Different Opinions....Who is right?

[Samael_Khan]

Why should we assume or even propose such a thing? It's a useless layer of complexity without any evidence or even possible method by which said intelligence could manipulate the evolutionnary process.

True. But my only reason for pointing that out was to show that since one can assume an intelligent designer using the OP line of reasoning, we can come up with at least one other explanation using the same reasoning. Many of us can come up with multiple conclusions actually.

 

[exchemist]

Thanks for this. It is very useful.

So the public use of theory corresponds to the word hypothesis in the scientific community. Theory is then an accurate explanation of a phenomenon thoroughly supported by evidence.

I have come across flat earthers who reject the theory of gravity and base that on the bible.

Bear in mind there are even two theories of gravity in physics.

 

[Samael_Khan]

Bear in mind there are even two theories of gravity in physics.

THAT is interesting.

 

[Valjean]

"Who is right?" One side is based on evidence, the other on ignorance and incredulity.

I came across this today....its a Flower Mantis.....beautifully designed to be camouflaged on the flowers it lives on.

Science would describe how this just evolved with no intelligent direction at all.

And why would the believers dispute this, unless they failed to understand the mechanisms science describes which account for these remarkable adaptations.

Believers would see an exquisitely crafted creature designed by an intelligent Creator to be invisible to predators but facilitating catching prey of its own.

But wouldn't this idea be accounted for by errors in reasoning, specifically an argument from ignorance and an argument from personal incredulity?

If one is ignorant of the mechanisms of adaptation described by science, and the evidence supporting them, then that could explain a belief in magic.
If this is combined with astonishment at the degree of complexity achieved or the aesthetics of it all, then the false dichotomy between mechanism and intention is further reinforced.

This creature is as beautiful as the flowers that it walks on.....so what makes the most sense....deliberate and thoughtful creation....or just an accident of nature?

The highlighted passage makes it clear that this is an argument from ignorance, since science makes no such claim. The author's ignorance and bias is showing.

Did nature just fluke these? Or was this camouflage clever and deliberate creation?

No, nature didn't 'fluke' these, and no biologist would make such a claim.

Your argument for magic is based on a misrepresentation or dismissal of a well evidenced scientific explanation, and the promotion of an entirely unevidenced alternative.
Inasmuch as the mechanism of natural selection has been explained to you in the past, I suspect your position is an intentional misrepresentation. It's religious propaganda.

 

[Sunstone]

I just love how the title of this thread entices us with a fascinating question: How are we to decide between competing theories? But the OP itself is just the same-old same-old argument from ignorance we've all heard before.

Talk about bait and switch.

 

[bobhikes]

I came across this today....its a Flower Mantis.....beautifully designed to be camouflaged on the flowers it lives on.

Science would describe how this just evolved with no intelligent direction at all.

Believers would see an exquisitely crafted creature designed by an intelligent Creator to be invisible to predators but facilitating catching prey of its own.

This creature is as beautiful as the flowers that it walks on.....so what makes the most sense....deliberate and thoughtful creation....or just an accident of nature?

What about this one...


Did nature just fluke these? Or was this camouflage clever and deliberate creation?

I looked up Flower mantis and there are more than one species yet all species mimic local floral so it seems inline with how evolution works. If it was a creator they wouldn't be much creativity as they were just copying another local item.

 

[exchemist]

THAT is interesting.

As there are for a number of phenomena in chemistry, too. There's nothing wrong with that, so long as the alternatives can be reconciled logically. In the case of gravity, Newton's version is by far the more widely used, due to its simplicity, but it is recognised to be a less complete and accurate description than Einstein's general relativity. In chemistry we have (to give just one example) different models for covalent bonding, which we choose according to the issue we want to address, but they can be shown to derive from the same foundation, so one does not contradict the other.

The caveat, I think, is that theories in science should be regarded as predictive models of aspects of the physical world, rather than as final truths about it. The history of science shows that these models change over time, in the light of new observations about the world.

 

[Valjean]

I looked up Flower mantis and there are more than one species yet all species mimic local floral so it seems inline with how evolution works. If it was a creator they wouldn't be much creativity as they were just copying another local item.

The creator hypothesis: 'Goddidit', still doesn't explain anything. No mechanism is proposed.

 

[exchemist]

I just love how the title of this thread entices us with a fascinating question: How are we to decide between competing theories? But the OP itself is just the same-old same-old argument from ignorance we've all heard before.

Talk about bait and switch.

It's worse than that: the title claims it is about competing mere opinions.

 

[Samael_Khan]

As there are for a number of phenomena in chemistry, too. There's nothing wrong with that, so long as the alternatives can be reconciled logically. In the case of gravity, Newton's version is by far the more widely used, due to its simplicity, but it is recognised to be a less complete and accurate description than Einstein's general relativity. In chemistry we have (to give just one example) different models for covalent bonding, which we choose according to the issue we want to address, but they can be shown to derive from the same foundation, so one does not contradict the other.

The caveat, I think, is that theories in science should be regarded as predictive models of aspects of the physical world, rather than as final truths about it. The history of science shows that these models change over time, in the light of new observations about the world.

I can understand that since it seems that the current evidence supports both models?

And science would have to be able to change over time based on new evidence

 

[exchemist]

I can understand that since it seems that the current evidence supports both models?

And science would have to be able to change over time based on new evidence

Yes. In the case of gravity, there are things that GR can predict correctly which Newtonian gravity can't. Newtonian gravity is far easier to work with and gives perfectly good results for most purposes, but we do need GR on occasions, for example in setting up GPS systems and for a number of astronomical purposes. So Newton's model is treated as a useful approximation.

There's a lot of approximation in chemistry, because the systems we are dealing with are far too complex to be modelled fully in the way a physicist would ideally like. You just need to have at the back of your mind the potential limitations of these approximations. (I find the fun bits are where these approximations break down so that the normal "rules" are not followed, and one has to go to a deeper level to account for what is going on.)

 

[HonestJoe]

No. This is a completely off-topic, absurd conspiracy theory that has already been refuted - at length - on this forum.

To be fair, I think that was meant to be a question of whether the virus evolved or was created by a god.

 

[Salvador]

Evolution isn't an 'opinion'; it is a proven fact/theory.

Evolution is simply significant enough gene pool changes within a species changing over the course of many generations resulting in organisms having genetic traits different enough from their distant ancestors; so that there'd be no possible sexual reproduction occurring between somebody who were to have distant ancestral genetic traits with anybody living in the current population.

I'd like to study the natural mechanisms that make evolution work by way of favorable genetic traits due to mutations more likely getting passed along to the next generation: i.e. - natural selection, genetic drifting, or gene flow.

 

[Salvador]

No. This is a completely off-topic, absurd conspiracy theory that has already been refuted - at length - on this forum. More here: Zoonic overload

Are you aware of the reports in regards to the Wuhan corona virus being leaked out of a Wuhan bio-research-lab by way of a Covid-19 infected virus researcher? This china corona virus might have natural formed, but it could have been accidentally spread by Chinese authoritative negligence.

 

[exchemist]

Are you aware of the reports in regards to the Wuhan corona virus being leaked out of a Wuhan bio-research-lab by way of a Covid-19 infected virus researcher? This china corona virus might have natural formed, but it could have been accidentally spread by Chinese authoritative negligence.

Yes. But a lapse in lab biosecurity (for which there is not so far any evidence) is not remotely the same thing as as a deliberately created, i.e. bioengineered virus, which is the nonsense you were peddling in post 31.

Don't peddle far-right conspiracy theories.

 

[Salvador]

Yes. But a lapse in lab biosecurity (for which there is not so far any evidence) is not remotely the same thing as as a deliberately created, i.e. bioengineered virus, which is the nonsense you were peddling in post 31.

Don't peddle far-right conspiracy theories.

Please let us consider China might have committed bio-terrorism as evident by having closed off Wuhan to other parts of China while allowing SARS-Cov2 infected international flights out of Wuhan to Europe and America.

Knowing the Virus Was Spreading, China Shut Down Domestic Travel to and From Wuhan, Did NOT Stop International Flights

 

[Revoltingest]

I came across this today....its a Flower Mantis.....beautifully designed to be camouflaged on the flowers it lives on.

Science would describe how this just evolved with no intelligent direction at all.

Believers would see an exquisitely crafted creature designed by an intelligent Creator to be invisible to predators but facilitating catching prey of its own.

This creature is as beautiful as the flowers that it walks on.....so what makes the most sense....deliberate and thoughtful creation....or just an accident of nature?

What about this one...

Who could imagine that such beauty could be hidden under a living leaf?

Or this guy who just perfectly blends in with his surroundings....?

How about a bit of floating seaweed?

Spot the owl...

Chameleons are just incredible...

Did nature just fluke these? Or was this camouflage clever and deliberate creation?

I see what you mean.
But I take issue with the term "fluke" because it's used in the singular.
Now were it plural, then you'd be on to something...how I see things.

Analogy time....
Let's consider another system, but simple for illustration purposes:
A big tank of air. And the tank is flexible.
It has trillions of gas molecules, all bouncing off of each other & the
inner walls of our tank. In the blink of an eye, there are gazillions
of such collisions....or "flukes" as it were.
It's just a gas molecule moving in a direction until it bounces off
of something (the tank wall or another molecule) & then moves
in a different direction.

We observe a strange thing...the appearance that they all act together
toward some goal. If we pump more air into the tank, it expands.
All the molecules act together so that....
Pressure x Volume = Some unchanging number....call it X.
In short....
P x V = X
This elegant relationship is called an "emergent property" of gases (Boyle's Law).
It can be fully explained from simple mechanical interaction of gas molecules
(although the physics involves some math I've long since forgotten).
Nothing needs to guide the molecules to explain this emergent property.
(This is actually just part of a more elaborate & elegant property involving
temperature & other factors.)

Now back to evolution, & a simple definition our system (life)....
1) Gazillions of organism interactions over many years...millions & even billions.
2) Some organisms are more successful than others, eg, live longer, are healthier.
3) Successful ones tend to pass on their genes more often than the losers.
4) Random changes to genes happen now & then.
5) A small percentage of these changes make an organism more successful.

Analyzing this system would explain the emergent property of evolution.
As with our simple gas system, I'd expect this more complex system to
yield elegant emergent properties. And they'ed be far more varied,
as your pictures of diverse adaptions show.

Of course, this doesn't say anything about a supreme being.
Evolution should occur whether gods exist or not.
For those who believe in them, I advise considering that they
set up the universe & laws of physics such that evolution would
occur, ie, it is one of their tools.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I came across this today....its a Flower Mantis.....beautifully designed to be camouflaged on the flowers it lives on.

To call it "designed", is pretty much assuming the conclusion

Science would describe how this just evolved with no intelligent direction at all.

But WITH the direction of natural selection, which is a direction and guiding process which creationists and cdesign proponentsists conveniently like to ignore.

Believers would see an exquisitely crafted creature designed by an intelligent Creator to be invisible to predators but facilitating catching prey of its own.

So this "intelligent creator" doesn't like predators? He wants butterflies to easily locate food but not those who eat the butterflies (which supposedly is also by his design)?

How does that make sense?
Are butterflies under some kind "protection program" or something?

This creature is as beautiful as the flowers that it walks on.....so what makes the most sense....deliberate and thoughtful creation....or just an accident of nature?

How "beautifull" a butterlfy is, which fyi is also a subjective opinion and not a matter of objective fact or objective properties of the creature, has no relevance to how it came about.

What DOES have relevance to how it came about, is the evidence. The data you gather in the world. The objective properties of said creature and how those relate to other creatures.

And when we use the empirical data and observations (as opposed to subjective opinion or emotions) to form our conclusion, then the conclusion is evolution. Which is why that is the consensus among mainstream science.

What about this one...

Who could imagine that such beauty could be hidden under a living leaf?

Or this guy who just perfectly blends in with his surroundings....?

How about a bit of floating seaweed?

Spot the owl...

Chameleons are just incredible...

Did nature just fluke these? Or was this camouflage clever and deliberate creation?

Neither.

It's the result of millions of years of reproduction with variation, filtered and "guided" by natural selection.


I note that you didn't bring a SINGLE valid argument in this OP.

Your message amounts to nothing more then awe/emotion, assumed conclusion based on a priori beliefs and strawmanning the actual scientific explanation.

If you have anything more constructive to say....

 

[wellwisher]

Exactly! Were some creationist -- any creationist -- to show me that intelligent design could "out-predict", so to speak, evolutionary theory, I would be compelled to consider intelligent design the superior model, and in all likelihood, closer to the truth.

There can be other means or grounds for deciding between competing notions of what the case might be, but a notion's usefulness in making accurate predictions is more or less the queen of them all.

Evolutionary theory does not make very good predictions. It is better at correlating new observations and then explaining how these also connect to the theory. This is not the same thing as prediction.

Evolution cannot identify, the next example of evolution, before it appears, That would be a prediction. Saying we will see a new virus strain next year, is like saying it will rain next year. This is not very accurate or useful. This is different from showing the chemical makeup of a new virus, before it appears. That would give evolution more credibility as a predictor. In the current science climate, env with evolutionary theory, when a new virus appears there is an after the fact scramble, as though a mystery has begun.

Intelligent Design, in theory, assumes that consciousness can lead genetics. This conscious that is leading is attributed to the consciousness of God. There no reason to believe that God could not make use of the DNA, to trigger and then safety store the needed change. If this schema was extrapolated to the creation itself, then insect consciousness, being aware of is surroundings, and its needs for survival, could help trigger a genetic change in its own facade, for defense in a unique environment.

Humming birds, for example, can change their colors to suit the occasion. This overall affect requires both genes in the DNA and complex wiring to their brains. Their feathers are hollow, and will refract light; rainbow affect, based on the chosen diameter of the hollow, which is subject to their will power. They can alter color or shut the color off. This cascade of connected events shows a connection between the facade and the DNA, mediated by conscious in real time.

It is possible, an insect brain, even without the hollow feathers like the hummingbird, could try to make a change in real time. Some critters will stop moving to appear invisible. Physical changes cannot happen, in this case, since that insect lacks the output mechanism. However, the very attempt to change, will have an impact earlier in the potential camouflage train to the DNA. The hummingbird had to start somewhere.

Human females make changes to the facade in other ways, based on visualization in the mirror. The creative female will imagine a new look to fit the occasion.. Or the child may imagine themselves as invisible. They do not have the output mechanism, but they do have the impulse to try. This may translate to body language that places then under the radar of the adults.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

I cannot understand how anyone might suggest that evolution proceeds purely by 'fluke', if that is what is being suggested here. It would be simply mind-boggling that anyone could do that and still believe they were discussing evolution.

Cdesign proponentsists can't afford to not misrepresent science.

All arguments "in support of" creationism, amount to nothing more then trying to poke holes in scientific explanations. That in itself is already bad enough, because it means that they have no positive case in support of their beliefs... They like to pretend that disproving science, automatically proves their alternative belief.

In any case, it's kind of hard to poke holes in well-established theories while being honest or accurate about what those well-established theories actually say. Especially if those "holes" need to be so big so that it puts the entire theory in question.

You can't really do that with evolution without strawmanning it.