TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Asks for evidence of gradual change in whales.
Gets a picture showing various fossils exhibiting gradual change, along with the prediction that it will be handwaved away.
Handwaves it away.
Priceless.
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Mutation not random????
- Thread starter IndigoChild5559
- Start date
Asks for evidence of gradual change in whales.
Gets a picture showing various fossils exhibiting gradual change, along with the prediction that it will be handwaved away.
Handwaves it away.
Priceless.
intelligent design is a less comprehensive alternative to evolutionary theory. While evolution relies upon detailed, well-defined processes such as mutation and natural selection, ID offers no descriptions of the design process or the designer. In fact, proponents do not even agree among themselves as to which biological phenomena were designed and which were not. Ultimately, this “theory” amounts to nothing more than pointing to holes in evolution and responding with a one-word, unceasingly repeated mantra: “design.” But unless ID advocates fill in the details, there is no way to scientifically test intelligent design or make predictions from it for future research. In short, it is not valid science.
gnostic
The Lost One
It is not even an alternative, since it even failed to be even a hypothesis.
Hypotheses, may be (A) untested yet, but it do needs to be testable, therefore it is at least falsifiable, (B) or current undergoing testing.
Intelligent Design is unfalsifiable, which disqualified it from being a hypothesis. ID is certainly untested, hence it has never met any of the requirements of Scientific Method, and therefore ID is not a “scientific theory”.
They have written enough books on Intelligent Design, but from non-scientific and non-peer-reviewed publishers. And even some biologists do read their pseudoscience trash, they were criticized for not offering any demonstrable facts about Intelligent Design or actual data that can be verified.
Even Michael Behe, their leading biologist and one of the senior members of Discovery Institute, didn’t deny no Intelligent Design works have ever been peer-reviewed, and works offered any original experiments and data to support ID:
“Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District (2005)” said:
Source: TalkOrigins: Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District Trial transcript: Day 12 (October 19), AM Session, Part 1
This court transcript is where Michael Behe (as expert witness for Dover) being cross-examined by Mr Rothschild.
So, Intelligent Design has never been tested, has no evidence, no experiments and no data, and no "peer review", therefore Intelligent Design is already dead in the water, a pseudoscience concept, definitely not a worthy alternative to Evolution.
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cladking
Well-Known Member
You call that gradual change!!!!
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
It is by definition.
I didn't expect you to accept the evidence. Hence why I predicted it would be handwaved away.
In reality, such a series of fossils is exactly what we expect if todays whale is the result of a land mammal gradually evolving into a sea dwelling mammal over the course of a couple dozen million years.
Your only "response" here, is one of sheer denial.
TagliatelliMonster
Veteran Member
Yep.
Another way to say this is that ID consists only of "negative evidence" (which isn't even valid evidence and more lies then anything else) against a rivalling idea.
It's the only thing creationists have. They like to pretend that poking holes in a rivalling idea, somehow ups the credibility of their own (unevidenced) idea.
It's as backwards as it gets.
Another tactic they like to employ is trying to drag scientific ideas down to their level of ignorant superstition so that they then can say that their superstitious ideas are "on par" with the science.
I always chuckle when they "accuse" scientists of "having faith" in the "religion of evolution" - implying that those characteristics means that we can safely ignore such ideas and discard them as nonsense.
cladking
Well-Known Member
So what do you expect if it changed exactly the way my theory predicts?
This is really remarkably simple; you need to show those legs got shorter gradually instead of a few inches at a time.
You have nothing except your deep and abiding belief in "Evolution" and "survival of the fittest".
All you have is handwaving and trying to distract people from seeing evidence you don't like. The irony is in this case the ONLY reason you don't like this way of interpreting evidence is that it ties science and religion together and shows that religion has some things more right than science. Religion doesn't say we should persecute the weak to strengthen the genome but rather help because we are all Nature's children and all capable of success. Helping the least among us is what helps the genome because it keeps it diverse and adaptable.
But the successful choose to trod on the weak to enrich themselves. They applaud as the weak minded find new and creative ways to remove themselves from the mortal coil.
You can not show any gradual change in any major species even though it's probable that some exists because God/ nature has an enormous bag of tricks. What we see is change between niches rather than within them because there is no such thing as "fitness". Types of genes (like legs in whales) can be reduced in a population but it occurs in fits and starts rather than gradually.
Yazata
Active Member
Which raises the question what "Intelligent Design" is supposed to be. "Alternative to evolutionary theory" how?
My opinion is that ID is still a viable possibility regarding how things (including biological things) came to be as they are.
It's an answer to a philosophical question. But what it isn't is a scientific theory.
ID's not being science doesn't necessarily imply that it's wrong. Just that it's arguably inappropriate for secondary school science classes.
Yes. ID as it currently stands is extraordinarily uninformative. It basically waves its arm at the surrounding world and says "A miracle happened..."
Explanations succeed by reducing the unknown to the known. They fail when they just mystify things. We walk in with a question and walk out with knowledge that constitutes an answer to the question. (How explanation works is still an open question in epistemology and the philosophy of science.)
But just saying "God did it...", without any explanation of what this 'God' is supposed to be, or how this hypothetical miraculous agent supposedly "did it", doesn't tell us a whole lot. We would also seem to need some account of how mortals like us can know any of this stuff, something better than another wave of the hand with the word "revelation".
ID does create an opportunity to associate its purported "explanation" with theistic myth (whichever one the ID proponent favors, whether Abrahamic or not). And perhaps more importantly, it reintroduces the idea of purpose back into our accounts of origins, something that modern science seems intent on draining out of our contemporary worldview.
It seems to me that if ID were applied consistently, it wouldn't just be restricted to biological phenomena but would apply to all of reality. Many Muslims seem much more inclined to do that, attributing everything that happens to the will of God. Occasionalism in early modern European philosophy did the same.
I should probably point out that contemporary science isn't really a whole lot better off. It attributes everything to the operation of so-called "laws of physics" but it seems incapable of explaining where those 'laws' originally come from, how they operate, or why they are as they are. Even the word "laws" evokes the early modern theistic origins of the idea, the idea of the initial laws of creation were pronounced by God. Today atheism has swept away God but left behind God's Laws like the Cheshire Cat's Grin in Alice.
So it seems to me that ID proponents would be well advised to turn their attention away from biological origins towards the origin of reality itself. Many of our atheists are physical determinists such that everything that happens is supposedly determined by the laws of physics and by initial conditions. Which seemingly makes everything that subsequently happens anywhere in the universe a function of the laws of physics and the initial conditions at the origin event, the Big Bang. And nobody can explain any of that.
So some possibility would still seem to be on the table that these were initially selected and embody some kind of purpose such that the universe will turn out some particular way at some particular time, even in its smallest details. All determined at the beginning. (That's why I'm inclined to perceive physical determinism as a species of creationism.)
Yes, I agree. What ID lacks, the thing that would make it an actual science, is a research program capable of producing testable predictions.
Of course trying to knock holes in the idea of biological evolution by natural selection isn't without scientific value. It would seem to represent Popperian-style attempts at falsification. Science needs that and can't be allowed to become a matter of enforced group-think where any expression of skepticism can destroy careers. (I fear that we might be edging towards that.)
But all in all, I'm inclined to perceive "ID" as a philosophical rather than a scientific proposition. That doesn't mean that it's wrong necessarily, just that it isn't natural science. Even if it can somehow, someday discredit Darwin and evolution by natural selection, ID won't become a true scientific alternative until it has something to put in Darwin's place. Religious myth won't do. A mere philosophical possibility won't suffice.
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gnostic
The Lost One
No, ID is wrong.
What is wrong is the notion of "Designer".
Intelligent Design creationists have repeatedly stated that the universe and life itself cannot form itself, it must be all designed, which therefore required this IMAGINARY "Designer". They invoked "Designer" upon the designs - using the cause-and-effect argument.
But using the cause-and-effect is a phony claim, because they are only speculating that the "effect" is "designed", speculation isn't fact or evidence of anything except for wishful thinking.
Then they tried to claim that the cause is the "Designer" itself, which even have less substances than the argument for the "designed" effect.
So it is all wishful thinking. How do prove something exist that don't exist anything beyond speculative assertions of both "designed" and "Designer".
The Designer has no more substances than God, demons, angels, fairies and pixies, the Easter bunny, etc.
Hence, not only Intelligent Design is illogical from the start, it is also unfalsifiable, hence the concept untestable and untested, therefore ID isn't a scientific concept.
You are right, Intelligent Design isn't scientific theory...but Intelligent Design disqualified itself from being a "hypothesis", because it failed to provide falsifiable/testable explanations & predictions...hence, ID isn't even a hypothesis.
Creationists could possibly pass Intelligent Design as philosophy if not science, but even in the philosophy department, it would fail there too, because of their "logic" in their assertions, are based on circular reasoning, confirmation biases, argument from ignorance, false equivalence, and whole other boat-load of other fallacies.
Now, Intelligent Design can work as a religious concept, which is what it is already is, because the members of Discovery Institute were mostly Young Earth creationists (eg Phillip Johnson, Steven Meyer) and even a few Old Earth creationists (like Michael Behe for instance), they are the one who started the new "Intelligent Design".
Since Discovery Institute couldn't get the Creator in the Genesis Creation to be taught in science classrooms in the US, they tried to substitute "Creator" with "Designer", and "Creation" with "Design".
I am not fooled by their tactics...and I am not even a biologist, nor a cosmologist. There are nothing in Intelligent Design that are scientific and factual; it is all PR or propaganda.
The point is that not only ID isn't scientific theory, it isn't even a working "hypothesis".
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
We can't win with you. When we show very slow change, even though it leads to a speciation event it is "too slow". Now you see change on the genus level and it is "too fast".
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Right after you provide the experimental support for a bifurcated speech area that we will into existence in the midbrain.
tas8831
Well-Known Member
I cannot do this when they do not exist. You writing things does not make them true or accurate or relevant, even if you wriute them repeatedly. Like that "root" thing. Shall I find that to prove my point yet again?
I accept that this happens a lot - you make a claim, it is shown to be nonsense, you claim that you presented evidence for it, you are shown to have not done this, you claim that you did.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
Then surely you can link to where you "mentioned a few experiments in addition to every experiment done by every researcher."
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Charlatans got to hang on to their grift (no money for claddie, of course - it is his ego that seeks the 'money').
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Nope.
The Believabliltiy of Evolution
You should have learned by now. But the egotist, in his Trump-like need to be the smartest (even when he is far from it, just cannot help himself:
Here is a list of the evidence "cited" re: trees:
The Believabliltiy of Evolution
"This is why humans share so many traits (genes) with oak trees; we both evolved for billions of years from the same sources. We both had highly complex genes before we ever got to earth."
No links or citations for any sort of actual support for his assertions.
The Believabliltiy of Evolution
"The "driver" is consciousness and behavior and running into the tree was a result of Look and See Science."
No links or citations for any sort of actual support for his assertions.
The Believabliltiy of Evolution
"I think we don't go nearly far enough in projecting a common ancestry. In light of the fact that oak trees and apes share so much genetic material and huge amounts of it have no known function is seems probable that life on earth came from outside of earth. "
No links or citations for any sort of actual support for his assertions.
This next one is interesting - it was in response to me asking for a citation for one of the kooky claims:
The Believabliltiy of Evolution
"Everything in existence had to come from things that already existed. Yet we still ponder whether an egg or a chicken came first. We can't see the forest for the trees and can't really understand the trees because all life is consciousness which is fundamental to its understanding. So instead of seeing experimental results and observation we see our beliefs."
No links or citations for any sort of actual support for his assertions.
The Believabliltiy of Evolution
"I believe all life is conscious. This being said I also believe that many life form and individuals have a highly limited consciousness. Tree roots, for instance change directions before hitting obstructions and bacteria are known to act in concert. In many species "consciousness" is little more than a weak will to thrive and survive. Yew trees tend to release their pollen not when most violently shaken but rather when wind velocity is most erratic. This would tend to spread the pollen over a wider area and assure much lower velocity of the pollen when it gets to the intended target."
No links or citations for any sort of actual support for his assertions.
So yes, this guy does not even know what a citation is, or what 'citing' something means in science. He actually thinks that him merely asserting something is evidence.
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Please define "survival of the fittest" as used in evolution.
I ask because the last several times I have asked you employed a foolish and ignorant definition that has nothing to do with biology.
tas8831
Well-Known Member
And he never did....
cladking
Well-Known Member
You show a few sudden changes and then announce it was gradual.
It was not gradual until you can show it was gradual. ALL observed change in all species and every individual is sudden.
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Define "gradual" as you are using it in this context please.
And then, since you claimed to have "mentioned a few experiments in addition to every experiment done by every researcher." provide evidence that you have actually read about/observed "every experiment done by every researcher."
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Why?
Is this the level of your ignorance re: development and genetic change's influence on morphology?
Are you really THIS naïve and uninformed?
I mean, I knew you were all along, but rarely do you come out and confirm my hypothesis.
Tell me, brain genius, is this really what you think "gradual change" means????
My gosh - you've been at this how ling and you STILL harbor child-like notions such as this?
Please define "survival of the fittest" in a biologically/evolutionarily relevant sense.
cladking
Well-Known Member
You're not even trying to see what's there and see only what you want to see;
You're showing the fossilized remains of three sudden changes each caused by the interplay of consciousness and environment in a group of individuals. You are blind to the changes, the suddeness, consciousness, and individuals as well as their genetics, behavior, and their interplay within the group.
Instead you look and see everything and know that insulting, demeaning, and nasty comments to anyone who disagrees will be both tolerated and encouraged.
You are fooled by glib and facile answers, I am not.
It must be nice to know everything like believers in science who truly give weight and meaning to homo omnisciencis.
You're showing the fossilized remains of three sudden changes each caused by the interplay of consciousness and environment in a group of individuals. You are blind to the changes, the suddeness, consciousness, and individuals as well as their genetics, behavior, and their interplay within the group.
Instead you look and see everything and know that insulting, demeaning, and nasty comments to anyone who disagrees will be both tolerated and encouraged.
You are fooled by glib and facile answers, I am not.
It must be nice to know everything like believers in science who truly give weight and meaning to homo omnisciencis.