Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

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Atreyu
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Atreyu »

Sorry, but only a fairly inflexible and simple mind could be satisfied with only those two variables (genetic drift and natural selection) to explain change of species. To be satisfied with only those two variables is akin to assuming that life on Earth serves no cosmic function, and no good philosopher would assume that....
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Mark1955
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Mark1955 »

Atreyu wrote:Sorry, but only a fairly inflexible and simple mind could be satisfied with only those two variables (genetic drift and natural selection) to explain change of species. To be satisfied with only those two variables is akin to assuming that life on Earth serves no cosmic function, and no good philosopher would assume that....
Ah personal abuse - in my experience the last refuge of the person who has lost the argument.

I have a simple principle, if you want to claim something try and produce some evidence for it rather than just trying to discredit what you claim is the opposite answer.
If you think you know the answer you probably don't understand the question.
Dlaw
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Dlaw »

Atreyu wrote:Sorry, but only a fairly inflexible and simple mind could be satisfied with only those two variables (genetic drift and natural selection) to explain change of species. To be satisfied with only those two variables is akin to assuming that life on Earth serves no cosmic function, and no good philosopher would assume that....
It completely confounds me when I try to understand why people suggest that Evolution implies human life has no purpose.

I just don't see any connection between the two ideas. Next to the story of the Earth and all its millennia, the iron-age religious Scriptures are clearly children's stories AT BEST.

Isn't that something any rational person has to agree with?

How can anyone think that all the pre-human time and human time before the iron age and AFTER the iron age failed to communicate anything of significance relative to Scripture? You have to realized that's is what you're suggesting.

With all that iron-age peoples didn't know and were so dead wrong about, how can anyone think that there was this huge, unparalleled spike of wisdom and then the heavens fell silent - at least in print?

Why would reading an ancient scroll tell us more about God, purpose and truth than peering into the distant reaches of the Universe and its past or into the intricacies of the genome?
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Lagayscienza »

Atreyu wrote: ...assuming that life on Earth serves no cosmic function, and no good philosopher would assume that....
Many very good philosophers assume exactly that. There is no evidence for any so called "cosmic function" just as their is no evidence for spooky nonsense notions such as "élan vital". Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution and if this pisses off certain pissant pseudo-intellectuals and religious nutters then so much the better.
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Atreyu
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Atreyu »

Lagayscienza wrote:
Atreyu wrote: ...assuming that life on Earth serves no cosmic function, and no good philosopher would assume that....
Many very good philosophers assume exactly that. There is no evidence for any so called "cosmic function" just as their is no evidence for spooky nonsense notions such as "élan vital". Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution and if this pisses off certain pissant pseudo-intellectuals and religious nutters then so much the better.
No good philosopher would assume such a thing as in philosophy we are not tied to "evidence". Science is not philosophy. In philosophy, we are only tied to our reason. And it's unreasonable to assume no cosmic function for life on Earth. A good philosopher only assumes certain things in certain scenarios, and only temporarily to follow a particular line of thought. No good philosopher assumes anything as a general principle.

A good philosopher assumes neither a cosmic function for man, nor the existence of one. He reasons it out. And the question of cosmic function is intimately tied to many other philosophical issues - is there a sort of 'cosmic consciousness' or 'god"?, did the Universe begin or did it always exist?, does the Universe have a purpose? - and many other things.

So in considering whether or not life on Earth has any cosmic function, one must consider all of these other issues simultaneously, and resolve them. To just assume no cosmic function is weak philosophy, not to mention that it necessitates many other assumptions in relation to all these other "big" philosophical questions....
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Lagayscienza
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Lagayscienza »

Ah, the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

Have you actually ever read any philosophy?
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Atreyu
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Atreyu »

Lagayscienza wrote:Ah, the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.

Have you actually ever read any philosophy?
Have you ever actually done any? :P
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Grant-Silver »

Yes I believe in evolution, but under the creative mind of an Infinite Being, call it God if you like?
gimal
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by gimal »

Four reasons why natural selection cant account for evolution or so called new species.


gamahucherpress.yellowgum.com/books/phi ... ection.pdf
”natural selection, a process that causes helpful traits (those that increase the chance of survival and reproduction) to become more common in a population and causes harmful traits to become more rare
”(Ref: Futuyma, Douglas Evolution 2005”



1) Cambridge explosion
Darwin saw the Cambridge explosion as proving his theory of evolution to be false

"Nevertheless, the difficulty of assigning any good reason for the absence of vast piles of strata rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian system is very great. ...The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained." (Darwin , C., The Origin of Species
, 1872, pp.316-317.)

now

" No real progress has been made by evolutionists since Darwin’s day and "The Cambrian evolutionary explosion is still shrouded in mystery."(Eldredge, N.,
The Monkey Business
, 1982, p. 46.)”-at the present time nothing has changed

also Dawkins
" “Eldredge and Gould certainly would agree that some very important gaps really are due to imperfections in the fossil record. Very big gaps, too. For example the Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups . And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there,without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists."
(Dawkins, Richard,
The Blind Watchmaker
," 1986, p.229).-nothing has changed to the present

2)NS is invalidated by the fact of speciation as NS only deals with traits already present and cant deal with the generation of new species

3) ”natural selection, a process that causes helpful traits (those that increase the chance of survival and reproduction) to become more common in a population
and causes harmful traits to become more rare
”(Ref: Futuyma, Douglas Evolution 2005”
Seeing bad genes can become common ie breast cancer this thus makes natural selection wrong which says bad genes should be come rare or less common.

4) genetics cannot account for the generation of new species-ie the Cambrian explosion as it is claimed the generation of new genes is a random process due to radiation, viruses, chemicals etc and genetic cannot account for these process happening as they are out side the scope of genetics physics chaos theory etc may give some explanation but genetics cant
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Dolphin42 »

Cambridge Explosion? Terrorism among the dreaming spires?

-- Updated November 7th, 2016, 1:07 pm to add the following --

My bad: The term "dreaming spires" is associated more with Oxford than Cambridge. Comment withdrawn.
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Renee »

A_Seagull wrote:The point about evolution is that it is the ONLY possibility currently available.

If you don't like it, it is probably because you don't understand it. Because it is a very beautiful and elegant theory.

And don't be deluded by the notion that it is 'only a theory'; just about everything that relates to the real world is 'only a theory'. It is just that some theories are better than others. And some theories, such as evolution, are so far ahead of the rest of the field that there are effectively no others in the race.
This. ^^^^ Absolutely.

I wasn't even going to look at replies I got so disgusted (not a personal attack) at the questioning of the "theory".

There are lots of things occurring in nature for which you can't see examples. God is one, for instance. Angels. Evolution. Beta particles. Big Bang. Soul. Salvation. Heaven. Hell.

I intentionally mixed scientific theories with religious metaphors there. Nobody can tell any other that the other's belief is false. One can only say for himself, "this is not something I believe in" and "this other thing is something I believe in" if there is no evidence of the believed object.

So let's not put ranks over whose belief is superior to the belief of whom.

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

That said, believing in Beta particles could help create nuclear power plants, and atomic bombs, while believing in angels could not even help create a steam engine or even a lever. Believing in the preservation of energy helped create numerous simplifications in planning to build bridges, hydroelectric dams, heart rate monitors, stereophonic equipment. Believing in heaven did not help to even get rid of premature birth, pestilence, or matrimonial infidelity.

I am on the side of science and the reasoning it employs.

In my opinion, for myself, religions, and especially those that attack perfectly good theories only because it contradicts their most sacred beliefs, can only work against the betterment of mankind, and beside, they are stupid, they are advocated by people blinded by their beliefs, and they are disgustingly obnoxious in their righteousness. (Religions, not people.)

I am sorry, and I push this following only as my own personal opinion, without trying to influence anyone else to follow my lead, but I am extremely angry with people who advocate the "falsehood" of the evolutionary theory.
Ignorance is power.
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Dolphin42 »

This is a nitpicking point, but I question your inclusion of beta particles in that list. You could argue that we can't see them directly. But if you do that then you have to conclude that we don't see anything directly, which makes the concept of "seeing things directly" somewhat redundant.

We can certainly see pretty direct effects of beta particles, in a bubble or cloud chamber, or a Geiger-Muller tube, for example. I'd say that's just as direct as the sense in which I see a keyboard in front of me.

-- Updated November 7th, 2016, 1:50 pm to add the following --
I am sorry, and I push this following only as my own personal opinion, without trying to influence anyone else to follow my lead, but I am extremely angry with people who advocate the "falsehood" of the evolutionary theory.
If you're going to get angry at that you'll end up exhausted. It's possibly the most commonly discussed topic on forums like this. The arguments have been re-stated ad-nauseam. I've been through it myself with various people far too many times.
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Renee »

Dolphin42 wrote: If you're going to get angry at that you'll end up exhausted.
Thanks for the advice, but it came just a bit too late. I'm already exhausted. (-:

"I don't suffer foolish reasoning well." Leave the evolutionary theory alone. It stands, it is reasonable, it is logical, and it is shown to have worked. What else does one need to get convinced that rejecting the evolutionary theory is just another "Galileo"? Meaning, that Galileo's theory was rejected initially also because and only because people gave preference to religious dogma over a reasoned-out and sensible theory which was built on reliable data.
Ignorance is power.
gimal
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by gimal »

The species paradox disapproves theory of evolution ie species evolving

http://gamahucherpress.yellowgum.com/wp ... ARADOX.pdf
who did the first bird mate with who did the first dog mate with

an individual of species A gives birth to a individual of the new species B so who did this new individual of new species B mate with to continue the new species
either
1)there was no one to mate with- so how did the new species B become common
or
2)a whole lot of species A gave birth toa whole lot of new individuals of species B at the same time so that these new individual members of species B could mate together

if this 2) was the way it happened
we have a major problem
it would mean something made a whole lot of members of species A give birth to a whole lot new members of species B at the same time
we are told species form due to random mutations
so
it is beyound possibility that the same random mutation took place in a whole lot of different members of species A at the same time

the other alternative is that some intelligence was at work

NOW
There is a a dilemma
1)in order to resolve the dean paradox
the dean paradox makes you abandon the word species
in which case biology is destroyed

or
2)biology uses the word bird
signifying it is different from its parent organism
science uses the word species
as such
you have the dean paraodox

in order to resolve the dean paradox
the dean paradox makes you abandon the word species
in which case biology is destroyed
and all this talk in biology about speciation species this species that is meaningless nonsense
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Re: Could the theory of Darwinian evolution be mistaken?

Post by Dolphin42 »

This "species paradox" rests on the fallacy that the concept of species is an all-or-nothing thing. Such black-and-white thinking is very common because of our tendency to impose our discrete categories on the continua of nature. Categorisation is necessary in order to manage the complexity of the world. But it is artificial.

-- Updated November 10th, 2016, 1:00 pm to add the following --

--

In organisms that reproduce sexually:

Due to genetic drift, the genetic variation between individuals can increase if, for example, one sub-population becomes physically separated from another sub-population and they cannot easily interbreed. But there won't be a sudden point, during a single generation, when successful reproduction between individuals in the two sub-populations goes from 100% to 0%.

Successful reproduction is never 100% anyway. As genetic differences increase, reproductive success falls. The lower the reproductive success, the less genetic material is combined, and the greater the rate of divergence.

That, at least, seems to me like a pretty obvious common sense deduction from the basic facts of genetics and sexual reproduction.
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