Evolution My ToE

[YoursTrue]

That paper has been cited a mere 38 times in 12 years.
A paper that purports to offer an explanation (please note that Koonin merely made a proposal premised on his view of some evidence - "I propose that most or all major evolutionary transitions that show..."... "A Biological Big Bang (BBB) model is proposed for the major transitions in life's evolution. According to this model...") for a major set of evolutionary changes that garners a mere 38 citations in 12 years is not a very influential paper, and I note that of those 38 citations, 9 are Koonin's.
Gould and Eldgredge's 1977 paper on punctuated equilibria has been cited 3250 times, or about 77 per year.
Point is, Koonin is better known for his theorizing and 'challenging the status quo' than his hard science work.
In this particular paper, you consider it "evidence" even though it is a mere proposal for a model of larger-scale early evolutionary change, and is not a 'challenge' to evolution at all.

I do wonder, though - why do creationists do this so often, find a paper of a personality that says something they like or agree with or can spin to their favor after which they elevate that person or their claim to the level of unimpeachable expert? It gets tiring.

Is there any unimpeachable expert with absolutely certain 100% decisions or estimations, or is the nature of science that which cannot be proved, therefore certainty may only be temporary until something else is discovered?

 

[Dan From Smithville]

You must be responding to someone I ignore...

I thought we might have some common ground to reason on, but it seems you’re not willing to consider any points I make, either theological or scientific.

I didn’t mean to come across as arrogant when I was discussing theology...I was just stating facts, about the reputation of many religions that profess Christianity. And their several conflicting interpretations of how Jesus’ sacrifice accomplishes God’s purpose for mankind.

I think most don’t even know what Jehovah God’s purpose for mankind is... “Thy will be done on Earth” is -shwoop- right over their pulpit.

And I was referring to religions, not necessarily their members.


I think any further reparté right now would be fruitless.

Truly, I wish you the best. Take care.

We were discussing the anti-intellectual nature of creationism. For not meaning to, you carried it across like a natural. I would recommend maintaining a neutral emotional position, especially when dealing with subjects sensitive to yourself.

You are stating your belief. Your belief is not an established fact, except to say that you have one. You do not understand the the difference between objective and subjective. What you believe is only evidence for you. I cannot use it. No one else can use it.

Well, not to seem like I am gloating --I am not--but you did not succeed in supporting your clai m. Unless you come up with some very compelling objective evidence, there isn't anything else to discuss.

Good luck to you as well. I hope one day you find that accepting science is not incompatible with a belief in God and that believing does not require the rules you have chosen to follow.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I don't guess he is speaking to me any more. It is a strange situation. He treated me like an idiot and when it was recognized, he is the one offended. Now all I get are judgement icons as passive/aggressive disapproval.

Ah well, the arrogant are often the most thin-skinned and never more so than those that have no apparent reason for their arrogance.

The creationists are far too easily offended while making incredibly offensive statements. They continually demonstrate that they do not understand the concept of evidence They also seem to know that understanding the concept would harm their ability to argue. Instead of barely plausible deniability they would have to admit that there is massive evidence for the theory of evolution or openly lie. They do not want to quite cross that line yet.

And refute them too often and they put you on ignore.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

The creationists are far too easily offended while making incredibly offensive statements. They continually demonstrate that they do not understand the concept of evidence They also seem to know that understanding the concept would harm their ability to argue. Instead of barely plausible deniability they would have to admit that there is massive evidence for the theory of evolution or openly lie. They do not want to quite cross that line yet.

And refute them too often and they put you on ignore.

I may have spoken too soon or his last post was a farewell. Time will tell.

 

[YoursTrue]

I prefer the more recent article - WHAT ABOUT THE FOSSIL RECORD?.

How is it, that "it is not necessarily easy to "see" macroevolutionary history; there are no firsthand accounts to be read", yet persons are free to speculate that "evolutions goes through rapid diversification at times"?

If we were to say, "God does "this or that", persons would say, we have no evidence that God does anything, because we have not seen it.

It seems to me, any guess is good, so long as it supports the belief of ToE - it's science.
What I find alarming about that, is that, the scientists who want to stick to true science, are discredited when they point out the fact that just declaring a hypothesis true, is not science.

Apparently so. In fact, I have noted that some scientists who declare opposition to the theory of evolution are quite unnerved at the prospect of broadcasting their lack of belief in the theory because of censorship. And when I read about peer review, it seems that it is lacking when it comes to actual analysis.

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Apparently so. In fact, I have noted that some scientists who declare opposition to the theory of evolution are quite unnerved at the prospect of broadcasting their lack of belief in the theory because of censorship. And when I read about peer review, it seems that it is lacking when it comes to actual analysis.

If they are not telling people, then how do you know about it?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Apparently so. In fact, I have noted that some scientists who declare opposition to the theory of evolution are quite unnerved at the prospect of broadcasting their lack of belief in the theory because of censorship. And when I read about peer review, it seems that it is lacking when it comes to actual analysis.

Careful You may be breaking the Ninth Commandment again.

 

[Subduction Zone]

If they are not telling people, then how do you know about it?

Shhhh! It's a secret!

 

[Dan From Smithville]

Careful You may be breaking the Ninth Commandment again.

Apparently there is a creationist translation of the Bible where the Commandments are known as the 10 Flexible Guidelines that can be Applied Arbitrarily or Ignored as Need Dictates.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

He is against slavery.

He clearly isn't. Unambigously.

He does not like the oppression of rich men. He is against the sweatshops and slavery we have today. He will stop the world soon so we can get off.

Yes yes, any day now...

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Not really.

Yes really

It may be a bit like saying
'in 40 miles you will see a bend in the road when you get there, do not turn left, because there is a cliff with no fence that your car will drive over if you do'

No, it's not at all like that, because that can actually be verified.

Where there is a choice in what to do (believe in this case) we are responsible for what choice we make.

Belief is not a choice.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Apparently so. In fact, I have noted that some scientists who declare opposition to the theory of evolution are quite unnerved at the prospect of broadcasting their lack of belief in the theory because of censorship. And when I read about peer review, it seems that it is lacking when it comes to actual analysis.

So which creationist propaganda channel fed you that misinformation?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Really?

Absolutely.

You don’t think it takes faith on your part to believe that land-based mammals “returned” to the ocean?

Indeed. You have no need or use for faith, when you have verifiable and testable evidence.

That those myriad mutations required for such a transition, occurred, despite what little anatomical evidence there really is?

There is a ridiculous amount of anatomical (and genetic and fossil) evience for whale, dolphin, etc ancestors being land crawling mammals. Ignoring it, doesn't make it disappear.

You have your experts, too.

Yes, scientists/professionals are usually experts in the field they specialise in.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

There is not one shred of evidence, or even the most basic logic, that microevolution miraculously result in macroevolution.

There's nothing "miraculous" about the accumulation of many small changes will inevitably result in big changes over time.

Just like there is nothing "miraculous" about accumulating many pennies, will inevitably result in millions of dollars after a while.

1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+....+1 = big number

Why try to use speciation as a crutch, or steping stone? It never results in anything but another species of it's kind.

Just like evolution theory predicts.
If a species would speciate into a completely different species, then evolution theory would be falisified.

You weren't aware of this?
Strange, concidering I am positive that I (and likely, others also) informed you about that several times already.

Disturbing how far persons will go to support a belief in ToE.

Disturbing how dishonest people will become just so they can clinge to their iron age myths and legends.

 

[Polymath257]

The problem with reasoning and observation is that there is no verifiable evidence showing that (1) life began with a unicell that kept emerging or multiplying, and (2) life forms merged, emerged, evolved literally and definitely and distinctly from one type of animal to another. It's just so evident now in my mind, and nothing that a supporter of evolution shows anything else as far as the growth aspect of evolution. One might say that because a dinosaur fossil showed feathers, it means that birds evolved from dinosaurs, but frankly, I no longer 'see' it that way. What I see is that it is possible that some extinct form of dinosaur had feathers, but it does not have to mean that dinosaurs evolved into birds. If I was told in school before I believed what the Bible says that dinosaurs became birds, I would have accepted that. But now -- I don't.
Not sure what you mean that belief in creation was erroneous 200 years ago; not sure what you believe "creationism" is, by the way. It's the same way I asked someone here what is a Christian who claimed to have been a Christian, or believed it in the past, so far no answer. So what you think someone who believes in creation rather than evolution really believes may not be true of all those who do believe in creation rather than evolution in its simplest terms (no Designer).

The 'creationist' system typically believes that species are basically static: they don't evolve. It is also very common to think the world is very young: on the order of 10,000 years or less. often, they also believe in a global flood that killed off most life on Earth. Those positions were all shown to be wrong by the early 1800's.

When the evidence that species in the past were not the same as those now came out, one view that arose was 'Catastrophism', which basically said that the 'global flood' was one of a series of catastrophes that produced mass extinctions. Even this was found to be problematic simply because it got to the place that too many such catastrophes would have been necessary to explain the evidence.

So, we *know* that species in the past were different than those today. Furthermore, the farther you go into the past, the more different the species are, on average (some do keep the same basic form for long times). That lead to the natural idea that species change over time. Since we also know that living things reproduce, it is natural to propose that those changes happen over the course of generations. Furthermore, that proposal fit the evidence that came out of genetics and biochemistry.

So, in your dinosaur example, there was a time when there were no birds, but there were dinosaurs. Later, some of the dinosaurs had feathers. And later still, birds with skeletal structures very similar to those of dinosaurs had feathers. In no other animals do you find the feather structures specific to birds except in some of those dinosaurs.

So, what do you propose happened? No birds, but dinosaurs-->dinosaurs with feathers--->birds with feathers. That is the progression in the fossil record. If birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, what *did* happen?
A

 

[Polymath257]

There's nothing "miraculous" about the accumulation of many small changes will inevitably result in big changes over time.

Just like there is nothing "miraculous" about accumulating many pennies, will inevitably result in millions of dollars after a while.

1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+....+1 = big number

Archimedes principle is a miracle!

 

[Polymath257]

You have your experts, too.

OK, let's compare the experts.

One side has people who actually go into the field to discover fossils, who work in labs, and that publish in peer-reviewed journals where critiques are abundant.

The other side has to sign a statement declaring one particular view is mandatory, they only criticize the work of others, they do no lab work, they lie consistently about the work of others, and they tend to publish in popular books for the propaganda value, and *anything* leading to their mandatory conclusion is considered of value.

It's clear to me which side I consider to be the real experts.

 

[Polymath257]

Is there any unimpeachable expert with absolutely certain 100% decisions or estimations, or is the nature of science that which cannot be proved, therefore certainty may only be temporary until something else is discovered?

Science works by eliminating wrong ideas because the evidence shows they are wrong. It does not and cannot absolutely prove any general statement. It is *always* possible new evidence will show modifications are required.

So, for example, Newton proposed a theory of gravity. That theory worked incredibly well for over 200 years, including the discovery of Neptune. But very small discrepancies were found between the Newtonian predictions and the observations of the motion of Mercury. When Einstein came around, he proposed a *different* theory of gravity that explained those anomalous motions of Mercury. But it *also* agreed with the Newtonian prediction *as an approximation*. In other words, Newton's ideas were 'wrong', but were a good approximation to the more accurate ideas of Einstein.

Now, in spite of being 'wrong', Newton's methods are still used today to get probes to other planets. Why? because they are a very good approximation, in spite of being wrong in detail. They are a good enough approximation to get those probes to other planets: the differences in prediction between Newton and Einstein are very, very small in this case.

This is a good lesson on how science changes: we can never *absolutely* know we have the right picture. But we *can* know that our picture gives the right answers to some degree of approximation. And, when our ideas are found to be wrong, the new picture that arises has to be a *better* approximation: it has to agree with the old ideas to the extent they were tested and give *better* results in other cases.

So, in spite of Newton's ideas being 'wrong', we don't go from Newton's ideas *back* to those of Ptolemy and Aristotle (which were used prior to Newton) because those were a *worse* approximation.

In the same way, the idea that species are basically static (no evolution) was the OLD idea that was common about 200 years ago. It was shown to be wrong and Darwin's ideas gave a mechanism for the observed changes. But Darwin wasn't the last word (there is no last word in science). So while his ideas were a good approximation, Darwin didn't know anything about genetics. So, later, the discoveries of genetics were integrated into the understanding of how species change (this occurred in the 1940-50s). Later, Gould and Eldridge discovered that in *some* cases, the changes between species could happen pretty rapidly (less than 50,000 years), so another modification to the overall viewpoint was adopted.

The goal is to get better and better approximations and thereby learn in more detail how the universe works. At no point can we be certain we have the 'one correct theory'. Instead, we look at the universe, hopefully with more and more refined methods giving more detail, and modify our ideas in response to this new information, getting better and better approximations as we do so.

The idea that species are static and that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old was the OLD idea that was found to be a very bad approximation. it is gone in scientific circles because it was shown to be such a bad approximation. And just like there is no longer debate about whether Ptolemy's ideas were correct, there is no longer debate about whether species are static *within science*.

 

[tas8831]

It is kind of fun to observe the use of
high falutin' terms by people who dont know
what they mean, whether it is science
or something in Latin.

And miss that in accusing others of an
ad hom where there was none, they
are edging into that territory themselves.
Esp. a "lol, ad hom" dismissal of whatever
was said.

But only kind-of amusing
as it gets tiresome.

They definitely are not ready for flatuin' when
they've not yet grasped things like why
science does not do proof, and have not
bothered to find out what ad hom actually
refers to.

Indeed.

YEC Jonathan Sarfati was (and probably still is) well known for accusing people that are not theologians of engaging in "argumentum ad verecundiam" (basically, argument from false authority) when discussing YECism. Brilliant lack of self-awareness, seeing as how he, as a chemist with couple of real publications on optics and such, pontificates on a regular basis on geology, biology, physics, etc.
He was also a big hurler of "ad hom". Yet he was a master of it, dismissing any criticism of YECism by referring to those making such arguments as "misotheists".
They are very thin-skinned when it comes to the supposed transgressions of others, but bask in the glow of doing it themselves on a regular basis.

 

[tas8831]

There is not one shred of evidence, or even the most basic logic, that suggests that somehow "micro-evolution" miraculously stops before hitting "macro-evolution".

Sure there is! Apoptosis

Color me intrigued:


Please explain, without paraphrasing or plagiarizing a YEC/OEC website, and support with documentation, how apoptosis is a logical/real barrier between 'micro' and 'macro' evolution.

And please start by defining microevolution and macroevolution - but be forewarned, macroevolution is not an event, despite a tendency for many creationists to indicate that it is.