I found THIS INFORMATION fascinating. But, then, I still do have my appendix.Why would God have made a body with a "worthless evolutionary artifact," anyway? :-) (more apologetics...I love this stuff)
GeeeeeeZ
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510 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 401 – 510 of 510But, in the natural world, selection achieves suboptimal, not optimal results.
I am not mesmerized by natural selection as you are. I don't consider it to be any more "optimal" in its effects than the various mechanisms that ALSO isolate genes in order to bring about phenotypic change. Natural selection in accommodation to severe environmental pressures can in fact reduce a population so severely that it approaches extinction.
The point you miss is that every individual that gets to pass its genes on is not necessarily the best adapted. And natural selection is too slow to accommodate to severe environmental pressures. For instance, if the food source of a species is eliminated, the species may be eliminated before it can adapt new traits in a future generation.
And besides, what does "optimum" anything have to do with what I'm saying? Absolutely nothing.
See above for my answer.
As has been famously and poetically said, time and chance happeneth to them all.
More meaningless distraction from you.
I am paraphrasing the Bible. It’s meaningless distraction? Well, you couldn’t be more right in a scientific discussion.
And horizontal gene transfer and mutation happeneth to some.
To what effect, pray tell? You haven't shown that this process does anything at all with respect to my claims. . You've already clearly affirmed that mutation couldn't affect it. Neither could hgt.
I have clearly affirmed that, while most mutations are useless or worse, a small percentage of mutations can be beneficial, and have an effect in deep time. HGT can also have an effect in all groups that is only beginning to be closely studied by scientists.
Other random processes, too, act mostly to produce harmful or neutral changes, though, occasionally, maybe once in several thousand years, they are advantageous and are passed on.
What on earth are you talking about? I've never said one thing about "advantageous" change being the necessary condition, I've been talking about change, period, ALL phenotypic change caused by ALL mechanisms that isolate populations, including all random causes. I've been very clear about this. Most random changes do not compromise the survivability of a species. All the variations in the populations of a ring species are simply interesting variations, they are neither advantageous or disadvantageous, they are brought about by a random collection of genes with a random migration of a portion of a population. They are brought about by the LOSS of genes, leaving them behind in the former populations. The ring is created by a series of phenotypic changes brought about by a reduction in genetic variability at each population split. RANDOM, not selected for advantage.
Scientists know what I am talking about, even if you don’t. Random changes in the distribution of character states in a population that are advantageous are likely to be passed on.
You have to deny a great deal of well-documented scientific evidence to support your theory of the Fall----like deep time, transitional species, the differences in the ages of fossils, and the divergence of a common lineage into millions of living species. And your denial now includes horizontal gene transfer’s effect on genetic diversity.
"Deep time, transitional species, different ages of fossils and divergence etc etc etc are ALL imaginative constructs imposed upon rocks for which there is NOT anything remotely like "scientific evidence."
I know beamish does not agree with your contention that there is not a shred of scientific evidence for deep time.
Well, I disagree with Beamish quite strenuously on that point and I don't see him having produced any evidence for that either. He refers to astronomical measures at one point and if that's the only evidence I leave you two to sort it out.
No, it’s not the only evidence. He also refers to radiometric dating. You have not produced any evidence that the dating methods that scientists use regularly are of no use. What evidence do you have for that strong, often reiterated conviction?
If you “disagree with Beamish quite strenuously on that point”, does that mean, in your view, that beamish has not thought this through?
From my point of view the fact that the processes that bring about evolution require a reduction in genetic variability imposes an end point on evolution that occurs well before anything like "deep time" could even begin. LIFE cannot evolve/vary/speciate for more than a few thousand years before facing extinction. That's a SCIENTIFIC fact.
Probably, he has doubts about some of the other things you have no doubt about.
Some things he's said indicate he doesn't understand what I'm getting at any better than you do. He's arguing his own agenda and not thinking about mine. That's fine, we can have separate arguments with you. I have plenty of doubts about what he's saying too.
This is not about whether we can have separate arguments. Although you embraced him as an ally weeks ago, it appears that there is a gulf between the two of you, as to what scientific evidence you are willing to accept or what you want to reject. For example, he does not seem to accept your contention that fossils are all the same age. You seem to exhibit different species of creationism. You two demonstrate speciation in cyberspace, thus defeating each of your claims that speciation is impossible.
Your pronouncements regarding what you believe is scientific evidence and what is not isn’t, thank God, the Last Word on the subject.
You keep trying to reduce my argument to a mere flat statement of my belief, but it's based on observed facts, it's truly scientific in a way that absolutely nothing you have said is. YOU are the one making the flat out empty assertions while I've pointed to observable effects in actual reality. Your "natural world" is a fantasy, and you will not address actual facts in the real one.
I have brought up observed facts and you have denied them. It is only your humble view that I make empty assertions while you are strictly factual, despite not having produced any evidence I asked for. I suspect that scientists would say I am making statements consistent with science, and you are making flat-out empty assertions.
Why do you try to pretend your religious belief has no influence on your view of science, when it clearly has a strong effect?
Concluded
It has to take a huge feat of imagination to sweepingly dismiss the abundant corroborating scientific evidence from many independent professionally-accredited sources as being “ALL imaginative constructs”.
No, it takes a dogged determination to stick to reality and true scientific evidence even when all the establishment sources are against you. They are IGNORING the true scientific evidence and you are following them like the proverbial lemming to the sea. Please just THINK. What you and they are getting out of a mere stack of rocks, this whole edifice of deep time and progression of age of fossils up the stack of rocks, and transitional forms that are merely fossils with features in common with more than one other type, and so on and so forth, HAS NOT ONE SHRED OF ACTUAL SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE GOING FOR IT. IT IS NOTHING BUT AN IMAGINATIVE CONSTRUCT. OBVIOUSLY, psi bond, there is nothing more to it than that. It's all an elaborate fiction, a "just so" story made up to "explain" a mere guess about the meaning of rocks and fossils.
It takes a lot of imagination to cultivate the elaborate fiction that you are the sole bearer of the gospel truth waging glorious battle against everyone applying the scientific method to the paleontological and genetic evidence. I can see many shreds of evidence that you have rejected. Forgive me for disagreeing with you and agreeing in part with beamish; we could found, in effect, a colony for those who wandered away from Faith.
YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE. YOU HAVE NOT PRODUCED ONE SHRED OF EVIDENCE HERE. You appeal to the authority of other deceived ones.
I appeal to reason, not to Faith, when trying to understand the natural world. Those I respect who are engaged in the same pursuit, also use reason, not doctrinaire proclamations.
And when the biologist Mayr thinks ring species confirm evolution that's only because he is not thinking about the genetic realities that conservationists MUST think about, he's only thinking about the superficial phenotypic changes. By the time the ring of populations has reached the point of inability to interbreed, the last population in the ring is severely genetically depleted, and has no capacity to "evolve" any further, which spells DOOM to the ToE. Thus do evolutionists deceive themselves.
Thus you deceive yourself, thinking you see something that no scientist sees that disproves evolution. The final population in a ring has not lost the potential for genetic variation. There is no evidence of that.
Blame everything on mendacious rocks. It’s somewhat like, when you observe a train at two different points in its itinerary, you readily assume it has been at all the points in between----reasonable people will say such an assumption is a logical inference, while implacable critics will say it’s ALL imaginative constructs----or, if they’re more plainspoken but nonetheless polite: it’s all hogwash, or it’s all humbug.
Good grief you just don't know the difference between a mere imaginative construct and scientific fact. What can one possibly say under such circumstances. How about, it's an hypothesis rather than imaginative construct? It IS an hypothesis I suppose. But by now it ought to have been dropped because you have to be able to prove with evidence the validity of such an hypothesis and there is no such proof, there is only more hypothetical imaginative reasoning. If you'd just THINK, psi bond, just THINK.
If you could really THINK, Faith, you would see that you are tying yourself in knots. Purely imaginative constructs are not the equivalent of scientific hypotheses. The latter begins with some basis in scientific facts. Fossils are facts; scientists form hypotheses concerning what they mean. Their hypotheses have held up on further verification. At least to the satisfaction of other scientists, though not, of course, to creationists, some of whom have even denied that fossils are the actual remains of biological organisms.
Nor is God’s word is scientific evidence. Ancient mud, layering of rocks, even new techniques like gene sequencing and observation of the components of living cells in realtime are as snakes in his Garden.
Oh balderdash. God's word tells us that God made living things "after their own kind" and that there was a worldwide Flood. Certain deducations naturally follow. That's all that's relevant to this discussion.
So, then, it is not balderdash. Modern scientific techniques that provide evidence that all species are related by common descent contradict the claim that God made all living things "after their own kind". In which case, the arrogant declarations of creationists that scientists don’t know what they are talking about are not natural deductions, but the sanctimonious preaching of irate folks. Indeed, there is no scientific evidence that God created all living things, since God’s word does not qualify as scientific evidence. In truth, God is not relevant to scientific discussions.
Again, the interpretation evolution imposes on the rocks and fossils is nothing but imaginative fantasy and/or raw hypothesis. Gene sequencing and the study of cells are SCIENCE. You don't seem to know the difference.
It’s all science, whether you THINK it is or not. In fact, some scientists are both geneticists and paleontologists.
"It's just that you can't think outside the box, psi bond, you can't follow an argument that doesn't lead to your own purely fantasized conclusions. If you could read and were an honest person, either or both, this could actually be a discussion."
I can think outside of the Bible and without the Bible as a reference point. You make it clear you believe that anyone who does not agree to follow you h wherever your argument will lead is dreadfully defective or plain stupid. But everyone can readily see that that authoritarian assumption on your part cannot lead to an honest, serious discussion of objective matters.
Concluded
I remind you: The topic is creationism vs. evolution, not me. You keep forgetting that.
Oh that's FUNNY considering the absolute nonsense you've been imputing to me instead of thinking about what I've actually said.
It’s FUNNY you can’t understand that ad hominem remarks are not any part of an honest discussion on the designated topic.
According to your view, it is like reading the Bible: One only needs to think about what is being said and not be distracted by bullying to the effect that decent people would get the message naturally. All you need is Faith.
There once was a time when everyone believed that God’s word as given in the Bible was the final word on all things scientific. That time was called the Dark Ages.
Actually, in the Dark Ages the Bible was not taught at all by the Roman Church. They taught all manner of nonbiblical and basically pagan superstitions and they followed Aristotle the pagan instead of the Bible, who told them that the earth is the center of the universe.
In the Dark Ages, the Roman Catholic Church taught God’s word. According to God’s word, the the sun revolves around the earth. But Galileo, who took nothing about the natural world on faith, found by observation that Church doctrine on the matter was not true. In 1633, the Church made him recant and, in addition, on grave suspicion of heresy, confined him to house arrest for the remainder of his life. It was a dark episode in the beginnings of Western science, setting the stage for latter-day clashes over the theory of evolution in U.S. courtrooms and beyond. Though oddly enough, not in Europe, where the conflict between religion and science began.
Yes, Beamish and I disagree completely about the meaning of the fossil record. He apparently denies not only the age of the Earth as indicated in Genesis but the Flood as the explanation for the fossils, the most natural and most elegant explanation.
Every plant or animal that has ever lived has not turned into a fossil. Indeed, if that were the case, the earth would be covered in avalanches of fossils everywhere.
Not sure what Beamish said that prompted this response, but my answer is that the quantity of fossilization that does exist far outstrips any conceivable scenario of separate fossilization events over time. The occurrences are remarkably uniform up the strata. There are places where there is a near-avalanche of fossils too. I've heard there are parts of the desert of the Great Basin where there are actual mounds and pillars of fossilized sea life.
However, museums in many parts of the world contain a voluminous amount of preserved materials representing virtually every known group of biological organism, from eukaryotes to humans. These specimens number in the billions.
Yes, indeed. Exactly the sort of thing that a worldwide Flood could accomplish that nothing else could.
If there are no pre-Cambrian rabbits, it’s not because, as some may speculate defensively, they were too quick to be fossilized.
Oh, and how does anything you've said prove that? And nobody (least of all moi) has said that they were "too quick to be fossilized," what I said was that being land animals they wouldn't be found in the lowest strata left by the Flood where one would expect to find what one does find -- marine life. And I have to assume that rabbits WERE fossilized, but in the upper strata, which for the most part were washed away as the flood waters drained.
Paleontologists have a sampling of almost everything that has existed. It can afford them a window on the past,
Yes it does, but it would be a lot clearer window if they took the flood into account. The abundance of fossilized life forms are evidence of the amazing fecundity of the antediluvian world.
just as public opinion polls, which sample the opinions of a large population (too large to be individually polled), provide politicians and polemicists with some insight into what the public is thinking.
Well they WOULD produce some useful insight if it were recognized that the window looks onto the pre-Flood world and not a series of ancient time periods.
It is a sign of ignorance of the fossil record to imagine that all fossils are rock impressions or the products of petrifaction. Their importance as evidence cannot be hand waved away so easily. In some cases, soft parts, including flesh, hair, eyes, and even stomach contents have been preserved without mineral substitutions. In fact, DNA has been recovered from fossils and analyzed. Even hominid fossils. Recently, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Anthropology in Germany extracted DNA from Neanderthal fossils.
A sure indication we are not talking about anything any older than a few thousand years.
An earth as old as 4.5 billion years makes possible the evolution that the evidence indicates. The biblical 6000 years or so that Faith puts her faith in, does not.
Even a hundred trillion years wouldn't have the power to overcome the inexorable reduction of genetic diversity brought about by phenotypic variation/speciation.
Good morning, Mr. Bond.
Yet, in each migration, the ability to adapt to new ecological niches is displayed. She does not THINK about what that means.
Your ridiculous imitation of my comments about you is tiresome. I have already commented on everything you claim I have not. The ability to adapt to new ecological niches is of the very essence of what I've been talking about. This is the phenotypic change that is the most salient and superficial feature of these migrations, what is taken blindly for evolution without noticing the genetic cost. However, you overemphasize the adaptation aspect just as you overemphasized the advantageous aspect. There is no need for any special adaptation in the establishment of ring species. The environment is pretty much the same all around the ring. All that happens is that the migration itself reduces the genetic potential so that new traits can emerge, neutral traits for the most part, neither especially adaptive or advantageous, merely interestingly different.
Leave your brother out of it. The usage I refer to is the one that defines trend as “a general tendency”. The wind may trend from one direction, and then another. That is, trends are not fossilized. A trend toward stasis, as previously noted, can be followed by a trend toward intense phenotypic variability.
And the OVERALL trend of both together is what I'm talking about. Stasis makes no impact whatever on evolution, and intense phenotypic variability is inevitably accompanied by intense genotypic reduction. The overall trend of ALL processes is to the reduction of genetic diversity.
In other words, the speciation that evolutionists observe is an illusion according to her, because speciation, as she has previously determined, is not possible.
Um, I believe I have been affirming all along that it DOES occur just as evolutionists say it does, exactly so. What they observe I affirm.
A train cannot go between two different points on its route because, if you THINK about it, before it gets to the second point it must cross half the difference between them, and before that one quarter the distance from the start point to the half-way point. And so on to infinity. Of course, an infinity of points cannot be traversed by the train. So, it’s clear the train can never get out of the station. Yet somehow it does. Nature surprises. Speciation occurs, heedless of her theoretical constructs.
Speciation DOES occur. What it MEANS is what we disagree about. There's lots and lots and lots of speciation and the variations that lead to speciation in nature. BUT IT ALL OCCURS AT THE COST OF GENETIC DIVERSITY AND CANNOT OCCUR OTHERWISE, AND THIS LOSS OF DIVERSITY MEANS THAT EVOLUTION BEYOND THE BOUNDARY OF THE BUILT-IN GENETIC COMPLEMENT OF THE SPECIES CANNOT HAPPEN.
She’s said it many times over, so it must be true. However, there is no evidence that reduction in genetic variability is the same as loss of the capability for variation in the transcription of genetic instructions.
Ask the conservationists.
Whatever variation remains, or is even added into the genetic instructions, cannot survive the inevitable loss of alleles necessary to phenotypic variation or speciation.
Once again, evolution is not science. There's plenty of science done in related fields, but evolution is not science.
To an evolutionist, deep time grants the enlightenment that creationists assiduously deny.
"That's because you are content to live with an illusion, since you haven't the slightest EVIDENCE for any effects of this fantasy of deep time, and the main absurdity is the idea that time could change the direction of things. If genetic reduction is the direction of all phenotypic variations including speciation, it's groundless blind faith to claim the addition of time could change that."
You contradict yourself here. Previously, you agreed that if genetic reduction is indomitable, all species would now be extinct in deep time.
There is no contradiction, it is the fact that time can't alter the inevitable direction to genetic reduction that makes extinction also inevitable.
A condition of stasis could theoretically occur instead, that is, an absence of evolution, but there isn't really any true stasis as genetic drift tends to occur in apparently stable populations, and stasis over extravagantly long periods of time is highly unlikely anyway.
The more time the more genetic reduction, the more genetic reduction the greater the threat of extinction.
Moreover, accumulations of small differences in deep time can produce speciation that is unobservable under similar conditions in human time.
The problem isn't speciation itself, nobody is saying that doesn't occur, it occurs quite frequently, it's the genetic reduction that makes speciation possible that spells doom for the continuation of such changes. Say you get something added in and say it gets selected, it is selected at the cost of other alleles for that trait. There is no getting around this, psi bond. Except of course by blind faith and flat denial. They've served you well to this point.
You have not been paying attention on two points. First, in Darwinian evolution, the only selection process is natural selection. It acts on multiple sources of variation. Natural selection is the only natural process that is selective in its effect.
Yeah, I knew you weren't paying attention, not thinking about anything I've said. This was discussed days ago already.
I'm sorry, but all the other processes that reduce populations have the same OVERALL effect as natural selection. Mere random migration will accomplish the same thing. They ALL change the phenotype at the cost of reduced genetic variability.
Selection is not optimal but suboptimal in nature. All members of the next generation do not have a given advantageous trait. Various accidents of chance enable individuals lacking the advantageous trait to survive.
This is irrelevant to the point I am making, which is only that ALL phenotypic change, whatever its cause, requires the reduction of genetic variability. There are all sorts of complicated scenarios that occur in nature, but the overall trend I'm talking about does not change.
One can extend this to a third point: It is not known that infertility is selected for to isolate a population. Isolation is not ordinarily an evolutionary advantage.
Definitely not, but it occurs quite predictably with either a series of population reductions or a drastic population reduction that produces a new phenotype with reduced genetic diversity.
Infertility, as noted earlier, is thought to be a by-product of evolution. As a result, macroevolution is a by-product of microevolution.
Are you talking about the inability to interbreed or actual infertility within the new population? Infertility has no evolutionary value whatever, no survival value at all for that matter, but inability to interbreed with an older population doesn't mean there's a problem with breeding within the new. A severely genetically reduced, even bottlenecked, group can multiply to a huge population even with its reduced genetic potentials. It's a new variation with reduced ability to vary further but that doesn't mean it can't proliferate in its current condition. Conceivably you could have a huge population of near-clones if it came to that genetically speaking.
But that's a very odd statement comparing infertility to macroevolution. Infertility would spell the end of a species, so if that's the comparison, I agree with it: macroevolution can't happen either.
The point you miss is that every individual that gets to pass its genes on is not necessarily the best adapted. And natural selection is too slow to accommodate to severe environmental pressures. For instance, if the food source of a species is eliminated, the species may be eliminated before it can adapt new traits in a future generation.
And your point is? I already referred to such environmental threats which apparently you don't recall or didn't read. I also didn't say genetic reduction was the only threat to a species. There are many sorts of threats. And a remarkable adaptability quite apart from selected adaptability as well.
I have clearly affirmed that, while most mutations are useless or worse, a small percentage of mutations can be beneficial, and have an effect in deep time.
And I have answered that it can't happen because of the inevitable loss of genetic diversity when there is any change in the phenotype. It doesn't matter whether a mutation is selected or not, whatever is selected is selected at the cost of other alleles or reduced genetic diversity. Mutation cannot overcome the inevitable reduction.
HGT can also have an effect in all groups that is only beginning to be closely studied by scientists.
The exact same situation applies as with mutation. The addition of a new allele or gene may or may not be selected, and if it is, this happens at the cost of other alleles, which is the same reduction in genetic diversity I'm talking about, as phenotypic change happens in no other way and it doesn't matter WHAT the material selected or eliminated is, the process is the same in all cases.
The final population in a ring has not lost the potential for genetic variation. There is no evidence of that.
REDUCED potential for genetic variation compared to the other populations, remember, and probably quite drastically reduced. Oh there has to be evidence somewhere even if the evolutionists ignore it, because there's no way it could be avoided considering how it was arrived at, by a series of phenotypic changes that ALWAYS require genetic reduction. The conservationists could show it to you.
Fossils are facts; scientists form hypotheses concerning what they mean. Their hypotheses have held up on further verification. At least to the satisfaction of other scientists,
Right, they manage not to notice that the "verification" is nothing but further hypothetical and imaginative reasoning without a shred of actual scientific evidence. This you could notice yourself if you'd just make the effort while reading their stuff.
Purely imaginative constructs are not the equivalent of scientific hypotheses. The latter begins with some basis in scientific facts. Fossils are facts; scientists form hypotheses concerning what they mean.
And creationist scientists form the hypothesis that they can only be reasonably explained by a worldwide Flood.
Evolutionist scientists invent a whole scenario that they cannot prove about ages of time, ages of fossils, transitional forms and so on, that REMAIN imaginative constructs because there is NO evidence that could possibly ever establish this scenario as science.
So, then, it is not balderdash. Modern scientific techniques that provide evidence that all species are related by common descent contradict the claim that God made all living things "after their own kind".
There IS no evidence of this, there is only a huge edifice of imaginative constructs all built one on another. Common descent is all one huge unverified and unverifiable fantasy.
It’s FUNNY you can’t understand that ad hominem remarks are not any part of an honest discussion on the designated topic.
What's funny is that you deny the extent to which ad hominems are your MO, all throughout this conversation.
In the Dark Ages, the Roman Catholic Church taught God’s word.
They did not. That was why there had to be a Reformation. They taught all manner of superstitious nonsense and they were enamored of Aristotle whose philosophy overrode the Bible.
According to God’s word, the the sun revolves around the earth.
We know the difference between speaking from the human perspective and science; we know the difference between poetic expression and science. Apparently you don't. It was Aristotle that set the Roman Church against Galileo, not the Bible.
But Galileo, who took nothing about the natural world on faith, found by observation that Church doctrine on the matter was not true. In 1633, the Church made him recant and, in addition, on grave suspicion of heresy, confined him to house arrest for the remainder of his life.
The Roman Church persecuted true Christians as well as Galileo. They are not and never were the church of Jesus Christ.
It was a dark episode in the beginnings of Western science, setting the stage for latter-day clashes over the theory of evolution in U.S. courtrooms and beyond.
Sorry, the war against evolution IS based on the Bible; the war against Galileo was based on pseudochristian paganism. Evolution itself is paganism.
Though oddly enough, not in Europe, where the conflict between religion and science began.
Once again, I know you like your fictional history, but evolution is NOT SCIENCE, it is pure fantasy.
But Galileo, who took nothing about the natural world on faith, found by observation that Church doctrine on the matter was not true.
I don't know of any creationists who take anything about the natural world on faith, and I don't take anythnig about the natural world on faith either. We have a genuine respect for science that evolutionists don't.
There is nothing based on faith about the fact that genetic depletion is the inevitable result of phenotypic variation or speciation, and there is nothing based on faith about explaining the strata and their fossil contents by a worldwide flood. Both are based on observations of the natural world.
Evolutionism on the other hand has made up a fantastic scheme of millions of years and a progression of living things over millions of years, to explain layers of what were once soft sediments with living things buried in them, different sediments that eventually turned into rock. Evolutionists talk about the development of new phenotypes as if they proved evolution, without taking into account that new phenotypes require a reduction in genetic diversity that points to an end point in the processes that lead to new phenotypes.
The actual observation of the rocks makes a worldwide Flood a far more reasonable explanation than the jerryrigged castle of evolutionism; the actual observation of living things makes it clear that evolution can't occur beyond a built-in boundary to the species.
Science, not faith. It is evolutionism that is built on blind faith.
To suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very childish … God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips.
-- St. Augustine
Faith: Speciation DOES occur. What it MEANS is what we disagree about. There's lots and lots and lots of speciation and the variations that lead to speciation in nature. BUT IT ALL OCCURS AT THE COST OF GENETIC DIVERSITY AND CANNOT OCCUR OTHERWISE, AND THIS LOSS OF DIVERSITY MEANS THAT EVOLUTION BEYOND THE BOUNDARY OF THE BUILT-IN GENETIC COMPLEMENT OF THE SPECIES CANNOT HAPPEN.
Clearly, now you are submitting your argument to mutation. Whereas, hitherto, you spoke of “reduction of diversity”, or “decrease in diversity” now you have begun to speak of “LOSS OF DIVERSITY”. You are representing the phenomenon as all black and white, eliminating the grays that occur in nature.
Wikipedia: “Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise.”
Your saying “Speciation DOES occur” means that new species are brought into being by the evolutionary process.
Your saying “LOSS OF DIVERSITY MEANS THAT EVOLUTION BEYOND THE BOUNDARY OF THE BUILT-IN GENETIC COMPLEMENT OF THE SPECIES CANNOT HAPPEN” means speciation cannot happen.
Thus, you contradict yourself. You’re saying, in effect, if it happens, it is exactly because it cannot happen. Or: That it happens is proof that it cannot happen.
Evidently, you don’t fully understand the scientific terms you are using, theorizing, and abstractly speculating with. While beamish confuses himself erroneously thinking there are no DNA studies on fossils, you get hung up on simple scientific terminology like “speciation” and, as noted earlier, “natural selection” and “genetic drift”.
As far as speciation is concerned, we have evidence of developmental adaptation (anagenesis or phyletic evolution) and evidence of branching adaptation (cladogenesis) from the fossil record. Evidence from genetic studies of chromosomes and DNA sequencing supports the branching scenario of speciation. The passionate arguments of creationists against evolution fall under attack from two independent sources of scientific evidence. Both sources point to the same phenomena, adaptation and differentiation through genetic mechanisms, acting in combination with environmental pressures. Speciation is a product of evolution in which variation is exploited to produce adaptation. When this variation occurs in related populations that are isolated from one another, they become distinct units. As long as there is some gene flow between these units, the continuity of the species will be maintained. As long as the environment is stable, this continuity will be reinforced by the fact that only certain genetic combinations will prove adaptive under specific conditions. When the environment varies beyond certain limits, the phenotypic variation that is inherent in all populations will either readjust to the new conditions or the population will die out. Extinction results when none of the inherent genetic variation fits the new environmental demands, not because there is no inherent potential for genetic variation.
For example, consider a sexually reproducing, relatively homogeneous species living within a small, restricted environmental zone. Assume further that this species constitutes a single breeding population. This means that any member of the population has as good a chance to mate with any other mature member of that population of the opposite sex. Such a situation would insure a wide and random distribution of genes in the population at large. Random mating of this time is called panmixis. When it occurs the population is said to share a common gene pool. Any variation which occurs in such a population will be distributed fairly evenly within the confines of the total group.
Concluded
Now if this is a particularly successful species and it spreads out geographically, it is likely that subpopulations will become established as units of the larger group. If the distance between these groups widens, they will eventually constitute separate breeding groups. Organisms that are closer together are more likely to breed that organisms that are father apart. If any barriers develop between units, then these units will become at least partially isolated. In such situations, new genetic variations will be unequally distributed in the species at large. That is each subgroup will develop its own gene pool different in some respects from all the other gene pools. If the geographic space in which the species is distributed is uneven----that is, if there are environmental variations to which the species is sensitive----then different selection pressures will further differentiate the gene pools of the subgroups.
As long as some interbreeding continues to occur between these subpopulations, there will be no differentiation beyond the level of the species. Each individual unit will constitute a separate breed or strain of the species. If, however, for some reason, some of the populations become totally isolated, they will continue to change to the point where genetic differences will be great enough to produce new species. As long as gene flow continues, enough genetic similarity will be preserved between strains to stop the process of speciation from reaching finality. Under natural conditions, subpopulations tend to become separated through such centrifugal processes as differential genetic variation, differential selection pressures, and semi-isolation, but they are also frequently drawn together by the centripetal process of gene flow. Speciation occurs when the centripetal forces are interrupted.
To be sure, Darwin’s theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact
that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not
be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in
religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific
propositions.
-- Judge John E. Jones III (conservative Republican appointed in 2002 by George W. Bush), Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, December 20, 2005, ruling for the plaintiffs (11 parents of students) that the school board’s anti-evolution policy violated the U.S. Constitution
Faith: I don't know of any creationists who take anything about the natural world on faith, and I don't take anythnig about the natural world on faith either. We have a genuine respect for science that evolutionists don't.
“You lie,” Joe Wilson said; but I say, “You try.” Just kidding.
The doctrine of creationism is a pious confession of faith that a supernatural being made the natural world and all the living things in it. It is not reliance on scientific evidence.
There is nothing based on faith about the fact that genetic depletion is the inevitable result of phenotypic variation or speciation, and there is nothing based on faith about explaining the strata and their fossil contents by a worldwide flood. Both are based on observations of the natural world.
That you don't get variations or speciation without a reduction in the genetic complement (genome) is not a fact, but a statement of faith that changes in gene frequency disable any future changes. That there was a worldwide flood, just as described in the Bible, and that all living organisms are descended from those placed on Noah's ark is a statement of faith, for which no scientific evidence has been found. Where did the Flood water come from, and where did it go? These questions have not been thought through in the proposed models attempting to validate the Bible story.
Evolutionism on the other hand has made up a fantastic scheme of millions of years and a progression of living things over millions of years, to explain layers of what were once soft sediments with living things buried in them, different sediments that eventually turned into rock. Evolutionists talk about the development of new phenotypes as if they proved evolution, without taking into account that new phenotypes require a reduction in genetic diversity that points to an end point in the processes that lead to new phenotypes.
In the first place, the fossil record allows us to trace the sequential transformation of particular species. In the second place, it provides comparative material illustrative of branching development of forms from parental forms. Sequential transformation and branching are best explained as evolutionary adaptation to environment. In the first case (known as anagenesis), a single type develops greater and greater genetic specialization in areas where the environment has remained relatively constant. This is progressive development of goodness of fit. In the second case (known as cladogenesis), related isolated populations differentiate from one another as a result of differential selection pressures that arise in different microenvironments.
The actual observation of the rocks makes a worldwide Flood a far more reasonable explanation than the jerryrigged castle of evolutionism; the actual observation of living things makes it clear that evolution can't occur beyond a built-in boundary to the species.
Such frantic repetition is symptomatic of a catechism for the faithful, not of dispassionate reasoned scientific discourse. Even those who believed the allegory of the Flood was literally true found anomalies in it that could not be well explained.
Concluded
Science, not faith. It is evolutionism that is built on blind faith.
What creationism is all about is whether or not the Old Testament Book of Genesis is an accurate account of what happened around 4600 years ago with regard to a worldwide flood, and about 6000 years ago, with regard to creation of the natural world. Evolutionism is about what reasoned inferences can be made from the evidence provided by paleontology, systematics, genetics, population ecology, and other non-biblical scientific sources.
What creationism is all about is whether or not the Old Testament Book of Genesis is an accurate account of what happened around 4600 years ago with regard to a worldwide flood, and about 6000 years ago, with regard to creation of the natural world.
The Biblical record gives us clues to the history of the natural world but it still requires scientific reasoning based on all the relevant sciences to support them.
Evolutionism is about what reasoned inferences can be made from the evidence provided by paleontology, systematics, genetics, population ecology, and other non-biblical scientific sources.
So you are dependent on pure human reason, although there's simply no way to reconstruct the past without some external help because there's no way to test anything from the unwitnessed past, it can only remain an imaginative construct. It's all wild guesses, psi bond, that's the point, and as I've been pointing out they are bizarre ideas imposed on the observed facts -- laying a time scale on a stack of horizontally-deposited wet sediments full of fossils is perfectly ridiculous; as is ignoring the obvious effects of genetic depletion with every new emergent trait, though breeders know this and conservationists know it. It's positively anti-rational.
It's really really interesting that what is observable in the real world fits so WELL with the very few hints from the Biblical witness. A global flood is the only reasonable explanation for the strata, truly. The inevitable reduction of genetic diversity implies an original complement of species-limited genetic potential that can't go back more than a few thousand years. The Bible fits reality, evolution doesn't.
To suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very childish … God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips.
-- St. Augustine
It's perfectly silly to think anyone thinks of God as having a physical body.
Faith: Speciation DOES occur. What it MEANS is what we disagree about. There's lots and lots and lots of speciation and the variations that lead to speciation in nature. BUT IT ALL OCCURS AT THE COST OF GENETIC DIVERSITY AND CANNOT OCCUR OTHERWISE, AND THIS LOSS OF DIVERSITY MEANS THAT EVOLUTION BEYOND THE BOUNDARY OF THE BUILT-IN GENETIC COMPLEMENT OF THE SPECIES CANNOT HAPPEN.
PB: Clearly, now you are submitting your argument to mutation. Whereas, hitherto, you spoke of “reduction of diversity”, or “decrease in diversity” now you have begun to speak of “LOSS OF DIVERSITY”.
I've used all the terms interchangeably all along and there's nothing different about what I say above from what I've said all along. But I've been trying to avoid misreadings so I've emphasized decrease and reduction more lately to apply to the overall genetic picture. The term LOSS applies just fine in respect to a particular trait, as some alleles must be either suppressed or completely lost for a new trait to emerge and stick. Also, in the long run, after many speciation events or a drastic one or two it's a loss; overall with respect to the entire genome it's a reduction or decrease. The change in gene frequencies that accompanies all phenotypic variation and speciation events means that some are reduced The only kind of increase that can occur is a relative one as there are now more of some alleles than others, and those are the ones that determine the new traits. Meanwhile that always happens with the loss of other alleles, and it is this fact that tends to get overlooked. Enough such changes and the overall loss begins to make a difference. Conservationists know this. Evolutionists ignore it, being mesmerized by the new phenotypes and confused by all the math involved in calculating the changes in gene frequencies.
You are representing the phenomenon as all black and white, eliminating the grays that occur in nature.
Yes, I am, because the grays do not make a difference with respect to the trend I'm talking about. There is NEVER a genetic increase in the overall picture, NEVER. There may be temporary increases, as when formerly separated populations recombine, but that's an illusion if you think it has anything to do with the overall trend to genetic change which is always a decrease.
Wikipedia: “Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise.”
This is true, no argument, never has been, I've been affirming this all along, but I always point out that they always leave out the fact that this can only occur through the reduction of genetic diversity, which utterly defeats the claims of the ToE.
Your saying “Speciation DOES occur” means that new species are brought into being by the evolutionary process.
Never have denied it. But I use the term "species" to mean "varieties" of the particular species that has speciated. It doesn't matter. The term "species" MEANS "variety" and means "Kind" as well. The actual process that occurs is not in question and I've never questioned it. All I've questioned is the assumption that the process is open-ended. I could use the term "microevolution" too and sometimes do. The actual natural physical facts are the same and uncontested, only the theory is different.
Your saying “LOSS OF DIVERSITY MEANS THAT EVOLUTION BEYOND THE BOUNDARY OF THE BUILT-IN GENETIC COMPLEMENT OF THE SPECIES CANNOT HAPPEN” means speciation cannot happen.
Speciation beyond a particular boundary cannot happen, no. But all kinds of speciation events nevertheless DO happen, just as the evolutionists describe them. Change to the point of inability to interbreed with the original population happens quite frequently in nature, as I've been discussing freely all along. I simply disagree with the evolutionists about what all these things really mean. They think these processes can go on and on to REALLY new species rather than mere varieties/species of a given Kind. I'm saying there's no way they can because the very processes that bring about these varieties decrease in their ability to do so with each such event -- slowly, by very small increments in many cases, sometimes drastically fast when there is a drastic population reduction.
Truly I would have thought I'd been extremely clear about this point all along, but I did have the impression you weren't really paying attention.
Thus, you contradict yourself. You’re saying, in effect, if it happens, it is exactly because it cannot happen. Or: That it happens is proof that it cannot happen.
I haven't contradicted myself at all; you are simply having a problem following the argument, caused by paradigm paralysis at least, or not paying careful enough attention. You insist on a rigid evolutionist definition of "speciation" that ignores what is really going on in the actual observed events, and although I've been trying to pry you free from your categorical paralysis I guess I haven't succeeded.
But all the way back to the beginning of this discussion I've been saying exactly the same thing, using interchangeable terminology in an attempt to break out of the iron grip of the evolutionist mindset. The observed natural phenomena are the same; we are talking about the same events, but we have different contexts for them.
Evidently, you don’t fully understand the scientific terms you are using, theorizing, and abstractly speculating with.
I understand them just fine; I simply reject the meanings the evolutionists attach to them, the theory in which they are embedded, so I seek to release them in order to use them for purely descriptive purposes. They define actual observable phenomena just fine. Beyond the observable the ToE leaps to conclusions I deny BASED ON THE ACTUAL OBSERVABLE FACTS, as there is nothing in observable reality that supports their conclusions.
I recognize speciation as occurring as far as it has actually been observed, and it has been observed in many cases. But the theory about these events is wrong. They artificially define inability to interbreed as the point of development of a truly new species. I regard it as merely characterizing closeness to the end of the natural processes of variation, something that happens as they are approaching the boundary of the Kind. The truth is that speciation can't extend past some point of genetic reduction, which is different for every line of speciation events.
The only way to argue with a paradigm is to pry its terms free from the concrete the theory casts them in.
While beamish confuses himself erroneously thinking there are no DNA studies on fossils, you get hung up on simple scientific terminology like “speciation” and, as noted earlier, “natural selection” and “genetic drift”.
I am using these terms accurately to describe what is actually observed. You aren't used to using them outside the rigid confines of the ToE where they are made to imply the whole imaginative construct they don't in fact support. Try speaking ONLY of the phenomena themselves instead of jumping to the hypotheticals imposed on them by the ToE and the terms will come into proper focus.
As far as speciation is concerned, we have evidence of developmental adaptation (anagenesis or phyletic evolution) and evidence of branching adaptation (cladogenesis) from the fossil record.
You have no such thing from the fossil record as the fossil record cannot possibly ever be shown to record the passage of time let alone speciation events. The fossil record has nothing to do with speciation events. Look to living things to find out about speciation. The fossil record is a mausoleum of dead animal life that all died in one catastrophic event, obviously caused by a prodigious amount of water, which created layerings of disparate sediments in which hapless life forms found themselves trapped.
Evidence from genetic studies of chromosomes and DNA sequencing supports the branching scenario of speciation.
This is all a misuse of taxonomic classification. You are confused by mere classification constructs. There is no actual evidence of real descent in any of this, it's all hypothetical and imposed on a mere mental construct.
As for genetic evidence, you get some similarities between DNA samples and jump to the conclusion that there is genetic relatedness, but it's all a mental game, there is no REAL evidence of any of this.
The passionate arguments of creationists against evolution fall under attack from two independent sources of scientific evidence. Both sources point to the same phenomena, adaptation and differentiation through genetic mechanisms, acting in combination with environmental pressures. Speciation is a product of evolution in which variation is exploited to produce adaptation.
You are confused. There is no actual evidence in all this. Your two sources are both imaginative constructs and nothing more. You are denying the REAL evidence I have given here. You are following out the purely imagined hypothetical construct that is the theory of evolution and have deluded yourself that that constitutes evidence. This kind of mental gymnastics is possible simply because there is no way to test any of it so you can go on fantasy-building without restraint, simply creating sand castles out of seeming similarities but calling it science and bullying anyone who disagrees with you BECAUSE THERE IS NO WAY TO TEST ANY OF IT.
Speciation is a product of evolution in which variation is exploited to produce adaptation.
Adaptation is not really all that big a factor in the variation or speciation events. There is not very often a real challenge to adaptaption when a small part of a population migrates for instance. They simply move to a similar territory. Natural Selection in its classic form probably happens rather seldom, while random events such as migration and bottleneck happen far more often, and there's no reason to think these challenge the survivability of the new population unless they are in a hostile niche or so inbred and genetically depleted they are vulnerable to all kinds of threats from disease and otherwise.
When this variation occurs in related populations that are isolated from one another, they become distinct units.
Yes, they develop new traits, new phenotypes, that differentiate them. I've been discussing this up one side and down the other already. They have different gene frequencies. This is what brings out the new traits. When the process is repeated many times or brought about by a drastic population reduction, then the inevitable loss of alleles for the new dominant traits also will become drastic. Otherwise it will be a gradual slow reduction over time.
As long as there is some gene flow between these units, the continuity of the species will be maintained.
Meaning a new phenotype will not develop. This is true. There will be no speciation/variation/evolution as long as there is gene flow.
As long as the environment is stable, this continuity will be reinforced by the fact that only certain genetic combinations will prove adaptive under specific conditions.
Yes, but again, adaptability is not usually an important factor in speciation events. Most of them are purely random and do not compromise adaptability. The population will maintain whatever characteristics have emerged from random processes as long as the population and the environment remain relatively stable.
When the environment varies beyond certain limits, the phenotypic variation that is inherent in all populations will either readjust to the new conditions or the population will die out.
Yes, but again, this isn't the most common scenario. Changes in the phenotype are more commonly brought about by random events, including genetic drift, and they aren't usually affected by environmental changes. It would take a serious change in the environment to bring about natural selection. The point is that NS or adaptive requirements are just one of many events that bring about new phenotypes with their concomitant reduction in genetic diversity.
Extinction results when none of the inherent genetic variation fits the new environmental demands, not because there is no inherent potential for genetic variation.
This is one way it happens, but not as often as the theory claims. Some variations are threatened simply by reaching a point of inbred homozygosity because this usually goes along with various kinds of vulnerabilities. Then a very slight change in the environment can threaten them.
For example, consider a sexually reproducing, relatively homogeneous species living within a small, restricted environmental zone. Assume further that this species constitutes a single breeding population. This means that any member of the population has as good a chance to mate with any other mature member of that population of the opposite sex. Such a situation would insure a wide and random distribution of genes in the population at large. Random mating of this time is called panmixis. When it occurs the population is said to share a common gene pool. Any variation which occurs in such a population will be distributed fairly evenly within the confines of the total group.
Yes. And it's a fairly mild form of evolution, right? A change that just occurs by random within a population, the most common form of genetic drift, right?
What isn't getting noticed though, is that ANY change is accompanied by a corresponding reduction in COMPETING ALLELES for the newly dominant trait. OVer time, as the new trait continues to dominate in the population, the alleles for the same gene, the same trait, that are not getting expressed, are suppressed and eventually can simply die out of the population altogether along with the individuals that retain them. Or they may not completely die out, but this still describes a situation of reduction of genetic diversity as the dominating expression of any allele is accompanied by the nonexpression of others. But this situation is more like stasis in which evolution is so slow as to be negligible. But again, if it does take hold, if a new phenotype comes to characterizing the population over some generations, then competing alleles are going to disappear as they are not being expressed.
What creationism is all about is whether or not the Old Testament Book of Genesis is an accurate account of what happened around 4600 years ago with regard to a worldwide flood, and about 6000 years ago, with regard to creation of the natural world.
The Biblical record gives us clues to the history of the natural world but it still requires scientific reasoning based on all the relevant sciences to support them.
It is not the moral obligation or valid purpose of scientific reasoning to support the “clues” to the history of the natural world given in the biblical account of creation.
There is no nonreligious objective reason for the assumption that the Bible gives an accurate historical account of the creation of the earth and the universe. Hence, it cannot be relied on as a reliable source for serious scientific answers to questions about the origin of species or the origin of life. If the scientific answers differ from what the so-called “clues” hint, the “clues” must be thrust aside.
Evolutionism is about what reasoned inferences can be made from the evidence provided by paleontology, systematics, genetics, population ecology, and other non-biblical scientific sources.
So you are dependent on pure human reason, although there's simply no way to reconstruct the past without some external help because there's no way to test anything from the unwitnessed past, it can only remain an imaginative construct. It's all wild guesses, psi bond, that's the point, and as I've been pointing out they are bizarre ideas imposed on the observed facts -- laying a time scale on a stack of horizontally-deposited wet sediments full of fossils is perfectly ridiculous; as is ignoring the obvious effects of genetic depletion with every new emergent trait, though breeders know this and conservationists know it. It's positively anti-rational.
Fossils are objective data. DNA strands are objective data. Transitional fossils and the identicalness of the genetic code in all life forms on earth are objective data. To find answers to what these data mean, we have only human reason and dispassionate scientific study to help us; there is no objective external help available to science. Rationally, we know that no book, no matter how ancient or sacred, can provide answers to these scientific questions. The answers must come from impartial observations of the natural world. Rationally considered, the biblical stories of the creation and the fall are poetic allegories from human authors. Not factual history. Not empirical evidence. Not scientific at all.
Evolutionism is dispassionately concerned with a nonsectarian understanding of nature. On the other hand, creationism is passionately concerned with defending the creation myth and legend of the Fall in a particular religion.
It's really really interesting that what is observable in the real world fits so WELL with the very few hints from the Biblical witness. A global flood is the only reasonable explanation for the strata, truly. The inevitable reduction of genetic diversity implies an original complement of species-limited genetic potential that can't go back more than a few thousand years. The Bible fits reality, evolution doesn't.
It’s of interest that only people with strong religious convictions vigorously promote the claim that allegorical biblical stories fit reality really well and that evolutionary treatments definitely do not.
A considerable number of European insects inadvertently introduced into North America have evolved new physiological characteristics in a matter of only ten or fifteen years (C. S. Elton, The Ecology of Invasions by Animals and Plants, 1958). Despite creationist theories of genetic reduction, populations still show the capacity for genetic variation. Religious pre-Darwinian nineteenth century geologists discarded flood geology, in which they had believed strongly, when they had gained a better understanding of the earth’s structure from objective scientific evidence.
To suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very childish … God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he breathe upon him with throat and lips.
-- St. Augustine
It's perfectly silly to think anyone thinks of God as having a physical body.
Nonetheless, many, if not most religious people anthropomorphize God when talking or thinking about it answering their prayers, showing love or anger, or judging them.
In fact, the Bible describes God as walking in the Garden (“Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden”) or speaking (“And God said…”, “God blessed them and said to them…”). Hence, biblical literalists will naturally think that it has legs and feet to walk with, and a mouth and throat to speak. And lungs to breathe life into dust.
In my humble view, it is perfectly silly for anyone to believe it (God) literally made the man from the dust from the ground and the woman from a rib of the man----is that what you believe, Faith?
Faith: Speciation DOES occur. What it MEANS is what we disagree about. There's lots and lots and lots of speciation and the variations that lead to speciation in nature. BUT IT ALL OCCURS AT THE COST OF GENETIC DIVERSITY AND CANNOT OCCUR OTHERWISE, AND THIS LOSS OF DIVERSITY MEANS THAT EVOLUTION BEYOND THE BOUNDARY OF THE BUILT-IN GENETIC COMPLEMENT OF THE SPECIES CANNOT HAPPEN.
PB: Clearly, now you are submitting your argument to mutation. Whereas, hitherto, you spoke of “reduction of diversity”, or “decrease in diversity” now you have begun to speak of “LOSS OF DIVERSITY”.
I've used all the terms interchangeably all along and there's nothing different about what I say above from what I've said all along. But I've been trying to avoid misreadings so I've emphasized decrease and reduction more lately to apply to the overall genetic picture. The term LOSS applies just fine in respect to a particular trait, as some alleles must be either suppressed or completely lost for a new trait to emerge and stick. Also, in the long run, after many speciation events or a drastic one or two it's a loss; overall with respect to the entire genome it's a reduction or decrease. The change in gene frequencies that accompanies all phenotypic variation and speciation events means that some are reduced The only kind of increase that can occur is a relative one as there are now more of some alleles than others, and those are the ones that determine the new traits. Meanwhile that always happens with the loss of other alleles, and it is this fact that tends to get overlooked. Enough such changes and the overall loss begins to make a difference. Conservationists know this. Evolutionists ignore it, being mesmerized by the new phenotypes and confused by all the math involved in calculating the changes in gene frequencies.
The phenomenon you refer to becomes a serious problem in small inbreeding populations. In nature, large populations of a species with interbreeding subgroups do not exhibit a problematic decrease in genetic diversity. Evolutionists have observed many cases of lineages changing over time or branching into new lineages that continue to change independently of the original group, thus diverging.
You are representing the phenomenon as all black and white, eliminating the grays that occur in nature.
Yes, I am, because the grays do not make a difference with respect to the trend I'm talking about. There is NEVER a genetic increase in the overall picture, NEVER. There may be temporary increases, as when formerly separated populations recombine, but that's an illusion if you think it has anything to do with the overall trend to genetic change which is always a decrease.
Concluded
A particular trait may be controlled by a single allele or by a combination of alleles. It makes more sense to think in terms of fluctuations in frequency of an allele in a population than overall increase or decrease in genetic diversity, since loss of the capacity for diversity is not known to be lost. And that God has built limitations into genetic variation is not a scientific hypothesis.
Wikipedia: “Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise.”
This is true, no argument, never has been, I've been affirming this all along, but I always point out that they always leave out the fact that this can only occur through the reduction of genetic diversity, which utterly defeats the claims of the ToE.
Does this mean that you accept that new species have developed from ancestral species? The theory of evolution only claims that all species have descended with modification from a common ancestor, not that reduction of genetic diversity does not occur.
Your saying “Speciation DOES occur” means that new species are brought into being by the evolutionary process.
Never have denied it. But I use the term "species" to mean "varieties" of the particular species that has speciated. It doesn't matter. The term "species" MEANS "variety" and means "Kind" as well. The actual process that occurs is not in question and I've never questioned it. All I've questioned is the assumption that the process is open-ended. I could use the term "microevolution" too and sometimes do. The actual natural physical facts are the same and uncontested, only the theory is different.
The fact is that populations of a given species have developed into reproductively isolated subpopulations that continue to change independently of each other due to genetic variation. By common consent, biologists call these subpopulations separate species if they arose from a common species and are incapable of interbreeding. Biologists use the term “variety” to mean a morphologically distinct subset of the population that does not produce infertile offspring when crossed with members of the rest of the population. It is a taxonomic rank below subspecies that is used mainly in botany. “Kind” is used in the biblical story of creation. It is not a scientific category. In popular usage, “kind’ is used to refer to a generic class, as in a kind of bird, or a kind of insect.
Early naturalists, educated by the Church, based their science on the Platonic concept of “ideal types”. In Carl Linnaeus’s influential system of classification, the naturalist chooses a “type specimen” when naming a new species. Of course, a naturalist from Mars would be perplexed trying to identify a bulldog, chihuahua, dachshund, or great Dane as members of the same species by comparing them to an arbitrarily chosen “type specimen” of Canis familiaris. Yet all genomic studies show that all these varieties have descended from the wolf during the past 10.000 years. Typological notions of species crumbled as naturalists confronted two persuasive facts. First is the tremendous variability within species. Second, mutations and hybrids that differ from parents blur the boundaries of species----prompting even Linnaeus, late in life, to question the typological species system he made famous. Ernst Mayr introduced the biological species concept that strongly influenced two generations of biologists. Mayr characterized species as breeding populations occupying a specific niche in nature and reproductively isolated from one another by geography, ecology, or behavior. Dogs, maize, birds, snakes, humans, butterflies, horses, fleas, fish, protozoans, worms, elephants show obvious morphological differences, but all share the same genetic code. Whether one chooses to call them many species or just one, their common descent is manifestly traceable in their genomes.
Your saying “LOSS OF DIVERSITY MEANS THAT EVOLUTION BEYOND THE BOUNDARY OF THE BUILT-IN GENETIC COMPLEMENT OF THE SPECIES CANNOT HAPPEN” means speciation cannot happen.
Speciation beyond a particular boundary cannot happen, no. But all kinds of speciation events nevertheless DO happen, just as the evolutionists describe them. Change to the point of inability to interbreed with the original population happens quite frequently in nature, as I've been discussing freely all along. I simply disagree with the evolutionists about what all these things really mean. They think these processes can go on and on to REALLY new species rather than mere varieties/species of a given Kind. I'm saying there's no way they can because the very processes that bring about these varieties decrease in their ability to do so with each such event -- slowly, by very small increments in many cases, sometimes drastically fast when there is a drastic population reduction.
What you are struggling to say, Faith, is that you believe variation within a species population cannot ever lead to speciation, the production of new species. Your objection is really not on genetic grounds, but on semantic ones. You are willing to grant the fact of the development of non-interbreeding populations within a species, but you balk at calling them species that evolved from the original species, presumably because you believe all distinct species were created by God. Since it would contravene your belief, you dismiss the scientific evidence of transitional species. In other words, the view that scientists hold cannot be right if it makes Genesis scientifically untenable.
Truly I would have thought I'd been extremely clear about this point all along, but I did have the impression you weren't really paying attention.
You were extremely clear; I was just extremely apathetic about seeing this familiar argument zealously presented to me in cyberspace yet again.
Thus, you contradict yourself. You’re saying, in effect, if it happens, it is exactly because it cannot happen. Or: That it happens is proof that it cannot happen.
I haven't contradicted myself at all; you are simply having a problem following the argument, caused by paradigm paralysis at least, or not paying careful enough attention. You insist on a rigid evolutionist definition of "speciation" that ignores what is really going on in the actual observed events, and although I've been trying to pry you free from your categorical paralysis I guess I haven't succeeded.
No, I have no problem following the argument one more time. You have contradicted yourself. You cannot twist scientific terminology in common use to mean what you want it to mean, as if your redefinition is common usage. You are really trying to say that intraspecific variation mechanically precludes speciation.
But all the way back to the beginning of this discussion I've been saying exactly the same thing, using interchangeable terminology in an attempt to break out of the iron grip of the evolutionist mindset. The observed natural phenomena are the same; we are talking about the same events, but we have different contexts for them.
Maybe that is what evangelists do, but scientists try to be precise about their terminology and define their terms with care; they avoid using established terms in a new sense without explicitly noting that they are doing so.
Evidently, you don’t fully understand the scientific terms you are using, theorizing, and abstractly speculating with.
Concluded
I understand them just fine; I simply reject the meanings the evolutionists attach to them, the theory in which they are embedded, so I seek to release them in order to use them for purely descriptive purposes. They define actual observable phenomena just fine. Beyond the observable the ToE leaps to conclusions I deny BASED ON THE ACTUAL OBSERVABLE FACTS, as there is nothing in observable reality that supports their conclusions.
You evidently don’t understand how you sow confusion and risk being misunderstood when you take scientific terminology to be your private property rather than a shared means of communication. Speciation is used in evolutionary biology to name the process by which new species arise. BASED ON THE ACTUAL OBSERVABLE FACTS, theory of evolution is supported objectively and independently from many sources in the fossil record and genetic studies. The observable facts do not support the biblical account, according to which God crested all species or kinds, and all living creatures are descended from the pairs of each carried through the Flood on Noah’s ark.
I recognize speciation as occurring as far as it has actually been observed, and it has been observed in many cases. But the theory about these events is wrong. They artificially define inability to interbreed as the point of development of a truly new species. I regard it as merely characterizing closeness to the end of the natural processes of variation, something that happens as they are approaching the boundary of the Kind. The truth is that speciation can't extend past some point of genetic reduction, which is different for every line of speciation events.
Translating from your Orwellian newspeak, what you are actually saying is that speciation does not occur (new species are not formed), but each species can vary its form within the limits of its God-given kind. This may appear to be case when examining evidence occurring within human time. But deep time is a different story, and not a biblical one.
The only way to argue with a paradigm is to pry its terms free from the concrete the theory casts them in.
You would be on firmer ground if you used biblical terminology rather than appropriating scientific terminology for your idiosyncratic use. In that way, you probably will win more converts to your faith.
You evidently don’t understand how you sow confusion and risk being misunderstood when you take scientific terminology to be your private property rather than a shared means of communication.
Oh nonsense. I have bent over backwards making it clear how I am using the terms. I've explained them up one side and down the other. All along it's been clear you simply refuse to pay attention, but I haven't stopped explaining on account of that.
In order to talk about a theory diferent from that of the estabishment's one HAS to use terms in a different sense, and I HAVE explained them all along.
The English language doesn't have other terms for the phenomena in question. I call it "microevolution,"I call it "variation," then because it fits the observations of LIVING systems -- NOT THE UTTERLY RIDICULOUS CLAIMS ABOUT THE DEAD THINGS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD -- I also use the term "speciation" to get across that I mean to include the evolutionist claim that it is defined by the point where ability to interbreed is lost.
But of course if someone has the grip of rigor mortis on the way it is used by evolutionists it is difficult to break the paradigm. But I keep hammering away.
Speciation is used in evolutionary biology to name the process by which new species arise. BASED ON THE ACTUAL OBSERVABLE FACTS, theory of evolution is supported objectively and independently from many sources in the fossil record and genetic studies.
There is nothing to "observe" in the fossil record. The fossil record is a mute dead thing. All you are doing with it is imposing a wild scheme of interpretation upon it THAT CANNOT BE TESTED, PROVED OR DISPROVED. The ToE is not based on anything "observable," it's nothing but an edifice of fantasy.
Living systems CAN be observed. There you can SEE the phenomena called "speciation" by the evolutionists, and I use the term in to describe the very same phenomena they use it to describe.
The observable facts do not support the biblical account, according to which God crested all species or kinds, and all living creatures are descended from the pairs of each carried through the Flood on Noah’s ark.
I have shown many times over how the observable facts are more compatible with the Biblical hints than the outlandish jerryrigged nonsense of the ToE.
But of course it's hard for ossified brain matter to take in new information. You are putting up a smokescreen, insisting on protocols and formalities because you don't want to have to think.
It is not the moral obligation or valid purpose of scientific reasoning to support the “clues” to the history of the natural world given in the biblical account of creation.
I am not claiming that it is and have not claimed that it is (though as a matter of fact it IS an obligation to support the word of God). I have claimed only that the OBSERVED FACTS FIT IT.
You'll say anything to obfuscate and misrepresent.
It's perfectly silly to think anyone thinks of God as having a physical body.
Nonetheless, many, if not most religious people anthropomorphize God when talking or thinking about it answering their prayers, showing love or anger, or judging them.
Answer to prayer, expressions of emotion and judgment DO NOT IMPUTE A PHYSICAL BODY to God. God is spirit, pure intelligence, pure Personality, capable of every form of communication AND action, but without a physical body. He graciously uses terms that we can understand although scripture also teaches He is not like us even in these things. Still, we were made "in His image," a term we'd understand better if there had never been a Fall, which blinded us to God.
But NOBODY (except the idiot Mormons) claim God has literal physical hands or anything else.
What you are struggling to say, Faith, is that you believe variation within a species population cannot ever lead to speciation, the production of new species.
I have been saying it quite clearly, psi bond, all along. I am not merely trying to SAY it, I have been arguing the FACTS in favor of it and using the terminology available just as the evolutionists use it to describe what is observed about LIVING systems.
Your objection is really not on genetic grounds, but on semantic ones.
This is a lie. I have argued the GENETICS of the situation from the beginning. The terminology becomes a problem only because it is co-opted to the theory of evolution.
You are willing to grant the fact of the development of non-interbreeding populations within a species, but you balk at calling them species that evolved from the original species, presumably because you believe all distinct species were created by God.
You lie again. I've argued clearly for days now that it is the reduction in genetic diversity which is always brought about by any form of variation/speciation/evolution or the development of new traits or phenotypes that makes evolution beyond the built-in genome of a species impossible.
A particular trait may be controlled by a single allele or by a combination of alleles.
It also may be controlled by more than one gene. So what?
It makes more sense to think in terms of fluctuations in frequency of an allele in a population than overall increase or decrease in genetic diversity ...
As I have acknowledged in umpteen ways by now, this describes one common situation that occurs in populations. As in stasis, FLUCTUATIONS are NOT EVOLUTION. I am focused on EVOLUTION, that is, the genetics of what brings about phenotypic change. If you have many phenotypes or a fluctuation back and forth of the same phenotypes, YOU DO NOT HAVE EVOLUTION. When you get EVOLUTION -- otherwise known as VARIATION, SPECIATION OR MICROEVOLUTION, all observable events -- THEN YOU GET REDUCED GENETIC DIVERSITY.
...since loss of the capacity for diversity is not known to be lost.
Again, genetic diversity is NOT LOST EXCEPT WHEN THERE IS EVOLUTION / SPECIATION/ VARIATION / MICROEVOLUTION/ THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TRAITS OR PHENOTYPES. If you have stasis, or mere fluctuations of alleles, or the re-merging of populations, YOU DO NOT HAVE A REDUCTION OF GENETIC DIVERSITY. It takes the SELECTION of new traits, WHETHER RANDOMLY (what word other than "selection" could be used to describe even the random pinpointing of a particular trait for random reasons than "selection" -- if you have a better word for what I mean, please divulge it) -- it takes this selection, or bringing to the fore of specific alleles for specific traits, to bring about the genetic reduction I have been laboriously talking about.
And that God has built limitations into genetic variation is not a scientific hypothesis.
Well, I haven't brought God into my discussion of the observed realities of nature, but since you raise the question I must say I see no reason why God's word should not be the foundation for anything scientific since He made it all. What a strange idea.
Also, even if a trait is determined by a combination of alleles, for these to become the foundation of a trait requires that OTHER alleles for the same trait be suppressed. And although they many not be lost to the population for some time, and although there may still be fluctuations in which old alleles come back into play, this is not evolution, and when evolution actually occurs, when you get a trait fixed in a population, when you have a series of population reductions, natural selection events, bottlenecks or even protracted genetic drift over many many generations, eventually the alternative alleles WILL BE LOST. Homozygosity is an extreme example of this -- THERE ARE SIMPLY NO MORE ALLELES AVAILABLE IN THE POPULATION FOR THE TRAITS THAT ARE HOMOZYGOUS. Again, this is the extreme, but there are many stages on the way to it, losing alleles by stages OR all at once by particular events.
Translating from your Orwellian newspeak, what you are actually saying is that speciation does not occur (new species are not formed), but each species can vary its form within the limits of its God-given kind.
Again you lie. I have not merely SAID speciation beyond the boundary of a given "species" or Kind does not occur, I have been showing HOW it does not occur from the genetic standpoint. I have been ARGUING the point. I have NOT rested anything I've argued on the Bible at ANY point.
This may appear to be case when examining evidence occurring within human time. But deep time is a different story, and not a biblical one.
What you call "human time" is the only time for which we have actual scientific evidence. There is no evidence whatever for "deep time," it is strictly an unverifiable hypothesis or imaginative construct, and the argument I have made for the inevitable reduction of genetic diversity brought about by variation / speciation / microevolution / development of new trats or phenotypes IS scientific, IS fact, IS based on actual observation of reality, and DOES prove that "deep time" is a figment of the evolutionist imagination as the processes that lead to genetic depletion must reach an end point in a few thousand years, well before anything like "deep time" could possible enter into the picture. My argument falsifies deep time.
And by the way, evolutionists do NOT always restrict the term "speciation" ONLY to the case of populations that can no longer interbreed with a parent population. They often use it just as I'm using it, to describe ANY change in a population at any stage. They often use it to describe any of the series of ring species, each being distinguishable from all the others, not merely the end population. In fact the term "ring species" implies a RING OF SPECIES.
You evidently don’t understand how you sow confusion and risk being misunderstood when you take scientific terminology to be your private property rather than a shared means of communication.
Oh nonsense. I have bent over backwards making it clear how I am using the terms. I've explained them up one side and down the other. All along it's been clear you simply refuse to pay attention, but I haven't stopped explaining on account of that.
Oh, disingenuousnesss. You haven’t explained in context that you are using well-defined terms in non-conventional contrary ways. You would have done that if you “have bent over backwards making it clear how I am using the terms.”
In order to talk about a theory diferent from that of the estabishment's one HAS to use terms in a different sense, and I HAVE explained them all along.
No, Faith, one can devise new terms that don’t carry the supposedly offensive baggage of the usage in the scientific literature. Actually, what you have explained is that you believe you are right in your use of scientific terms despite my criticisms of your misleading, imprecise usage.
The English language doesn't have other terms for the phenomena in question. I call it "microevolution,"I call it "variation," then because it fits the observations of LIVING systems -- NOT THE UTTERLY RIDICULOUS CLAIMS ABOUT THE DEAD THINGS IN THE FOSSIL RECORD -- I also use the term "speciation" to get across that I mean to include the evolutionist claim that it is defined by the point where ability to interbreed is lost.
It seems, you have been avoiding “microevolution” until recently in your posts. That word is well understood unless you redefine it without notice to mean something it has not previously been used for.
But of course if someone has the grip of rigor mortis on the way it is used by evolutionists it is difficult to break the paradigm. But I keep hammering away.
Naturally, someone who is paralyzed from rigor mortis over the self-righteousness of her self-assumed noble mission, will not see the light, no matter how much anyone hammers on the point that communication is not about talking to oneself.
Speciation is used in evolutionary biology to name the process by which new species arise. BASED ON THE ACTUAL OBSERVABLE FACTS, theory of evolution is supported objectively and independently from many sources in the fossil record and genetic studies.
There is nothing to "observe" in the fossil record. The fossil record is a mute dead thing. All you are doing with it is imposing a wild scheme of interpretation upon it THAT CANNOT BE TESTED, PROVED OR DISPROVED. The ToE is not based on anything "observable," it's nothing but an edifice of fantasy.
The fossil record is composed of countless fossils, each of which, whether preserved in rock or amber, provides a bundle of sense data for human observation. If they are not God’s hoax, as some creationists have proposed, fossils provide information about organisms that lived on earth millions of years ago. Scientists, using unfettered reason, seek to determine what it means. Creationists, of course, insistently denounce the theory of evolution as an “edifice of fantasy”, because they favor an edifice of Faith that vindicates the Bible.
Concluded
Living systems CAN be observed. There you can SEE the phenomena called "speciation" by the evolutionists, and I use the term in to describe the very same phenomena they use it to describe.
The formation of new species----that is to say, speciation----is suggested by scientific observation of populations of conspecific living organisms in nature.
The observable facts do not support the biblical account, according to which God crested all species or kinds, and all living creatures are descended from the pairs of each carried through the Flood on Noah’s ark.
I have shown many times over how the observable facts are more compatible with the Biblical hints than the outlandish jerryrigged nonsense of the ToE .
No, Faith, you have only shown why you believe selected observable facts are more compatible with selected biblical “hints” or “clues”. However, the Bible is not taken by scientists to be a puzzle to be decoded in order to obtain scientific answers explaining natural phenomena. That God created each kind of living organism and that the only modern survivors of them are those descended from the ones rescued on Noah’s ark, are pious propositions that, as you shriek, “CANNOT BE TESTED, PROVED OR DISPROVED.” But, given the weight of sober scientific evidence, they are extremely unlikely.
But of course it's hard for ossified brain matter to take in new information.
As I noted in discussing your attitude above, that is quite true.
You are putting up a smokescreen, insisting on protocols and formalities because you don't want to have to think.
Precisely employing unambiguous terms enables clear thinking. Promiscuously using terms in a manner that is not mutually agreed upon breeds smokescreens hampering communication. And bitter sanctimonious allegations such as yours.
It is not the moral obligation or valid purpose of scientific reasoning to support the “clues” to the history of the natural world given in the biblical account of creation.
I am not claiming that it is and have not claimed that it is (though as a matter of fact it IS an obligation to support the word of God). I have claimed only that the OBSERVED FACTS FIT IT.
What scientists know of the genetic code, the evidence of transitional species in the fossil record, and the earth’s history do not fit literal readings of God’s word in the Book of Genesis. If, as you claim, it is a moral obligation to support the word of God, scientists are damned to hell, in your book.
Only creationists shrieking “OBSERVED FACTS FIT IT”, don’t accept that they deny the overwhelming weight of well-established scientific evidence.
You'll say anything to obfuscate and misrepresent.
It is to represent the scientific enterprise appropriately to clearly state that there is no moral obligation or valid purpose for scientific reasoning to support the alleged “clues” to the history of the natural world given in the biblical account of creation. Nor, given your claims that the word of God must be supported, is it an obfuscation.
It's perfectly silly to think anyone thinks of God as having a physical body.
Nonetheless, many, if not most religious people anthropomorphize God when talking or thinking about it answering their prayers, showing love or anger, or judging them.
Answer to prayer, expressions of emotion and judgment DO NOT IMPUTE A PHYSICAL BODY to God. God is spirit, pure intelligence, pure Personality, capable of every form of communication AND action, but without a physical body. He graciously uses terms that we can understand although scripture also teaches He is not like us even in these things. Still, we were made "in His image," a term we'd understand better if there had never been a Fall, which blinded us to God.
Although they “DO NOT IMPUTE A PHYSICAL BODY to God,” many, if not most, religious folks fall into the habit of thinking of it as if it does. A literal reading of scripture indicates it has a body to walk with and talk with and a lung to breathe with.
If we are “blinded” to God, we may be blinded to an understanding of the poetic allegorical sense in which the story of creation was fundamentally intended to be read.
So, you think being made in its image means something else than being made in its image?
But NOBODY (except the idiot Mormons) claim God has literal physical hands or anything else.
Except Michelangelo, who painted it as having the shape of a bearded old Caucasian on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (which I suppose you’d assert is the citadel of entrenched idiotic paganism).
What you are struggling to say, Faith, is that you believe variation within a species population cannot ever lead to speciation, the production of new species.
I have been saying it quite clearly, psi bond, all along. I am not merely trying
to SAY it, I have been arguing the FACTS in favor of it and using the terminology available just as the evolutionists use it to describe what is observed about LIVING systems.
You have been saying speciation occurs, but that the formation of new species. i.e., speciation, cannot happen. So, your claim that you have been saying it clearly is clearly not the truth.
Your objection is really not on genetic grounds, but on semantic ones.
This is a lie. I have argued the GENETICS of the situation from the beginning. The terminology becomes a problem only because it is co-opted to the theory of evolution
The truth is that the terminology becomes a problem when you autocratically impose your own meanings on well-defined terms in scientific discourse.
You are willing to grant the fact of the development of non-interbreeding populations within a species, but you balk at calling them species that evolved from the original species, presumably because you believe all distinct species were created by God.
You lie again. I've argued clearly for days now that it is the reduction in genetic diversity which is always brought about by any form of variation/speciation/evolution or the development of new traits or phenotypes that makes evolution beyond the built-in genome of a species impossible.
In other words, as I said before, you grant the fact of the dissimilar development of non-interbreeding populations within a species, but you balk at calling them new species that evolved beyond the hypothetically fixed (“built-in”) genome of the original species.
Is it not true that you believe, as a Christian, that all distinct species were created by God? I doubt that I am lying by presuming that you do.
A particular trait may be controlled by a single allele or by a combination of alleles.
It also may be controlled by more than one gene. So what?
A trait controlled by several separate genes is likely to be more susceptible to variation and stochastic fluctuation. Theories of the effect of variation on phenotypic diversity that postulate an iron-clad law linking decrease in variability with loss of the capacity for variability will be complicated by situations involving something not as simple as the one-locus, two-alleles, two-phenotypes model----assuming the standard definitions of ‘allele’, ‘phenotype’, and ‘locus’
It makes more sense to think in terms of fluctuations in frequency of an allele in a population than overall increase or decrease in genetic diversity ... .
As I have acknowledged in umpteen ways by now, this describes one common situation that occurs in populations. As in stasis, FLUCTUATIONS are NOT EVOLUTION. I am focused on EVOLUTION, that is, the genetics of what brings about phenotypic change. If you have many phenotypes or a fluctuation back and forth of the same phenotypes, YOU DO NOT HAVE EVOLUTION. When you get EVOLUTION -- otherwise known as VARIATION, SPECIATION OR MICROEVOLUTION, all observable events -- THEN YOU GET REDUCED GENETIC DIVERSITY.
Stochastic fluctuations in allele frequency influence the distribution of phenotypic characters in the population and constitute a factor in frequency-dependent natural selection.
...since loss of the capacity for diversity is not known to be lost.
Again, genetic diversity is NOT LOST EXCEPT WHEN THERE IS EVOLUTION / SPECIATION/ VARIATION / MICROEVOLUTION/ THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW TRAITS OR PHENOTYPES. If you have stasis, or mere fluctuations of alleles, or the re-merging of populations, YOU DO NOT HAVE A REDUCTION OF GENETIC DIVERSITY. It takes the SELECTION of new traits, WHETHER RANDOMLY (what word other than "selection" could be used to describe even the random pinpointing of a particular trait for random reasons than "selection" -- if you have a better word for what I mean, please divulge it) -- it takes this selection, or bringing to the fore of specific alleles for specific traits, to bring about the genetic reduction I have been laboriously talking about.
Again the capacity for diversity is not lost when diversity is reduced. Nor is there an endpoint to frequency-dependent natural selection, no more than with fitness-dependent natural selection.
And that God has built limitations into genetic variation is not a scientific hypothesis.
Well, I haven't brought God into my discussion of the observed realities of nature, but since you raise the question I must say I see no reason why God's word should not be the foundation for anything scientific since He made it all. What a strange idea.
Well, Faith, it would certainly be disingenuous to suggest that your fierce hostility to the theory of evolution is not religiously based, and that religion does not profoundly affect your view of what constitutes the observed realities of nature with respect to the origin of species. It would be equally disingenuous to suggest that religious zeal is not the primary factor driving countless laymen posters to relentlessly argue that the theory of evolution is false.
That God is responsible for building purported rigid limitations into genetic variation is not a hypothesis that can be tested. That such a nonrational belief should be considered a scientific hypothesis is indeed a strange idea.
And by the way, evolutionists do NOT always restrict the term "speciation" ONLY to the case of populations that can no longer interbreed with a parent population. They often use it just as I'm using it, to describe ANY change in a population at any stage. They often use it to describe any of the series of ring species, each being distinguishable from all the others, not merely the end population.
Scientists who publish in the scientific literature do not use these terms in such imprecise ways as you describe and seem to prefer.
In fact the term "ring species" implies a RING OF SPECIES.
No, it means a species that exhibits the ring phenomenon observed in population genetics.
“Ring ceremony” does not mean a ring of ceremonies.
It is to represent the scientific enterprise appropriately to clearly state that there is no moral obligation or valid purpose for scientific reasoning to support the alleged “clues” to the history of the natural world given in the biblical account of creation.
Actually, you are wrong and science is wrong. If God is God, and the Bible is the word of God, all human beings have the moral obligation to conform their thinking to His revelation.
There is also a "valid purpose" because reality really does support the very little there is in the word of God that describes the natural world, as I have been demonstrating.
"Nor, given your claims that the word of God must be supported, is it an obfuscation."
The obfuscation is in such misrepresentations of yours as that I'm arguing from the Bible and not from scientific observation. The source of my inspiration is not the subject of this debate, the scientific observations are the subject of this debate, but you insist on confounding the two, which amounts to obfuscation and misrepresentation and lies. Most of what you have said this time around is in that category.
You have been saying speciation occurs, but that the formation of new species. i.e., speciation, cannot happen. So, your claim that you have been saying it clearly is clearly not the truth.
I will try this one more time.
In using the term "speciation" I am aiming to stick to the way evolutionists use it. That they derive much of their thinking about it from the fossil record I find utterly ridiculous but that doesn't impinge on the points I am making. It doesn't matter where they get the ideas, the point is that when you think about what speciation really is from a genetic point of view it simply turns out that it has a built-in limitation beyond which no further phenotypic change can occur. Reduction of genetic diversity which ALWAYS accompanies speciation can't be overcome. That being the case it doesn't matter if they get the idea from the fossil record or from the Zodiac, in actual reality speciation CANNOT happen beyond this built-in limit. The facts of population genetics do not support open-ended phenotypic change, period. If it can't happen, it can't happen. The fossil record needs rethinking because clearly there IS no evolution from one species to another.
Is it not true that you believe, as a Christian, that all distinct species were created by God? I doubt that I am lying by presuming that you do.
You are lying with this very statement since my beliefs are not the substance of my argument here, which is entirely about genetics.
A trait controlled by several separate genes is likely to be more susceptible to variation and stochastic fluctuation.
So what? If a species evolves at all it evolves at the cost of reduction of genetic diversity; if it doesn't evolve then reduction of genetic diversity is not involved. It doesn't matter how many genes or alleles are involved -- the trend is ALWAYS to genetic reduction IF there is evolution / variation / speciation going on. In NO case whatever does genetic diversity INCREASE, which is what would have to happen to make open-ended evolution possivle.
Theories of the effect of variation on phenotypic diversity that postulate an iron-clad law linking decrease in variability with loss of the capacity for variability will be complicated by situations involving something not as simple as the one-locus, two-alleles, two-phenotypes model----assuming the standard definitions of ‘allele’, ‘phenotype’, and ‘locus’
All the complications that occur in nature do not change the fact that if phenotypic variation is occurring, reduction in genetic diversity is ALSO occurring. If it's occurring at one gene and not another then the diversity is reduced for that gene. What NEVER happens is an increase anywhere in the genome. You never get MORE alleles, you ALWAYS get fewer.
Stochastic fluctuations in allele frequency influence the distribution of phenotypic characters in the population and constitute a factor in frequency-dependent natural selection.
I have no idea what "frequency dependent natural selection" means.
Why don't you use ordinary English instead of science jargon? Because you like to posture and obfuscate perhaps? The science jargon has the effect of obscuring and mystifying rather than illuminating. It's like guild talk, intended to exclude rather than edify. Stochastic merely means random and I've addressed this situation many times.
IF you have natural selection, those individuals with the selected alleles will also NOT have the rejected alleles. The selected alleles will form the new phenotype. If it is true natural selection and the rest of the original population dies out, there will be a complete loss of the alternative alleles to the new population -- the reduction of genetic diversity that always accompanies phenotypic change.
But a purely random (stochastic) process like migration can produce all the beaks of Darwin's finches. A new beak doesn't have to be selected because of the environment, it can occur because of a stochastic process and then find its niche where the new style beak is particularly useful. If a short beak characterizes a particular subpopulation, the alleles for other beaks will not be present in that subpopulation. At the same time a long beak may characterize another subpopulation that does not have the alleles for the short beak -- simply another case of the reduction of genetic diversity that always accompanies phenotypic change.
Again the capacity for diversity is not lost when diversity is reduced.
Again you are confused. Sometimes it is lost, sometimes some diversity remains, as I've said over and over and over and over and over and over and over. If some remains it just means there is less active evolving or varying or speciating going on. Again, I'm talking about an overall TREND. Things can stay static or stable or fluctuate, and in that case there is simply little change going on so there is not as much reduction of genetic diversity going on. Again, it's when there is a clearcut development of a new phenotype that the trend becomes obvious. Otherwise it's vaguer and slower. But there is NEVER AN INCREASE, and that's what's needed for the open-ended evolution you think the fossil record exemplifies.
Nor is there an endpoint to frequency-dependent natural selection, no more than with fitness-dependent natural selection.
Show where the increase enters into the frequencies. That's the only thing that would make open-ended change possible and you haven't indicated how there could be any such increase. Changes in frequencies always tend to reduction of some alleles. Even where there is supposedly new input, at least hypothetically, the processes of isolation that make change possible end up reducing the genetic diversity anyway. There is never an increase that I've seen and you haven't shown one.
Need to refine another statement before you try to make a big problem out of it. I said:
IF you have natural selection, those individuals with the selected alleles will also NOT have the rejected alleles. The selected alleles will form the new phenotype.
I'm aware that you can have the situation of dominant and recessive too, so that the non-adaptive alleles do not necessarily completely die out, at least not at first.
Well, Faith, it would certainly be disingenuous to suggest that your fierce hostility to the theory of evolution is not religiously based,
I believe anything I have expressed of "fierce hostility" is simply my awareness that the scientific facts make it impossible. I call it an imaginative construct that can't be proved because it's true, not out of a prior hostility. I'm sarcastic about the whole thing because it's so obviously a delusion that has been falsely given the status of science.
The only thing that matters is whether the observations of nature hold up. I don't have to argue evolution. I could leave it completely alone, simply reject it without bothering to argue it, simply on the testimony of the word of God. Many do that and there's nothing wrong with that. But I have taken the trouble to understand a few things about the scientific questions involved and I actually SEE how evolution is wrong. So I argue it. If I didn't grasp some of the problem I wouldn't put myself in the position of trying to argue it.
...and that religion does not profoundly affect your view of what constitutes the observed realities of nature with respect to the origin of species.
I say it does not. Of course it led me to thinking about it in the first place, but it does NOT affect my view of the facts themselves. I am capable of intellectual objectivity. Sometimes I wonder if you are.
It would be equally disingenuous to suggest that religious zeal is not the primary factor driving countless laymen posters to relentlessly argue that the theory of evolution is false.
Believers KNOW evolution is wrong, from the word of God. That doesn't mean we know HOW it is wrong and some no doubt argue more from zeal than knowledge. But you know, the same is true of the average layman evolutionist too. The thinking that supports evolutionism is a house of cards, but millions are in its thrall nevertheless. Much of evolutionistic thinking is based on an atheistic zeal, a real need to deny that there is a God, and not on scientific objectivity at all. Are you willing to make the same accusation of evolutionists as of creationists?
That God is responsible for building purported rigid limitations into genetic variation is not a hypothesis that can be tested.
You have the cart before the horse. The Bible doesn't offer an hypothesis about these things and I didn't start from an hypothesis. The arguments I pursue came from reading about biology and evolutionism. I came to recognize that there is a fact of nature, an actual fact, that CAN be observed, and that is that some species are severely genetically depleted to the point that their survival is in doubt. How can this happen? It happens fairly frequently. Conservationists worry about it; breeders of all kinds have to take it into account if they want healthy breeds.
Could this be only a tendency in SOME living things and not others or only under SOME circumstances? Apparently if evolutionists think about it at all this is what they conclude, but the facts are against them. It's an actual tendency of the genetic stuff under the very "evolutionary mechanisms" that they believe bring about open-ended speciation.
It's not a hypothesis I started with at all. I simply thought a lot about it and realized that whatever this process is, it applies to all living things, it's a rule of genetics, and it contradicts the beliefs of evolutionists. You read the conservationists and recognize that natural selection and bottleneck and all the rest inevitably threaten to bring about genetic depletion, all those mechanisms that are called "mechanisms of evolution." Gee, that's interesting -- they lead to a condition from which living things cannot evolve.
Funny, the very processes that are supposed to bring about evolution end up making evolution impossible. Looks like a fact to me. Haven't seen anything yet to show it's wrong.
I probably got the main ideas for my favorite arguments from some creationist or other, but I don't remember where and I've done so much of my own thinking about them I've made them my own anyway. But again, such arguments don't come from the Bible. The incentive to discover arguments does, but not the arguments themselves. They ARE based on genuine observation of natural phenomena, they have to be.
It is to represent the scientific enterprise appropriately to clearly state that there is no moral obligation or valid purpose for scientific reasoning to support the alleged “clues” to the history of the natural world given in the biblical account of creation.
Actually, you are wrong and science is wrong. If God is God, and the Bible is the word of God, all human beings have the moral obligation to conform their thinking to His revelation.
No, actually, I am right about what science is. Recently, creationists have begun waging a fight to redefine science to suit their agenda (most notably in Kitzmiller v. Dover, in which they suffered a setback). The truth is: There can be no objective way of knowing “If God is God, and the Bible is the word of God.” You have heavily obfuscated the issue here by forcefully asserting this unprovable notion. It may be true, but it cannot be demonstrated with empirical evidence to be true. Science is science, not religion; in the proper pursuit of science, whatever you believe as a matter of religious faith has no place. For, in the knowable world, science cannot dedicate itself to attempting to confirm the creation myth of your religion or another. As I’ve already told you, the moral obligation that science must respect is to be guided in its theories by the empirical evidence the natural world furnishes. The word of someone’s god has nothing to do with that. Nor does the passionate faith of biblical literalists that science is wrong.
There is also a "valid purpose" because reality really does support the very little there is in the word of God that describes the natural world, as I have been demonstrating.
Science, which seeks only to understand nature, has no valid purpose in supporting the biblical narrative of how the world began, even if that seemed to be true. Despite your belligerent proclamations that you are right and I am wrong, your barked demonstrations are not convincing to scientists who understand the technical terms needed to describe complex phenomena and have actually done years of fieldwork. The arguments you make only convince others like you. Meanwhile, albeit dismissed by you, the capacity of living organisms to move into new environments and evolve adaptations to them continues unabated, as in the fossil record.
"Nor, given your claims that the word of God must be supported, is it an obfuscation.".
The obfuscation is in such misrepresentations of yours as that I'm arguing from the Bible and not from scientific observation. The source of my inspiration is not the subject of this debate, the scientific observations are the subject of this debate, but you insist on confounding the two, which amounts to obfuscation and misrepresentation and lies. Most of what you have said this time around is in that category.
I did not say you are arguing from the Bible----that is not true. Rather, I am saying that what drives you to aggressively argue, vociferously declare again and again that “science is wrong”, and berate the mental faculties of those who won’t agree with you, is your awareness that evolution contravenes a literal understanding of the Bible. Insisting I said what you pretend I said is just disingenuous obfuscation, willful misrepresentation, and, what’s more, not true.
Undoubtedly, your dogged use of appropriated findings of science to attempt to demonstrate discrepancies in the theory of evolution is explained by the dogged devotion you have to a literal reading of scripture.
Concluded
Your inspiration’s biblical source is the motivational reason impelling you to debate. Almost certainly, it is not because you always wanted to become a biologist. I presume that you feel evolution’s blind materialist causation challenges your consoling vision of Judgment Day. Therefore, you argue because of the Bible, but, certainly, not from it----you realize you must adopt the accouterments of scientists, and repurpose as much of their language as you think you understand, relegating God to the background, in order to obtain a serious hearing for your self-assigned proselytizing efforts outside your church.
Still, sensible people no more trust creationists for science than they do tribal medicine men for health care.
Faith: I probably got the main ideas for my favorite arguments from some creationist or other, but I don't remember where and I've done so much of my own thinking about them I've made them my own anyway. But again, such arguments don't come from the Bible. The incentive to discover arguments does, but not the arguments themselves. They ARE based on genuine observation of natural phenomena, they have to be.
There is no “genuine observation of natural phenomena” on which one can base the belief that a creator god made the natural world and each kind of living organism. However, one can make plausible scientific inferences about the relationships of species.
I don’t doubt that you do your own thinking, but it is not terribly original with you or the creationists whose arguments influenced you. Behind your idea of species as fixed kinds within bounds of variation lay old forms of conventional belief, particularly essentialism, the notion that reality is undergirded by a finite number of “natural kinds”, the essential patterns or archetypes of entities seen in the world. This idea dates back to Plato. Influenced by him, essentialists held that these natural kinds (or Platonic Forms) are discrete and immutable, and that physical objects are merely their inexact manifestations. Geometric shapes, for instance, were thought of as natural kinds, triangles always being three-sided, various in their minor characteristics (equilateral, isosceles, scalene), and forever distinct from rectangles or pentagons. Inorganic elements were another example----iron being always iron, and lead always being lead, unless some alchemist found a magical way of turning it into gold. Animal and plant species were also considered natural kinds, rigidly demarcated and unchangeable, though individual dogs or chickens might be various within their hard-sided categories. The essential form of a species, according to this view, is more fundamental and durable than the individuals embodying it at a given time. This is what William Whewell expressed when, in 1837, in his History of the Inductive Sciences, he wrote emphatically: “Species have a real existence in nature and a transition from one to another does not exist.” To believe otherwise was to reject an assumption that was interwoven with religious teachings and ideas of civil order.
Whether your thinking is original should not matter to you, only whether it is right. Evolution embodies a natural purposelessness and randomness that are contradictory to the notion that earth’s living creatures, their capacities (including human capacities), their histories, their indigenousness to particular locales, and their interrelationships all reflect some sort of divinely preordained plan. Creationist proselytizers pursuing Christian political agendas are therefore right to regard it with loathing and alarm. And to stream out across cyberspace screaming like wild animals against it.
What I said holds, and nothing you can say can overturn its perfect logic:
If God is God, and the Bible is the word of God, all human beings have the moral obligation to conform their thinking to His revelation.
The truth is: There can be no objective way of knowing “If God is God, and the Bible is the word of God.”
This is irrelevant to my perfectly logical statement.
You have heavily obfuscated the issue here by forcefully asserting this unprovable notion.
It's an ordinary logical proposition. If the premise is true, the conclusion is true.
It may be true, but it cannot be demonstrated with empirical evidence to be true.
Irrelevant. It stands as written.
Science is science, not religion; in the proper pursuit of science, whatever you believe as a matter of religious faith has no place.
I have introduced nothing of religious faith into my discussions of science here.
For, in the knowable world, science cannot dedicate itself to attempting to confirm the creation myth of your religion or another.
Again, IF God is God, IF the Bible is His word, THEN you are obligated and science is obligated.
As I’ve already told you, the moral obligation that science must respect is to be guided in its theories by the empirical evidence the natural world furnishes.
Should be no problem with that as long as the scientists are honest and the subject matter is amenable to testing and falsification.
The word of someone’s god has nothing to do with that.
Why are you having such a struggle with a straightforward logical proposition? IF God is God, and IF the Bible is His word, THEN you have an obligation to regard its revelations as truth -- about anything whatsoever.
Nor does the passionate faith of biblical literalists that science is wrong.
Nobody has requested this of you. You seem to be having some sort of problem with logical categories.
I'm not interested in this subject myself. It has nothing to do with the argument I'd been having with you, it's a complete red herring. I merely said what I said in answer to your persistent off-topic goading.
Faith: There is also a "valid purpose" because reality really does support the very little there is in the word of God that describes the natural world, as I have been demonstrating.
PB: Science, which seeks only to understand nature, has no valid purpose in supporting the biblical narrative of how the world began, even if that seemed to be true.
You really are having a terrible time with simple logic. I'm now stating that reality DOES support the Biblical hints, and obviously IF THIS STATEMENT IS TRUE then science most certainly DOES have a "valid purpose" in supporting whatever of the Bible is relevant, that is, if science really is concerned to accurately understand natural world. But the more you go on in this vein the clearer it becomes that your real reason for doggedly supporting evolution is to deny God.
Despite your belligerent proclamations that you are right and I am wrong, your barked demonstrations are not convincing to scientists who understand the technical terms needed to describe complex phenomena and have actually done years of fieldwork. The arguments you make only convince others like you.
Certainly is difficult to get an objective hearing from someone who keeps trying to make a religious argument out of a scientific one, who constantly appeals to authority instead of to scientific fact, and who accuses the opponent of belligerence without a cause.
Meanwhile, albeit dismissed by you, the capacity of living organisms to move into new environments and evolve adaptations to them continues unabated, as in the fossil record.
Funny, I've been affirming the capacity of living organisms to to just this myself over and over again. They certainly do move into new environments and evolve adaptations as well as interesting changes that are neutral. Of course there's a bit of a problem with that last phrase, "as in the fossil record" -- has anyone seen a fossil "move into new environments and evolve adaptations to them?"
I did not say you are arguing from the Bible----that is not true. Rather, I am saying that what drives you to aggressively argue, vociferously declare again and again that “science is wrong”, and berate the mental faculties of those who won’t agree with you, is your awareness that evolution contravenes a literal understanding of the Bible.
I see, my mistake apparently. Then let me disagree with THIS statement rather than the other. Again, quite apart from ANYTHING having to do with the Bible or God I simply find evolution to be built on sheer fantasy and the thinking that supports it to be delusional. Quite on its own terms, having nothing to do with my religious beliefs.
Undoubtedly, your dogged use of appropriated findings of science to attempt to demonstrate discrepancies in the theory of evolution is explained by the dogged devotion you have to a literal reading of scripture.
Funny, I'd have thought it is explained by the fact that there ARE discrepancies in the theory of evolution that I've been demonstrating.
Your inspiration’s biblical source is the motivational reason impelling you to debate.
Actually, I think it's more that once I got a good grip on the actual scientific evidence I couldn't resist debating it. The fact that the mechanisms of evolution do indeed inexorably reduce genetic diversity does prove the theory of evolution to be false, and how could I resist trying to make that argument? AND the fact that the neat strata of disparate rocks with their fossil contents fits a worldwide flood rather than the jerryrigged "deep time" vaporings of evolutionist pseudoscience just BEGS to be presented. There's pure enjoyment in arguments for truth.
Almost certainly, it is not because you always wanted to become a biologist.
Quite true, I'm a complete amateur who simply enjoys arguing for truths in biology and geology that I've discovered.
I presume that you feel evolution’s blind materialist causation challenges your consoling vision of Judgment Day.
Frankly, I hadn't given it a thought. I tend to focus on the facts of the particular arguments that interest me.
Therefore, you argue because of the Bible, but, certainly, not from it----you realize you must adopt the accouterments of scientists, and repurpose as much of their language as you think you understand, relegating God to the background, in order to obtain a serious hearing for your self-assigned proselytizing efforts outside your church.
I believe I made it clear that the Bible gives incentive and a conclusion but no hypothesis and no scientific argument. These come out of what I've learned of biology and geology and I thoroughly enjoy arguing on the basis of this knowledge. It's interesting that you insist on making a purely scientific argument into a religious one. This is about you, not me.
Still, sensible people no more trust creationists for science than they do tribal medicine men for health care.
Trust has nothing to do with science. It's about the arguments themselves. They either hold up or they don't. You have been running off on a completely irrelevant tangent here today -- and most of yesterday too. Obviously science isn't your interest here, you're much more interested in attacking religious belief.
There is no “genuine observation of natural phenomena” on which one can base the belief that a creator god made the natural world and each kind of living organism.
Nor have I claimed any such thing. You seem to be having a very strenuous argument with a particularly nagging Straw Man who lives in your head.
However, one can make plausible scientific inferences about the relationships of species.
Indeed, and one can make plausible arguments that the laws of genetics make some kinds of inferred relationships false.
I don’t doubt that you do your own thinking, but it is not terribly original with you or the creationists whose arguments influenced you.
I merely felt an obligation to credit creationists since I'm sure I didn't make up the whole argument myself. Sometime I should review them. I just enjoy using my own mind so much I may unfairly leave out some sources of my inspiration.
Behind your idea of species as fixed kinds within bounds of variation lay old forms of conventional belief, particularly essentialism, the notion that reality is undergirded by a finite number of “natural kinds”, the essential patterns or archetypes of entities seen in the world. This idea dates back to Plato.
Jeepers, REALLY? Funny, I would have sworn I got the idea from thinking about how the mechanisms of evolution inexorably involve genetic reduction which ultimately leads to an end of the same processes.
Influenced by him, essentialists held that these natural kinds (or Platonic Forms) are discrete and immutable, and that physical objects are merely their inexact manifestations. Geometric shapes, for instance, were thought of as natural kinds, triangles always being three-sided, various in their minor characteristics (equilateral, isosceles, scalene), and forever distinct from rectangles or pentagons. Inorganic elements were another example----iron being always iron, and lead always being lead, unless some alchemist found a magical way of turning it into gold. Animal and plant species were also considered natural kinds, rigidly demarcated and unchangeable, though individual dogs or chickens might be various within their hard-sided categories. The essential form of a species, according to this view, is more fundamental and durable than the individuals embodying it at a given time. This is what William Whewell expressed when, in 1837, in his History of the Inductive Sciences, he wrote emphatically: “Species have a real existence in nature and a transition from one to another does not exist.” To believe otherwise was to reject an assumption that was interwoven with religious teachings and ideas of civil order.
Well, imagine that! I had no idea. Perhaps there's something to it, hard to say. However, for my own part I assure you I've simply applied my mind to the actual situation I've come to recognize in population genetics.
Whether your thinking is original should not matter to you, only whether it is right.
Indeed and I assure you this is the case. I merely didn't want to pretend to be original since probably some of it did come from creationist sources.
Evolution embodies a natural purposelessness and randomness that are contradictory to the notion that earth’s living creatures, their capacities (including human capacities), their histories, their indigenousness to particular locales, and their interrelationships all reflect some sort of divinely preordained plan.
Well, as a matter of fact I believe there's quite a bit of teleological thinking in evolutionism, but that's another subject for another time.
Creationist proselytizers pursuing Christian political agendas are therefore right to regard it with loathing and alarm. And to stream out across cyberspace screaming like wild animals against it.
Apparently you are quite preoccupied with some such notion, some feeling feel we are out to tear you to pieces. I'm sorry you feel that way. It makes scientific discussion quite difficult.
Could I just ask you, psi bond, something like this: Would it distress you terribly if it turned out that the theory of evolution really is wrong? I mean of course that you could really see and understand how it is wrong.
If so, why, and what sort of explanation of origins would you look for from that point?
What I said holds, and nothing you can say can overturn its perfect logic:
It holds in theory, but it has no practical significance or application. In your theology, it may be perfect logic, but, in the real world, it is inapplicable. If there were no dry land on earth, we would have to conform our life styles to living on the water or under it: That is perfect logic, too.
If God is God, and the Bible is the word of God, all human beings have the moral obligation to conform their thinking to His revelation.
The truth is: There can be no objective way of knowing “If God is God, and the Bible is the word of God.”
This is irrelevant to my perfectly logical statement
The relevant point is: The antecedent premise is not confirmable. Hence the consequent is no use to us as a moral imperative.
You have heavily obfuscated the issue here by forcefully asserting this unprovable notion.
It's an ordinary logical proposition. If the premise is true, the conclusion is true.
That is correct. This is another logical proposition: If the earth’s atmosphere is lost, we must learn to survive somehow or die. If the premise is true, the conclusion is true.
It may be true, but it cannot be demonstrated with empirical evidence to be true.
Irrelevant. It stands as written.
No, it stands as irrelevant. The inability to confirm it means nothing must be done on account of it. That is relevant.
Science is science, not religion; in the proper pursuit of science, whatever you believe as a matter of religious faith has no place.
I have introduced nothing of religious faith into my discussions of science here.
The relevant point here is that you asserted that science has some obligation to follow the so-called clues given in the Bible in order to understand nature. That is an assumption pertaining to your religious faith.
For, in the knowable world, science cannot dedicate itself to attempting to confirm the creation myth of your religion or another.
Again, IF God is God, IF the Bible is His word, THEN you are obligated and science is obligated.
No, my obligation is irrelevant here, and, in reality, science has no such obligation. You are emphasizing a hypothetical case that, realistically speaking, can never be the case in the physical world.
As I’ve already told you, the moral obligation that science must respect is to be guided in its theories by the empirical evidence the natural world furnishes.
Should be no problem with that as long as the scientists are honest and the subject matter is amenable to testing and falsification.
I’m glad you have no problem with that despite what you’ve said you thought was the moral obligation of science. Indeed, the theory of evolution has been revised a number of times and is continually be re-examined and refined under criticism from scientists----as it should be.
The word of someone’s god has nothing to do with that.
Why are you having such a struggle with a straightforward logical proposition? IF God is God, and IF the Bible is His word, THEN you have an obligation to regard its revelations as truth -- about anything whatsoever.
I don’t see any problem with the logical proposition itself. The problem is with your evident conviction that it means something of practical consequence in the world we live in. Indeed, if there are many gods and goddesses who created the world, we have an obligation to heed the words of all of them. That is only logical.
Nor does the passionate faith of biblical literalists that science is wrong.
Nobody has requested this of you. You seem to be having some sort of problem with logical categories.
By making this all about me, you obfuscate it. It should not be difficult to see that if science’s purpose is to understand nature based on the evidence that nature furnishes, then the faith of biblical literalists is irrelevant to that quest.
Concluded
I'm not interested in this subject myself. It has nothing to do with the argument I'd been having with you, it's a complete red herring. I merely said what I said in answer to your persistent off-topic goading.
You may want to pretend it’s irrelevant and of no interest to you, you may want to keep God out of sight in the closet, yet it is clearly what drives your arguments and explains their ardor, whether or not you are willing to acknowledge that. Why not dispute the atomic theory of matter? I know of no clue in the Bible that suggests all substances are composed of atoms and molecules, and that, before the earth appeared, the state of matter was a plasma of subatomic particles that coalesced into stars, from one of which the earth eventually emerged. But, of course, there were no eyewitnesses to that. Nor any biblical testimony about it.
Faith: There is also a "valid purpose" because reality really does support the very little there is in the word of God that describes the natural world, as I have been demonstrating.
PB: Science, which seeks only to understand nature, has no valid purpose in supporting the biblical narrative of how the world began, even if that seemed to be true.
You really are having a terrible time with simple logic. I'm now stating that reality DOES support the Biblical hints, and obviously IF THIS STATEMENT IS TRUE then science most certainly DOES have a "valid purpose" in supporting whatever of the Bible is relevant, that is, if science really is concerned to accurately understand natural world. But the more you go on in this vein the clearer it becomes that your real reason for doggedly supporting evolution is to deny God.
Notwithstanding your efforts to flip this thing around, the problem with logic is yours. There is no valid purpose of science to support any scripture. I have heard that some findings of modern science affirm parts of the Vedic scriptures of Hinduism. And parts of Taoism. Nonetheless, science has no business supporting any part of Hinduism, or any other religion.
My real reason for supporting evolution, as I’ve told you, has nothing to do with any denial of God. It has to do with the social definition of science. There may or may not be a god; either way I would say what I have said here. Either way, I would be glad that a conservative Republican judge, in 2005, ruled that introduction of creationist alternatives to evolution in the public schools of the Dover School District, PA, was a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Despite your belligerent proclamations that you are right and I am wrong, your barked demonstrations are not convincing to scientists who understand the technical terms needed to describe complex phenomena and have actually done years of fieldwork. The arguments you make only convince others like you.
Certainly is difficult to get an objective hearing from someone who keeps trying to make a religious argument out of a scientific one, who constantly appeals to authority instead of to scientific fact,.
You are obfuscating with deflecting countercharges. I merely pointed out your religious inspiration, which is counter to the purpose of science. Why are you so testy about this?
and who accuses the opponent of belligerence without a cause
Without a cause? C’mon, now. THINK! THINK! THINK! THINK!
Meanwhile, albeit dismissed by you, the capacity of living organisms to move into new environments and evolve adaptations to them continues unabated, as in the fossil record.
Funny, I've been affirming the capacity of living organisms to to just this myself over and over again. They certainly do move into new environments and evolve adaptations as well as interesting changes that are neutral. Of course there's a bit of a problem with that last phrase, "as in the fossil record" -- has anyone seen a fossil "move into new environments and evolve adaptations to them?"
Well, then we agree that evolution is a fact. Hence we have no disagreement.
I guessed that you would jump on the last phrase. To avoid your semantic objection I could have written: “as evidenced in the fossil record.” But you would quickly object that the fossil record is evidence of nothing. As if scientists have been wasting their time collecting and studying fossils.
Has anyone living seen the Roman Empire? How do we know it ever existed?
Concluded
I did not say you are arguing from the Bible----that is not true. Rather, I am saying that what drives you to aggressively argue, vociferously declare again and again that “science is wrong”, and berate the mental faculties of those who won’t agree with you, is your awareness that evolution contravenes a literal understanding of the Bible.
I see, my mistake apparently. Then let me disagree with THIS statement rather than the other. Again, quite apart from ANYTHING having to do with the Bible or God I simply find evolution to be built on sheer fantasy and the thinking that supports it to be delusional. Quite on its own terms, having nothing to do with my religious beliefs.
You compound your mistaking my words by switching to another subject. Whether or not we factor in your religious inspiration for addressing evolution, I find your assessment of evolutionary theory delusional. And I find your faith in your ability to know what is sheer fantasy in evolutionary science misplaced.
Undoubtedly, your dogged use of appropriated findings of science to attempt to demonstrate discrepancies in the theory of evolution is explained by the dogged devotion you have to a literal reading of scripture.
Funny, I'd have thought it is explained by the fact that there ARE discrepancies in the theory of evolution that I've been demonstrating.
It’s funny that you don’t seem to think there are discrepancies in evolutionary theory of which scientists are aware, though not the ones you imagine and are doggedly devoted to forcefully explaining with an evangelist’s zeal.
Your inspiration’s biblical source is the motivational reason impelling you to debate.
Actually, I think it's more that once I got a good grip on the actual scientific evidence I couldn't resist debating it. The fact that the mechanisms of evolution do indeed inexorably reduce genetic diversity does prove the theory of evolution to be false, and how could I resist trying to make that argument? AND the fact that the neat strata of disparate rocks with their fossil contents fits a worldwide flood rather than the jerryrigged "deep time" vaporings of evolutionist pseudoscience just BEGS to be presented. There's pure enjoyment in arguments for truth.
Your fantasy that you have disproved the theory of evolution is harmless fun as long as you don’t try to have it taught to kids in science classrooms in the public schools.. That would effectively change the social definition of science.
Actually, the reduction in genetic diversity helps to prove the evolutionary relationships between species. Fixed genes are the ones that we look at when we compare two modern animals to try to estimate how long ago their ancestors split apart.
Creationists are not in unanimous agreement on the young earth concept and that Noah’s flood was responsible for the creation of all the fossils. All the problems inherent in flood geology can comprise a whole other argument that you have not entered into here. The order in which various life forms are found in the strata is not satisfactorily explained by flood geology.
Bishops and theologians who have attended to the evidence for evolution have given up the struggle against it.
Almost certainly, it is not because you always wanted to become a biologist.
Quite true, I'm a complete amateur who simply enjoys arguing for truths in biology and geology that I've discovered.
You don’t believe any professional training or fieldwork is needed to develop a background for dealing with the voluminous biological and geological literature on evolution in scientific journals?
I presume that you feel evolution’s blind materialist causation challenges your consoling vision of Judgment Day.
Frankly, I hadn't given it a thought. I tend to focus on the facts of the particular arguments that interest me.
It is clear that you don’t give any thought to the larger implications of the things you say. Sometimes a perspective beyond the facts is needed to see the facts themselves in a proper light.
Therefore, you argue because of the Bible, but, certainly, not from it----you realize you must adopt the accouterments of scientists, and repurpose as much of their language as you think you understand, relegating God to the background, in order to obtain a serious hearing for your self-assigned proselytizing efforts outside your church.
I believe I made it clear that the Bible gives incentive and a conclusion but no hypothesis and no scientific argument. These come out of what I've learned of biology and geology and I thoroughly enjoy arguing on the basis of this knowledge. It's interesting that you insist on making a purely scientific argument into a religious one. This is about you, not me.
You haven’t made it clear that you understand the distinction between a conclusion and a hypothesis. It is not a conclusion that all species were created by a god at one time, nor that God made them immutable within prescribed bounds of variation. Those are biblically-inspired hypotheses. They are not scientific ones. As I said before, it is fine that you get enjoyment from what you believe you understand of biology and geology that scientists cannot understand----as long as you don’t want your understanding of these disciplines included in the public school curricula.
Though you evidently want to make it all about me, it isn’t about me. It’s about you.
Concluded
Still, sensible people no more trust creationists for science than they do tribal medicine men for health care.
Trust has nothing to do with science. It's about the arguments themselves. They either hold up or they don't. You have been running off on a completely irrelevant tangent here today -- and most of yesterday too. Obviously science isn't your interest here, you're much more interested in attacking religious belief.
However, trust does have to do with confidence in the ability of the best scientists to develop good explanations for empirical phenomena. We shouldn’t trust witch doctors with medical treatment for our children or ourselves, and we shouldn’t trust creationists with dispassionate explanations for the origin of species. That is all I am saying in the above sentence; sensible people will find nothing to quibble about there.
Your religious belief per se does not concern me. It seems that a lot of your fun comes from imagining that, in attacking the theory of evolution, you are striking a blow against atheism.
I am concerned with the effect on society of ardently promoted pseudoscience, such as creationism.
There is no “genuine observation of natural phenomena” on which one can base the belief that a creator god made the natural world and each kind of living organism.
Nor have I claimed any such thing. You seem to be having a very strenuous argument with a particularly nagging Straw Man who lives in your head.
The straw man is your conviction that everything I say is intended to contradict you. The incentive you have to discover arguments against evolution comes from the Bible, you say. I merely point out that the notion of a creator god cannot be confirmed by empirical data from natural phenomena.
However, one can make plausible scientific inferences about the relationships of species.
Indeed, and one can make plausible arguments that the laws of genetics make some kinds of inferred relationships false.
Then why haven’t you made any such arguments?
I don’t doubt that you do your own thinking, but it is not terribly original with you or the creationists whose arguments influenced you.
I merely felt an obligation to credit creationists since I'm sure I didn't make up the whole argument myself. Sometime I should review them. I just enjoy using my own mind so much I may unfairly leave out some sources of my inspiration.
Even Darwin’s explanation of the origin of species by means of natural selection was not entirely original. Alfred Russel Wallace had the idea at about the same time.
If you enjoy using your own mind, you should turn to something more socially useful, like finding a cure for AIDS or cancer.
Behind your idea of species as fixed kinds within bounds of variation lay old forms of conventional belief, particularly essentialism, the notion that reality is undergirded by a finite number of “natural kinds”, the essential patterns or archetypes of entities seen in the world. This idea dates back to Plato.
Jeepers, REALLY? Funny, I would have sworn I got the idea from thinking about how the mechanisms of evolution inexorably involve genetic reduction which ultimately leads to an end of the same processes.
I hope I haven’t shocked you by pointing out that your thinking was not in a vacuum. It has a long intellectual history behind it.
Influenced by him, essentialists held that these natural kinds (or Platonic Forms) are discrete and immutable, and that physical objects are merely their inexact manifestations. Geometric shapes, for instance, were thought of as natural kinds, triangles always being three-sided, various in their minor characteristics (equilateral, isosceles, scalene), and forever distinct from rectangles or pentagons. Inorganic elements were another example----iron being always iron, and lead always being lead, unless some alchemist found a magical way of turning it into gold. Animal and plant species were also considered natural kinds, rigidly demarcated and unchangeable, though individual dogs or chickens might be various within their hard-sided categories. The essential form of a species, according to this view, is more fundamental and durable than the individuals embodying it at a given time. This is what William Whewell expressed when, in 1837, in his History of the Inductive Sciences, he wrote emphatically: “Species have a real existence in nature and a transition from one to another does not exist.” To believe otherwise was to reject an assumption that was interwoven with religious teachings and ideas of civil order.
Well, imagine that! I had no idea. Perhaps there's something to it, hard to say. However, for my own part I assure you I've simply applied my mind to the actual situation I've come to recognize in population genetics.
Alfred North Whitehead said that all of philosophy consists of footnotes to Plato. Be humble. You may have had an initial inspiration for thinking as you have.
Concluded
Whether your thinking is original should not matter to you, only whether it is right.
Indeed and I assure you this is the case. I merely didn't want to pretend to be original since probably some of it did come from creationist sources.
Lot of it comes from creationist sources. I’ve heard this argument and self-justification before. In fact, sometimes, it seems to me you are the same poster I argued with two years ago. But that cannot be for that was a marathon debate that extended into deep time.
Evolution embodies a natural purposelessness and randomness that are contradictory to the notion that earth’s living creatures, their capacities (including human capacities), their histories, their indigenousness to particular locales, and their interrelationships all reflect some sort of divinely preordained plan.
Well, as a matter of fact I believe there's quite a bit of teleological thinking in evolutionism, but that's another subject for another time.
Well, that is a misconception. Scientists will tell you that evolution is blind and purposeless. Although, a century or so ago, evolution was misconceived in the popular mind as a virtual synonym of progress, that is not at all how modern scientists think of it. On the other hand, creationists and biblical literalists assume that the universe and all things in it have an unalterable divine purpose and cannot be altered beyond divinely set limits.
Creationist proselytizers pursuing Christian political agendas are therefore right to regard it with loathing and alarm. And to stream out across cyberspace screaming like wild animals against it.
Apparently you are quite preoccupied with some such notion, some feeling feel we are out to tear you to pieces. I'm sorry you feel that way. It makes scientific discussion quite difficult.
Apparently, you begrudge me the exercise of a little poetic license. I have no feeling of being threatened by you. You amuse me, and if I indulge now and then in a little levity, it is because of that very fact.
A scientific discussion is quite difficult when so much of well-established evolutionary science is dismissed as useless imaginativeness in favor of a theory that starts with the unverifiable premise that God created all natural things. At least, exogenesis potentially can be a scientific theory. Genesis cannot.
Could I just ask you, psi bond, something like this: Would it distress you terribly if it turned out that the theory of evolution really is wrong? I mean of course that you could really see and understand how it is wrong.
Your question embodies a common misconception. A scientific theory, by definition, can never be proved right. It can either be found to provide a satisfactory explanation for some natural phenomenon, or it can be falsified. Newton’s theory of gravitation was useful and still is (in rocket science), although it has been replaced by Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which gives a fuller explanation. The theory that all matter is composed of indivisible atoms was found by scientists to be inadequate to explain subatomic phenomena, and it was modified to account for electrons, protons, neutrons, photons, neutrinos, et al., which led to some counterintuitive (and explosive) findings. (Einstein’s theory, too, has been the target of many efforts to prove it wrong by laypersons that also enjoyed exercising their minds on technical scientific matters.)
If so, why, and what sort of explanation of origins would you look for from that point?
It would have to be a scientific theory of greater explanatory power that accounted for the evolutionary relationships observed between species, one that replaces natural selection or augments it with other natural mechanisms yet to be discovered in nature.
What explanation for the origin of species do you look for?
Just a brief collection of answers:
What I said holds, and nothing you can say can overturn its perfect logic:
It holds in theory, but it has no practical significance or application.
It is a logical statement, and if the premise is true then the conclusion is true, and in that case it DOES have practical implications. This also applies to all your own logical examples.
The truth is: There can be no objective way of knowing “If God is God, and the Bible is the word of God.”
There are many clues to its objective truth available to one who has ears to hear.
Has anyone living seen the Roman Empire? How do we know it ever existed?
We know it existed because of the written reports about it. Same for all ancient peoples. Archaeology also supplies some information, though without written help that is subject to much error. Written reports are also how we know about the God of the Bible and the history of the Jews and the apostles and the gospel of Christ and all the rest.
However, the fossil record left no written reports, and all the claims made for it are purely imaginary as a result, and unfortunately untestable, unfalsifiable.
The rest of your evasive remarks really don't require an answer.
Yes, I'm the same person you argued with a few years ago -- I would have thought much longer than two years ago.
Thanks for the debate. Until next time.
As we look back on the history of life, we see a picture of never-ending, ever-rejuvenating novelty. Individuals die; species, families, orders, and even classes go extinct. But the evolutionary process itself seems to pick itself up and resume its recurrent flowering, with undiminished freshness, with unabated youthfulness, as epoch gives way to epoch.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, 2009, p. 422
Nowadays there is nothing to debate. Evolution is a fact and, from a Christian perspective, one of the greatest of God’s works.
-- Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford, Sunday Times, 2004
The thinking of many clergymen, over time, has evolved beyond virtual fixation, adapting to the scientific age we live in.
What I said holds, and nothing you can say can overturn its perfect logic.
It holds in theory, but it has no practical significance or application.
It is a logical statement, and if the premise is true then the conclusion is true, and in that case it DOES have practical implications. This also applies to all your own logical examples.
You should understand: If the premise is true, then the conclusion is true in logic. In logic, truth is a formal property of a logical proposition that it may or may not have. The world need not accord with logic. For logic is an abstract method of reasoning, first systematized by Aristotle, not the fundamental structure of reality.
If the earth is flat, we cannot go wandering over the edge without falling off. That is a logical proposition with no practical implications for us. It makes logical sense, but it is nothing for sensible people to worry about.
Science cannot be concerned whether its most powerful explanations of the universe conform to religious dogma, or follow biblical hints. The problem is that many who accept the benefits of science are easily persuaded to believe in pseudoscience such as astrology or like creationism, which tries to masquerade as science (knowing the prestige that attaches to things scientific), but when one examines the biblically-inspired claims closely, they don’t hold up to rigorous scrutiny.
The truth is: There can be no objective way of knowing “If God is God, and the Bible is the word of God.”.
There are many clues to its objective truth available to one who has ears to hear..
That is an untestable contention. It’s no more objective than this one: There are many gods and goddesses that rule over our lives----one only needs ears to hear and eyes to see.
Has anyone living seen the Roman Empire? How do we know it ever existed?.
We know it existed because of the written reports about it. Same for all ancient peoples. Archaeology also supplies some information, though without written help that is subject to much error. Written reports are also how we know about the God of the Bible and the history of the Jews and the apostles and the gospel of Christ and all the rest.
Actually, the “written reports” of the Bible are conflicting accounts (see especially chapters 1 and 2 of Genesis). None of these accounts in the Old and New Testaments is contemporary.
The history of the Roman Empire is a reconstruction, to some degree imaginative, from contemporary written materials, artifacts, and architectural monuments like Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, as well as the Roman towns at Pompeii and Herculaneum that were virtually fossilizedin lava eruptions and provide the best record of daily life in the Empire. Geological evidence, the fossil record, and the living archive embodied in genomes provide the only trustworthy objective evidence for the history of life. For that purpose, the Bible and other scriptures are not suitable.
It's a sad sign of the times that there are antichrist "clergymen" who elevate a man-made fiction over the word of God.
It's certainly true that there's no way anyone will ever get away with the truth about evolution, barring an unusual act of mercy by God; it has been enshrined as absolute fact and the truth doesn't have a chance. And that's BECAUSE it's not a testable falsifiable theory, it's pure self-confirming circular fantasy; and also because so many people are emotionally committed to a Godless universe.
So bizarre that a few bazillion fossils buried by a great flood have been imagined into a warmhearted family saga and then pronounced --- "fact."
Your dissertation on logic is nonsense. If a statement is true, it's true. Good try though.
Chapter 1 of Genesis is a chronology; Chapter 2 of Genesis is an accounting of some elements of the creation that pertain to Adam and Eve. Unbelievers are always inventing nonexistent contradictions in the Bible.
I will request that Z delete your post because you are out of line to use a name for me I have not used. It's against a basic rule of posting on message boards to do that, not to mention plain human decency.
Many thanks to Z for deleting psi bond's post.
Revised reposting of last night’s concluding remarks (two words deleted; for a clarification, see the end of the post below for today, September 27):
Concluded
However, the fossil record left no written reports, and all the claims made for it are purely imaginary as a result, and unfortunately untestable, unfalsifiable.
The fossil record is much better than written reports from human hands. It provides accurate impressions, fossilized, and mummified remains of ancient life forms. It provides records of evolutionary relationships that can be crosschecked by studies of the fixed genes in living and extinct species.
The rest of your evasive remarks really don't require an answer.
This remark of yours is nothing but characteristically dismissive evasiveness. You have no nonevasive sensible answers to the questions I raised.
Yes, I'm the same person you argued with a few years ago -- I would have thought much longer than two years ago.
So, still up to your old tricks, religious fervor undiminished, eh? You haven’t changed your spots, just your screen name. I should have known----there are many elements in your belligerent proselytizing style that are really quite unmistakable, as unmistakable as is much of the evidence on which the theory of evolution is built.
Thanks for the debate.
Don’t mention it.
Until next time.
I can hardly wait----to do this yet again, we have all of deep time to play in.
In the meantime, keep evangelizing and leaving ‘em laughing.
Resolved, That the theory of evolution provides a fruitful and unifying scientific explanation for the emergence of life on earth, that many theological interpretations of origins can readily embrace an evolutionary outlook, and that an acceptance of evolution is entirely compatible with an authentic and living Christian faith.
-- Episcopal Church, 75th General Convention, June 13-21, 2006, Resolution A129
Faith: It's a sad sign of the times that there are antichrist "clergymen" who elevate a man-made fiction over the word of God.
Chicago Tribune, Friday, 10/25/96: “In a major statement of the Roman Catholic Church's position on the theory of evolution, Pope John Paul II has proclaimed that the theory is 'more than just a hypothesis' and that evolution is compatible with Christian faith. In a written message to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the pope said the theory of evolution has been buttressed by scientific studies and discoveries since Charles Darwin ... ‘It is indeed remarkable that this theory has progressively taken root in the minds of researchers following a series of discoveries made in different spheres of knowledge', the pope said in his message Wednesday. ‘The convergence, neither sought nor provoked, of results of studies undertaken independently from each other constitutes, in itself, a significant argument in favor of this theory...’”
It's certainly true that there's no way anyone will ever get away with the truth about evolution, barring an unusual act of mercy by God; it has been enshrined as absolute fact and the truth doesn't have a chance. And that's BECAUSE it's not a testable falsifiable theory, it's pure self-confirming circular fantasy; and also because so many people are emotionally committed to a Godless universe.
That “there's no way anyone will ever get away with the truth about evolution, barring an unusual act of mercy by God” is not a testable falsifiable hypothesis or theory (by the way, how do you know which displays of God’s mercy are usual or unusual?). The notion that the quality of God’s mercy will be strained on Judgment Day for evolutionists may be spiritually consoling for you, but it is highly imaginative. There is no way to verify that contention. However, as noted some weeks previously, there is a way to falsify the theory of evolution. A pre-Cambrian rabbit will suffice. Apparently, you are not convinced I am truthful when I avow that my acceptance of evolution has nothing to do with my religious belief or lack thereof. However, a great many, probably most, of those who accept evolution are God-fearing people and do not see it----as you evidently do----as an affirmation of a godless universe.
Creation myths and myths like the flood meet a need in the psychological or spiritual nature of humans that has absolutely nothing to do with science. To turn a myth into science, or science into a myth, is an insult to myths, an insult to religion, and an insult to science. Each has its place in society.
One of the crucial predictions of evolutionary theory is that the appearance of organisms in the fossil record should reflect the branching, treelike structure of evolution:
It is a fact that literally nothing you could remotely call a mammal has ever been found in Devonian rock or in any older stratum. They are not just statistically rarer in Devonian than in older rocks. They literally never occur in rocks older than a a certain date . (quote continued below)
Concluded
But this didn’t have to be so. It could have been the case, as we dug down lower and lower from the Devonian through the Silurian and then even older, through the Ordovician, we suddenly found that the Cambrian era----older than any of them----teemed with mammals. That is in fact not what we find, but the possibility demonstrates that you can’t accuse the argument of being circular: at any moment somebody might dig up a mammal in Cambrian rocks, and the theory of evolution would be instantly blown apart if they did. Evolution, in other words, is a falsifiable, and therefore, scientific theory.
-- Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, 2009, p. 100
So bizarre that a few bazillion fossils buried by a great flood have been imagined into a warmhearted family saga and then pronounced --- "fact."
Bizarre as it may seem to some, I doubt it was a conspiracy. Just a great many thoughtful rational minds realizing it was the most plausible explanation of what they had found. But if you wish to remain estranged from the rest of the family, that’s quite all right.
According to an official document of the Episcopal Church in support of evolution and its teaching (2006): “The quest to understand the origins of life on earth, and the forces that drive the ongoing changes in living organisms involves Reason and is in no way incompatible with the central truths of Scripture and Christian Tradition. Episcopalians generally accept that it is appropriate to seek to understand, through scientific probing, the origins both of the cosmos and life on earth, and that evolution is a valid explanation of the development of all living things, including humanity.”
Your dissertation on logic is nonsense. If a statement is true, it's true. Good try though.
You may vigorously try to dismiss it, but my view of the place of logic in the world reflects the typical view of modern philosophers. I’m sure, however, you will tell me they are deluded and don’t know what you know.
Nonetheless, logic is not about reality; it is about itself.
Chapter 1 of Genesis is a chronology; Chapter 2 of Genesis is an accounting of some elements of the creation that pertain to Adam and Eve. Unbelievers are always inventing nonexistent contradictions in the Bible.
A literal reading of the Bible shows that both chapter 1 and 2 embody chronologies, contradictory ones.
In chapter 2 of Genesis, when “no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth," God formed the man from the dust of the earth. In chapter 1, man appeared on the earth on the third day after the plants and shrubs, as well as subsequent to the appearance of the beasts of the earth and the birds of the air. These last two, in chapter 2, are created after man. There are other differences in chronology as well.
I will request that Z delete your post because you are out of line to use a name for me I have not used. It's against a basic rule of posting on message boards to do that, not to mention plain human decency.
I have not seen anyone on the Internet object as you do to mentioning his/her former screen name. It was the only means by which I could trace whatever remains on the Internet of our earlier correspondence. But if you request of me that I do not use your former name, then I will not do so. For I certainly did not intend it to be taken as an insult, only as I sign of recognition. It may be a severe limitation of mine, but I never imagined anyone would consider it to be a fundamental breach of human decency. As you have never tried to insult me, I will not try to insult you----accordingly, Faith, I have reposted here my previous concluding remarks, but with your former screen name removed, and I’m requesting that Z not delete it.
OK psi bond. Peace.
I keep being tempted to say more but that will only prolong it. We're at the end.
So thanks again. I enjoy debate.
Faith: You can't be a "God-fearing" Christian and deny any part of the Bible. I'd expect the false-Christian "clergymen" to deny the Bible, the Pope most definitely.
There is no plausible reason to assume you have a superior knowledge of what it is permissible for a Christian to believe. Apparently, you think that so-called false Christian spokesmen like the leaders of the Episcopal Church, the Bishop of Oxford, and the Pope can only be saved from hellfire for their support of evolution by an “unusual” exercise of God’s mercy. That belief may be comforting as hell (so to speak), but it is an untestable hypothesis, which is just the sort of thing you have been denouncing all along.
I don’t know that they deny any part of the Bible----they may acknowledge Genesis to be fine allegorical poetry, as God may have intended, inspirational to humans as such----even the first two chapters, contradictory as they are, but imaginatively illuminating nonetheless.
There is no such thing as a "Devonian" or a "Cambrian" era. There are only layers of rocks of disparate composition at various depths. The idea that there could be a purely limestone or sandstone "age" is ridiculous. The reason mammals do not show up in the deepest layers is that they are land animals that would have been buried at a later stage of the Flood and therefore higher in the strata.
The correlations due to quantum entanglement are ridiculous, too, but they are observed to occur.
There is no such thing as an “elephant” or “horse”; there is only a mass of living cells to see. An elephant doesn’t know it is an “elephant”. And no one has postulated an age of sandstone or of limestone----those are straw men. Layers of mud or silt or sand, in which dead organisms may be trapped, are gradually laid down on the floor of a sea, lake, or estuary. The sand or mud becomes compacted over the ages and hardens into sedimentary rock, like sandstone or limestone.
Quite apart from the other reasons to object to creationists’ ‘head for the hills’ rationalization for the ordering of fossils, there could only ever be a statistical tendency for mammals, for example, to be on average better at escaping the rising waters than reptiles. Instead, as we should expect on the evolution theory, there absolutely are no mammals in the lower strata of the geological record. The ‘head for the hills’ theory would be on more solid ground if there were a statistical tailing off of mammals as you move down through the rocks. There are absolutely no trilobites above Permian strata, absolutely nodinosaurs (except birds) above Cretaceous strata. Once again, on the ‘head for the hills’ theory, there should be a statistical tailing off.
It's possible one might nevertheless have been swept into the sea and buried lower and maybe it will be found someday. It's probably deep under the Himalayas or something like that.
And then the theory of evolution will be proved false. Pray for it.
It’s unlikely that such evidence will be found only in one place.
The Himalayas were formed relatively recently, beginning about 70 million years ago and still ongoing at 67 mm per year (according to plate tectonic theory) when the Indo-Australian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate. The fossils found in the Himalayas are those formed in the ancient seabed of the Tethys Sea, now exposed and pushed up to form mountains.
I'm glad you had no intention of insulting me, though it was more like a violation of privacy than an insult.
Yes, I believe in doing unto others as I would have them do unto me.
Something that is said to be against “plain human decency” I figured would be an insult. Why mentioning a former screen name that you chose to call yourself by is a violation of privacy is a mystery to me.
In any case, it's been good mental exercise if not exactly enjoyable.
Until next time, eh?
Just kidding.
I’m just glad you’ve learned something, even if it was only that evolution is falsifiable.
Faith: OK psi bond. Peace.
I keep being tempted to say more but that will only prolong it. We're at the end.
So thanks again. I enjoy debate.
I just saw this.
As Darwin said, and as Ernst Mayr titled one of his insightful books, it’s “one long argument.”
I enjoy debating with someone like you, Faith, who respects her opponent’s intellect----someone who, except for inadvertent indiscretions, doesn’t call in a deus ex machina to delete arguments from her opponent that she doesn’t like.
This was fun for me, too. And good discipline.
"I’m just glad you’ve learned something, even if it was only that evolution is falsifiable."
I haven't had the time to read all the comments, but I'm hoping you feel YOU learned from Faith, too, psi bond.
Thanks for the lively and interesting debate and thanks for hanging in there. I hope this does happen again....good job, you both.
Z: I haven't had the time to read all the comments, but I'm hoping you feel YOU learned from Faith, too, psi bond.
Yes, I learned that, with his defense of evolution at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Pope John Paul II put his immortal soul in danger. I hadn’t seen that in the news reports I read in the secular press.
I know little about Catholicism and danger to immortal souls, thank God......but I do know that, after creation, there could be an evolving of certain species..
you know, psi bond...you're always so demeaning, self-aggrandizing and kind of desperate..I hope that's not you in your real life. I do wish you the best.
I know little about Catholicism and danger to immortal souls, thank God......
I know you haven’t learned anything from me in the course of this debate, since you declared you couldn’t at the outset.
My remark about Pope John Paul II was not concerned with what you may know of this, but about what I learned from Faith. Faith claims to know of such things, even declaring that clergymen who accept evolution are the anti-Christ(s): ”It's a sad sign of the times that there are antichrist ‘clergymen’ who elevate a man-made fiction over the word of God.”
but I do know that, after creation, there could be an evolving of certain species..
That’s more than scientists can know. How do you “know” this?
you know, psi bond...you're always so demeaning, self-aggrandizing and kind of desperate..I hope that's not you in your real life. I do wish you the best.
This debate hasn’t been about me. I wish you would not try to make it so now by falling back on your desperate ad hominem tactic and reiterating the self-righteous misperceptions you have about me.
The conflict between religion and science is a whole lot larger subject than me or what you mistakenly think about me.
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