Darwin's Illusion

[Subduction Zone]

So I should not bother with your posts when you insult me? I'll keep that in mind, it will make life easier.

Some people can dish it out but cannot handle it when others do the same to them. And I do not mean you in this case. I have been ignored because I corrected her false claims about others too often.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I'm sorry, I missed this among the volume of other posts.

I base my claim on the fact that all possible reduced iterations cannot be determined and even if they could, how would anyone know.

Is that what you were thinking here. I'm not sure. I don't know if I fully understand your comment.

Now I have a chance to learn something. Can you unpack the bold?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Now I have a chance to learn something. Can you unpack the bold?

Can we know anything absolutely? Can I be sure that I have named every extant species of insect there is? Is there no chance that new information will come along that will upset my apple cart and lead to my conclusions being refuted?

Irreducible complexity says that there is no other. And in Behe's examples, that was the claim without testing or full examination of the constructs or similar constructs already known.

Remove a piece of a mousetrap and it does not function as a mousetrap. But it does function as tie clip.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I don't think it was you but I guess it could apply because I gave up any chance of a friendly sensible discussion with you long ago but I will see how you respond to my last post. Surprise me.

I'm not even sure why the dead horse keeps getting beaten over and over and over again. If nothing will convince a person why do they hang on? There must be some reason that has nothing to do with the validity of a scientific theory. Especially considering that nothing offered has raised ignorance and incredulity to a level that makes it evidence against science. And nothing could raise those things to that level.

When nothing new is being raised in response to the evidence and reasoning, what is the point of engaging them? How many times can one point out that fish are still fish and no one has any reason to expect them not to be or that the theory evolution doesn't predict that birds will suddenly fly out of fish eggs?

I have elements of OCD, but this appears to be obsessive to the point of making my own pale by comparison.

I suppose that as long as the denial is kept alive, the debate can continue?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

So I should not bother with your posts when you insult me? I'll keep that in mind, it will make life easier.

That is the point I have come to.

 

[blü 2]

You can say what you want according to the theory. It does not show and obviously doesn't prove evolution.

It doesn't claim to prove evolution. It sets out to explain the observed phenomenon of evolution. All errors in the theory of evolution have been found by scientists who study evolution. If you know of even one example where outsiders have put a scientific scratch on the theory of evolution, please inform me of it.

For example, Behe's 'irreducible complexity' was shot down in flames at the Dover trial. Behe admitted in his evidence that he had not taken exaptation into account. Note that he had first acknowledged a problem with exaptation around 2000, Dover was 2005, and this is 2023. If 'irreducible complexity' has one single recognized example extant, please tell me what it is.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Some people can dish it out but cannot handle it when others do the same to them. And I do not mean you in this case. I have been ignored because I corrected her false claims about others too often.

I think also that some people can dish it out, but become indignant and angry when that is pointed out.

It detracts from ever finding reasonable resolution. I personally wonder if that distraction is part of a pitch.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Gives me hope that even Christians can be honest which is a refreshing change from what I'm used to.

I would imagine that some approaches to religion and versions of religious interpretation are threatened when there are religious people found that do not ignore reality in favor of a literal interpretation that demands reality to be ignored and dismissed or poorly rationalized in some way. It seems that those types of ideology thrive on the gaps in our knowledge and the fact that proof is not a standard of science.

Amusingly, they do not offer proof of the validity of their own interpretation that doesn't rely on logical fallacies or ignoring contradiction.

I've said that before and seen those words twisted unjustly into things I did not say.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Can we know anything absolutely? Can I be sure that I have named every extant species of insect there is? Is there no chance that new information will come along that will upset my apple cart and lead to my conclusions being refuted?

Irreducible complexity says that there is no other. And in Behe's examples, that was the claim without testing or full examination of the constructs or similar constructs already known.

Remove a piece of a mousetrap and it does not function as a mousetrap. But it does function as tie clip.

I misunderstood you. Thanks for explaining it to me.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

You may think the fossils are evidence. They are not.

Anything evident to the senses is evidence. The question is, evidence of what? As soon as one becomes aware of a new sensation, the mind begins to decide what it signifies or implies, and also how we feel about that. Fossils are evidence that fossils exist. Why are they there? What do they signify? You haven't tried to answer that. You just say no to evolution.

I used to think they were evidence because I believed the theory of evolution.

That's the wrong order. Belief follows reviewing evidence

But now I see and realize the fossils are evidence only of organisms that were alive, but these do not demonstrate evolution

What are they to you? Do you consider all of those hominin fossils such as Australopithecus, Ardipithicus, and Paranthropus created kinds that just went extinct? How does that comport with the garden story and Adam and Eve? Were these also made in God's image? Did they have souls? Did they go to heaven or hell?

they think somewhere in between the fossils must be miniscule changes. But it's never been found.

Nor need it be found. Did you see my illustration using a photo album? Somebody was photographed on her birthday every year from birth to death, and the photos assemble in an album, which a hurricane has scattered. Are you going to argue that they don't represent gradual (hourly) change just because we don't have a video of her evolving from infant to old woman?

To really believe the process of evolution (from abiogenesis on) is truly blind faith.

The way you do it would be. You exclude the evidence and them claim there is none.

It does not show and obviously doesn't prove evolution.

Evolution cannot and need not be proven. It can only be shown to be correct beyond reasonable doubt, which has been done. But why is that an issue for somebody that believes in a god? The believer doesn't require proof (or even good evidence) for his god belief, so what with requiring it for other beliefs?

What I can't quite understand is how a person who claims to know anything about genetics can say that evolution involves different skin colors or shapes of noses or lips on a human.

How do you think nature knows to make the color of the baby the same as that of the parents? The information is in the genes

To see the miniscule changes moving from one form to a subsequent form (such as fish to landroving animals) would obviously require a long time of observation. There isn't any record of these tiny changes over the many, many years observed.

But there is such a record. You reject it, but that's a personal choice motivated by a desire that the theory be incorrect. You're on your own path detached from the evidence.

Incidentally, in science, we needn't observe the past nor recreate it and observe that. What we observe is the present, from which we deduce some of the past, like a detective investigating a murder scene.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I misunderstood you. Thanks for explaining it to me.

You're welcome. I often misunderstand me too.

 

[John53]

I would imagine that some approaches to religion and versions of religious interpretation are threatened when there are religious people found that do not ignore reality in favor of a literal interpretation that demands reality to be ignored and dismissed or poorly rationalized in some way. It seems that those types of ideology thrive on the gaps in our knowledge and the fact that proof is not a standard of science.

Amusingly, they do not offer proof of the validity of their own interpretation that doesn't rely on logical fallacies or ignoring contradiction.

I've said that before and seen those words twisted unjustly into things I did not say.

I thought about what I wrote this morning when I woke up and I was wrong, most people I know are Christian and most of those are honest. I was talking about a very small section of the Christian community.

 

[metis]

At the risk of going off topic I do not consider anything Freud did as science and believe he was correct about nothing. He was insightful but wholly wrong.

Darwin's work was "scientific" and much of what he wrote was well reasoned and very much like reality but all of his premises were wrong so all of conclusions were wrong.

Believe in whatever you want to believe, I guess, but you're clearly not into science.

 

[gnostic]

You may think the fossils are evidence. They are not. I used to think they were evidence because I believed the theory of evolution. But now I see and realize the fossils are evidence only of organisms that were alive, but these do not demonstrate evolution. They demonstrate organisms that once were alive.

There are things in this world that we, in our rather short lifetimes now, can observe, but as long as humans are believed to have been around (by many scientists) there is simply no record of any animal evolving. By slow and 'natural selection.' Period. Now I am sure there will be excuses (perhaps called reasons), but these made up reasons show only that scientists figure what they want. According to their precepts.

You are missing the points.

You have earlier, basically claimed that Irreducible Complexity “might be” plausible (your words were “is not far-fetched”, but worse still you suggest that fossils were “not natural”, that it might involved god or at least imply it with the “superior forces”:

The "science" of irreducible complexity is not far-fetched and no amount of fossils will change that. If it's not natural, what then? uh oh, might mean a superior force is involved.

If such superior forces behind the Irreducible Complexity being the “God” or “Creator” or “Designer”, then the Irreducible Complexity would be unfalsifiable, because God/Creator/Designer itself being unfalsifiable, because you cannot test any one of them.

And there are no “The “science” of Irreducible Complexity”, because it isn’t a “scientific theory”, and therefore not “science”.

In order to become “science”, any “explained” concept must followed & passed ALL 3 of these requirements in that “order”:

1. Falsifiability
2. Scientific Method
3. Peer Review

Irreducible Complexity hasn’t even pass the 1st one - Falsifiability - as it is not falsifiable, which means Irreducible Complexity don’t even qualify as a “hypothesis”, and cannot even go through the next requirement.

No concept can skip the first requirement. All hypotheses should be “falsifiable” in the first place.

So, “you” calling Irreducible Complexity “science”, is far-fetched.

And the rest of your original post, is absolute garbage: you argue against fossils, DNA, early Earth, and so on...

No one can really explain evolution even though they try. They obviously offer explanations but it does not and cannot explain really how it happened, even though yes, they offer explanations. One is: "While there is no direct fossil evidence for the evolution of DNA (because of its size and fragility), scientists have theorized on its origins based on verified laboratory evidence." Oh? They've theorized based on verified laboratory evidence? Really?
The explanation offered goes on: "One theory goes like this: RNA, the compliment molecule to DNA, was the first to evolve naturally from materials already common in the pre-biotic Earth."
But if I were in school again I'd hear it and then figure ok kind of with a slight shrug of the shoulder IF I believed it, knowing of course as a student of science that things change. So maybe yes, maybe no, I'd figure
The article goes on, "Self-replication was achieved through catalytic actions in RNA-based molecules, called ribosomes, or possibly through an intermediary molecule. This step still remains unverified to science as of this writing."
Uh-huh. Unverified. Or possibly. Maybe? Maybe not. But let's figure.

...because nothing you said, makes much sense, since you are all over the place and you don’t know what you are saying.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I thought about what I wrote this morning when I woke up and I was wrong, most people I know are Christian and most of those are honest. I was talking about a very small section of the Christian community.

It is so weird that there are far more Christians that accept the theory of evolution than atheists, and yet creationists want to insist that it is an atheistic idea.

 

[John53]

It is so weird that there are far more Christians that accept the theory of evolution than atheists, and yet creationists want to insist that it is an atheistic idea.

I guess there's a minority that feel accepting anything that even remotely contradicts their interpretation of the bible would be the same as saying God doesn't exist.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I thought about what I wrote this morning when I woke up and I was wrong, most people I know are Christian and most of those are honest. I was talking about a very small section of the Christian community.

I took it to mean that you found Christians that accepted science to be acting honestly. It works either way I suppose.

I would say I have to be careful what I post, but generally I am and it doesn't matter. On the Demon thread all I asked for was the evidence used to determine demons and I was showcased for denying that demons exist. I didn't say anything remotely like that, but there you go. So much for being careful about wording with some folks.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I guess there's a minority that feel accepting anything that even remotely contradicts their interpretation of the bible would be the same as saying God doesn't exist.

I have been told countless times that I have been trying to "disprove God" when I showed that evolution was a fact. My standard response is that I am only refuting false versions of God just as evidence for the globe refutes the "God" of Flat Earthers.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

I guess there's a minority that feel accepting anything that even remotely contradicts their interpretation of the bible would be the same as saying God doesn't exist.

I think some are mired in an interpretation that their faith group demands they follow or they are out or they feel like what you describe. There is only one demand I know of to be a Christian. The rest has various interpretations and was written at a time that leaves modern readers without a lot of contemporary context. There is probably political and cultural commentary in there that goes right over the head of most people, since we aren't from that time.

 

[LIIA]

I have no reason to believe that anything is non-physical or that consciousness persists beyond death. Maybe, but maybe not, and there is little support for the maybe beyond things like near death experiences, which are not convincing.

Interactions of matter don’t give rise to consciousness/self-awareness/the ability to have qualia. Other than wishful thinking, there is no evidence to such claim. In fact, consciousness/self-awareness is not even understood or can be explained by science.

On the other hand, the NDEs prove that consciousness is non-physical and continues beyond the non-functioning physical body. You say it’s not convincing but in what sense? It’s not a theory but rather documented events that were verified through scientific research.

I think the most powerful evidence is the NDEs of those near-death experiencers (NDErs) who were born blind and never had any visual experience of any kind throughout their entire life. They totally didn’t know the meaning of vision, light, dark or color and for the first time they had verified visual experiences of true events that even included their own body and without eyes or functioning brain or body. This kind of visual experiences were from a perspective external to the body and not physically attainable even to healthy person from his specific physical location. The visual experiences were verified as true events and those blind NDErs are back to be blind once again after they gained back their bodily functions.

See the “Line of Evidence” #1 through #9, the “Conclusion of Study” and finally the “Conclusion”.

Near-Death Experiences Evidence for Their Reality - PMC (nih.gov)

Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF) website

NDERF Home Page

The NDEs typically include experiences within our physical world (such as experiences within the hospital or its surrounding areas) in addition to other metaphysical experiences. The metaphysical experiences are not directly verifiable, but the verification of the physical part proves the NDE experience to be true especially that the entire experience beyond or without a functioning physical body is metaphysical.

The NDEs are numerous and large number of it was verified/documented through scientific research.