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Help, I'm being attacked by Atheists

  
  

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Twig the Wonder Kid
22:59 / 06.09.07
Ok, I'm clearly coming across like a loon so far, but please don't think I am defending a position of skepticism without sufficient thought. I am not arguing from a "position of ignorance" (that is a very presumptive accusation dismoglobin). I have read widely on the subject, from the usual suspects; Dawkins, Dennett, Gould, back to the original Darwin, (which is refreshing in it's un-sensationalism after reading Dawkins). Naturally I have read more of the pro-evolution argument than the anti, simply because I can't stomach the Creationist claptrap, but the only conclusion I have drawn is that it is far from conclusive.

But why do I have to defend myself against an accusation of "ignorance", as you demand I do dismoglobin? Simply because one of the theories I doubt happens to be widely popular for the last few hundred years and you are speaking with a majority behind you? This is the aunt jobiska syndrome, i.e "it is a fact the whole world knows". Five hundred years ago the same would have been said about the existence of God. But I've clearly abused that comparison too much already.

It is far and away the current theory which makes the best sense of available evidence. Expressing skepticism about evolution is the equivalent of expressing skepticism about the idea of a heliocentric solar system - it just means you don't know what you're talking about.

It is not the same at all. Firstly, a 'best' theory does not equal a correct theory. Secondly, the heliocentric system can be demonstrated through prediction and measurement, whereas macro-evolution cannot. I'll have to make the distinction of macro/micro evolution from hereon because, as I already said elene, I whole-heartedly agree with micro evolution - a species can adapt, and this has been proved in many different ways. You don’t need to convince me of that.

But what has not, to my knowledge, been satisfactorily demonstrated, is the principle of macro-evolution, i.e. species adapting into other species. The fossil record should contain countless examples of such. It has enough examples of form adapting within a species over very long periods of time, but no 'transitional' forms at all. I'm not just talking about 'missing links', but necessary connections between major animal groups. For example, while there are countless fossils of early invertebrate sea creatures, and countless fossils of early fish, there hasn’t been a single fossil discovered linking the two, not a single record of a change that took 100 million years. This is statistically very improbable. The same goes for the intermediaries between fish and amphibians. Classes of animals seem to appear fully formed in the fossil record, and then disappear just as suddenly, they don't change gradually as evolution would predict.

Adaptations of form are something we have found quite easy to reproduce artificially, breeding animals for example. But never have breeders succeeded in producing a new species, i.e. one that cannot mate with it's predecessors. Yet we work on the assumption that this process could theoretically occur through the gradual, imperceptibly small modifications of evolution.

Similarly we accept that sophisticated body parts such as the eye can have evolved in gradual increments, without considering the intermediate stages that would have been required to get there. There would be no survival advantage to having anything less than a 90% functioning eye, so how does it get from 0 to 90% without being selected out? There are plenty of other examples of developments such as these that require a much more sophisticated explanation than gradual tiny mutations, e.g. hair, feathers.

There are also the arguments of catastrophism, biological oddities (the irish elk for example), morphology/organising principles and more nebulous issues with the theory's inarguable memetic strength, i.e. how appealing it is to us to believe (see here for more on that), it's reductionist nature, and it's lack of cyclicism. In my mind all of these add up to enough for reasonable doubt, enough to justify a position of skepticism.

But now, in being forced to justify my right to hold an opinion, I am taking this thread waaay off topic.
 
 
diz
23:38 / 06.09.07
I am not arguing from a "position of ignorance" (that is a very presumptive accusation dismoglobin).

Not at all. You can judge a process by its output. Whatever you've read, if you still think that the basic issue is "far from conclusive," you've somehow managed to remain ignorant.

Five hundred years ago the same would have been said about the existence of God.

Yes, and 500 years ago you could argue that it was unreasonable to be an atheist, because God was the argument that worked best at the time to explain the evidence. 500 years from now, we will probably believe something that is as different from modern evolutionary biology as string theory is from Galilean physics. None of that changes the fact that evolution is the only theory on the table right now that is even remotely in line with the evidence, and by "the evidence," I mean the sum total of the contemporary biological sciences, which, on an absolute scale, is a collection of knowledge which dwarfs pretty much the entire sum total of human knowledge circa 1507.

It is not the same at all. Firstly, a 'best' theory does not equal a correct theory.

"Correct" in science has no meaning other than "best right now." That's how it works. Of course it's conditional and limited and subject to revision, because all knowledge is inherently conditional and limited and subject to revision.

Secondly, the heliocentric system can be demonstrated through prediction and measurement, whereas macro-evolution cannot.

I am not even going to address these issues point-by-point, because they are too stupid. You don't know what you're talking about.
 
 
Lurid Archive
00:40 / 07.09.07
I should really let diz have the last word, since I agree wholeheartedly with the previous post, but I thought I'd comment on this,

But now, in being forced to justify my right to hold an opinion, I am taking this thread waaay off topic.

I think there may be a misunderstanding here. Of course you have a right to hold an opinion. But you don't have a right to have that opinion respected. The more I see you explain your opinion the less I respect it to be honest, since what you are saying amounts to little more than a disappointingly unoriginal rehash of creationist talking points.
 
 
Alex's Grandma
01:30 / 07.09.07
I'm as angry as anyone that I don't own a Genpet - one of those, stapled to the wall while I conducted my latest round of experiments might inspire me to be the next Oppenheimer!

So I feel your pain, LA. But, not to take this out on Twig!

Joking aside, isn't Darwin's theory of evolution, in the sense of it being a question of slow, incremental change, somewhat open to debate these days? Isn't there an alternative theory that has species development occurring in (horrible way of putting it, but still ...) short, quantum leaps?
 
 
Mirror
03:24 / 07.09.07
But what has not, to my knowledge, been satisfactorily demonstrated, is the principle of macro-evolution, i.e. species adapting into other species.

Speciation events have been observed in a number of cases. Just thought you should know.
 
 
Lurid Archive
09:57 / 07.09.07
Joking aside, isn't Darwin's theory of evolution, in the sense of it being a question of slow, incremental change, somewhat open to debate these days? Isn't there an alternative theory that has species development occurring in (horrible way of putting it, but still ...) short, quantum leaps?

The short answer is "no". The long answer is that the theory of evolution is not complete in every detail and that parts of the theory are up for grabs, revision and so on. So the saltationists may have more of a handle on the process of speciation, maybe, or they may not. The evidence doesn't really support saltationism, as I understand it, and everyone agrees that evolution happens very quickly as measured in geological time. If the saltationists won the argument - which looks unlikely - then you would get a somewhat altered theory of evolution, but a theory of evolution nonetheless. This point is quite similar to creationist tactics; on the one hand declaring evolution to be a matter of faith, and on the other hand using the presence of any scientific debate to cast doubt on the theory.

This, of course, has nothing to do with Twig's points.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
10:37 / 07.09.07
I'd like to adress Twig's points about macro-evolution:

But what has not, to my knowledge, been satisfactorily demonstrated, is the principle of macro-evolution, i.e. species adapting into other species. The fossil record should contain countless examples of such. It has enough examples of form adapting within a species over very long periods of time, but no 'transitional' forms at all. I'm not just talking about 'missing links', but necessary connections between major animal groups. For example, while there are countless fossils of early invertebrate sea creatures, and countless fossils of early fish, there hasn’t been a single fossil discovered linking the two, not a single record of a change that took 100 million years. This is statistically very improbable...

The same goes for the intermediaries between fish and amphibians. Classes of animals seem to appear fully formed in the fossil record, and then disappear just as suddenly, they don't change gradually as evolution would predict.

I'm not sure what you mean by there not being enough transitional fossils, as all life-forms are transitional. Is this "transitional" a specific scientific term I'm not familiar with? We can trace the evolution of ceratopian dinosaurs from Protoceratops into Monoclonius and so-on. It seems reasonable to consider Monoclonius as "transitional", in my understanding of the term, between Protoceratops and Triceratops:







Adaptations of form are something we have found quite easy to reproduce artificially, breeding animals for example. But never have breeders succeeded in producing a new species, i.e. one that cannot mate with it's predecessors. Yet we work on the assumption that this process could theoretically occur through the gradual, imperceptibly small modifications of evolution.

Similarly we accept that sophisticated body parts such as the eye can have evolved in gradual increments, without considering the intermediate stages that would have been required to get there. There would be no survival advantage to having anything less than a 90% functioning eye, so how does it get from 0 to 90% without being selected out? There are plenty of other examples of developments such as these that require a much more sophisticated explanation than gradual tiny mutations, e.g. hair, feathers.

This is easier to answer. First of all, mutations can be huge - remember that man who had a skin condition causing nail-material to grow all over his body? And animals can be born with one leg, or three legs, or a heart on the outside of the body, mutations as drastic as that in the space of only one generation. All it would take would be for some drastic mutation to be useful and it gets a chance to spread.

So, feathers. You probably start out with a small carnivorous dinosaur living on insects and small mammals. Its brood might contain a mutation with a missing leg, or no eyes, and those will probably be dead pretty quickly, but that same mutation might easily give it feather structures (which might just be lengthened versions of a covering the dinosaurs already had), and all of a sudden it can jump and glide with much more skill, meaning it gets to kill more prey and avoid more predators. So it has more chance to mate, and so we get a species of feathered dinosaur running around. If the species carries on being successful, breeding and breeding over a long time, the chances are the conditions will select for bigger, stronger feathers and bigger, stronger arm-muscles.

With eyes, they would have started out as a cluster of brain cells on some invertebrate. The "thing which is 90% of an eye" might not have been as useful as a "complete eye", but it wasn't neccesarily doing any harm and as such there was no reason for it be bred out. To put it another way, Stuff evolves through random mutation that is neither useful, nor harmful, and so isn't bred out but just remains doing nothing - and sometimes some further mutation occurs to the animal which picks up that previous mutation and makes it useful enough to be naturally selected.
 
 
el d.
10:41 / 07.09.07
Well, as I was last seen viciously defending the atheist PoV, I´d like to comment on this as well.

I´m quite positive that all our evidence shows creationism to be quite excremental, so I´ll say no more to that. (Imagine a Chihuaha mating with a Great Dane. Got your speciation right there, bub.)

But there are instances of some strands of atheism being as blatantly ignorant as some fundamentalist groups. I´d like to point to this wonderful article by Marc Vernon on Philosophy now which provided valuable insights to the follies of Mr.D.

The most obvious being, in my opinion, the lack of my ever-so-dear relativistic stance. But I digress, creationism still poses a quite back-to-the-bloody-inquisition-roots type of problem which needs to be tackled by an atheist and agnostic an quite possibly relativistic religous civil movement.

[wink]
Which, of course, will turn us all into philantrophic bakuninites hugging each other.
[/wink]
 
 
Evil Scientist
11:09 / 07.09.07
Similarly we accept that sophisticated body parts such as the eye can have evolved in gradual increments, without considering the intermediate stages that would have been required to get there. There would be no survival advantage to having anything less than a 90% functioning eye, so how does it get from 0 to 90% without being selected out? There are plenty of other examples of developments such as these that require a much more sophisticated explanation than gradual tiny mutations, e.g. hair, feathers.

Just underlining what Allecto said here. It is important to understand that the development of the eye is believed to have begun as photoreceptive cells in simple organisms (ie light or dark) and that evolutionary pressures have slowly selected towards the structure we are familiar with today. There are plenty of examples in biology of "eye" structures which are not >90% effective (when compared with the human eye). But then human sight is not >90% effective when compared with some other species sight.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
12:02 / 07.09.07
Ultimately I think we've got to remember that whilst there may be some gaps in the theory of evolution - I couldn't name them, but I assume that an evolutionary biologist could - it is

a) very silly to, rather than go out and look at what might fill those gaps, throw out the whole theory as bankrupt (or only equivalent to faith, no better-evidenced) because of one or two missing fossils - because you'd then have to throw out a lot of other dependant sciences as well, including vaccination;

b) neccesary to be aware that, as with most things, very few of the people who criticise evolution do so without an agenda of some kind - either an attempt to win more converts, or usually a more or less disguised reactionary social interest.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
13:00 / 07.09.07
So, my biologist friend got back to me.

Tiktaalik ( wikipedia ) might be a good example of what you're looking for. This is also a recent discovery where we had lobe finned fish such as Panderichthys about 385 million years ago, and flippery amphibians like Ichthyostega about 365 million years, and they discover this new fishy amphibian dated to 375 million yrs.

I think this would be a pretty good example of the kind of thing you are saying has never happened - a link between fish and amphibians is expected and then, later, found, at just the right time period.

You may be confusing the fact that it is hard to find fossils, because they are old and require a lot of luck/randomness to discover with the idea that evolution is an untestable theory.

Similarly, the debated link between dinosaurs and birds:

There was a rather big debate as to whether birds are dinosaurs. There were many physical characterstics that united birds with certain dinosaurs like Velociraptors, but many of the old timers were having none of it. Then bam out of China (I think) comes a fossil of one of the velociraptor relatives that is finally preserved well enough to show a skin imprint and it has feathers.

Anyway, then he got into a long spiel about jawbones or something, but here you go if you're interested:

Probainognathus was an important find that represented a cranial
transition from a reptile-like morphology to a new mammal morphology.
Reptiles have several bones in their lower jaw and the jaw hinge has the
articular bone in the lower jaw hinging against the quadrate of the upper.
In modern mammals we have just one bone in the lower jaw and our hinge
works with that bone, the dentary, hinging against the upper squamosal.
Those extra two bones actually moved into our middle ear to become the
malleus (hammer) and incus (anvil). Reptiles already had a columella
(equivalent to the stapes in mammals). Probainognathus was special
because it sat in between the two and had all four bones involved in the
jaw hinge.

An important point, though, is that it rarely turns out the we actually
find grandpa in the fossil record. It's almost always a great uncle.
There is usually a feature or two that suggest that the animal we find
isn't exactly along the line we are tracking, but a close relative and
dead end side branch. There are over a million named animal species and
at least as many left to name. Take that back in time and you see how
unlikely it is that we will catch that exact right species. A quality
fossil needs to form, it needs to have formed in a location where at this
point in time it is close to the surface, somebody needs to dig it up, and
it needs to have the work done on it and be described and understood.

Right now in our lab we have we have about 1 bat, 2 shrews, and about 10
mice that likely represent new species and we're just waiting to get
better information to be able to write it all up and put some names on
these animals. Most labs that do similar work are probably in a similar
situation.

I could also ramble on about merging fossils with other aspects of biology
such as geography and genetics. The genetics revolution has been huge in
verifying our ideas of how things are related. The ways they have
challenged old ideas are what gets all the press, but the vast majority of
genetic results confirmed old ideas (who would have guessed that birds,
mammals, primates, etc. can each be verified as related using
essentially the same processes that we use to assign paternity. Um,
everyone. Yawn.)
 
 
Twig the Wonder Kid
15:56 / 07.09.07
Ok, so I come at you with a provocative stance on a contentious topic. The reaction is split into two camps.

On one hand we have Allmacto (and sleaze, Alex's Gran, shock, evasion, RED, most of you) who take it, run with it, chew it around a little, see if you can make sense of where it's coming from.

Then you have dizmoglobin, and the commenters to my blog, who's only argument seems to be "it's just wrong, everyone knows that". And dizmo, why you are being so rude to me?

I am not even going to address these issues point-by-point, because they are too stupid. You don't know what you're talking about.

Seeing how you've been so quick to insist I'm just "ignorant", despite hearing very little specific argument from your side, I would reverse this and suggest that in fact it is you who don't know what I'm talking about. If this simple thought experiment is so abhorrant to you, the idea of stepping outside your dominant ideology for an afternoon, if only to see what the world looks like from there, you are just the voice of the mob.

Yours is the “why can’t [people] just keep their uniformed pie holes shut and listen to the elite” argument. Just as you suggest that 500 years ago you would have been shouting me down for not believing in God.

Remember that I'm not arguing that the Theory of Evolution is wrong, it's probably not. What I am arguing is that it is loosely defined enough for it to require a degree of faith regarding the details.

Allmacto: Your explanation for the 90% eye mutation is right. But do you see what I mean about how difficult it would be to demonstrate such a process. It makes perfect sense, but how could you ever predict and measure this effect?
 
 
Tryphena Absent
20:20 / 07.09.07
Twig, you've had ample response in this thread, why don't you engage with the people who showed you that you were wrong pleasantly rather than the people who told you that you were wrong. The people who told you aren't going to be pleasant because you're unpleasant back, they're just going to keep telling you and they're kind of right about the way science works and the theory of evolution.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
13:22 / 08.09.07
Richard Dawkins replies to his critics (in his lispy C3PO voice) in this Timesonline article. Relevant to this thread (as it started out at least) is this passage:

You’re as much a fundamentalist as those you criticise.

Dawkins: No, please, do not mistake passion, which can change its mind, for fundamentalism, which never will. Passion for passion, an evangelical Christian and I may be evenly matched. But we are not equally fundamentalist. The true scientist, however passionately he may “believe”, in evolution for example, knows exactly what would change his mind: evidence! The fundamentalist knows that nothing will.
 
 
Twig the Wonder Kid
14:38 / 08.09.07
Fair point Tryphena, but the topic of the thread is Atheist Fundementalism, for which dizmoglobin makes a good example.

Ultimately I think we've got to remember that whilst there may be some gaps in the theory of evolution - I couldn't name them, but I assume that an evolutionary biologist could - it is

a) very silly to, rather than go out and look at what might fill those gaps, throw out the whole theory as bankrupt (or only equivalent to faith, no better-evidenced) because of one or two missing fossils - because you'd then have to throw out a lot of other dependant sciences as well, including vaccination;

You misunderstand me. I am not throwing out the theory, I am not even saying there is anything wrong with it. All I am saying is that those gaps cannot be taken as inarguable, and that they require a degree of faith to believe they will eventually be explained.

b) neccesary to be aware that, as with most things, very few of the people who criticise evolution do so without an agenda of some kind - either an attempt to win more converts, or usually a more or less disguised
reactionary social interest.

You suspect I have an agenda? I assure you I don't. The idea of a world without the theory of evolution to explain creation would be a very bleak one for me.

But there are instances of some strands of atheism being as blatantly ignorant as some fundamentalist groups. I´d like to point to this wonderful article by Marc Vernon on Philosophy now which provided valuable insights to the follies of Mr.D.

This is exactly the point I'm making (so poorly), thanks evasion.

I'm not sure what you mean by there not being enough transitional fossils, as all life-forms are transitional. Is this "transitional" a specific scientific term I'm not familiar with? We can trace the evolution of ceratopian dinosaurs from Protoceratops into Monoclonius and so-on. It seems reasonable to consider Monoclonius as "transitional", in my understanding of the term, between Protoceratops and Triceratops:

Ok, if you take the progression as Protoceratops -> Monoclonius -> Triceraptops, you have a progression of form. But then you are still left with huge gaps between each of the three, with no graduation, it is just adding a new step and moving the issue down a notch. It is not making a smooth curve in the fossil record, it is still a series of massive steps, even if the Monoclonius halves that step. Evolution predicts gradual change, not leaps, and we're talking about millions of years here.

Yes, the fossil record supports the theory of evolution, I'd never say otherwise, but it could also support a theory of static forms for long periods of time, jumping to new forms, if that was what you chose to use it for.

New steps are being discovered all the time that fit the tehory, but the thing I keep emphasising is the ability to make predictions and measure them. When the time scale is so variable, and the mutation so random, you can never predict with any degree of accuracy that creature X should be found at time Y, and then wait to find it. You can find new fossils and fit them into the theory, but not vice versa.

This is why I will not accept that is comparable with Newtonian physics, heliocentricism or a round earth. All of these principles can make a prediction of a state at time T, that can then be tested at time T. And this prediction/measurement can be repeated many, many times. Even quantum mechanics gives a probability of a state at time T, that can be measured statistically. If ever the prediction/measurement of any of these theories failed, the theory would be falsified.

You can never make a prediction for time T with evolution, because if you go look at time T it is extremely unlikely you will find a fossil there.

The true scientist, however passionately he may “believe”, in evolution for example, knows exactly what would change his mind: evidence! The fundamentalist knows that nothing will.

This is a good point. But to use the example of dizmoglobin again, he is arguing that

"Correct" in science has no meaning other than "best right now."

which is why 500 years ago he would have argued just a passionately for Creationism, because there was no evidence to be found with the technology of the 1500's.

In the case of Evolution it is highly unlikely that contradictory evidence will be found, which probably means that the theory is correct. But it may also mean that, because of the extremely low likelihood of finding contradictory evidence (because fossilisation is so rare), the nature of the theory is unscientific.
 
 
sleazenation
15:02 / 08.09.07
But it may also mean that, because of the extremely low likelihood of finding contradictory evidence (because fossilisation is so rare), the nature of the theory is unscientific.

But that position seems to indicate a belief that fossilisation is the only basis on which evidence that supports or doesn't support evolutionary theory can be found. However, going forward it is not going to be the fossil record that is the main source of data on biodiversity, but the recordings and observations of naturalists and scientists about the animals that exist in their lifetimes. If evolution is indeed the long game, then surely evidence is something that will be accumliated over generations.
 
 
Twig the Wonder Kid
16:59 / 08.09.07
This is the distinction between macro and micro evolution again. There is plenty of evidence for short term 'micro' evolution, but for very long term 'macro' evolution there is no evidence apart from the fossil record. (is there?)
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
17:57 / 08.09.07
No evidence, that is, apart from chromosomal evidence, molecular evidence, DNA redundancy, etc. etc. You have to really want not to accept evolution to not accept evolution at this point.
 
 
Twig the Wonder Kid
18:30 / 08.09.07
Could you expand on some of these Beast, specifically how they evidence macro-evolution.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
19:04 / 08.09.07
Well, there's rather a lot of molecular evidence for macroevolution to plough through so let's look at just one example: endogenous retroviruses.

Endogenous retroviruses are leftovers from an infection contracted by some critter in the past. Very rarely, you find that a copy of the retrovirus' geonome has sneaked into the host's geonome, and been passed down to that individual's descendants. Now, if the theory of macroevolution is correct, we would expect to find these endogenous retrovirus traces across different species, because if you go far enough back in the dim and distant past, those species must have some common ancestor. Since the happenstance of retroviral gubbins getting mixed up with the host's blueprints in such a way that it is transmissible to the host's offspring is so vanishingly rare and unlikely, it follows that two species with the same retrovirus insertions in the same place must surely share a common ancestor. Research bears this out in practice. Examining the geonomes of different primate species, researchers have in fact discovered retroviral insertions in the same place in different species.

We could also point to the existence of "switched off" genetic material in various species. Why, for example, would a shark have genes for fingers and toes, unless Jaws shares a common ancestor with something a bit better endowed in the limb department?
 
 
This Sunday
19:08 / 08.09.07
The point of science, in a modern sense (post establishment of the scientific method) is that it's all theory, though, yeah? Laws and absolutes are inevitably flawed or come apart when the scale or perspective are shifted.

Science is at its best not that dogmatic. Proofs may be elegant, but they are in some ways always illusory, or limited. Religion in that blind-eye dogmatic sense, even when called, or backed by, science, is still... it's a bad mark on science, on religion, and on humanity, whom I would prefer to presume (with that dogmatic blind eye) are all so much more capable of working things out on their own, than such determinism gives credit to.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
19:43 / 08.09.07
...of course, I don't really know why I bothered typing all that out, since you, Twig, don't really seem terribly interested in the evidence. The claim that you have "read widely on the subject" is somewhat undermined by the fact that you don't seem to have looked at the talk.origins archive linked to above. It seems to me that someone with a serious interest in the topic would have plugged the words "macroevolution evidence" into a search engine; had you done so you might have seen this page, 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, which is the first result on Google.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
19:45 / 08.09.07
Proofs may be elegant, but they are in some ways always illusory, or limited.

Decadent, what does any of that actually mean?
 
 
el d.
20:21 / 08.09.07
Thanks, dear Aunt, for that thread-stopping link. Twig, do us the favour and read that before mentioning missing evidence for macro-evolution again.

To get back to the essence of the thread: It´s really about the classification of some atheists, newly proud with their non-religion. I´m Pastafarian myself, so I probably count as one of those. The "fundamentalist" atheist seems to be the one that runs around shouting "religion is dumb, so are you, Duh!". But saying "if you could just accept that whatever you believe is not the truth and can therefore not be applied to everyone, and therefore no one needs spiritual saving, thank you." is not that offensive, is it?

By the way, the pope´s reception in Vienna was fun. Arrrrr!
 
 
Spaniel
22:46 / 08.09.07
I have to say, Decadent, I'm struggling along with Aunty.
 
 
Spaniel
22:47 / 08.09.07
And, you know, I'm pretty sure you should excise "inevitably".
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
23:03 / 08.09.07
New steps are being discovered all the time that fit the tehory, but the thing I keep emphasising is the ability to make predictions and measure them. When the time scale is so variable, and the mutation so random, you can never predict with any degree of accuracy that creature X should be found at time Y, and then wait to find it. You can find new fossils and fit them into the theory, but not vice versa.

I'm sorry...did you even read my post? We see fish. we see amphibians. we Predict the existence of a transitory creature at time T. we find transitory fish-amphibian creature at time T. What the fuck more do you want?

finding the velociraptor relative with feathers is also an example of predicting something and then finding it.

let me try to state it again: I strongly believe that you are conflating

A: Evolution is difficult to find evidence for, because fossils are hard to find

with

B: Evolution is difficult to find evidence for, because it is poorly defined or "untestable" theory.

your emphasis on "micro" and "macro" evolution appears strange to me. it's just evolution. the smooth, gradual changes we see today are exactly the kind of thing that was going on in the past between these steps we see in the fossil record. you can't say that micro-evolution here and now doesn't solve the problem, and then complain that the changes in the past don't solve the problem because they don't show micro-evolution between the steps.

also, as Aunt Beast says (and as my friend says in the italics above) there's a lot more to proving evolution than fossils these days. there's all kinds of biochemical/molecular biology going on, and 98% of what Evolution was Predicting we would find before (from studying fossils) is now being Tested and Verified by the genetic and chemical evidence. There are discrepancies and things being shifted around by the new evidence, but most of it is not. And that's what makes this Non-Faith: when we discover new information, we change the theory.

I believe that it is helpful to try and critique the posts and not the poster (ie not calling you ignorant.) and I have certainly, in my own life, encountered Atheists who I would consider arrogant, closed-minded, or ignorant. However - I really don't see what your argument has to stand on. And I don't feel like you are addressing the points I have made. I can understand why people are frustrated with you, because, at this point, I'm beginning to wonder what the fuck you are talking about.
 
 
Twig the Wonder Kid
23:24 / 08.09.07
I'm beginning to wonder what the fuck I'm talking about too RED.
 
 
*
23:47 / 08.09.07
There's no need to conflate an understanding and acceptance of evolution as the current best theory with atheism in the first place. I know scores of deists of one stripe or another who are perfectly comfortable with evolutionary theory. Science is not a religion, and science and religion are not mutually exclusive, any more than science and philosophy or religion and philosophy.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
00:44 / 09.09.07
Well I sure as Hel ain't an atheist; I've got hot and cold running Gods. I see absolutely no philosophical conflict between my spiritual beliefs and my commitment to science and empiricism. It is not possible for my beliefs to be threatened by anything science has to offer, because they are a seperate body of understanding which requires only the evidence of my own senses rather than empirical proof.

I am afraid I look askance at other deists who feel threatened by evolution or any other sound scientific fact (and friends, anything with such a bulwark of evidence behind it is surely a fact). There is no branch of science that can assail the existance of your God(s), unless you happen to believe something really fucking stupid like the world is flat, the sun goes round the Earth, or that your God created the world in seven days. Intelligent design (as opposed to flat-out Creationism) I find particularly hard to sympathise with, since there is plenty of space around the edges of natural selection through which a reasonably limber supreme being could slip. Who stirred the primordial soup, sort of thing.

As for anti-evolutionists who are not speaking from a place of religious dogma, I can only assume they're the sort of people who always have to say shite if the rest of the world is saying sugar, regardless of the actual merit of their position. I suppose the need to feel special in some way is a very powerful drive.
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
01:07 / 09.09.07
my easiest (and therefore quite probably silliest or flawedest) way of thinking about it is that, to God or even A God/ess, "evolution" probably is just another sort of tool, like a screwdriver. Want to make man in your own image? Bam! only a few billion years later it's done, and meanwhile you were downloading Doctor Who while it all took care of itself.
 
 
COG
08:17 / 09.09.07
Although this thread seems pretty done and dusted, please allow me one tap of the hammer on the final nail on that there coffin.

To address the question of why there are less fossil examples of transitional forms, we have to remember that mutations occur in organisms and not species. A successful species will at the beginning have sprung from a small subsection of a different species, the bulk of which carried on on their own sweet way. The newly mutated organism and its offspring (if successful) would gradually breed more and more thus producing a bigger, and itself evolving, population. After a time if this population (now sufficiently different to be a new species) found itself in a stable environment which suited it then the conditions could be right for it to bloom and produce huge numbers of individuals over many thousands of years.

So the chance of finding a fossil from this new successful (stable) species is much, much higher than the chance of finding one from the initial small population of mutated individuals.

The idea of a transitional species is misleading. All species are just species. Some last for thousands of years without significant change because their environment is very stable and there is no pressure for changes to take hold. Others are a flash in the pan due to a rapidly changing environment or just plain bad luck.

Here is an analogy. I can't decide if it is a good one or not, but here goes. In the 70s the pop music world was dominated by soft rock, soul, disco, etc etc. Then someone made the first hip hop record. Some people copied the form and made different hip hop records. Later came a huge explosion of hip hop records, Gangster, smooth, Indie, turntablist and many more sub-genres.

Now, go into a 2nd hand record store and look through the racks. You will find countless examples of hip hop. You will find countless examples of soft rock etc etc from the 70s. But can you find that rare 12" that started it all off? Damn right you can't.
 
 
Quantum
11:57 / 09.09.07
That's a great parallel, cog, spot on.
 
 
Charlus
12:54 / 16.09.07
Could there be anything as bad as evangelicals...? Aethiesm only survives with religion. It promotes a Godless world, so you can't have one wothout the other. But in your blog you mentioned that almost all of the ancient Greek writings as being distinguised... Please explain as I'm not sure what this means... Simple Simon and whatnot.

Thanks!
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
14:03 / 16.09.07
When I was being brought up as a Christian, the way I learned it there seemed to be no conflict. Evolution was accepted, but as with the universe itself, it was a process set in motion by God, who, being omniscient, already knew its conclusion. No intelligent design, no seven literal days. It never seemed a contradiction to me, anyway.
 
  

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