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Merged Icebear's Evolution Thread

Name a topic for which no controversy could plausibly exist..


how does a two stroke engine work?
How did the valves on steam engines work in the 1800s?
Where is the city of Gdansk?
How many people live there?
What was a Stanley Steamer?
How did the Mongols take Lioyang?
What is Taoism?
......

Need more??
 
icebear said:
how does a two stroke engine work?
You don't thinkt here are mechanics debating how to alter engines?

How did the valves on steam engines work in the 1800s?
Archaeology is a very controversial subject. The fact that it's recent doesn't negate that.

Where is the city of Gdansk?
Tectonics can make those discussions all KINDS of fun, as can politics (ie, how do you define "city"? I got hit for that one).

How many people live there?
You seriously don't think that there are any controversies involved in counting population? Look at criticisms of any demographic study sometime. For crying out loud, there are debates about how to define "people", much less how to count them!

What was a Stanley Steamer?
Vague terms invite controversy.

How did the Mongols take Lioyang?
Archaeology is a very controversial subject.

What is Taoism?
They've been debating that for thousands of years.

Need more??
One would be sufficient.

Oh, and by the way: you've always got to factor in the crazies with grudges. NO topic is free from controversy; trolls find their way in EVERYWHERE.

Also, you still haven't demonstrated that any of this is anything more than a mildly ammusing passtime, completely irrelevant to the conversation. It's not sufficient to provie that a source might be wrong; you need to show that it actually is in regards to the statements quoted from it. Are you capable of demonstrating that the quotes on Wiki regarding Goldschmidt are false? If not, the quality of the source of them is irrelevant; facts are true, regardless of origin.

Either refute the statements made about Goldschmidt or admit you can't. Wiki's general reliability is not at issue here, and is irrelevant to the topic.
 
how does a two stroke engine work?
How did the valves on steam engines work in the 1800s?
Where is the city of Gdansk?
How many people live there?
What was a Stanley Steamer?
How did the Mongols take Lioyang?
What is Taoism?
......

Need more??

All gods are imaginary?
 
Simple answer: Because DNA/RNA is an information code like xml, and information codes do not simply form up out of the blue from inanimate matter, for no particular reason.

Sure it does!

Let me guess: you learned this "fact" about information from an anti-evolution book or website, and not from an information-theory/mathematics/computer-science book. Am I right? How do you think I guessed?
 
Wiki is a wonderful resource for any topic for which no controversy could plausibly exist; for anything else, it's worthless.

It just so happens I have written a wikipedia article. One that in fact has huge controversy surrounding it.

Holistic Management

Worthless? I certainly hope not. I spent a lot of effort on it.

Doesn't make it any less controversial though. Anything that deals with economies larger than most countries GNP and deals with issues no less than extinction level events is bound to be controversial. But I took care to source it with scientific and political sources both, easy to read summaries, power point presentations and very technical papers. I wrote it in summary form so the real meat of the article is in the sources and links, not anything I personally wrote. This way a reader can decide for themselves how deep in the subject they want to dig. All this with other editors all pushing for deletion on any grounds they could manufacture and/or making changes that in many cases reduce the quality of the article. That is a very delicate balancing act and a process I quite frankly found quite painful.

The only reason it was worth it is because I believe there is value in getting that information all gathered together in one place as a reference for others. And you casually dismiss it and any other controversial article as worthless just so you can keep the sin of pride in your heart?:boggled:
 
Wiki is a wonderful resource for any topic for which no controversy could plausibly exist; for anything else, it's worthless.

This^^does not serve as a substantive demonstration that, in this case, the information in the wiki is not correct.

Have you such a substantive demonstration of fact?
 
Simple answer: Because DNA/RNA is an information code like xml, and information codes do not simply form up out of the blue from inanimate matter, for no particular reason.
And your proof of this is, icebear?
Simple answer: You are ignorant of the generation of organic chemicals that are the precursors to DNA and RNA from "inanimate matter".

The fruit fly experiments, designed specifically to prove for all time the validity of the concept of macroevolution and the theory of evolution, failed so spectacularly and unambiguously that a number of prominent scientists at the time denounced evolution.
That is an outright lie, icebear :(.
You have cited no fruit fly experiments that were "designed specifically to prove for all time the validity of the concept of macroevolution and the theory of evolution".
You have cited no reactions to these imaginary fruit fly experiments.
Fruit fly experiments are used to test the theory of evolution and show that the theory of evolution works.

We know that macroevolution works because we have seen it working by creating new species.

And then there is the lie about Richard Goldschmidt who was a supporter of evolution including macroevolution with his own theory of macroevolution (the "Hopeful Monster" hypothesis).

ETA: I think I see where you get your delusion about fruit fly experiments and macroevolution, icebear: Richard Goldschmidt published some papers on the genetics of fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster)
 
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how does a two stroke engine work?
How did the valves on steam engines work in the 1800s?
Where is the city of Gdansk?
How many people live there?
What was a Stanley Steamer?
How did the Mongols take Lioyang?
What is Taoism?
......

Need more??

You may not realize it, but this^^does NOT serve as a substantive demonstration that the facts n the wiki about Goldschmidt are incorrect.

Suppose you try again, and demonstrate where the wiki does err?
 
how does a two stroke engine work?
How did the valves on steam engines work in the 1800s?
Where is the city of Gdansk?
How many people live there?
What was a Stanley Steamer?
How did the Mongols take Lioyang?
What is Taoism?
......

Need more??
Given the nature of Wikipedia, one should always take what one reads there with a grain of salt, as the occasional contributor can corrupt any page. But Wikipedia has at least some capacity for correction, which is apparently lacking for some individual posters who cannot modify or acknowledge the silliness of even the most outrageous assertions, such as the assertion that all adherents of evolution are devoid of brains and creativity. While it might be useful as a caution against reliance on Wikipedia, your digression here does not even begin to demonstrate in any way that any part of Wikipedia is less reliable than you are.
 
Wiki is a wonderful resource for any topic for which no controversy could plausibly exist; for anything else, it's worthless.
That is correct, icebear.
But the life and publications of Richard Goldschmidt are not controversial - they are matters of fact.
We also have to compare our responses which cite a source that in turn cites the work of Richard Goldschmidt about evolution to your obviously wrong statement that Richard Goldschmidt "denounced evolution".
 
Icebear, I'm not going to let this go. I have a habit, lamented by some, of trying to argue one point at a time. You began this thread (or one of the ones merged, the pertinent statement now at post #41) with the unequivocal assertion that Evolution is a dead theory walking. Nobody with brains and/or talent believes in it any more. In other words, assuming you are not yourself an idiot bereft of brains or talent (which we cannot directly assert according to our agreements here) then the only conclusion we can draw is that you claim to be substantially more intelligent than any and all of those who accept evolution, not just those here, but the many scientists and teachers on whose wisdom we rely. You have stated that they are all idiots, and implied that you are smarter than all of them.

Others here are better at arguing the actual mechanics of evolution, an dI leave that to them. But before we can go any further with argument, I believe that first issue must be resolved. Of course one might acknowledge it as a hyperbolic statement, calling for some retraction on your part and forebearance on the part of others. But if not, then we have an assertion of mind-boggling dimensions. Either you are a genius and all who disagree idiots, in which case we should not bother to argue, but just soak up your wisdom gratefully, or the person making that assertion is an idiot (which we cannot directly assert according to our agreements here), with whom discussion is pointless.

So.....What's it to be?
 
It seems to me that there's a lot of controversy (disagreement among researchers regarding aspects of various theories) in any scientific discipline. Does the controversy mean that they're all wrong? Is chemistry wrong? Physics? Does a disagreement among Egyptologists mean that the pyramids really were built by extraterrestrials?
 
Simple answer: Because DNA/RNA is an information code like xml, and information codes do not simply form up out of the blue from inanimate matter, for no particular reason.

I have a degree in computer science and I'm familiar with information theory. I'm not going to belittle you for a statement like this because I've seen several science fiction authors make the same mistake. In fact, there were actual scientific theories at one time that memories were stored in strands of so-called "memory RNA". This however has proven false. Still though, the fact that computers use binary (base 2) while DNA seems to be base 4 is inductively enticing...so, people still fall into that trap.

Thinking about DNA in terms of functional abstraction rather than information content is not as intuitive. People have a hard time imaging that someone could know how to build something without knowing what it was supposed to look like when it was finished. This notion seems absurd and yet you see it all the time in nature. This is probably related to a lack of understanding of perception and consciousness which most intelligent people have no concept of. I don't know that this is the place to discuss it but I like fruit flies because their behavior is quite similar to that of single celled organisms even though they have vastly more brain power. This behavior is simple environmental response. Other organisms like nematodes and flatworms do this too but fruit flies are about the most complex organisms I can think of that behave this way. But I don't want to hijack the thread so that's all I'll say about it.

Our entire biosphere is driven by information.

This sounds similar to the Gaia hypothesis which although imaginative has been created without evidence. Versions of this theory are sometimes mentioned by Creationists as proof of a grand design.

The fruit fly experiments, designed specifically to prove for all time the validity of the concept of macroevolution and the theory of evolution, failed so spectacularly and unambiguously that a number of prominent scientists at the time denounced evolution.

Yes, this claim has been made a number of times. It still remains a claim though rather than proof. It should be possible to create two separate species from a parent fruit fly population. However, I am not aware of any experiment that has ever tried to do this. If this experiment had been tried several times and had failed then you would indeed have strong evidence against evolution. However, since this experiment has never been done, I'm not sure where this imaginary proof would be coming from. To the best of my ability to try to understand the line of reasoning of such claims, it appears to be something like the following: If an organism can be selectively bred to include harmful characteristics then this conflicts with my assumption that evolution always makes organisms better. Therefore, evolution--and not my assumption--must be wrong.

The closest I can think of where you begin to get into an evolutionary framework is where characteristics interfere with reproduction. This is because anything that constrains reproduction also constrains gene flow and this could eventually lead to separate species. Obvious examples of this include the varying populations of black bear around the world as well as the European bison compared to the American bison. Another example that comes to mind is the forest versus the savanna elephant (and possibly the desert elephant) even those these are genetically closely related.

That failure was due to the fact that the only information there ever was in that picture was the information for a fruit fly. The experiments proved in no uncertain terms that information for any sort of a meaningfully new creature could not be created by any combination of mutation and selection, as the theory of evolution demands.

Actually, this is demonstrably false. Obvious examples include pericentric inversions, centromere splitting/telomere joining, and chromosome duplication. Other examples include allotropes. Anyway this claim seems to be based on a bounded notion of species characteristics when in reality species have no definite characteristic boundaries. For example, the African wild dog is a different species from the domestic dog. They actually have differing numbers of chromosomes. However, it would be very difficult to point to any specific characteristic that they do not share other than the fact that domestic dogs make eye contact.
 
People have a hard time imaging that someone could know how to build something without knowing what it was supposed to look like when it was finished.
In this context, barehl, perhaps we should mention genetic algorithms which mimic natural selection to build something without knowing what it was supposed to look like when it was finished. A well known example is the NASA STS 5 evolved antenna.
 
...
Actually, this is demonstrably false. Obvious examples include pericentric inversions, centromere splitting/telomere joining, and chromosome duplication. Other examples include allotropes. ...

How do allotropes demonstrate that that information for a meaningfully new creature could be created by a combination of mutation and selection?
 
How do allotropes demonstrate that that information for a meaningfully new creature could be created by a combination of mutation and selection?
Perhaps it is a simple spelling error? Confusing allotrophy with allotropy, allotrophs with allotropes?
 
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In this context, barehl, perhaps we should mention genetic algorithms which mimic natural selection to build something without knowing what it was supposed to look like when it was finished. A well known example is NASA STS 5 evolved antenna.
Evolution has it even easier, it does not have to work to a certain goal like genetic algorithms have to.
 

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