Darwin's Illusion

[Dan From Smithville]

Very little time right now.

I've addressed all these other issues before and will probably return to address at least a few of them again but this is the first time I've been challenged here. Obviously there ae differences between individuals and their likelihood to survive and/ or reproduce but Darwin fell into a trap of defining fitness by whether a member of a species does survive and reproduce. But this is just assuming the conclusion. I don't dispute that species rap[idly adapt to changes in their niche and that this adaptation largely results from the proclivity of some individuals to better succeed under said changing conditions. But even those which don't succeed might have had their luck or experiences been different. They were no less "fit" to live merely different and or unlucky.

Adaptation to the environment is caused by changes to the environment but can "never" lead to speciation for the numerous reasons I've already listed and have been ignored. "Survival of the fittest" is putting the cart before the horse and highly assumptive. Once you have an assumption for the cause of speciation you quit looking. You can't even see the extensive evidence that speciation is sudden just like everything else that affects life which is always and only individual. "Species" is a word, a mnemonic with no real referent.

Here is a limited list of what you have claimed without support or explanation.

1. All change in all living things is sudden. You have NEVER provided any evidence or experiments that demonstrate this. You have been provided with examples that refute this on numerous occasions.
2. All individuals are equally fit. You don't appear to understand what is meant by fitness and have never demonstrated this to be a fact nor refuted the explanations and evidence provided you to correct your error.
3. Genetic bottlenecks are the source of speciation. Never mind the fact that the speciation you claim and describe as attributed to this biological event mirrors in many ways the speciation you deny exists, bottlenecks are not speciation events. Once again among numerous times I have explained this, bottlenecks are events that reduce a population to critically low levels and they reduce genetic variation of that population to whatever variation exists in the survivors. It is my opinion that you get your belief from a misunderstanding of plant and animal breeding or from poor examples of breeding. Plant and animal breeding mimic natural selection putting the breeder in the place of the environment selecting a trait that they want for whatever reason. In plants it is often yield or some aspect of trait pleasing to people. What you do not seem to understand is that once that trait is isolated, it is bred back into existing stock to produce varieties that already have traits desirable for human wants and needs. Having the single trait does not result in speciation and the reduction to the limited variation is not a bottleneck, but rather a step to adding the variation back into the population where it is now fixed.
4. There is no such thing as Homo omniscience. That is an arbitrary designation that you have created that has no explanatory or descriptive value. It is not in the literature. The application does not follow any rules of nomenclature. It tells us nothing that simply referring to contemporary human wouldn't tell us. It has no authority. I guess it makes you feel like you have some technical authority when you do not.
5. Saying Darwin was ahead of his time and that he also got everything wrong makes no sense. Tells us nothing. Explains nothing. All it reveals is that you don't really know much and can repeat an empty claim.
6. All life is individual tells us nothing new and says nothing about that self-evident observation having any meaning in these discussions. A bacteria is an individual cell. A colony of bacteria are numerous individual cells. I am an individual made up of numerous different tissues and individual cells. If some of my intestinal tract or skin is shed, I do not suddenly cease to exist. Repeating that all life is individual tells us nothing. It doesn't support anything you claim. It is just meaningless filler.
7. All life is consciousness is not true. Not all living things have an awareness of self and an understanding of self in the environment. I think @It Aint Necessarily So addressed this best in a recent previous post.
8. Speciation is not the result of conscious action on the part of an individual or a population. Referring back to breeding, humans can change the evolution of living things if they choose to, but there is no evidence or experiment that demonstrates that 99.9% of speciation was the conscious choice of anyone.

I know there is more, but these seem to be some common claims that you like to repeat ad nauseum as if they were fact that only you possess the requisite knowledge and understanding to recognize while at the same time being totally incapable of demonstrating them or refuting the criticism correctly brought up to address those many, many, many, many repeated empty claims.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Well there's Elvis as the young rebel chemist.

I loved his song Chemistry Lab Rock. Sadly, it didn't become as famous as his other songs.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Very little time right now.

I've addressed all these other issues before and will probably return to address at least a few of them again but this is the first time I've been challenged here. Obviously there ae differences between individuals and their likelihood to survive and/ or reproduce but Darwin fell into a trap of defining fitness by whether a member of a species does survive and reproduce. But this is just assuming the conclusion. I don't dispute that species rap[idly adapt to changes in their niche and that this adaptation largely results from the proclivity of some individuals to better succeed under said changing conditions. But even those which don't succeed might have had their luck or experiences been different. They were no less "fit" to live merely different and or unlucky.

Adaptation to the environment is caused by changes to the environment but can "never" lead to speciation for the numerous reasons I've already listed and have been ignored. "Survival of the fittest" is putting the cart before the horse and highly assumptive. Once you have an assumption for the cause of speciation you quit looking. You can't even see the extensive evidence that speciation is sudden just like everything else that affects life which is always and only individual. "Species" is a word, a mnemonic with no real referent.

Darwin did not consider the process of evolution as the survival of the fittest; he regarded it as survival of the fitter, because the “struggle for existence” (a term he took from English economist and demographer Thomas Malthus) is relative and thus not absolute. Instead, the winners with respect to species within ecosystems could become losers with a change of circumstances. For example, fossil evidence supports the notion that the mammoth (Mammuthus) was more fit during the most recent ice age (which ended roughly 11,700 years ago), but it became less fit as humans hunted it and the world’s climate warmed; fossil evidence suggests that the mammoth succumbed to extinction a few thousand years later. (From Encyclopedia Britannica)

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I have been reading more about the Dunning/Kruger effect and how it appears today in much wider application in science and politics and beyond.

I think I had an insight about that here on RF. I was under the impression that the victim was somebody who mistakenly thought that he had risen above the crowds and that his thinking was as nuanced and sophisticated as that of critical thinkers. But today, I see it as a result of people being unaware that such a stratum exists. They don't what critical thought is or what it does for the critical thinker. They don't know what a sound conclusion is. To them, all opinions are arrived at like theirs - whatever seems or feels right - and thus no opinion is better than any other. The clue is that these people don't acknowledge such a thing as expertise in thought, just action. You can be an expert woodworker or master distiller, but people like Fauci are just somebody with a different opinion arrived at like they arrived at theirs, and therefore no more valuable.

So, a common manifestation is somebody reading a sound, factual conclusion and saying, "That's just your opinion." That's your fist sign you've just entered D-K country.

Another is the person who knows next to nothing about a topic who is presenting his opinions as if they are equally meaningful and valuable as those ideas he rejects from qualified sources, as when he says he just doesn't see how such-and-such could have happened, such as abiogenesis. He offers his opinion not from the position that he hasn't learned enough yet, but that he has, and that his opinion is equally valuable, apparently unaware that those who know better and can see what he can't just see his statement as an admission of ignorance rather that a respectable alternative opinion of equal standing.

Great summary of claking's posting to date just before this, and a good place for him to start to make his own version of the list for future cutting-and-pasting.

 

[Audie]

I think I had an insight about that here on RF. I was under the impression that the victim was somebody who mistakenly thought that he had risen above the crowds and that his thinking was as nuanced and sophisticated as that of critical thinkers. But today, I see it as a result of people being unaware that such a stratum exists. They don't what critical thought is or what it does for the critical thinker. They don't know what a sound conclusion is. To them, all opinions are arrived at like theirs - whatever seems or feels right - and thus no opinion is better than any other. The clue is that these people don't acknowledge such a thing as expertise in thought, just action. You can be an expert woodworker or master distiller, but people like Fauci are just somebody with a different opinion arrived at like they arrived at theirs, and therefore no more valuable.

So, a common manifestation is somebody reading a sound, factual conclusion and saying, "That's just your opinion." That's your fist sign you've just entered D-K country.

View attachment 72970

Another is the person who knows next to nothing about a topic who is presenting his opinions as if they are equally meaningful and valuable as those ideas he rejects from qualified sources, as when he says he just doesn't see how such-and-such could have happened, such as abiogenesis. He offers his opinion not from the position that he hasn't learned enough yet, but that he has, and that his opinion is equally valuable, apparently unaware that those who know better and can see what he can't just see his statement as an admission of ignorance rather that a respectable alternative opinion of equal standing.

Great summary of claking's posting to date just before this, and a good place for him to start to make his own version of the list for future cutting-and-pasting.

W/I F

 

[cladking]

Darwin did not assume the conclusion. Saying something, anything, as is your proclivity, is not evidence for what you claim.

And THIS is what I have to deal with!!!!! Just in the last day or two in tis very thread I specifically stated one of Darwin's Illusions; one of his failed assumptions. The most critical of all his failed assumptions each of which I've listed many times in this and other threads and you ignore them. You ignore it and ignore it and then act like it never happened. Ignoring facts does not cancel them, just like gainsaying them or using them for word games has no effect on them.

I'd repeat it but it will be ignored AGAIN so you go look it up.

All the facts, all the logic, all the evidence, and every experiment says Darwin was wrong. All change in life is sudden. He was also wrong when he said the mechanism for "Evolution" was best expressed as "survival of the fittest". There is no such thing by any name at all.

 

[cladking]

As we have all observed thanks to the repeated examples so lovingly provided by those that think their knowledge exceeds expertise without benefit of acquiring that expertise.

Sigh.

If I'm right I'm still not an expert and still won't have the extensive knowledge possessed by experts. I'll just be right and they'll just be wrong.

I have "no" expertise in biology or Egyptology. But this doesn't affect in any way whether I can or can not understand author intent in ancient writing OR whether that author believed in Evolution or not.

Like most people now days you are confusing expertise for being right. People hold science as a belief system today and nobody is more holiest than thou than people who look to Peers for every answer.

It is normal in science history for every single expert to be wrong. And then "normal" is for science to change one funeral at a time. What we have here is one very dead cat/ turtle/ and communication.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Sigh.

If I'm right I'm still not an expert and still won't have the extensive knowledge possessed by experts. I'll just be right and they'll just be wrong.

I have "no" expertise in biology or Egyptology. But this doesn't affect in any way whether I can or can not understand author intent in ancient writing OR whether that author believed in Evolution or not.

Like most people now days you are confusing expertise for being right. People hold science as a belief system today and nobody is more holiest than thou than people who look to Peers for every answer.

It is normal in science history for every single expert to be wrong. And then "normal" is for science to change one funeral at a time. What we have here is one very dead cat/ turtle/ and communication.

Why would it matter what some ancient author believed when , as hard it is fathom this, they were probably more ignorant when it comes to the sicenccces than you are.?

 

[cladking]

To them, all opinions are arrived at like theirs - whatever seems or feels right - and thus no opinion is better than any other.

I try to have no opinions or beliefs and avoid stating any unless I state them all. You should remember they start with "reality is what is perceived by all people who always make perfect sense". It goes on and on so don't stop there.

What I do have is explanations for experiment and why the world exists as it does and presents it face (evidence) as it does. These "explanations" aren't "conclusions" nor "opinions" but are more akin to probabilities. There is a 75% probability that the pyramids were built with linear funiculars by scientists whose "theory of evolution" looked very very similar to my own. Of course they and I might be wrong but I believe there's a 60% chance that Darwin was wrong about every single thing. I have to reconcile my models to reality and I have to reconcile all of them to all of reality simultaneously.

Funny thing is that I'm always the only person that can be wrong. Scientists can't be wrong. Believers in science can't be wrong. Only I mght be wrong. I define "superstition" as knowing you are right. If you KNOW that survival of the fittest causes gradual change in species even though every generation is the same species as its parents then you are superstitious, your beliefs are non sequitur, and you haven't provided much of any evidence for your beliefs in this thread.

Simply stated if there is a change in species then there is a change in species. The difference it to me it appears to be sudden like all change in all life and you believe it is a gradual adaptation. But you can't show a single niche anywhere that shows speciation and this is because no niche lasts long enough for speciation to occur. DARWIN WAS WRONG when he said population were stable. He assumed the conclusion and now this has become a religion.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

And THIS is what I have to deal with!!!!! Just in the last day or two in tis very thread I specifically stated one of Darwin's Illusions; one of his failed assumptions. The most critical of all his failed assumptions each of which I've listed many times in this and other threads and you ignore them. You ignore it and ignore it and then act like it never happened. Ignoring facts does not cancel them, just like gainsaying them or using them for word games has no effect on them.

I'd repeat it but it will be ignored AGAIN so you go look it up.

All the facts, all the logic, all the evidence, and every experiment says Darwin was wrong. All change in life is sudden. He was also wrong when he said the mechanism for "Evolution" was best expressed as "survival of the fittest". There is no such thing by any name at all.

Repeating an invalid claim is not evidence that you have shown Darwin to be wrong. You HAVE NEVER provided evidence that all change in life is sudden. You have avoided evidence that shows it is not. You DO NOT PROVIDE FACTS. That is the problem. The fact that so many posters respond directly to what you post is the strongest evidence refuting your claims of being ignored. The only person gainsaying and manipulating words for 200 plus pages has been you. That is what the evidence shows.

All the evidence supports the theory of evolution and natural selection. Literally hundreds of thousands of studies, some of which have been repeatedly linked on this thread show that the theory of evolution and natural selection are the best explanation we have for the phenomena of evolution. No argument on logic has been made against the theory of evolution that makes any sense or follows any recognized logic. You aren't saying anything now.

You have to deal with reality and all of what you post here is an expression of a belief system without evidence or experiment to back it up. Often there is prevailing evidence that your claims are entirely wrong.

 

[cladking]

Why would it matter what some ancient author believed when , as hard it is fathom this, they were probably more ignorant when it comes to the sicenccces than you are.?

They were wholly ignorant of modern science.

But there is more than one kind of science and they were masters of theirs. They had 40,000 years of human history and science at their disposal.

If I'm right they were using a metaphysical language to describe rituals and that from this language and these rituals I can deduce the means they used to build pyramids then it follows they were scientists rather than stinky footed bumpkins as envisioned by orthodoxy. It further follows that their understanding of "evolution" should be considered relevant. INDEED, even if I am wholly wrong then the very fact these bumpkins invented agriculture still makes their opinion relevant to Darwin's illusion. How in the hell did savages invent agriculture? And while you're pondering this you better ask how beavers, ants, and termites also invented agriculture.

You can't address any of this with experimental basis, I can.

 

[cladking]

Repeating an invalid claim is not evidence that you have shown Darwin to be wrong.

HE made the invalid claim. HE is the one who is wrong.

This is what I said. It is YOUR job to argue this point. Word games are no argument at all.

 

[Subduction Zone]

They were wholly ignorant of modern science.

But there is more than one kind of science and they were masters of theirs. They had 40,000 years of human history and science at their disposal.

If I'm right they were using a metaphysical language to describe rituals and that from this language and these rituals I can deduce the means they used to build pyramids then it follows they were scientists rather than stinky footed bumpkins as envisioned by orthodoxy. It further follows that their understanding of "evolution" should be considered relevant. INDEED, even if I am wholly wrong then the very fact these bumpkins invented agriculture is still makes their opinion relevant to Darwin's illusion. How in the hell did savages invent agriculture? And while you're pondering this you better ask how beavers, ants, and termites also invented agriculture.

You can't address any of this with experimental basis, I can.

Actually they did not. History is a written record.
Writing is much younger than that. History only goes back about 5,500 years:

https://www.getty.edu/news/where-did-writing-come-from/

And humans as Homo sapiens, depending upon how one defines them, are from 200,000 to 300,000 years old. So no. Your 40,000 year number does not appear to have any validity to it.

 

[Subduction Zone]

HE made the invalid claim. HE is the one who is wrong.

This is what I said. It is YOUR job to argue this point. Word games are no argument at all.

That is strange. All of the evidence supports him. Why doesn't any of it support you?

 

[gnostic]

Over 200 pages of examples that support the theory of evolution. Explanations about Darwin's contribution. Numerous examples of how all change is not sudden. More examples explaining natural selection and how "survival of the fittest" was neither of Darwin's coinage nor is it a very good description of natural selection. Evidence and explanation of how genetic variation is constantly generated in populations and how it is the environment that selects the variation. Explanation of genetic bottlenecks and how they reduce populations to critical numbers with a consistent and critical reduction in genetic variation, but are not speciation events. Explanations and evidence demonstrating that directed mutations are a false claim of mistaking natural selection in action on populations of bacteria.

It has gone and on and all that is presented in opposition are vague statements, empty claims, repetition and massive projection. Stories about funerals, talking animals and beavers that farm fish for food.

The other ludicrous problem is him (cladking) believing that evolution and speciation can happen in less than 3 generations.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Sigh.

That you start with the word "Sigh" says a lot about how highly you hold your personal, unevidenced opinions over those that have actually taken the time to learn the facts and study these subjects. I find your "Sigh" to be unjustified based on what I have read from you.

If I'm right I'm still not an expert and still won't have the extensive knowledge possessed by experts. I'll just be right and they'll just be wrong.

You are wrong and still not an expert. You didn't create a new species of fly. You haven't demonstrated anything. Beavers don't farm fish for food. You don't have to tell us you are not an expert. I think that is a common, reasonable conclusion that many have drawn. As well as the conclusion that your belief system has no basis in fact. It isn't even wrong.

I have "no" expertise in biology or Egyptology. But this doesn't affect in any way whether I can or can not understand author intent in ancient writing OR whether that author believed in Evolution or not.

I think it is well understood that you are not an expert in any science. Not being an expert in a field doesn't mean that a person cannot or does not understand those fields. A rational person can learn on their own. But there is no evidence that you have done this. What I see is someone that believes things to the point that they are real to them and uses that belief to declare things as real that are not and that have no basis in fact.

Like most people now days you are confusing expertise for being right. People hold science as a belief system today and nobody is more holiest than thou than people who look to Peers for every answer.

You consider yourself an expert whether you will admit that or not. I think the "Sigh" and claims of explaining things hundreds of times when you have not lend credence to that conclusion.

None of the people that correct you give any evidence of holding science as a belief system or buy into this conspiracy theory about peers that has no basis in fact. Just because many of us reject the product of someone's imagination that has no support from anywhere doesn't indicate adherence to a belief system. Nor does that reasonable rejection of nonsense lend credibility to the imagined tales.

It is normal in science history for every single expert to be wrong. And then "normal" is for science to change one funeral at a time. What we have here is one very dead cat/ turtle/ and communication.

That even experts can be wrong about something is not evidence that a wild flight of fantasy that is issued as a declaration of reality without any rational or evidentuary basis is a sound description of reality. What is offered without evidence and that is what you offer, can be rejected just as easily. You should be happy that you get any response at all given that fact.

What we have is someone that may have had an interest in science, but never bothered to learn science and just decided their baseless opinions were facts. I think the fact that you don't bother to support your claims or recognize valid refutation of them speaks volumes that you close your ears to and look away from.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

The other ludicrous problem is him (cladking) believing that evolution and speciation can happen in less than 3 generations.

I think that was a concession to the fact that sudden, suddenly was seen as not being correct. So now sudden is redefined to mean three generations. Semantics isn't it?

 

[cladking]

There is no such thing as Homo omniscience. That is an arbitrary designation that you have created that has no explanatory or descriptive value. It is not in the literature. The application does not follow any rules of nomenclature. It tells us nothing that simply referring to contemporary human wouldn't tell us. It has no authority. I guess it makes you feel like you have some technical authority when you do not.

Homo sapiens are extinct. Long live Homo sapiens.

I'm just trying to remind the reader I believe humans became extinct at the tower of babel and we are an entirely new species I oft call homo circulus ratiocinatio (circularly reasoning man) because we use an abstract language expressed through the brocas area that allows induction and forces us to reason circularly. We do this all the time where no other species can.

Speciation events can be highly subtle but the effect is dramatic. As religious people suggest; it is behavior that defines the future NOT intent and not fitness.

If we want good outcomes individually or collectively it requires good behavior. If you kill and injure to get ahead you are damaging yourself and the human race. Religions aren't right because they have morals or God on their side. They are right because religions are an attempt to preserve ancient knowledge that derived from ancient science. But, obviously only science is holier than all thous and if Egyptologists believe ancient people were savage, ignorant, superstitious and barbaric bumpkins then religion mustta been founded on nonsense as surely as the bumpkins used ramps to build pyramid tombs.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Homo sapiens are extinct. Long live Homo sapiens.

I'm just trying to remind the reader I believe humans became extinct at the tower of babel and we are an entirely new species I oft call homo circulus ratiocinatio (circularly reasoning man) because we use an abstract language expressed through the brocas area that allows induction and forces us to reason circularly. We do this all the time where no other species can.

Speciation events can be highly subtle but the effect is dramatic. As religious people suggest; it is behavior that defines the future NOT intent and not fitness.

If we want good outcomes individually or collectively it requires good behavior. If you kill and injure to get head you are damaging yourself and the human race. Religions aren't right because they have morals or God on their side. They are right because religions are an attempt to preserve ancient knowledge that derived from ancient science. But, obviously only science is holiest than all thous and if Egyptologists believe ancient people were savage, ignorant, superstitious and barbaric bumpkins then religion mustta been founded on nonsense as surely as the bumpkins used ramps to build pyramid tombs.

Yes, of course. More belief and no evidence.

We recognize that you have lots of beliefs.

That trinomial is a recent invention that you have added to the mix. It is as meaningless as the binomial Homo omniscience.

Just a lot of words that say nothing and it isn't because of parsing, perspective or semantics on the part of your readers. It is just more baseless claims that are easily recognized as such given the absence of any rational basis.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

HE made the invalid claim. HE is the one who is wrong.

This is what I said. It is YOUR job to argue this point. Word games are no argument at all.

It is YOUR JOB to provide a rational basis for YOUR claims. Something you routinely avoid, while equally routinely claiming you didn't.

The invalid claims are YOURS.