Evolution My ToE

[ecco]

Is it the belief that there actually was a form of life that was an ancestor of all life on earth?
I’m not convinced either way, but it seems more likely to me that there wasn’t.

Then, specifically, what is it that you propose? What evidence do you have to support your beliefs?

 

[ecco]

If you’re talking about what the researchers themselves are saying, I think that most of them would agree that constructing trees of life is based on assumptions and involves a lot guesswork and made up stories.

What kind of guesswork are you referring to? Examples.
What kind of made up stories are you referring to? Examples.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I am not sure what you are trying to say. Perhaps you are saying that the idea of universal common ancestry (UCA), is considered the only, and best current model for explaining the diversity of life on earth, but if you are asking what my main point is, I would say, it is basically this : There is no verifiable evidence that can demonstrate that the circumstantial evidence gathered, really supports the idea of UCA.
So really, it is not a scientific fact. It is nothing more than a belief... similar to a religious belief.

And once again you demonstrate that you do not even understand the concept of evidence.

Tell me, why do you run away from the offer to discuss this concept? Is it because you know that you just told a lie and have to hide that fact from yourself? In fact you told more than one lie in this post of yours.

 

[Audie]

I think that most or all of the researchers might actually believe that there really was a form of life that was an ancestor of all life on earth today. That’s their personal opinion. Most or all of them might try to keep their personal opinions out of their discussions about their research, but maybe they don’t always succeed. What the discussions are about is the pros and cons of different ways of arranging all plant and animal species in a diagram. They’re all agreeing more or less on picturing the top part of it as a tree with branches representing lines of ancestry. They’re all agreeing to have something at the bottom that they call a “universal common ancestor.” I don’t actually see any harm in that, other than being a waste of time and ink.

The tree of life is a simplified way of expressing
a concept to beginners.

You seem to think serious resesrchers are a buncha time
wasting dufus who are busy drawing trees and arguing
about them.

That is not even remotely more than a cartoon
version. "What the discussions are about", no.

You and the most hardcore fundy and our selff-
styled "mystics" are alike in your
notion that you not merely know enough to offer
a qualified thought here and there, but that you
have a view out ahead of and above them ol' time-
wasting narrow vision reasearchers.

 

[Audie]

And once again you demonstrate that you do not even understand the concept of evidence.

Tell me, why do you run away from the offer to discuss this concept? Is it because you know that you just told a lie and have to hide that fact from yourself? In fact you told more than one lie in this post of yours.

Why? See brittle rigid construct.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Why? See brittle rigid construct.

I know, and I understand it a little bit. I recently started a thread where an ex-JW called into the Atheist Experience. His biggest fear was dissociation, a tool wielded by the JW's against their members that begin to see the light. It goes so far as forcing family members to shun their own. It is a rather evil cult to say the least at times.

 

[Jim]

I am not sure what you are trying to say. Perhaps you are saying that the idea of universal common ancestry (UCA), is considered the only, and best current model for explaining the diversity of life on earth, but if you are asking what my main point is, I would say, it is basically this : There is no verifiable evidence that can demonstrate that the circumstantial evidence gathered, really supports the idea of UCA.
So really, it is not a scientific fact. It is nothing more than a belief... similar to a religious belief.

Sometimes the idea of UCA might be that, a belief similar to a religious belief. I don’t know if you think that what you’re saying is opposed to what researchers are saying or not, but if you do, I’m disagreeing with that. I haven’t seen any researchers saying that LUCA is a proven incontrovertible fact. Most of the research articles that I’ve seen call it a “hypothesis,” and sometimes a “metaphor.”

Doolittle calls it “problematic,” “uncertain,” “a circularity” and “dreams of LUCA” that gene sequencing promised but never delivered, and says that it’s “in jeopardy.” He says that after Darwin it was often “assumed without proof,” and that evolutionary concepts were developed to justify existing methods of taxonomy.

What Is the Tree of Life?

 

[Jim]

I am not sure what you are trying to say.

I’m trying to say that if you think that the researchers are claiming to have proof that there there really was a universal common ancestor, I’m disagreeing with you. It’s an open question for me how much they actually believe it, but I don’t see any of them except possibly one or two claiming that any of the research has proved it. I see some of them explicitly denying that anyone has proved it.

 

[Audie]

I’m trying to say that if you think that the researchers are claiming to have proof that there there really was a universal common ancestor ancestor, I’m disagreeing with you. It’s an open question for me how much they actually believe it, but I don’t see any of them except possibly one or two claiming that any of the research has proved it. I see some of them explicitly denying that anyone has proved it.

You believrrs in magic kerp claiming scientist claim "proof".
Show us evidence anyone says "proved". You or npeace or
Hockey or any of you. Lets see it.


How after all this time and opportunity to know better,
can you guys posdibly not understand why science does
not and cannot do proof???

Should hardly be more necessary to say uca is unprovred than
to say water is wet.

As for facts, (or proof) you guys serm to enjoy semantic games, and
taking an example of sloppy or informal use by an individual
to generalize about how all sciebntists ( and atheists) are
variously stupid and dishonest.

You guys surely know this behaviour on your part is unreasonable
and dishonst, but keep right on doing it.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

If "house divided" (whatever a "house" might
be) is reliably true (regardless of what degree
of division on what) then Chridtianity cannot
stand.

Right on, I agree!
Titus 1:16 applies to those institutions which have taken sides in war & have killed their brothers, disobeying Christ’s command at John 13:34... that’s most of Christendom, right there....

If you had even one fact contrary to ToE
you'd surely have posted it by now.

I’ve been posting it, for years: the sudden appearance of fully developed / adapted organisms in the Cambrian Explosion.

 

[nPeace]

@Jim
For many scientists - probably those who are not debating Creationist, UCA is unverified, and to some, unverifiable, but I am not addressing those scientists. I'm addressing posters on RF who make statements like "evolution is a fact", and they are including the idea of UCA.

There is however, a difference between UCA, and LUCA.
UCA is included in these statements... "The central idea of biological evolution is that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor... All life on Earth shares a last universal common ancestor (LUCA)"

LUCA can be thrown out tomorrow, and there would still be UCA.
Evolution - Wikipedia
Common descent
All organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral gene pool. Current species are a stage in the process of evolution, with their diversity the product of a long series of speciation and extinction events. The common descent of organisms was first deduced from four simple facts about organisms: First, they have geographic distributions that cannot be explained by local adaptation. Second, the diversity of life is not a set of completely unique organisms, but organisms that share morphological similarities. Third, vestigial traits with no clear purpose resemble functional ancestral traits. Fourth, organisms can be classified using these similarities into a hierarchy of nested groups, similar to a family tree.
Modern research has suggested that, due to horizontal gene transfer, this "tree of life" may be more complicated than a simple branching tree since some genes have spread independently between distantly related species. To solve this problem and others, some authors prefer to use the "Coral of life" as a metaphor or a mathematical model to illustrate the evolution of life. This view dates back to an idea briefly mentioned by Darwin but later abandoned.

As you can see, they changed the tree to a coral. They is no certainty of LUCA.

 

[nPeace]

@Jim don't mind the hangups some here have with the word prove. Scientists use it. Just read the journals, and you will see it. They are not idiots. They know what they mean, and when it may be appropriate to use it.

 

[Hockeycowboy]

Is it okay for me to come in late in this conversation and ask precisely what you’re opposing?

Sure! Come on in to it!

Is it the belief that there actually was a form of life that was an ancestor of all life on earth? I’m not convinced either way, but it seems more likely to me that there wasn’t.

That’s it...well, the biggest disagreement, anyways.


Me neither.

 

[night912]

Nowhere did the bible tell Israel or anyone else to beat slaves to death or even treat them unfairly!

I never said that the bible told Israel to beat slaves to death. I said the bible told Israel how to own slaves. Therefore the bible/god is not against slavery.

 

[Astrophile]

@Jim
For many scientists - probably those who are not debating Creationist, UCA is unverified, and to some, unverifiable, but I am not addressing those scientists. I'm addressing posters on RF who make statements like "evolution is a fact", and they are including the idea of UCA.

There is however, a difference between UCA, and LUCA.
UCA is included in these statements... "The central idea of biological evolution is that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor... All life on Earth shares a last universal common ancestor (LUCA)"

LUCA can be thrown out tomorrow, and there would still be UCA.
Evolution - Wikipedia
Common descent
All organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor or ancestral gene pool. Current species are a stage in the process of evolution, with their diversity the product of a long series of speciation and extinction events. The common descent of organisms was first deduced from four simple facts about organisms: First, they have geographic distributions that cannot be explained by local adaptation. Second, the diversity of life is not a set of completely unique organisms, but organisms that share morphological similarities. Third, vestigial traits with no clear purpose resemble functional ancestral traits. Fourth, organisms can be classified using these similarities into a hierarchy of nested groups, similar to a family tree.
Modern research has suggested that, due to horizontal gene transfer, this "tree of life" may be more complicated than a simple branching tree since some genes have spread independently between distantly related species. To solve this problem and others, some authors prefer to use the "Coral of life" as a metaphor or a mathematical model to illustrate the evolution of life. This view dates back to an idea briefly mentioned by Darwin but later abandoned.

As you can see, they changed the tree to a coral. They is no certainty of LUCA.

This is all very well, but it doesn't change the fact that we share common ancestors with apes and that our most recent common ancestor with gorillas lived 8-10 million years ago - Homininae - Wikipedia .

 

[nPeace]

This is all very well, but it doesn't change the fact that we share common ancestors with apes and that our most recent common ancestor with gorillas lived 8-10 million years ago - Homininae - Wikipedia .

Is it "all very well"? Then how can it be not all very well? Can't be both, can it?
Fact and fiction are not the same. Fact and belief are not the same.
What you just said, is a belief - not a fact. Are you describing fact as Stephen Jay Gould put it? He describes fact in science as meaning data, not absolute certainty but "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent".
That's his opinion. Should we call it a scientific opinion? Lol.

What would be more accurate for you to say is, "It does not change the fact that the theory exist that we share common ancestors with apes and that our most recent common ancestor with gorillas lived 8-10 million years ago"... and you believe that.

That's okay by me. I already know you have a belief. That's what I said before. Theories of evolution provide a provisional explanation for what we observe - the facts.

Understandably Atheists desperately want their beliefs to be fact, but that's wishful thinking.
A fact is a thing that is known or proved to be true. See what I mean @Jim.

 

[Audie]

Right on, I agree!
Titus 1:16 applies to those institutions which have taken sides in war & have killed their brothers, disobeying Christ’s command at John 13:34... that’s most of Christendom, right there....


I’ve been posting it, for years: the sudden appearance of fully developed / adapted organisms in the Cambrian Explosion.

Divided opinion on details of ToE does not stand will not
make it "fall". Your cliche is of no value to your argument.

What would be an organism that is not "fully developed"?
I have asked that for years and creos go silent.

Please explain what you mean by fully developed,
how you know it is fully developed, how you can tell
it could not develop further, etc.

"Fully adapted" is similarly problematic, prease exprain.

As for "sudden appearance" (however fast that was)
could you fill in a few details since you seem familiar
with your topic after years of
posting about it.

How fast is sudden?
What would be a not-"fully" developed plant or animal
be like?

And-
How would you account for the ( sudden) discovery
of, say, a single bone of some mysterious animal,
with no other examples of its kind ever seen?

This sort of thing is quite common. What does it
mean?

These are serious questions, plz give it a thoughtful answer.

 

[Audie]

Then, specifically, what is it that you propose? What evidence do you have to support your beliefs?

You will never get an answer.

 

[Audie]

@Jim don't mind the hangups some here have with the word prove. Scientists use it. Just read the journals, and you will see it. They are not idiots. They know what they mean, and when it may be appropriate to use it.

Really? Lets see you give examples.

You seem clueless, thinking it is a "hang up" to
object to your misrepresentation of science.

We do of course get it that you desperately want your
fairy tales to be true, but still, it strikes mr as dishonourable
to use misrepresentation, distortion, and other degrees
of falsehood.

Of course, that such are all one has to defend the
Truth of God and all other aspects of reality does
make it understandable if not admirable.


Scientific Proof Is A Myth

Proof - RationalWiki

Etc. You are wasting your time and residual
credibility on this hang up YOU have re
proof in science.

 

[dad]

Did you really just call yourself and your fellow fundamentalists demonstrably ignorant? Really?!?

I know you are but what am I?