Intelligent design, my version.

[Sapiens]

Sorry, haven't had time to read the whole thread but I am interested in the topic.

Then I suggest that you do so prior to reeling off bizarre opinions and subject that you are "interested" in in such a desultory fashion.

To my logic....intelligent design requires an intelligent designer.

And what about non-intelligent design? Is a intelligent designer required to tell each and every stream, trickle, creek, river and current where and when to flow or can we leave that up to gravity and the shape of the topography?

What implements do humans use for a specific purpose wasn't designed and assembled by other humans? We don't expect to pick our wristwatches off a tree or our smartphones from a bush do we?

Many, starting with clubs.

Even a simple mousetrap requires a semi-intelligent mind to assemble the components in the correct order. The components themselves, no matter how simple, needed someone to design them and the assembly then makes the product usable.

Yes, a spring style mousetrap is designed by a person, but my favorite mousetrap, a cat is not, except for "pure-bred" cats, who are designed by people and tend to be lousy mousers in my experience.

Think about a computer. How many components are required to make a working model that achieves all the tasks that it was designed to perform? If you threw all the components together in a washing machine for millions of years, what are the odds that a fully functioning computer would emerge at the end?

I'd say that the odds approach zero, why are you proposing such a damn fool experiment anyway?

Even if you have all the components just come together by ransom chance (more zeros than would fit in a thick Encyclopedia) would the computer work without a power source? Did the power source need to be constructed by someone? Did it require further effort to bring the power to the computer...we could go on and on.....but you catch my drift. Just the human brain alone, more complex than any super-computer, could never be the product of blind chance. Not to mention the other amazing systems operating in living beings.

I know of no one who has ever suggested that either a computer or a human brain were the product of blind chance, do you? Please tell me who (and when).

Organic evolution does not exist as a proven fact....it is human theory based on limited human thinking and pseudo-science. It is quite simply not provable by any scientific method other than educated guessing and speculation. Read the papers and articles for yourself and see how many times the words and phrasing are suggestion, guesses...not fact. "Might have" "could have" and "this leads us to believe that..." Are not scientific facts, but pure speculation.

There you are simply wrong, but that is likely because you've been fed a line of BS like the foolishness you've been spouting up to now concerning computer parts and washing machines. Evolution holds the rank of a "theory," Please go learn what a scientific theory is and report back. As far as "the words and phrasing" of scientific papers are concerned, that stems not from confusion or a lack of surety but rather from politeness and a long tradition that requires the use of the third person and the passive voice.

Every piece of "evidence" that I have seen as an example of organic evolution proved to be "adaptation" within a species and stretched beyond reasonable limits to "prove" science has the answers. It clearly doesn't....regardless of the scientific jargon used to describe it.

It is rather difficult to refute a claim that is not really made. Please provide a specific example.

If this ability to adapt to the environment is programmed into the genetics of all created beings, then what is the problem with believing in a super-intelligent designer? Who can quantify God? Who are mere humans to relegate him to the realms of fantasy and declare that we don't need him to explain our existence?

The primary issue is that there is no need to invoke such a thing. What you are engaged in here is what is know as a logical fallacy, specifically, an "argument from ignorance." Look it up.

Are we only trying to prove our own superiority....that we are too smart to acknowledge him? Do we need him to go away so we don't have to follow his commands?

No, we have no evidence of any sort of the existence of such a being. Those who claim to believe in such a being must tie themselves up in all sorts of illogical knots in order to try and make a case for it.

Whatever the reason...it is a complete and utter waste of time to squabble about it. If God exists...we owe him something. If he doesn't, our existence and future are looking pretty bleak. We can only expect more of the same.....doesn't exactly inspire confidence does it?

That's also a logical fallacy, this time know as a false dichotomy.

Son, your education is sorely lacking and your preacher based sources are idiots who have ill prepared you to venture forth and argue their case.

 

[Lyndon]

Non intelligent design: the nuclear bomb, TNT, Internet Porn.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

And what about non-intelligent design?

Also requires a designer. By definition. Which is what makes the original statement you responded to as trivially true as it is obviously true. If it is designed, there was a designer. However, the fact that humans have evolved to see patterns where none exist and to make analogies allows us to "see" rules, planning, "design", and so forth, where there none exists. I vaguely recall an experiment I wish I could remember the details of, but it involved something like a card game, only there were no actual rules. The researchers pretty much payed out or didn't (I believe) arbitrarily, yet the participants all thought that they had "learned" how the game works. Why? The same reason we compare human designs (and all their properties that show intent, planning, and a "mind" behind them) with life & the universe: we evolved to see patterns and make such connections, so we see them when they aren't there.

 

[outhouse]

Also requires a designer. By definition. Which is what makes the original statement you responded to as trivially true as it is obviously true. If it is designed, there was a designer. However, the fact that humans have evolved to see patterns where none exist and to make analogies allows us to "see" rules, planning, "design", and so forth, where there none exists. I vaguely recall an experiment I wish I could remember the details of, but it involved something like a card game, only there were no actual rules. The researchers pretty much payed out or didn't (I believe) arbitrarily, yet the participants all thought that they had "learned" how the game works. Why? The same reason we compare human designs (and all their properties that show intent, planning, and a "mind" behind them) with life & the universe: we evolved to see patterns and make such connections, so we see them when they aren't there.

Exactly.

No place in any part of nature, not one aspect of any sort in any way, can we attribute anything to any of the thousands of deities ancient men have created in the past.

 

[JayJayDee]

Seventh day Adventists, and Jehovah's Witnesses do not believe in the soul, they believe when you die, you sleep entirely unconscious till the resurrection, when God miraculously recreates your rejuvenated body from scratch. A bit hard from me to swallow, but interesting nonetheless.

Actually, we do believe in "the soul" but the Bible does not present it the way most people think.

In the Bible, the word "soul" is used to describe a living breathing creature. This term is never used to describe a disembodied conscious part of man that departs the body at death. That belief was adopted from pagan Greek teachings that infiltrated both Christianity and Judaism in the early centuries. There is no teaching of an immortal soul in the OT (Eccl 9:5, 10) and references to those who go to heaven in the NT are not souls. These are the ones whom Jesus resurrects as spirits to enable them to dwell in heaven. Flesh and blood cannot go there. (1 Cor 15:50)

A soul is not a spirit and a spirit is not a soul. They are two completely different things. The Bible contains a simple formula...body + spirit (breath) = soul (the whole person) Neither the soul nor the spirit can exist without the body.

1 Pet 3:18 says that Jesus was "raised in the spirit", not the flesh, so those chosen to rule with Christ in heaven will also be raised in invisible spiritual bodies. They die a death like his and are raised in the same manner as their Lord. His manifestations after his resurrection were materialisations conducted to reinforce the fact that he had been raised from the dead. Jews were forbidden to communicate with spirits, so he had to manifest himself in the flesh so that they would believe. He remained for 40 days after his resurrection, but there is no record of him staying with the ones he had as his constant companions for three and a half years. Rather it speaks of him only "appearing" to them.

"Sleeping in death" is what Paul spoke about and also Jesus when he was called to save his friend Lazarus and the young girl he resurrected. (John 11:11-14; Mark 5:39)

There is no one resurrected to heaven before Christ returns....

1 Thessalonians 4:13-16 (NASB) "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first."

This is called "the first resurrection" by the apostle John (Rev 20:6) These will be "kings and priests" who will reign with Christ for 1,000 years.

According to Paul, when Jesus comes back, he was to call those who are chosen to rule in his kingdom with the voice of an archangel and only then will those "dead in Christ" rise. They haven't gone anywhere...they were just "sleeping".

Those who are not chosen to rule with Christ will also be resurrected but not to heaven. (John 5:28, 29) Jesus calls them out of their graves, which are on earth. The heavenly kings will have earthly subjects. (Rev 21:1-5)

Once you put down the immortal soul teaching, it all makes sense. When you are given the idea that death is not really death, but a continuation of life, then you have to invent places for "dead souls" to go. The Bible doesn't do that, because all the dead are simply asleep. They haven't gone anywhere.

 

[Bunyip]

I'll take that as an admission you cannot back your previous claim.

I never suggested I had any scientific evidence of theistic evolution. It's not a matter of different evidence but how the same evidence is interpreted.

I did back my my claim. You are just trying to infer that I made a claim I did not make.

 

[Bunyip]

Evolution is at its heart a matter of fitness. While the definition of fitness is (especially in recent years) somewhat a matter of disagreement, essentially it is a measure of an organisms propensity/ability to produce offspring (the most common definition is actually not a matter of propensity but defined in terms of actual offspring, but the point is the same: the better adapted its environment an organism is, the more likely it is to survive long enough to reproduce and succeed in doing so).

Variability is plentiful in part because environments very over space and time. Thus traits that increase an organisms fitness in one environment would be maladaptive in another. However, among the most common and certainly most "fit" organisms on the planet are those that are also the oldest. The "vast diversity" we find is because many traits are "selected" given a specific environment. The most famous example is perhaps Darwin's finches. The changes in the beaks size and structure were the result of evolutionary processes that selected out those finches in a particular environment with beaks that better enabled them to access food in that environment.

Not all adaptive traits are that specific, or anywhere near that specific. We do not have antibodies that are specific to X or Y pathogen. Rather, particular cells assemble gene fragments together to form a custom-made antibody specific to a given pathogen.

The more an organism is able to survive with minimal variation in maximally variable environments, the less variability we will find. It turns out that the organisms which are in fact the least variable are also those which are able to survive with minimal variation in maximally variable environments, because the traits they possess that enable their survival depend minimally on the specific environment (they are generally "adaptive"). So, while fitness functions are evaluated specific to specific environment, this is because for the most part evolution has tended towards the selection of environmentally specific adaptive traits and thus decreased "general fitness".

Evolution has no direction. The term is misleading, in fact, because before the theory and still today (outside of its relation to evolutionary theory) it implies progress (or change in a positive/better/superior direction). Species both increase AND decrease in complexity over time. The vast majority of life is utterly incapable of the kind of learning that anything with a cortex has, because like virtually every other even so general a trait as is intelligence, it is not so universally beneficial that all species evolve to be more and more intelligent. Too often, we think of evolution as a process of change and adaption itself rather than the success of changes/mutations and how/whether resulting traits are adaptive.

Why has a process which is defined for the most part by the mechanisms through which the "fit" survive resulted in a vast decrease in the average fitness among species due in no small part to the "vast diversity" we find among life forms?

Well it didn't. This 'average fitness' notion of yours is absurd - most species fit a specific niche. There is no decrease in the 'average fitness - all species fit into specific niches - none can live anywhere.

 

[Bunyip]

It most certainly is "far off". All elements do not "come from hydrogen" in any sense, including reference to particle physics or the big bang. Almost 2 minutes after the big bang (according to the Standard Model), the first elements were able to form, and hydrogen was one of these, but it formed alongside the others and it is composed (made from) the same things that other were then and are now. Simplistically, electrons, neutrons, and protons (that's the grade school version and good enough for our purposes). That hydrogen is so abundant doesn't mean other elements "come from it". Nor does the small number of atomic constituents somehow make this statement sensical, as apart from anything else the most common isotope doesn't have any neutrons (deuterium does, but the elements do not come from this isotope of hydrogen nor any other).

Almost the whole of particle physics is devoted to explaining what atomic structures "come from" in terms not only of particles but of forces, and it was changes two both that allowed elements (and atoms) to form, and it will be changes to both that will eventually- ~10^100 years - result in the return to a universe of particles (only instead of extremely hot, brilliant, & dense it will be cold, dark, and sparse).

You missed the point - all elements come from the same simple building blocks - but those basic building blocks are still abundant. Just as all life came from the same primitive organisms, but those primitive organisms are still abundant. So that the primitive precursors still exist is neither here nor there in terms of evolutionary theory.

 

[Lyndon]

Actually, we do believe in "the soul" but the Bible does not present it the way most people think.

In the Bible, the word "soul" is used to describe a living breathing creature. This term is never used to describe a disembodied conscious part of man that departs the body at death. That belief was adopted from pagan Greek teachings that infiltrated both Christianity and Judaism in the early centuries. There is no teaching of an immortal soul in the OT (Eccl 9:5, 10) and references to those who go to heaven in the NT are not souls. These are the ones whom Jesus resurrects as spirits to enable them to dwell in heaven. Flesh and blood cannot go there. (1 Cor 15:50)

A soul is not a spirit and a spirit is not a soul. They are two completely different things. The Bible contains a simple formula...body + spirit (breath) = soul (the whole person) Neither the soul nor the spirit can exist without the body.

1 Pet 3:18 says that Jesus was "raised in the spirit", not the flesh, so those chosen to rule with Christ in heaven will also be raised in invisible spiritual bodies. They die a death like his and are raised in the same manner as their Lord. His manifestations after his resurrection were materialisations conducted to reinforce the fact that he had been raised from the dead. Jews were forbidden to communicate with spirits, so he had to manifest himself in the flesh so that they would believe. He remained for 40 days after his resurrection, but there is no record of him staying with the ones he had as his constant companions for three and a half years. Rather it speaks of him only "appearing" to them.

"Sleeping in death" is what Paul spoke about and also Jesus when he was called to save his friend Lazarus and the young girl he resurrected. (John 11:11-14; Mark 5:39)

There is no one resurrected to heaven before Christ returns....

1 Thessalonians 4:13-16 (NASB) "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first."

This is called "the first resurrection" by the apostle John (Rev 20:6) These will be "kings and priests" who will reign with Christ for 1,000 years.

According to Paul, when Jesus comes back, he was to call those who are chosen to rule in his kingdom with the voice of an archangel and only then will those "dead in Christ" rise. They haven't gone anywhere...they were just "sleeping".

Those who are not chosen to rule with Christ will also be resurrected but not to heaven. (John 5:28, 29) Jesus calls them out of their graves, which are on earth. The heavenly kings will have earthly subjects. (Rev 21:1-5)

Once you put down the immortal soul teaching, it all makes sense. When you are given the idea that death is not really death, but a continuation of life, then you have to invent places for "dead souls" to go. The Bible doesn't do that, because all the dead are simply asleep. They haven't gone anywhere.

Sorry my mistake, thanks for correcting me and explaining your view so clearly.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

You missed the point - all elements come from the same simple building blocks

Which you could have said. You didn't. Instead, you said something wildly inaccurate about basic chemistry. Also, those building blocks are not simple. If you'd like, I can link you to a Stanford lecture on particle physics that is accessible and point you to the time interval in which this is covered so that you need not watch the entire lecture.

Just as all life came from the same primitive organisms, but those primitive organisms are still abundant.

"Primitive" is somewhat loaded (it hearkens back to a time when evolution implied even for experts some amount of directionality), but ok. It's irrelevant to what I said, as I outlined in my post after that which you quoted from.

 

[Bunyip]

Which you could have said. You didn't. Instead, you said something wildly inaccurate about basic chemistry. Also, those building blocks are not simple. If you'd like, I can link you to a Stanford lecture on particle physics that is accessible and point you to the time interval in which this is covered so that you need not watch the entire lecture.

So you get the point I was making it take it? That the simple progenitors remain is not an issue.

"Primitive" is somewhat loaded (it hearkens back to a time when evolution implied even for experts some amount of directionality), but ok. It's irrelevant to what I said, as I outlined in my post after that which you quoted from.

You know what I meant by primitive - just substitute archaea if it confuses you. Perhaps another member is interested to discuss your issue with you?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Well it didn't. This 'average fitness' notion of yours is absurd

You may wish to write to the editors of Science (you know, that "pseudo-science" publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science). They actually published on this "absurd" notion:
"selection acts to increase the relative abundance of defectors. After some time, cooperators vanish from the population. Remarkably, however, a population of only cooperators has the highest average fitness, whereas a population of only defectors has the lowest. Thus, natural selection constantly reduces the average fitness of the population. Fisher's fundamental theorem, which states that average fitness increases under constant selection, does not apply here because selection is frequency-dependent:"
Nowak, M. A. (2006). Five rules for the evolution of cooperation. Science, 314(5805), 1560-1563.

"The average fitness of the population would therefore be expected to increase over time. This is often pictured as a steady ascent on a so-called fitness landscape."
Nowak, M. A., & Sigmund, K. (2004). Evolutionary dynamics of biological games. science, 303(5659), 793-799.

And I guess the largest scientific publishing company around needs to keep better track of the peer-reviewed volumes it puts out:

"For instance,

is the average fitness across individuals in a population, and [[φ,w]] is the covariance, across all individuals in the population, between phenotype and fitness."
Rice, S. H., Papadopoulos, A., & Harting, J. (2011). Stochastic Processes Driving Directional Evolution. in P. Pontarotti (ed.) Evolutionary Biology: Concepts, Biodiversity, Macroevolution, and Genome Evolution. Springer.

I could go on, but I'll wait to see how you write off, mischaracterize, or otherwise dismiss the above the way you did after claiming that all elements come from hydrogen.

There is no decrease in the 'average fitness - all species fit into specific niches - none can live anywhere.

I never said anywhere. Just that there are those species which can survive just about anywhere, and they've been here the longest and show the least variability, while increases in variability tend to ensure species' extinction.

 

[Bunyip]

You may wish to write to the editors of Science (you know, that "pseudo-science" publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science). They actually published on this "absurd" notion:
"selection acts to increase the relative abundance of defectors. After some time, cooperators vanish from the population. Remarkably, however, a population of only cooperators has the highest average fitness, whereas a population of only defectors has the lowest. Thus, natural selection constantly reduces the average fitness of the population. Fisher's fundamental theorem, which states that average fitness increases under constant selection, does not apply here because selection is frequency-dependent:"
Nowak, M. A. (2006). Five rules for the evolution of cooperation. Science, 314(5805), 1560-1563.

"The average fitness of the population would therefore be expected to increase over time. This is often pictured as a steady ascent on a so-called fitness landscape."
Nowak, M. A., & Sigmund, K. (2004). Evolutionary dynamics of biological games. science, 303(5659), 793-799.

And I guess the largest scientific publishing company around needs to keep better track of the peer-reviewed volumes it puts out:

"For instance,

is the average fitness across individuals in a population, and [[φ,w]] is the covariance, across all individuals in the population, between phenotype and fitness."
Rice, S. H., Papadopoulos, A., & Harting, J. (2011). Stochastic Processes Driving Directional Evolution. in P. Pontarotti (ed.) Evolutionary Biology: Concepts, Biodiversity, Macroevolution, and Genome Evolution. Springer.

I could go on, but I'll wait to see how you write off, mischaracterize, or otherwise dismiss the above the way you did after claiming that all elements come from hydrogen.


I never said anywhere. Just that there are those species which can survive just about anywhere, and they've been here the longest and show the least variability, while increases in variability tend to ensure species' extinction.

Those articles all discuss average fitness WITHIN A POPULATION, not the average fitness within the diversity of all life - as you appear tp imagine. You should have read them before citing them. None of those articles support your notion.
Perhaps there is another member interested in engaging with you on this notion? I'm not.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

There is no decrease in the 'average fitness - all species fit into specific niches - none can live anywhere.

"At the level of the individual species, average fitness also frequently differs between environments..."

Dudley, S. A. (2004). The Functional Ecology of Phenotypic Plasticity in Plants. Phenotypic plasticity: functional and conceptual approaches. In T. J. DeWitt, & S. M. Scheiner, (Eds.). Oxford University Press.

Those articles all discuss average fitness WITHIN A POPULATION

Which can include species, among other things:

"Selection will always act to maximize fitness in a given environment, thus plasticity in net fitness is unlikely to be adaptive (Scheiner 1993; Sih 2004). Plasticity in individual components of fitness (e.g. biomass, seed weight, etc.), however, can be under direct selection and can elevate average net fitness across environments (see Weiner 2004) because the relative contribution of different fitness components to net fitness often varies across environments."
Davidson, A. M., Jennions, M., & Nicotra, A. B. (2011). Do invasive species show higher phenotypic plasticity than native species and, if so, is it adaptive? A meta‐analysis. Ecology letters, 14(4), 419-431.


"Quantification shows that coexistence mechanisms function in two major ways: They may be (a) equalizing because they tend to minimize average fitness differences between species..."
Chesson, P. (2000). Mechanisms of maintenance of species diversity. Annual review of Ecology and Systematics, 343-366.

Plasticity in evolutionary biology is basically defined in opposition to your "all species fit into specific niches" notion:
"once plasticity has evolved, it may obviate the need for alternative adaptations to environmental variation. So, as either adaptation or constraint, or as part of an integrated set of strategies, plasticity is a key element in the functioning of organisms in variable environments." (from the intro paper to the volume cited first above)

 

[Bunyip]

"At the level of the individual species, average fitness also frequently differs between environments..."

Dudley, S. A. (2004). The Functional Ecology of Phenotypic Plasticity in Plants. Phenotypic plasticity: functional and conceptual approaches. In T. J. DeWitt, & S. M. Scheiner, (Eds.). Oxford University Press.

Correct. Not across all environments as you appear to have misconstrued.

Which can include species, among other things:

"Selection will always act to maximize fitness in a given environment, thus plasticity in net fitness is unlikely to be adaptive (Scheiner 1993; Sih 2004). Plasticity in individual components of fitness (e.g. biomass, seed weight, etc.), however, can be under direct selection and can elevate average net fitness across environments (see Weiner 2004) because the relative contribution of different fitness components to net fitness often varies across environments."
Davidson, A. M., Jennions, M., & Nicotra, A. B. (2011). Do invasive species show higher phenotypic plasticity than native species and, if so, is it adaptive? A meta‐analysis. Ecology letters, 14(4), 419-431.


"Quantification shows that coexistence mechanisms function in two major ways: They may be (a) equalizing because they tend to minimize average fitness differences between species..."
Chesson, P. (2000). Mechanisms of maintenance of species diversity. Annual review of Ecology and Systematics, 343-366.

Plasticity in evolutionary biology is basically defined in opposition to your "all species fit into specific niches" notion:

Not at all, all of those articles refer to populations in specific environments. I am not taking issue with anything in those references. Nor do they conflict with my understanding of evolution.

"once plasticity has evolved, it may obviate the need for alternative adaptations to environmental variation. So, as either adaptation or constraint, or as part of an integrated set of strategies, plasticity is a key element in the functioning of organisms in variable environments." (from the intro paper to the volume cited first above)

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Correct. Not across all environments as you appear to have misconstrued.

1) I never said "all".
2) "once plasticity has evolved, it may obviate the need for alternative adaptations to environmental variation. So, as either adaptation or constraint, or as part of an integrated set of strategies, plasticity is a key element in the functioning of organisms in variable environments." (see last post for citation)."

Now, first of all I never claimed that my definition was anything other than an average or similar generalization of an organism's fitness extended to compare larger populations so as to compare e.g., the fitness of the species about which I linked you to a wiki page. Secondly, your qualification of "population" doesn't really matter since that was a notion I started with. Third, your environmental niche contradicts a key component of, and active area of research in, evolutionary biology (plasticity), which looks at "general adaptive" measures rather than specific niches for some species. Fourth, your knowledge of science led you to claim that all elements come from hydrogen, and we're supposed to believe you understand evolutionary theory because...?

 

[Bunyip]

1) I never said "all".
2) "once plasticity has evolved, it may obviate the need for alternative adaptations to environmental variation. So, as either adaptation or constraint, or as part of an integrated set of strategies, plasticity is a key element in the functioning of organisms in variable environments." (see last post for citation)."

Yes, I understand that and am not contesting it.

Now, first of all I never claimed that my definition was anything other than an average or similar generalization of an organism's fitness extended to compare larger populations so as to compare e.g., the fitness of the species about which I linked you to a wiki page. Secondly, your qualification of "population" doesn't really matter since that was a notion I started with. Third, your environmental niche contradicts a key component of, and active area of research in, evolutionary biology (plasticity), which looks at "general adaptive" measures rather than specific niches for some species.

Not at all, it is perfectly in tune with my view. They are just looking at 'niches' in a broader context - a specific ecology for example. I am not differing with any of what these citations report or contend. They all look at specific ecosystems - not a broad adaptability across all of them.

Fourth, your knowledge of science led you to claim that all elements come from hydrogen, and we're supposed to believe you understand evolutionary theory because...?

Uh huh, you have covered the usual insults. I'll leave you to it.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Yes, I understand that and am not contesting it.

You did. I quoted you doing so:

This 'average fitness' notion of yours is absurd - most species fit a specific niche. There is no decrease in the 'average fitness - all species fit into specific niches - none can live anywhere.

Only this isn't true. It's so not true, in fact, that there is an entire area of research in evolutionary biology dedicated to how and in what ways it is untrue. Nor have you produced a shred of evidence that anything I've stated was inaccurate. You have, thought, misquoted me and compared my views to simplistic creationist arguments despite the fact that I neither believe in a creator nor do I dispute mainstream evolutionary theory (I require it for my work, in fact).

 

[Bunyip]

You did. I quoted you doing so:

My apologies. I should have been more specific - what I should have said is that it was absurd for you to infer from it an argument for theistic evolution.

Only this isn't true. It's so not true, in fact, that there is an entire area of research in evolutionary biology dedicated to how and in what ways it is untrue. Nor have you produced a shred of evidence that anything I've stated was inaccurate. You have, thought, misquoted me and compared my views to simplistic creationist arguments despite the fact that I neither believe in a creator nor do I dispute mainstream evolutionary theory (I require it for my work, in fact).

 

[Bunyip]

LegionOnoMai


Forgive me for pointing this out, but you have not actually expressed your hypothesis or explanation. What are you inferring from the abundance of archaea and less specified organisms?

And how does it relate to the topic here? Which was ID, however the originator now is asking in regard to theistic evolution. How does your notion relate to theistic evolution?