembles Lamarckian evolution in some respects, but it's not Lamarckian.
The human eye can be explained by simple natural selection. The process is pretty simple and well evidenced.

Obviously not (or at least not necessarily) obviously small changes + time don’t necessarily imply big changes

But if the small changes continue in successive generations they're likely to accumulate. A big change is usually an accumulation of small changes.

Observed Epigenetics would be an example of Lamarkinian evolution at a small scale (small changes)…………. Does this automatically proves that everything evolved through that mechanism?

??? -- What is the mechanism behind Lamarckian evolution? When has it ever been observed?

This is not supposed to be controversial, just answer “yes Leroy you are correct inthe context of evolution small changes don’t necessarily imply big changes”

But the converse is implied, isn't it? And with the accumulation of small changes, big changes are hard to avoid.

 

[cladking]

Did you not do any in high school biology?

I had a pretty good biology teacher in high school. I never really agreed with him much but I learned a lot anyway. Like all good teachers he didn't hold my disagreement against me.

 

[Valjean]

There is nothing beyond conjectural reasoning to show that (some, or a few) fish changed microscopically over eons of time to become humans. You can say otherwise, you can tell me I don't understand, but understanding does not mean I believe the conjectures. Or that the conjectural reasoning is true. Thanks.

There is a fossil record of gradual change, and we also have a genetic record of change.
Where, in your opinion did we come from, if not through a long process of evolution?

 

[gnostic]

Interestingly, the Bible has an account of this at 1 Corinthians chapter 15. I quote some passages pertinent to this discussion: "35But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36You fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37And what you sow is not the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or something else. 38But God gives it a body as He has designed, and to each kind of seed He gives its own body."
So verse 36 brings out that seeds die but God gives a body. Similar to a resurrection. We all face death now as humans, but that will not always be the case, according to what the Bible says. And I believe it.

except that humans do not originate from seeds, but from two living cells (gametes) - sperm and ova. The fusion of the two gametes (fertilisation), leads to a living fertilised cell, called a zygote.

More cells are produced from the zygote, known as typically as cell division, which eventually leads to embryo being formed. As the cell continued to multiply producing organs, bones and other tissues, the embryo become fetus. Eventually it would grow until it is ready for birth,

No death are involved in this reproduction.

We are not born from seeds, and we don’t sprout out of the ground, as we are not plants.

i don’t really care about Corinthians, as it is very inaccurate.

 

[Pogo]

So where's the scientific method showing how fish evolved eventually to be humans.

Start here again; Evolution 101
And when you have a related hypothesis you wish to test, go here and you can look for some relevant data. Google Scholar

It may take a little while as the evidence has been collecting for over 150 years.

 

[Valjean]

So where's the scientific method showing how fish evolved eventually to be humans.

Do you understand nested hierarchies? Every clade is a part of the previous clades it evolved from.

Do you understand the mechanisms driving evolution? Wouldn't natural selection enable a gradual evolution from fish to mammal?

 

[Pogo]

Why are you bringing up Lamarkinian inheritance & Lamarkinian evolution?

But epigenetics is pseudo Lamarckian and professors emeritus in their dotage think we need a new paradigm because somebody said science marches on funerals and so there is a controversy and so my creationist website bs has to be given equal credence even though I have no clue even what the words mean let alone the concepts or math.

sorry @gnostic if this is a bit hard to parse,

 

[YoursTrue]

Do you understand nested hierarchies? Every clade is a part of the previous clades it evolved from.

Do you understand the mechanisms driving evolution? Wouldn't natural selection enable a gradual evolution from fish to mammal?

I understand but do not see verification (ok, can't use the word proof, so I'll use verification instead) in reality as it was happening or even happens now) of those categories (clades). There is the THEORY of the supposed mechanisms driving evolution, but I see no verification in actual events showing that some type of fish (unknown, of course) evolving and eventually becoming humans. I see conjectures and postulates of those that embrace the theory. Now it might seem logical, but in actuality, there is nothing beyond scientists figuring that's how it probably happened.

 

[Pogo]

All experimentation I'm aware of has been confirmatory. Evolution is one of the best and most consiliently evidenced theories in all of science.
What evidence suggests it's wrong?

​

Evolution sparks silence of the crickets​

"Populations of a male cricket on different Hawaiian islands have lost their ability to chirp as a result of separate, but simultaneous, evolutionary adaptations to their wings. The changes, which allow the insects to avoid attracting a parasitic fly, occurred independently over just 20 generations and are visible to the human eye, a study reveals."

Have to bookmark this one for future, Visible evolution of physical bodies that changes environmental fitness and DNA evidence to match and further changes to the population to study due to these changes and has been watched in less than 1 human life-time though many generations of crickets and yes they are still crickets, but we never said they wouldn't be. Worth a read.

 

[YoursTrue]

​

Evolution sparks silence of the crickets​

"Populations of a male cricket on different Hawaiian islands have lost their ability to chirp as a result of separate, but simultaneous, evolutionary adaptations to their wings. The changes, which allow the insects to avoid attracting a parasitic fly, occurred independently over just 20 generations and are visible to the human eye, a study reveals."

Have to bookmark this one for future, Visible evolution of physical bodies that changes environmental fitness and DNA evidence to match and further changes to the population to study due to these changes and has been watched in less than 1 human life-time though many generations of crickets and yes they are still crickets, but we never said they wouldn't be. Worth a read.

Still does not show that they evolve to anything but crickets.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

​

Evolution sparks silence of the crickets​

"Populations of a male cricket on different Hawaiian islands have lost their ability to chirp as a result of separate, but simultaneous, evolutionary adaptations to their wings. The changes, which allow the insects to avoid attracting a parasitic fly, occurred independently over just 20 generations and are visible to the human eye, a study reveals."

Have to bookmark this one for future, Visible evolution of physical bodies that changes environmental fitness and DNA evidence to match and further changes to the population to study due to these changes and has been watched in less than 1 human life-time though many generations of crickets and yes they are still crickets, but we never said they wouldn't be. Worth a read.

The evidence for evolution just continues to pile up.

 

[Valjean]

Ah, yes. The miracle of science that allows all believers in science to see all of and only reality.

Who ever claimed to see all of reality? It seems the more we discover the more questions we generate.

Do you also believe reality itself changes at funerals?

Huh?

There's no such thing.

There is science performed by individuals inductively and/ or deductively. Science is a methodology defined by its metaphysics.

Its metaphysics? Please explain.

There is no magic and no miracles in science. Each individual builds his own models and all of these models vary from individual to individual. You keep forgetting that all experiment must apply to every observation and be applied to every event and anomaly at all times. You are taking reductionistic science and applying it piecemeal. You have adopted extrapolation and interpolation as beliefs.

Models are shared throughout the scientific community, and everyone participates in trying to disprove them. The accepted explanations are well founded and conform to the available evidence.
The explosion of technology and understanding we've accomplished in the last century or so is a testament to the effectiveness of this technique.

Another miracle of science; CONSENSUS. This is state of the art and is unchanged until the very next funeral (when it would seem reality itself changes to reflect the new paradigm). How can you ignore every point and go on repeating what you believe and why you believe it?

???? -- Paradigms change to reflect the current knowledge of reality, not the other way round.
What points do I ignore, and what more do I have but my beliefs and their supporting evidence?

Ya' got it!!! For every practical purpose where "practical purpose" is the advancement of human knowledge, the ability to invent, or devising new experiment, experiment is science. And no experiment has ever shown gradual change in species caused by fitness. Yet we see sudden change in species caused by bottlenecks quite often.

Wrong and wrong.
You keep repeating this and ignoring evidence to the contrary.

I believe almost all change in species that isn't caused by mutation results from typical individuals dying at bottlenecks. Why is this not addressed? What happens to those agricultural species without the continued efforts by man? I'll give you a clue most of them revert to their original characteristics virtually overnight. This is the nature of all life at all levels; change is sudden. Indeed, this tends to be true in nature as well where life isn't involved. You are imaging a gradual change and once you imagine that it's easy to imagine some individuals are more fit than others.

Please explain this dying at bottlenecks. Can you link to sources?
What evidence do you have that most change is sudden? How do you account for that?

Are you saying that some individuals are not better adapted than others; that there is no reproductive variation?

 

[Valjean]

You're right. Virtually everything in existence living, dead, or never really alive changes suddenly. One day a carefree young man finds he's going to have a baby and soon enough he has a family, more mouths to feed and progeny. Before he knows it he's a granpa ALL OF A SUDDEN.

This is the nature of reality itself but most especially the nature of life. We should think of life as reality on steroids. Of course it is robust and undergoes sudden changes before it suddenly dies but just like everything in reality life is individual. There's no such thing as "rabbits" but ONLY individuals most of whom closely fit the characteristics we (homo omniscience) call "rabbits". Planets aren't made of green cheese and rabbits don't miraculously spring into existence because somebody invented the word.

This is not complicated.

Well, it's certainly got me baffled.
You've been touting sudden change for years, but I've yet to see the evidence that this the usual course of evolution.