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Evolution, maybe someone can explain?

Foxfyre

Member
You have it backwards. Your pet notion is not in the realm of science just because you conceive of it. Testability if what is required to bring an idea into the realm of science. Claims are excluded until there is evidence to support them. This does not mean that we are closing our minds to the claim. It means that without testable criteria, the truth of your notion is indistinguishable from its falsity.
I disagree. The law of gravity existed long before anybody understood it. Microbes existed long before anybody invented a microscope. Craters on the moon and heavenly bodies invisible to the naked eye existed long before anybody invented a telescope. Nobody knew, so far as we know now, that everybody's fingerprint and everybody's DNS is unique until somebody figured that out. Time travel cannot be tested with the technology we have now, but nobody would convince Einstein that the theory of it is not science. We have no way to test the huge gaps in the paleontological record, but any reasonable person can accept that evolution was not part of the process of how we got from point A billions of years ago to the present.

Science does not evolve. It is. Only the knowledge of it evolves.
 

ppp

Well-Known Member
I disagree. The law of gravity existed long before anybody understood it. Microbes existed long before anybody invented a microscope. Craters on the moon and heavenly bodies invisible to the naked eye existed long before anybody invented a telescope. Nobody knew, so far as we know now, that everybody's fingerprint and everybody's DNS is unique until somebody figured that out. Time travel cannot be tested with the technology we have now, but nobody would convince Einstein that the theory of it is not science. We have no way to test the huge gaps in the paleontological record, but any reasonable person can accept that evolution was not part of the process of how we got from point A billions of years ago to the present.
You start by enumerating stuff that we didn't know at some point in time, and in the middle of that do an appeal to authority fallacy with Einstein. But even if I agreed with you about the whole paragraph, nothing n on that paragraph disagrees the ith what I said.

I think you are confusing all of reality for science. Science is tool/process by which we examine reality, and (colloquially) the body of conclusions that we have produced from that tool. Don't confuse the map (science) for the territory (reality)


Science does not evolve. It is. Only the knowledge of it evolves.
Science is the tool that we have created. And it has evolved. We are constantly refining and improving the process. Peer review is only 250 years old and did not become standards till after WW2.
 

Dan From Smithville

The Flying Elvises, Utah Chapter
Staff member
Premium Member
What I mean is that the science we have, the science we know cannot explain or support more than a tiny fraction of what we don't know.
I'm pretty sure I'm not following this. If we don't know, then science can be used to find out. I'm betting you meant "what we do know". But discovering what we don't know and coming to explanations are why we have science in the first place. If we knew, we would need a formal method for discovery.
And all competent and honest scientists I believe will agree with me on that.
You can believe it, but it is on evidence that you will want to rest your claims. Evidence from observation and testing.
"Lack of evidence" is criteria in arriving at some conclusions and/or making many decisions but in most cases it is not settled science.
I agree. Absences of evidence settles nothing and opens the way to look for evidence.
If you announce that you are in love or that today you understood something for the first time or that you don't feel good, we usually have no reason to disbelieve you but there is no known science that you can use to convince us.
I disagree. Those things can be tested. Even informally with limited rigor.

People in love behave in certain ways. They have changes in their biochemistry. One could conclude, upon testing, that someone behaving a certain way with these hormones or chemicals in their blood are likely to be in love. Brain scans could be used to compare those claiming to be in love to those claiming they are not see differences and similarities.

Doctors test if people are feeling good all the time. Medical science. Even the average person has means to test if someone is not feeling well.

I spent my life until I was in my 20's being tested on things I learned. We are always being tested on what we know.
Is the universe we can observe finite or infinite?
What we can observe is finite.
We have no way of knowing.
I agree. Being infinite and looking infinite are the not the same. I'm not even sure how you can know if something is infinite.

Perhaps the universe is infinite or it is finite, but so vast that it appears infinite.
Perhaps the universe we can observe is just a collection of galaxies within a much larger one.
The larger one would be the universe as far as I know.
True science never happens within a closed mind.
Science doesn't progress with a closed mind. Leave the true and not true out. It sounds too much like people trying to disrespect religious beliefs.
"Following the science" is reasonable so long as it is actual science
This assumes that there is an actual and a not actual science and that people can tell the difference. In my experience, most lay people can't tell you what science is and often will cling to pseudoscience or other beliefs and miss science.
and not just a convenient method to use to convince others that wrong is right or whatever.
That is something else.
Science that cannot be questioned is not science at all but rather is dogma.
I'm not sure why you are going into this so much. Are you doing this to demonstrate your state of general understanding. Scientists love to question everything.
I am quite certain that there is far more we don't know about the origins and evolution of the universe we inhabit than what we do know.
I agree. Again, if we knew everything, we would need science. We wouldn't even need to look.
 

Dan From Smithville

The Flying Elvises, Utah Chapter
Staff member
Premium Member
I disagree. The law of gravity existed long before anybody understood it.
The laws did not. Those are a human constructs to describe phenomena that already existed.
Microbes existed long before anybody invented a microscope.
Sure. But biological laws and theories about microbes did not.
Craters on the moon and heavenly bodies invisible to the naked eye existed long before anybody invented a telescope.
I'm not sure that anyone says these things sprang up suddenly without cause. Well, there may be one person, but I don't consider them a meaningful source of discussion.
Nobody knew, so far as we know now, that everybody's fingerprint and everybody's DNS is unique until somebody figured that out.
I'm not seeing what point you are making here. Using the methods of science, these things were discovered.
Time travel cannot be tested with the technology we have now,
We do it all the time. Just in one direction as far as I know.
but nobody would convince Einstein that the theory of it is not science.
You'll have to elaborate and provide some references here.
We have no way to test the huge gaps in the paleontological record,
Keep looking for fossils and other evidence.
but any reasonable person can accept that evolution was not part of the process of how we got from point A billions of years ago to the present.
I see your point. I wasn't sure where you were going with this. Agreed. The fossil record as it is, is sufficient to demonstrate evolution. But it is far from then only evidence.
Science does not evolve. It is. Only the knowledge of it evolves.
It depends on what is meant by evolve. The techniques we use today didn't exist in many cases even 100 years ago.
 

Dan From Smithville

The Flying Elvises, Utah Chapter
Staff member
Premium Member
Comparing apples to oranges here I think.
I disagree. It is a statement that we cannot come to unevidenced conclusions even from a fairly common and widely known phenomenon.
What is observable and known is not the same thing as creating life from what has never lived.
Now this is apples and oranges and confusing. I'm unclear what exactly you are trying to show us. The known and the unknown are not the same thing, but that we do not know doesn't mean we cannot seek to know or that there is nothing to see.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
Sorry it's just most science lovers I see are just as arrogant as religious die hards in believing to know anything to be true.

Try not to spam me again with your triggered ego and please try to argue me about anything science related. You pick whatever argument and whatever side you desire... i should warn you though, I don't lose.
Air ball, no response.
 

Foxfyre

Member
You start by enumerating stuff that we didn't know at some point in time, and in the middle of that do an appeal to authority fallacy with Einstein. But even if I agreed with you about the whole paragraph, nothing n on that paragraph disagrees the ith what I said.

I think you are confusing all of reality for science. Science is tool/process by which we examine reality, and (colloquially) the body of conclusions that we have produced from that tool. Don't confuse the map (science) for the territory (reality)



Science is the tool that we have created. And it has evolved. We are constantly refining and improving the process. Peer review is only 250 years old and did not become standards till after WW2.
Einstein was not used as an appeal to authority Einstein was used as an example of scientific opinion. And I do not accept that science evolves. Science is absolute. It is only our understanding, usually incomplete and often flawed, that evolves.
 

Foxfyre

Member
I'm pretty sure I'm not following this. If we don't know, then science can be used to find out. I'm betting you meant "what we do know". But discovering what we don't know and coming to explanations are why we have science in the first place. If we knew, we would need a formal method for discovery.

You can believe it, but it is on evidence that you will want to rest your claims. Evidence from observation and testing.

I agree. Absences of evidence settles nothing and opens the way to look for evidence.

I disagree. Those things can be tested. Even informally with limited rigor.

People in love behave in certain ways. They have changes in their biochemistry. One could conclude, upon testing, that someone behaving a certain way with these hormones or chemicals in their blood are likely to be in love. Brain scans could be used to compare those claiming to be in love to those claiming they are not see differences and similarities.

Doctors test if people are feeling good all the time. Medical science. Even the average person has means to test if someone is not feeling well.

I spent my life until I was in my 20's being tested on things I learned. We are always being tested on what we know.

What we can observe is finite.

I agree. Being infinite and looking infinite are the not the same. I'm not even sure how you can know if something is infinite.

Perhaps the universe is infinite or it is finite, but so vast that it appears infinite.

The larger one would be the universe as far as I know.

Science doesn't progress with a closed mind. Leave the true and not true out. It sounds too much like people trying to disrespect religious beliefs.

This assumes that there is an actual and a not actual science and that people can tell the difference. In my experience, most lay people can't tell you what science is and often will cling to pseudoscience or other beliefs and miss science.

That is something else.

I'm not sure why you are going into this so much. Are you doing this to demonstrate your state of general understanding. Scientists love to question everything.

I agree. Again, if we knew everything, we would need science. We wouldn't even need to look.
I'm sorry but I don't respond to chopped up posts that destroy content and too often intent of the post. Thanks for understanding.
 

ppp

Well-Known Member
Einstein was not used as an appeal to authority Einstein was used as an example of scientific opinion.
Do you know what an appeal to authority is?
And I do not accept that science evolves. Science is absolute. It is only our understanding, usually incomplete and often flawed, that evolves.
That is just a repetition of your assertion. It does not address any of the points in the post to which you are allegedly replying. You may as well have just folded your arms and said, Nuh-uh.
 

Valjean

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Please do not chop up my posts that destroys context and too often intent.

I haven't been here long enough to observe a great deal, but every participatory website I've ever used has presented a LOT of unreasonable non-science or presents a lot of prejudicial sources to justify what they call 'science.'

To eliminate what is not testable now
from the realm of science is to close the mind, close the book, eliminate all further advancement of knowledge of science and most of everything else.
What's not measurable or testable is not within the domain of science. You can't examine something with no features or physical attributes.
I disagree. The law of gravity existed long before anybody understood it. Microbes existed long before anybody invented a microscope. Craters on the moon and heavenly bodies invisible to the naked eye existed long before anybody invented a telescope. Nobody knew, so far as we know now, that everybody's fingerprint and everybody's DNS is unique until somebody figured that out. Time travel cannot be tested with the technology we have now, but nobody would convince Einstein that the theory of it is not science. We have no way to test the huge gaps in the paleontological record, but any reasonable person can accept that evolution was not part of the process of how we got from point A billions of years ago to the present.

Science does not evolve. It is. Only the knowledge of it evolves.
The laws, microbes and craters existed, with measurable, physical features, whether we had the physical or technological capability to examine them or not. Unlike feelings or emotions, they were always within the purview of science. When the technology became available, science examined.

Why can't we examine the gaps in the paleontological record? We can read about the latest gaps filled in with every edition of the relevant scientific journals.
Reasonable persons accept that evolution wasn't part of Earth's history?
Reasonable persons think. Their beliefs and opinions are formed by critical analysis of established facts.

A reasonable analysis of established facts, from a dozen different disciplines, strongly supports evolution. We use the techniques of evolution in medicine and agriculture all the time. We can demonstrate and observe the mechanisms of evolution. We've seen speciation happen on a human timescale.
Evolution is a firmly established fact

Science does evolve, inasmuch as it develops, grows, expands its technology and knowledge base.
 
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leroy

Well-Known Member
You once again are showing that you tend to argue in bad faith.
I acknowledged the blurryness of the lines at the boundaries - and noted that such will exist at the boundaries of any grouping (paraphyletic or otherwise).
Meanwhile, things like whales and tunas and sharks aren't in such blurry area's at all. The firmly and clearly sit respectively outside and inside the criteria of what makes a fish
Criteria? What criteria? You haven't shown any criteria
What empirical test could one apply to determine if something is a fish?
(paraphyletic or otherwise).
In the case of monophyletic groupsthere is an objective criteria. A whale is a mammal because it has a specific evolutionary history ....you don't have that with fishes
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Interesting claim, but where is your evidence and it is unlikely. Species and body plans evolve and are only found in limited layers. A rare example of this not happening is the Coelacanth that while it is not exactly like its first ancestors is still close. Fishapods such as Tiktaalik would likely only be found in this intermediate area since their niche would have given way to true tetrapods of which many have been found. In fact if there had been later examples the discovery would have been far less significant as all it would have done is pushed back it's origin. But that is basic evolution which contradicts your strawman attempt to divert attention from your failure to understand.
You are wrong at so many levels that is hard to know where to start.



Please enlightened me.......Why is it unexpected to find fishapods in say the Jurassic? Do you really hold that view? Do you what me to explain to you why issent it unexpected?
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
most science lovers I see are just as arrogant as religious die hards in believing to know anything to be true.
Empiricists have a method of deriving knowledge from experience, a means of demonstrating that such ideas are correct, and thus a way of knowing that they are correct.

Faith-based thinkers are not tethered in reality. Their ideas don't come from experience, but rather, from their imaginations. Their unfalsifiable, faith-based beliefs cannot be called knowledge or correct, have no explanatory or predictive power, and this no practical value. They can't be used for anything other than what clergy use them for - to make a living.
I'm trying to help you here man. Lose the ego
This is pretty uninsightful. You, whose ethos has already been undermined by a series of outrageous claims, is offering unsolicited advice to others, and is pointing at the ego of those others for being uninterested.
Please don't tell me what I should do
Also uninsightful, having just barked out orders to others to "lose the ego"
So the majority of the world is wrong because they believe religion over evolution?
Anybody aware of what the theory of evolution is and rejects it for a creationist alternative is making a logical error. The theory has been demonstrated to be correct beyond reasonable doubt. To declare it incorrect is to be unreasonable. Reason doesn't get one to that conclusion, just faith. @Valjean 's words, with which I agree, were, "Some theories, like evolution and heliocentrism, are so well evidenced that disbelieving them would border on absurdity."
So trust can be free, most times is I think. Innocent until proven guilty.
As explained, trust must be earned. Guilty until proven innocent is more apt in this case. We treat a person whose trustworthiness is as yet unknown to us the same way we would treat somebody that we knew was untrustworthy. We're not declaring them untrustworthy, but since there are only two ways to respond to three possibilities - we can trust or not trust people who are known to be trustworthy, known to be untrustworthy, and a middle groups about whom we are currently agnostic. The first two groups are trusted and distrusted respectively. You can treat the third group as you like, but I consider it more prudent to NOT trust them before I know that that is a reasonable thing to do.

Also, innocent until guilty is a legal principle in some parts of the world, and as such applies to judges and juries (and maybe attorneys, although they are expected to be partisan) - not the public. This comes up a lot in Trump discussions, who it seems now may never be tried much less convicted of alleged crimes, but that doesn't stop the public from convicting him in their minds. They are perfectly free to do that, since their judgment has no legal bearing.

They are also morally justified in my opinion. They have no moral duty to reserve judgment until a jury does, nor to agree with the jury if it convicts or acquits.

Incidentally, even the courts don't treat defendants as innocent. Innocent people aren't indicted or tried, aren't incarcerated pending trial don't or need to make bail, don't need to go to court, and don't need attorneys.
I disproved all of it.
Not if you didn't change any minds. Putting aside the problems with the word proof compared to convincingly demonstrated, when you claim to have proved something, you need to have changed at least one mind, and you've only "proved" your point to one person at that point. Proving is a form of teaching, and teaching doesn't occur if there is no learning.

Maybe this analogy will help. A comedian says that he was hysterical last night doing stand-up, but nobody in the audience laughed. Was he funny? Maybe to himself or to another audience, but he wasn't funny in that room at that time.
So is my claim clear? Before expressing your agreement or disagreement do you have any questions on what my claims are.
I thought I was clear to you, Leroy, that I don't intend to go further down this rabbit hole with you.
As boring as this might sound my point is that fish is not a taxonomical term
Yes, boring. Not worth spending days and thousands of words rehashing, especially since the matter has already been brought to a resolution:

As the word fish is almost always used, it refers to a collection of similar marine animals with heads, tails, spines, and endoskeletons, most of which have gills and fins, and most of which lay eggs and are cold-blooded, although some species will straddle categories. Some lay people might include some mollusks and arthropods ("shellfish"), but these are different phyla.

Taxonomically, we use words like monophyletic (and clade), polyphyletic, and paraphyletic to describe the relationships of some groups of living things to one another and to others outside of the group. The word fish in any of its variants can be described using those terms.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
"Following the science" is reasonable so long as it is actual science and not just a convenient method to use to convince others that wrong is right or whatever.
Creationists generally use their Bibles and a literalist interpretation of it to decide which science is "right" and which is "wrong."

Regarding convincing one that evolutionary science, for example, is good science, science is taught in the academic sense, not indoctrinated like religion. Whereas your pastor or Sunday school teacher expect you to believe whatever they say, and will repeat it to you often with admonitions for questioning, then ask you if you believe, and chastise you for not believing, your professor will just present evidence and arguments, test you on your knowledge of them, but never ask you if you believe the science.
Science that cannot be questioned is not science at all but rather is dogma.
As I just described, dogma comes from religions and other faith-based enterprises. Dogma is the set of ideas that one is expected to accept uncritically, which is an aspect of religion, but not science.

What science has a community of experts who have come to their beliefs independently after reviewing evidence, often leading to consensus and a dominant narrative, but if evidence shows that that narrative needs to be revised, it will be. Often, this follows a period of resistance. Individual scientists might become rigid in their opinions and unable to move from a prior position that younger scientists can assimilate. The community of experts will come over eventually, perhaps, as Planck said it, "one funeral at a time."
I am quite certain that there is far more we don't know about the origins and evolution of the universe we inhabit than what we do know.
OK, but so what? Science is making progress every year moving toward whatever its potential to explain as much of reality as can be scientifically explained.

What we don't know about how nature works is relatively unimportant. We may never find a definitive path for the chemical evolution of the last universal common ancestor, but that's fine. We may never unify gravity with the other forced (seems unlikely we won't ever do that), but that's fine, too.

What we DO know, on the other hand, has changed the human condition for the better, although both government and industry have used that knowledge to make the lives of many worse.

Today, our lives are longer (vaccines, nutrition, public health, pacemakers), more functional (eyeglasses, large joint replacements), easier (dishwashers, robotic vacuums), more comfortable (air conditioning), more efficient (computers), and more interesting (Internet, jet travel)
Please do not chop up my posts that destroys context and too often intent.
That's not efficient for the responder. He wants to focus on a particular sentence or paragraph and so needs to isolate it from surrounding and relatively irrelevant content. If you think that you've been misrepresented by the lack of inclusion of omitted text, you can demonstrate that yourself.

You know how to do that, right? You show what was quoted, you show that next to the restored context, and if you are correct, that will show that the contextectomy did indeed lead to misrepresentation. The classic example refers to the words "there is no God" in scripture. The missing context is the first three words, "the fool says," which clearly change the meaning of the isolated phrase.
Science does not evolve. It is. Only the knowledge of it evolves.
Science is knowledge. The word derives from the Latin for knowing:

View attachment 100161

Science is both a method and the body of knowledge generated to date using that method. Both evolve.
Einstein was not used as an appeal to authority Einstein was used as an example of scientific opinion.
That's what an appeal to authority is, since Einstein was a scientific authority and considered an authority by many regarding all thinking, which is why he was asked to be Israel's second president in 1952. His opinion carried weight that yours and mine never have or will.
"Truth" is something you feel in your bones when logic and visceral knowledge agree.
Disagree. What you call a feeling in one's bones and then visceral knowledge cannot be considered truth, knowledge, or correct. Those words can only meaningfully apply to that which is demonstrably the case. Empiricism is the only path to knowledge about how the world works and how it affects us.

What you are describing is intuition, which is notoriously unreliable as a path to truth or knowledge. It's better than ideas believed uncritically by faith, but not as good as empiricism. Pure reason is a path to mathematical truth including syllogism and the rules of inference (logic, reason), but though correct, these ideas are useless ideas until applied empirically.
 

Dan From Smithville

The Flying Elvises, Utah Chapter
Staff member
Premium Member
I'm sorry but I don't respond to chopped up posts that destroy content and too often intent of the post. Thanks for understanding.
It is a common practice to respond directly to points made within a post. It is done for clarity and distinction. While I don't agree that your opinion here reflects the post you are responding to, that is your business to respond or not. The points of my post still stand.
 

Foxfyre

Member
Do you know what an appeal to authority is?

That is just a repetition of your assertion. It does not address any of the points in the post to which you are allegedly replying. You may as well have just folded your arms and said, Nuh-uh.
My assertion is my argument. I don't require anybody agree with me but so far nobody has come up with any better argument. So oh well. Do have a lovely day.
 
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