Evolution Debate ...

[Dexter Sinister]

It suggests to me only that it was done 30 or so times.Why is beyond my imagination. Maybe it just liked doing that.

So it's capricious, unstable, childishly destructive...? A moron? Or maybe it doesn't exist.

“God did it” is put forward as the most likely explanation, not an avoidance of one.

Yeah, you've claimed that before. You're wrong. Why is it that you can't see that that explains nothing? Who designed the designer? Who designed the designer's designer? There's an infinite regression here, and where you choose a 'the buck stops here' point is completely arbitrary. It's useless as an explanation of anything.

Just as logical, is the following:
"There obviously must be a creator or we wouldn’t be here talking about it."

<sigh> If you think that's as logical as what I wrote, you need to do some serious intellectual work on the difference between an assumption, which is what that is, and facts, which I offered.

You do believe in natural abiogenesis and evolution, do you not?

No. This is one of the traps that always arise in debates between creationists and IDers on the one hand and evolutionists on the other. If I agree to that statement, I expect you'll then try to argue that my secular, rationalist, humanist attitudes are no less religiously based than yours, based on confounding two different meanings of the word belief.

It's not a question of belief, at least not in the sense you seem to be using the term, as a synonym for faith. I have only one article of faith, and that is that the universe is consistent and, at least in principle, comprehensible. I "believe" abiogenesis and evolution in the sense that I have given provisional assent to them as logical and reasonable explanations of the way certain things are, based on my understanding of the evidence.

Given the millions of years when life was possible for creatures such as us on this planet before we got here, and that on another world, the same evolutionary path wouldn’t have been followed, it would be extremely likely that we would have been preceded by intelligent beings.

What are you arguing here? It looks like this:
Premise 1: human life was physically possible on this planet long before it actually showed up (and I'd certainly agree with that).
Premise 2: evolution is highly unlikely to follow identical paths on different worlds (and I'd agree with that too).
Conclusion: we are unlikely to be the first intelligent beings.

I don't have a lot of confidence in your understanding of logic, but that conclusion does not follow from the premises. The premises, in fact, while I accept them as true statements, do not allow you to conclude anything at all about the likelihood of other intelligent life forms arising, here or anywhere else, before we did. In fact I don't see that the premises allow you conclude anything at all, beyond the obvious: we could have been here sooner, or not at all

We were talking about the possibility of intelligent life on other planets which would almost be a necessity if evolutionary theory was correct...

No, that's quite wrong, there's no reason to think evolution will necessarily produce intelligence. Evolution has no direction, it's not about progress or improvement or anything like that.

... and entirely possible with a designer.

Sure, anything's possible with a designer. So what? You have yet to demonstrate the designer's existence, it's still just an assumption that explains nothing.

 

[no1important]

Our sun with its nine planets is only one
of several hundred billion stars in the
Milky Way galaxy.

Our galaxy in turn is but one of hundreds
of billions of galaxies in the visible universe.

How many millions of solar systems are
out there, somewhere, with planets sustaining
life, and thinking beings who, like us, gaze up
at the skies, and wonder?

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Re: RE: Evolution Debate ...

How many millions of solar systems are out there, somewhere, with planets sustaining life, and thinking beings who, like us, gaze up at the skies, and wonder?

Good question No1, maybe the best and most important question there is. I often look up at the night sky and think about that. Wish we had an answer...

 

[Vanni Fucci]

Probability of Abiogenesis FAQs

I don't know if you've read this Extrafire, but you should, as should all cranky creationists out there...

 

[merryclaire]

anyone want a beer?

 

[Reverend Blair]

I could use one...

You know brewer's yeast itself is an interesting evolutionary thing. There are aerobic yeasts that work on the top of the wort, then there are anaerobic yeasts that work on the bottom. The aerobic yeasts give us lagers and other light beers, while the anaerobic yeasts give us the darker ales.

Which yeast was discovered in which areas has affected the way regions view the beer they brew, and therefore themselves. So the evolution of yeast has arguably affected the evolution of societies, if not of humankind itself.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Interesting observation, Rev. One could also argue more broadly that the evolution of all kinds of microbes has affected the evolution of human societies, mostly in terms of diseases, but beer and wine yeasts would certainly be a more positive study. Ever read "Guns, Germs, and Steel," by Jared Diamond? Highly recommended treatment of, at least in part, that very subject. Diseases I mean, not beer and wine.

 

[Jay]

Yeah, you've claimed that before. You're wrong. Why is it that you can't see that that explains nothing? Who designed the designer? Who designed the designer's designer? There's an infinite regression here, and where you choose a 'the buck stops here' point is completely arbitrary. It's useless as an explanation of anything.

Couldn't that argument be used against the "big bang" though? There is nothing known about how that happened or what started it or what was before it….

No, that's quite wrong, there's no reason to think evolution will necessarily produce intelligence. Evolution has no direction, it's not about progress or improvement or anything like that.

In essence I agree with that statement...and it makes me wonder, how could this come to produce such amazing intelligence and handy work? Surely people can understand that this is a very incredible situation we exist in, and it doesn't appear (logically) that "we" simply came from rocks and such...even if it is true.

My two cents for the pot.

 

[Reverend Blair]

Ever read "Guns, Germs, and Steel," by Jared Diamond? Highly recommended treatment of, at least in part, that very subject. Diseases I mean, not beer and wine.

I'll have to look that up.

In essence I agree with that statement...and it makes me wonder, how could this come to produce such amazing intelligence and handy work?

Our big brains are simply a survival adaptation, Jay...no different than a sabre tooth's teeth or an elephant's scent glands.

 

[Jay]

If that is the matter of fact...it is overkill by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Reverend Blair]

Evolution isn't exact though, and it is prone to overkill...consider peacocks. It's all about passing your genes on.

 

[Jay]

Peacocks make sense...the females want the best males...so the breeders are the best (biggest, Colourful), but that doesn’t explain the enormous complexity of the human.

I think the complexity of the mind and the versatility of humanity is quite the conundrum.

 

[Reverend Blair]

Because we mate for a long time (another evolutionary strategy) a female wanted a good provider for her and her offspring. A large-brained male would be more able to provide because he could make tools and think his way out of bad situations. He would get the best available mate and their offspring would be more likely to survive and mate themselves. At the same time a male would prefer a smarter female because she would know where the roots and tubers were likely to be and would look after the kids better. Every fifteen years or so, the positive traits would be reinforced so slight differences would accumulate through the generations.

Some anthropologists actually see the vestiges of that in modern mating behaviour.

None of this is that complicated, Jay. Think of your dog's traits. Very much the same thing, but done by us instead of by accident. Dogs have evolved from wolves very recently though.

 

[Dexter Sinister]

Couldn't that argument be used against the "big bang" though?

No. There are multiple lines of scientific evidence pointing to a Big Bang about 13.7 billion years ago. There is no scientific evidence pointing to the existence of an Intelligent Designer.

how could this come to produce such amazing intelligence and handy work? Surely people can understand that this is a very incredible situation we exist in, and it doesn't appear (logically) that "we" simply came from rocks and such...even if it is true.

Appearances are subtley deceptive. I'll grant Extrafire's major point, that there is certainly the appearance of design in the biological world we know, but it doesn't withstand close scrutiny. Much of what we find in the details of biology suggests an absence of design, as it's very wasteful and inefficient. As a trivial example, why do human males produce such huge numbers of sperm cells when one at a time is really all that's necessary? Another of my favourite questions also relates to the male reproductive apparatus: why do we use the same organs for reproduction and excretion? What kind of designer runs an open sewer through a playground?

More to the point though, the appearance of design is exactly what we'd see if a process like natural selection were operating. Which it is. All creatures produce far more offspring than can survive on the available resources, and it's the differential survival and reproductive success of offspring that drives evolution.

 

[Extrafire]

Dex

So it's capricious, unstable, childishly destructive...? A moron? Or maybe it doesn't exist.

The method by which the earth formed included such events, so it was a part of the planet building, not destruction. The life appeared between them. It could have just been having fun making the different lifeforms.

Who designed the designer? Who designed the designer's designer? There's an infinite regression here, and where you choose a 'the buck stops here' point is completely arbitrary. It's useless as an explanation of anything.

You’re making assumptions of the nature of a creator and its plane of existence. There’s no reason to suppose that it would be subject to the same time dimension that it created for us, so there’s no reason to suppose that there needs be any regression. Since you are familiar with string theory, you know there exists the possibility of other time dimensions in the origin of the universe, why should a creator be restricted to what it has provided for its creation. But this is all speculative.

<sigh> If you think that's as logical as what I wrote, you need to do some serious intellectual work on the difference between an assumption, which is what that is, and facts, which I offered.

As I pointed out, both statements are circular. And abiogenesis is not a fact, it is assumed. As you pointed out, We don't know.

I "believe" abiogenesis and evolution in the sense that I have given provisional assent to them as logical and reasonable explanations of the way certain things are, based on my understanding of the evidence.

That is the sense which I intended.

What are you arguing here? It looks like this:
Premise 1: human life was physically possible on this planet long before it actually showed up (and I'd certainly agree with that).
Premise 2: evolution is highly unlikely to follow identical paths on different worlds (and I'd agree with that too).
Conclusion: we are unlikely to be the first intelligent beings.

Exactly.

I don't have a lot of confidence in your understanding of logic, but that conclusion does not follow from the premises. The premises, in fact, while I accept them as true statements, do not allow you to conclude anything at all about the likelihood of other intelligent life forms arising, here or anywhere else, before we did. In fact I don't see that the premises allow you conclude anything at all, beyond the obvious: we could have been here sooner, or not at all
Quote:
We were talking about the possibility of intelligent life on other planets which would almost be a necessity if evolutionary theory was correct...


No, that's quite wrong, there's no reason to think evolution will necessarily produce intelligence. Evolution has no direction, it's not about progress or improvement or anything like that.

Well, if life is as common throughout the galaxy, as many people insist, and since intelligent life could have been here much earlier, and elsewhere in the galaxy very much earlier, anything with even a little bit of a head start would be vastly ahead of us on the technological scale, unlike science fiction where they’re all roughly even. We would have noticed them.
As for the probability of intelligent life, I heard within the last year on Quirks and Quarks, a scientist explaining why he believed intelligent life is an inevitable product of evolution. (He may have even said humanoid type of life-form, I’m not sure.) He didn’t entirely convince me of the logic of his arguments, but he had some good points. Bob MacDonald said “That sounds like design.” He said he wouldn’t use that word because that’s what the creationists would say, and he gave his reasons why it wasn’t design. (That’s about as much as I remember, maybe you could help me out again.) But there’s at least one scientist who does believe that evolution will necessarily produce intelligence.

 

[Extrafire]

Vanni Fucci Posted:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Probability of Abiogenesis FAQs

I don't know if you've read this Extrafire, but you should, as should all cranky creationists out there...

I don’t know about the cranky creationists, but I hadn’t seen that particular site, although I have heard similar arguments. Doesn’t really address the problems with abiogenesis.

 

[peapod]

Yes abiogenesis, a favorite of creationists....Hey I just read something really interesting on that...here it is

Creationist babble 8O
This [my claim that abiogenesis is seperate from the Theory of Evolution] is the old definition switch Evolutionists are so fond of. If you point out the flaws in astronomical measuring techniques, they claim that has nothing to do with Evolution, then turn right around and use those same flawed techniques as an argument for Evolution.


What? What the heck does astronomical measuring techniques have to do with abiogenesis? Abiogenesis is related to evolution as the Big Bang is related to various theories in physics. Still, if we learned that the Big Bang were false or that it was actually God does that mean the speed of light is now 15 MPH or that the sun really does revolve around the earth? I don’t think so. The Theory of Evolution is a theory about how the diversity of life came about. As such the Theory of Evolution accepts as given that life is present. Now abiogenesis is part of biology and if true is related to the Theory of Evolution in that it provides an explanation for what the Theory of Evolution takes as a given. Still if the current theories/hypotheses of abiogenesis turn out to be false it does little to nothing to the Theory of Evolution.

This next part is priceless.

Berkley’s Museum of Paleontology (A hornets nest of Christian Fundamentalism if there ever was one, right) explains the Cambrian Explosion this way:

This event is sometimes called the “Cambrian Explosion”, because of the relatively short time over which this diversity of forms appears.

The International Subcommission on Cambrian Stratigraphy in Würzburg, Germany says this:

So because some call it the Cambrian Explosion and there is a relatively short time (hint: a relatively short time in geological terms is millions of years) it must be true that the Cambrian Explosion violates the evolutionary model. Of course, what this also entails is a bunch of people being completely deluded. It sure would be nice if Mr. Lewis could provide a clear and concise explanation as to exactly how this refutes the evolutionary model. After all, the biologists haven’t done it, so he should be able to since it is all so obvious.

And to cap of the hillarity, there is this,

The archaeopteryx is placed in the Tithonian Age, which is the first Age of the Malm Epoch, which is the first epoch of the Jurassic period. But the dinosaurs it is supposed to have descended from are said to be of the Ladinian Age, which is the first age of the Middle Triassic Epoch. While possessing all of the traits of a modern bird, it is dated millions of years BEFORE the dinosaurs it is supposed to have descended from. Perhaps in addition to flight it had developed the ability to time-travel.–link

Okay, lets go over this.

Archaeopteryx shows up in the Tithonian Age of the Jurassic Period.
Dinosaurs show up in the Ladinian Age of the Middle Triassic Epoch.
The Triassic precedes the the Jurassic.
But some how Archaeopteryx precedes the dinosaurs.
I tell ya…you just can’t make stuff like this up. I don’t know what we call this other than a complete misunderstanding of geological time periods. As for the ancesters of Archaeopteryx, most of the theorized ancestors such as the Ornithopoda are no longer considered ancestors of Archaeopteryx. Might there be textbooks suggesting a link? Yeah, probably, but my guess is that these would be older books. The best way to characterize Archaeopteryx is as follows,

Archaeopteryx is a bird because it had feathers. However, it retained many dinosaurian characters which are not found in modern birds, whilst having certain characters found in birds but not in dinosaurs. By virtue of this fact Archaeopteryx represents an example of a group in transition - a representative which, although on the sidelines in the dinosaur to bird transition, an echo of the actual event, still allows a brief glimpse into the possible mechanism which brought about the evolution of the birds and by its very existence shows that such a transition is possible.

If a textbook does not do this, then it is either an early textbook and the mistake is honest, or it is a badly written textbook and should not be used. Still the fact that a textbook might be badly written does not in anyway present a challenge to the evidence supporting evolution. It is delusional to think otherwise.

 

[peapod]

Just in hot off the teletype... 8O 8O

Intelligent Design Proponents Attempt Experimental Science
In an attempt that Intelligent Design (ID) theorists claim will definitively disprove Darwin's theory, ID proponents will attempt to mate humans and chimpanzees to "empirically test Darwin's theory" in the words of one ID theorist. Under the controversial plan, female volunteers will copulate with male chimpanzees. ID proponents predict that none of the women will become impregnated, thus refuting Darwinism.

The project is a joint endeavor hosted by the Intelligent Design Network (IDN) and the Discovery Institute. Both organizations have been highly critical of Darwinian evolution, arguing that observed complexity indicates the existence of a designer. Critics claim that ID is not a scientific theory. This experiment, project leaders claim, "will prove the scientific grounding of Intelligent Design."

"Evolutionary theory is nothing but a lie," said IDN founder William Harris. "They've been saying man came from monkeys for years. Well, we're about to disprove that. If a monkey can't successfully impregnate a human woman, then we're not related to them."

Current evolutionary theory holds that humans and chimpanzees descend from a common ancestor. Scientists also claim we share roughly 98% of our DNA with chimps. As a counter-argument, Harris and colleagues point to preliminary research showing that a young woman's uncle is not a monkey as supportive of their claims.

"We know God made us special," says Reverend Fred Phelps. "We don't need no fag scientists tellin' us otherwise! But if this will shut those idiots up, then let's do it!" Rev. Phelps' statements were met with a resounding "Hallelujah" from the project team.

The project will begin later this year after a three month screening program to choose the female volunteers. According to the plan, the Discovery Institute and IDN will hold a cross-country interview process similar to that of Fox's reality hit American Idol.

Like the familiar American Idol format, a panel of judges will evaluate contestantss. In this case, the judges will be three male chimpanzees. Contestants will be expected to "strip, bend over, and present themselves in typical chimpanzee mating fashion" says Harris. Quality of contestants will be judged by the chimps reaction. The top three females will be receive a t-shirt, a small cash prize and the privledge of participating in the study. According to IDN insiders, negotiations are still underway to ink a contract with a "Christian Simon Cowell-like personality to provide saucy commentary and brutally honest critique" on the women's performances.

Project leaders laughed off the question of their plan being sinful bestiality.

"No, no. This is Godly work," said Dr. Ezekial Brown. "The participants will be doing this for Jesus, so it isn't a sin. The Lord asks us to undertake mighty tasks to fulfill His will. Plus, we've cleared it with evangelical leaders like Tony Perkins, Jerry Falwell and Fred Phelps. This is legit. Plus, we're excluding Jezebels from the start. We want only good, single Christian women for this."

Brown is heading of the interview process, tentatively titled Do It For Jesus. One prototype t-shirt showed a silhouette outline of a woman and chimpanzee embracing with a smiling Jesus watching over them. Brown and Harris said t-shirt plans had not yet been finalized, though marketing research found a strong response to this design among female Young Earth Creationists in the target 18 - 25 age range.

Neither PETA nor the American Association for the Advancement of Science had an official comment.

Speaking off the record, pro-evolution critics of Intelligent Design suggested that Harris and colleagues do not really understand basic evolutionary concepts and called the experiment "interestingly misguided."

:lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[Vanni Fucci]

:munky2: :laughing3: :munky2:

 

[I think not]