Schneibster
Unregistered
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2005
- Messages
- 3,966
Seconded.
He's not even kidding; he's not even thinking about kidding. It's the best.
Fossil and Evolution
- Thread starter mijopaalmc
- Start date
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
I would recommend checking out the Talk Origins web site that has been mentioned twice, and then coming back here if you still have some specific, detailed questions. People on this board love to answer questions, and the more detail, the better. It is the vague, hand-wavy questions that tend to receive grumpy answers. I hope this helps.
Don't get me wrong, mate, I'm not saying your question isn't genuine, I only agree that, at face value, it could be seen as less-then-honest.
However, I'd be willing to answer any specific questions you have.
Dr Adequate
Banned
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2004
- Messages
- 17,766
HELLO?
I have never felt more disgusted with my fellow-skeptics collectively than on this thread. Well, maybe years ago with the Case Of The Ghostly Policeman.
The Atheist ... cbish ... dr kitten ... Taffer ... articulett ...
Your behavior appalls me. You've been asked a question which most of you haven't understood and which the remainder can't answer, so your response is to explain to the questioner that he is lying about his motives in asking the question.
Which doesn't answer the question.
---
Apart from that, I feel personally insulted. I say that there is a serious question there, I answer it, I say in my usual tactless manner that you're all idiots for not recognising this as an interesting question, and, dagnamit, I am the local expert on epistemology.
If you don't get it, then at least give me a bit of rope here.
I have never felt more disgusted with my fellow-skeptics collectively than on this thread. Well, maybe years ago with the Case Of The Ghostly Policeman.
The Atheist ... cbish ... dr kitten ... Taffer ... articulett ...
Your behavior appalls me. You've been asked a question which most of you haven't understood and which the remainder can't answer, so your response is to explain to the questioner that he is lying about his motives in asking the question.
Which doesn't answer the question.
---
Apart from that, I feel personally insulted. I say that there is a serious question there, I answer it, I say in my usual tactless manner that you're all idiots for not recognising this as an interesting question, and, dagnamit, I am the local expert on epistemology.
If you don't get it, then at least give me a bit of rope here.
Last edited:
Dr Adequate
Banned
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2004
- Messages
- 17,766
Well, apparently after the first 8000 posts I can say that it's a good question and no-one accuses me of being a creationist in disguise. Maybe you should make 8000 posts.
---
Seriously, they are usually nice intelligent people who wouldn't question your integrity, but I think something in your original question has temporarily driven them nuts.
JoeTheJuggler
Penultimate Amazing
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2006
- Messages
- 27,766
Why would you want to do that? It seems sort of like aspiring to think about numbers like a child who doesn't understand mathematics. What use is that?
I believe that's why you're being greeted with such suspicion. Also, this sort of thing has happened in these forums many times before. "I'm a skeptic, but how do you explain this?" followed by a demonstration of very unskeptical thinking.
Dr Adequate
Banned
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2004
- Messages
- 17,766
'Cos we might want to know the answer.
At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes --- an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, and the most ruthlessly skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.
- Carl Sagan
---
Now, if you have nothing better to do than to pretend that the best question asked about evolution on this forum in years is the product of some lying gutter creationist then I can tell you what to do with yourself and the horse you rode in on.
ARE YOU ALL FREAKIN' NUTS?
We are skeptics. We've just been asked --- how do we know?
Which is the same question that we ask everyone else.
If you don't know the answer to that, then feel free to sit in the corner while I explain.
But keep your mouth shut while you do so.
Last edited:
The Atheist
The Grammar Tyrant
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2006
- Messages
- 36,364
Uh, doc. Just before you get too carried away, I don't think I'm in that game at this stage:
As you know, I'm happy to take a contrary position, but don't credit me with one until I'm in it, ok?
Excuse me?
I said that the OP was worded in such a way which could be construed to be dishonest. I said I'd love to shown that it isn't dishonest. Not once did I actually accuse him of lying, did I? Not once did I say it was not a good question, did I? And I resent the implication that I am too stupid or too close-minded to understand the question.
And it is not an epistemologic question, it is a question about the scientific method, and inductive reasoning.
Slimething
Illuminator
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2006
- Messages
- 3,790
Just to intrude into this lovefest, to my knowledge a full fossilized human has not been found yet. Am I correct? If that is so, mij can confidently inform his dinner buddies that we don't exist.
Skeptic Ginger
Nasty Woman
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2005
- Messages
- 96,955
Welcome to the board, Mijo. It's an unusual forum name so I hope you don't mind I Googled it looking for evidence of sincerity or evangelicalism. Are you the science tutor or was that someone using the same tag?
If people find out you are sincere (I don't see the big deal, time will usually tell) you will, I'm certain, hear apologies from them. I think everyone needs reminders that we are not psychic and can't always tell by a post if it is going to be one of those posts. If I was concerned, I'd rather not say anything than risk attacking someone falsely. I'm on a tell everyone to be nicer crusade. Otherwise I might be
as well.
It is true there are Evangelicals who frequent the skeptic boards with similar OPs. They think they are clever asking for us to prove the one thing they think is going to make skeptics say, "wow, then evolution can't be true, Jesus save me." They don't realize it's a fantasy. The science of evolution is well beyond that position where a theory looks good but might still be incorrect. I didn't think your OP was the typical Evangelical OP of this type if it is of any help to you to know that.
Evolution is a theory that passed into the 'overwhelming evidence for it' phase at least a decade or more ago and anyone but a science purist would probably say it happened 3-4 decades ago. In fact the bulk of arguments evolution deniers put forth are based on 40 year old science. While a lot of the public is unaware of the progress of science in this field, evolution deniers add the choice of actually avoiding looking for it. They make no effort to search out the current state of the science, preferring instead to repeat what they heard from some other Evangelical. It sounded good to them. It was cleverly stated, but utterly false.
Which brings me to cbish's post.
TalkOrigins has cataloged every evolution denier and ID/Creation supporter's claims and provides the science supporting why the claims are wrong as well as just about anything else about evolution you might want to know. AnswersInGenesis is the opposite. It has every unsupportable claim and false analogy you could possibly think of. The arguments are clever, but false.
I would, however like to promote a couple of approaches to explaining why evolution is overwhelmingly supported by the evidence. I encourage us to "frame" how we present data and ideas to people because it gets past some of the misconceptions more quickly.
One of those approaches is what I just said. There is overwhelming evidence supporting the theory of evolution. Because science does not seek to "prove" theories and because the word theory is confused with hypothesis by much of the public, when we don't come out and say evolution is now proven, it confuses people. Using the terminology, 'overwhelming evidence', we remain accurate yet make it clear we are talking theory as in theory of gravity, not theory as in, "I have a theory".
The second approach is only needed when someone is making the claim ID is a viable theory. You mentioned the usual, 'science doesn't investigate the supernatural'. That's true but non-scientists don't have a clue what we mean by it and a simple explanation is heard as the Evangelicals promote, "science is biased against religion". So when the fairness doctrine is waved or someone is claiming there is evidence for the alternative "theory" of ID, I address the evidence they speak of rather than explain why I don't need to address it.
Regarding your specific question, which seems to be you are considering the "not enough time" fallacy:
One claim of IDers is a continuation of denial of evolution rather than support of ID. That is the claim not enough time has passed for evolution to have produced the life forms we see today. This false claim is based on some guy's fancy calculations but flawed reasoning and uses an incorrect process as the model of how genetic change is supposed to occur. See TalkOrigins for more details.
These are the things I like to point out:
The evidence from the fossil record and Darwin's observations led us to look for slowly changing features like one sees when you make a morph from one image to another on a computer. But now that we know a lot more about genetics, we know there is more to it than simply morphing fins into limbs. The embryo has an organized blueprint with interchangeable parts. A rabbit gene that initiates a mammal eye in a rabbit fetus can be inserted into a fruitfly egg which has the equivalent gene removed and an insect eye will grow in the right place in the fruitfly larva. This experiment has been done.
If you think about what has to happen for an animal to grow an extra finger or toe, it doesn't start out as a bump and turn into a digit after subsequent generations. We don't have people with digit stubs getting longer with each generation. A simple mutation in the gene that directs the fetus to grow digits gets you a complete digit because there are separate genes for growing all the structures. You only need a mutation in the number of digits gene. This is one reason the time argument was so flawed. The math guy didn't understand the genetic science.
So in a nut shell, the genetic record has replaced the fossil record and science is no longer concerned with the gaps.
The other main claim of scientific evidence supporting ID is the claim one can find genetic dead-ends going backward. They call it "irreducible complexity". This has been completely debunked and the studies by Behe who is credited with this claim have been shown to be wrong. Behe didn't recognize the precursor to the bacterial flagella because he looked for structures. It turns out the genetic precursor was there all the time. The "robustness" of DNA (meaning the flexibility) meant the precursor was not structurally similar.
I've linked the website from Ken Miller below. He has done the most thorough job addressing Behe's claims. Miller also addresses the claims about "design" which lacks true logic and instead uses false logic since one cannot really conclude complexity is or isn't designed. In fact, some argue the robustness of DNA is more likely to be "not designed" because it has so many options you wouldn't need so wouldn't put there if you were designing it. Human designed things are not robust.
Answering the Biochemical Argument from Design; by Ken Miller
Dumbski has a rebuttal page, STILL SPINNING JUST FINE: A RESPONSE TO KEN MILLER in which he puts out more of the same false analogies and unsupported claims. Still spinning is right.
There has been a revolution in genetic science in the last decade due to a breakthrough in lab technology making the study of DNA and RNA cheaper and easier. In addition, a whole new field, Bioinformatics, merges computer science with genetic science. Computer programmers routinely work with geneticists and the results have just been incredible. Spend an hour just perusing the genome research and you will find the level of detail we are now looking at is as I said earlier completely overwhelming.
So that, Mijo, is why we know evolution is how we got here.
If people find out you are sincere (I don't see the big deal, time will usually tell) you will, I'm certain, hear apologies from them. I think everyone needs reminders that we are not psychic and can't always tell by a post if it is going to be one of those posts. If I was concerned, I'd rather not say anything than risk attacking someone falsely. I'm on a tell everyone to be nicer crusade. Otherwise I might be
as well.It is true there are Evangelicals who frequent the skeptic boards with similar OPs. They think they are clever asking for us to prove the one thing they think is going to make skeptics say, "wow, then evolution can't be true, Jesus save me." They don't realize it's a fantasy. The science of evolution is well beyond that position where a theory looks good but might still be incorrect. I didn't think your OP was the typical Evangelical OP of this type if it is of any help to you to know that.
Evolution is a theory that passed into the 'overwhelming evidence for it' phase at least a decade or more ago and anyone but a science purist would probably say it happened 3-4 decades ago. In fact the bulk of arguments evolution deniers put forth are based on 40 year old science. While a lot of the public is unaware of the progress of science in this field, evolution deniers add the choice of actually avoiding looking for it. They make no effort to search out the current state of the science, preferring instead to repeat what they heard from some other Evangelical. It sounded good to them. It was cleverly stated, but utterly false.
Which brings me to cbish's post.
It is true, the evidence for evolution is at your fingertips (which is another reason your OP is suspected by some as we've said).
TalkOrigins has cataloged every evolution denier and ID/Creation supporter's claims and provides the science supporting why the claims are wrong as well as just about anything else about evolution you might want to know. AnswersInGenesis is the opposite. It has every unsupportable claim and false analogy you could possibly think of. The arguments are clever, but false.
I would, however like to promote a couple of approaches to explaining why evolution is overwhelmingly supported by the evidence. I encourage us to "frame" how we present data and ideas to people because it gets past some of the misconceptions more quickly.
One of those approaches is what I just said. There is overwhelming evidence supporting the theory of evolution. Because science does not seek to "prove" theories and because the word theory is confused with hypothesis by much of the public, when we don't come out and say evolution is now proven, it confuses people. Using the terminology, 'overwhelming evidence', we remain accurate yet make it clear we are talking theory as in theory of gravity, not theory as in, "I have a theory".
The second approach is only needed when someone is making the claim ID is a viable theory. You mentioned the usual, 'science doesn't investigate the supernatural'. That's true but non-scientists don't have a clue what we mean by it and a simple explanation is heard as the Evangelicals promote, "science is biased against religion". So when the fairness doctrine is waved or someone is claiming there is evidence for the alternative "theory" of ID, I address the evidence they speak of rather than explain why I don't need to address it.
Regarding your specific question, which seems to be you are considering the "not enough time" fallacy:
One claim of IDers is a continuation of denial of evolution rather than support of ID. That is the claim not enough time has passed for evolution to have produced the life forms we see today. This false claim is based on some guy's fancy calculations but flawed reasoning and uses an incorrect process as the model of how genetic change is supposed to occur. See TalkOrigins for more details.
These are the things I like to point out:
The evidence from the fossil record and Darwin's observations led us to look for slowly changing features like one sees when you make a morph from one image to another on a computer. But now that we know a lot more about genetics, we know there is more to it than simply morphing fins into limbs. The embryo has an organized blueprint with interchangeable parts. A rabbit gene that initiates a mammal eye in a rabbit fetus can be inserted into a fruitfly egg which has the equivalent gene removed and an insect eye will grow in the right place in the fruitfly larva. This experiment has been done.
If you think about what has to happen for an animal to grow an extra finger or toe, it doesn't start out as a bump and turn into a digit after subsequent generations. We don't have people with digit stubs getting longer with each generation. A simple mutation in the gene that directs the fetus to grow digits gets you a complete digit because there are separate genes for growing all the structures. You only need a mutation in the number of digits gene. This is one reason the time argument was so flawed. The math guy didn't understand the genetic science.
So in a nut shell, the genetic record has replaced the fossil record and science is no longer concerned with the gaps.
The other main claim of scientific evidence supporting ID is the claim one can find genetic dead-ends going backward. They call it "irreducible complexity". This has been completely debunked and the studies by Behe who is credited with this claim have been shown to be wrong. Behe didn't recognize the precursor to the bacterial flagella because he looked for structures. It turns out the genetic precursor was there all the time. The "robustness" of DNA (meaning the flexibility) meant the precursor was not structurally similar.
I've linked the website from Ken Miller below. He has done the most thorough job addressing Behe's claims. Miller also addresses the claims about "design" which lacks true logic and instead uses false logic since one cannot really conclude complexity is or isn't designed. In fact, some argue the robustness of DNA is more likely to be "not designed" because it has so many options you wouldn't need so wouldn't put there if you were designing it. Human designed things are not robust.
Answering the Biochemical Argument from Design; by Ken Miller
Dumbski has a rebuttal page, STILL SPINNING JUST FINE: A RESPONSE TO KEN MILLER in which he puts out more of the same false analogies and unsupported claims. Still spinning is right.
There has been a revolution in genetic science in the last decade due to a breakthrough in lab technology making the study of DNA and RNA cheaper and easier. In addition, a whole new field, Bioinformatics, merges computer science with genetic science. Computer programmers routinely work with geneticists and the results have just been incredible. Spend an hour just perusing the genome research and you will find the level of detail we are now looking at is as I said earlier completely overwhelming.
So that, Mijo, is why we know evolution is how we got here.
Last edited:
Skeptic Ginger
Nasty Woman
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2005
- Messages
- 96,955
Thanks. I've been working on this logic for 5 years in these forums. I keep forgetting to save it somewhere so I can just post it again when needed.Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
Wonderful and nominated!
UnrepentantSinner
A post by Alan Smithee
If "human" is defined as genus Homo then the Turkana Boy is about 90 % complete, only missing his hands and feet.
As far as the "sneaky Creationist" subplot of this thead goes, I say unless someone signs up and says "I'm a Darwinist but I have no way of explaining to Creationists how, if we came from monkeys, why there are still monkeys," we give them the benefit of the doubt and just answer their question.
Mojo
Mostly harmless
Them pesky evilutionists removed them so he couldn't be identified from fingerprints.
I think that is a good question and a good analogy. And I think it reflects the same problem that scientists had to deal with before Wallace and Darwin proposed the mechanism of Natural Selection. Scientists could see different forms and could even see how one form related to another, but there was no reasonable method to account for one changing into another (especially over the even shorter time period they thought they were working with at the time). The wonderfulness of Natural Selection was that it demonstrated a mechanism by which small changes could be selected and that these small changes could accumulate. Once you see the mechanism, the snapshots every 1.92 seconds make sense as a reflection of this process.
The addition I would make to your candlestick analogy is that you are certain that you are alone in the room (let's say it is otherwise empty and hermetically sealed), so that there is no opportunity for anyone to switch the candlestick. Then you can understand the intellectual struggle among scientists to explain the changes.
Linda
Dr Adequate
Banned
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2004
- Messages
- 17,766
Did my "implication" offend you? Very well, let me rephrase that, borrowing your own terminology.
Your statements are worded in such a way which could be construed as being too stupid or too close-minded to understand the question. I'd love to be shown that you aren't too stupid or too close-minded to understand the question.
There, that took all the sting out of it, didn't it?
That is a distinction without a difference.
Dr Adequate
Banned
- Joined
- Aug 31, 2004
- Messages
- 17,766