hapless_fool wrote:
Gallileo was a back-stabbing jerk who brought most of his misfortune upon himself. I am not sure what you mean by "back-stabbing." But you don't get house arrest for being a jerk.
What if the Theory of Evolution is Right? (Part I)
Sort:
Dec 14, 2014
0
#543
The_Ghostess_Lola wrote:
(#500) ....the hominids that adapted to living on the ground specialised to a separate niche many millions of years ago, adapting to walking upright on the ground and then adapting further in other ways.
When someone tries to tell me what happened millions of years ago (ahhh....'cuz they were there ?....ahhh....hello ?), especially about a species we know very-very little about ?....well, I really begin to wonder about that someone. Oh !....I almost forgot - it's a Scientific Fact....Sorry........
I can't help that you don't trust scientists' methods for figuring out what happened millions of years ago.
I do hope you understand that scientists don't just make up stories about what happened but instead figure out ways of learning from evidence what happened long ago.
A detective wasn't there when the crime occurred, but he uses evidence to figure out what happened. One detective working alone might get an awful lot wrong. Lots of detectives working on the same case for a long time, comparing notes, checking each other's thinking, criticizing each other when it seems to them that unwarranted conclusions are being reached, are much more reliable. And it's similar with scientists.
It's one thing for you not to know how information about the past can be extracted from the evidence we have. It's another thing for you to insist that nobody anywhere can possibly extract information about the past from the evidence we have. In any field involving study of clues about the past, the scientific community has very carefully worked out methods of extracting information. And it's best--and they know it's best--when they have not just one line of evidence leading to a conclusion but rather multiple lines of evidence that all turn out to lead to the same conclusion.
But if you don't trust scientists, just keep getting the same flu inoculation each year instead of getting one that is specially made for that year's *newly evolved* flu.
Dec 14, 2014
0
#544
The_Ghostess_Lola wrote:
....and off the thread's topic ? I believe there's a someone here that believes (very strongly - I might add) in the Big Bang Theory. Well, have you left room for a possible non-BB Universe that doesn't need stuff like dark matter/energy & if light decays ?....just curious. And IDK about you, but I don't believe everything I read.
I mean, were you there too ? All those years ago ? In your little aeroplane ? Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't the motion of what you saw back then, but it was more like the motion of you.
All I'm asking is for ordinary ppl to not be too quick to make conclusions about certain events when they weren't even there. Fair enuf ?
There are conclusions that scientists are really, really, really sure about, and there are conclusions that scientists are less sure about. There's good reason to think that the Big Bang Theory is roughly correct, but I wouldn't class it as being something that scientists are as sure about as they are that evolution occurred. (Elroch can tell me if I'm wrong about that.)
Not being there doesn't mean you can't draw conclusions from evidence. You don't have to have been there during World War II in order to learn a lot about it from evidence.
Dec 14, 2014
0
#545
Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait !....
....
Dec 14, 2014
0
#546
hapless_fool wrote:
Let's get this out of the way now. Does Dawkins have any major positions that the atheists here think are wrong or at least a bit misguided, or do you take as gospel the sum and substance of all he has written? I don't want you apologizing for him everytime I post a howler of his.
In fact, I am not at all sure that a creator God would have to be at least as complex as the universe itself. A creator God could simply create an initial state and a few simple rules of development.
However, if a creator God wanted to create a universe that is exactly the way ours is in full detail--if he intended, for instance, for intelligent life to evolve after many billions of years--then he needs to be at least as complex as is required to hold the knowledge of how a universe would evolve in that same detail.
Dec 14, 2014
0
#547
hapless_fool wrote:
Let's get this out of the way now. Does Dawkins have any major positions that the atheists here think are wrong or at least a bit misguided, or do you take as gospel the sum and substance of all he has written? I don't want you apologizing for him everytime I post a howler of his.
Dawkins's criticisms of philosophical arguments for God's existence, as presented in The God Delusion, lack nuance. The funny thing is, he gets what's wrong with them essentially right. Many people miss the forest for the trees when they examine theological arguments. Dawkins really doesn't.
Dec 14, 2014
0
#548
hapless_fool wrote:
Elroch wrote:
Hard facts are much more interesting that such discussions, because they are fixed and general. I don't think Dawkins is of any great significance morally speaking. His misguided attitude to aborting Down's syndrome babies was a "SHOULD" statement which indicated his personal view. Its insubstantial nature is indicated by the fact that he retracted the statement later, or at least clarified its scope. Moreover, you should be able to tell by that word "should" that it was not a scientific statement.
I just reread my last five posts and I did not use the word "should" once, I think, including my Dawkins quotes. What are you talking about?
If Dawkins stayed in his lab (which apparently hasn't been visited by him in over 30 years) the world would be a better place, but it is precisely that he is out there telling us what we SHOULD believe in questions of metaphysics and theology that gets him and his conspecifics in trouble.
The enthymeme works like this, and you atheists must have used this at least 500 times on these threads:
Major premise: unstated.
Minor premise: we share a common ancestry with all living things.
Therefore: God does not exist, and anyone who believes in God is an idiot.
Would you do me the honor of providing the major premise?
One of his arguments runs like this: (1) The world of life around us displays an astonishingly strong appearance of design. (2) With no other explanation than a designer God, it is entirely understandable that people would believe in a designer God on the basis of that astonishingly strong appearance of design. (3) Once we have available the theory of evolution to explain that astonishingly strong appearance of design, the explanation of a designer God loses its force. (4) Therefore, we should no longer believe in a designer God on the basis of the astonishingly strong appearance of design in the world of life around us.
That is one of his primary arguments. It is not his only one.
Dec 14, 2014
0
#549
I'm sorry, there are just too many posts from the last day or day and a half to read through them all now. Possibly later. But if I'm repeating what other people have already said, I'm sorry.
Dec 14, 2014
0
#550
Not being there doesn't mean you can't draw conclusions from evidence. You don't have to have been there during World War II in order to learn a lot about it from evidence.
I know, but take the big bang....it seems like we're basing that it happened on the SoL. Other than that, I don't think we have any other reasonable record, do we ?
As far as hominids ?....at least we have some record. A few bones here and there and some reasonable deductions....not much - but a little.
Dec 15, 2014
0
#551
The_Ghostess_Lola wrote:
Off-Topic once again....pleez 4give me....
Here are some wild assumptions I put 2gether.
Okay. Let's say there are very-very-very roughly 10 planets to each Sun in our Universe. And let's say there are 200 BB Suns in each galaxy. And that there are 200 BB galaxies in our Universe.
Okay. Certain scientific journals are guessing that our Earth was singularized just b4 the Big Bang to something a'O 1/8th of an inch in diameter - spherically (whew !). Okay....1.3 MM of today's Earth's can fit inside our Sun - they say - by volume.
Sorry, but this is hopelessly garbled nonsense, and you should avoid whatever source provided this information.
The Earth certainly did not exist near the Big Bang: there was just a hot plasma, whose composition changed with temperature. This is the sort of stuff they study at CERN, using high energy collisions.
To rectify the misinformation, near the Big Bang it was too hot for even elements to exist. Later on calculations based on nuclear physics predict that hydrogen formed, plus a specific amount of helium which can be calculated, and not very much of anything else - the temperature was too hot to form heavy elements.
SCIENTIFIC TEST: when astronomers look everywhere they can see in the Universe, the ratio of helium to hydrogen is similar to that predicted was formed early in the Big Bang. [Of course, in stars, more is formed].
The Earth is made of heavier elements, and there is exactly one way known for them to form - supernovae (again understood using nuclear physics and observed directly - eg SN1987a, and historically - eg the crab nebula came from one recorded by Chinese astromers in 1054.
So early supernovae made heavy elements, later another star formed (our Sun) and gravity and friction made planets, the smaller ones containing mostly heavy elements (because the light ones get evaporated off).
Where am I going w/ all this ? Well, I did some calculations and the diameter of singularity of our entire Universe was very-very-very roughly 7400 miles in diameter at the moment of kaboom. Today's Earth is roughly 7900 miles in diameter.
No, the diameter of our Universe is believed to have been much smaller. Why not read any respectable description of the Big Bang? They will all give a similar description.
So, at the instant b4 the Big Bang, the singularity of matter was a bit smaller than that of the Earth. Pretty far-fetched - like to the point of believing in magic....but okay.
As I said, more extraordinary than you think! But think of it not as matter but of some material a billion times hotter than you can imagine.
Now, if we stay w/ what we know, the space-time continuum thing ?....then what was the matchstick that lit the bomb ? IOW's, what made it explode ? Better yet, where'd this bomb come from ? And what was a'0 this bomb at the time ?
Remember, I don't rule anyone's guesses out - one is as good as the other. I will tho' view everything trying to use common sense first. After that, I will try thinking counter-intuitively........
Common sense is great for many things. It's really awful for making a medical diagnosis, building a computer, sending a spacecraft to Pluto, looking at and understanding objects billions of light years away or studying how subatomic particles behave, and many other things outside of the realm for which common sense developed. A different sort of sense is needed, which is the sense that comprises scientific knowledge.
And in case you don't know, this type of sense works in all of those realms described above and many more. This is why it is trusted where common sense isn't.
Dec 15, 2014
0
#552
I think I want to avoid Dawkin's forays into theology and metaphysics for now. After all, he is a scientist and at least in The Selfish Gene he steers clear of such undertaking.
Again, on a scientific basis, do any of you object to any of his major assertions?
MW, those links you provided on Stove, did you read any of them? Would you care to summarize?
I remember The Selfish Gene from the early 80's.Is that the same book? Scientists have no business attacking people's religious beliefs. Our main function on Earth is to live in a way that is pleasing to God. Science or any other endeavour is somthing to entertain us in our recreation period. It's not what's important.
Its not just the design that begs God, it's the information behind the design. Information leads and energy and matter proceeds.
Dec 15, 2014
0
#555
hapless_fool, I respect Dawkins as a scientist and the gene-centric viewpoint (which was not discovered by Dawkins, and was a rather minor viewpoint at the time he wrote, but which is now viewed as fundamental) which is very enlightening in explaining how evolution occurs. As you will find in the book, there are many examples where it has successful quantitative predictions about real species.
Why not simply bring up an example from the book for discussion rather than demanding a signed contract saying someone agrees with the book 100%? (Having said that, it is surely generally accurate and remains reliable today, because of the way its content was generated. If you pick an example, people are generally going to have to agree with it).
Dec 15, 2014
0
#556
einstein99 wrote:
V1, Its up to the claimant to prove the case of fusion of two chromosomes.
Firstly, it's not. All that matters is that it was possible and it is consistent with the observed genomes of the primates. We live in a world where many unlikely things have happened and a far greater number of unlikely things have not happened. There would be a need for an intervention hypothesis if there was an absence of unlikely things.
As Popper pointed out, it is necessary to falsify a scientific hypothesis to reject it. While it is unfalsified and makes successful predictions its scope remains universal.
[It's worth mentioning that established scientific theories never actually get falsified, because extensive testing makes that statistically impossible. What happens is that one of two things occurs: they are shown to be an approximation to a better theory, or their scope is found to be limited to a realm including earlier testing, but not all contexts. For examples, think of Newton's law of gravitation or Maxwell's electrodynamics].
Your viewpoint is a very odd one. You can only disagree with the fact that primates are variations on a theme by concentrating on the Y-chromosome and ignoring the fact that even that is quantitatively consistent with evolution (as well as grossly misrepresenting the close relationship in almost all the autosomal DNA).
But you are now claiming that it is not that the two halves of chromosome two map to two genes in other primates that is in question, but that they could have fused by accident (an event which is known to happen in other examples). You believe that some kind of intervention was needed to fuse these two chromosomes.
This suggestion has no basis in ancient myths and is not needed by the scientific evidence. There is nothing about the merged chromosomes that is inconsistent with it having occurred by accident: don't believe me, ask the geneticists.
Dec 15, 2014
0
#557
Elroch wrote:
hapless_fool, I respect Dawkins as a scientist and the gene-centric viewpoint (which was not discovered by Dawkins, and was a rather minor viewpoint at the time he wrote, but which is now viewed as fundamental) which is very enlightening in explaining how evolution occurs. As you will find in the book, there are many examples where it has successful quantitative predictions about real species.
Why not simply bring up an example from the book for discussion rather than demanding a signed contract saying someone agrees with the book 100%? (Having said that, it is surely generally accurate and remains reliable today, because of the way its content was generated. If you pick an example, people are generally going to have to agree with it).
I'm sorry, would you pull up the quote of my demand of a signed contract? I seemed to have missed it.
We're talking about evolutionary science from one of the world's experts. PW was the one who brought it up, and then endeared himself to me forever by calling me a liar.
I'm willing to look at this stuff but I'm not going to put up with histrionics, pleonastics, and I will not respond to any red font post.
Dec 15, 2014
0
#558
Well Rocky ?...at least I put 2gether a guess. What's your guess Mr. Hotshot ?
And BTW, I'm saying IF the Big Bang happened....sounds like you've been sold that it happened....careful there smartypants....haha !
Dec 15, 2014
0
#559
hapless_fool wrote:
Elroch wrote:
hapless_fool, I respect Dawkins as a scientist and the gene-centric viewpoint (which was not discovered by Dawkins, and was a rather minor viewpoint at the time he wrote, but which is now viewed as fundamental) which is very enlightening in explaining how evolution occurs. As you will find in the book, there are many examples where it has successful quantitative predictions about real species.
Why not simply bring up an example from the book for discussion rather than demanding a signed contract saying someone agrees with the book 100%? (Having said that, it is surely generally accurate and remains reliable today, because of the way its content was generated. If you pick an example, people are generally going to have to agree with it).
I'm sorry, would you pull up the quote of my demand of a signed contract? I seemed to have missed it.
I thought when you asked "Again, on a scientific basis, do any of you object to any of his major assertions?" you were looking for an implied agreement with the rest. But I accept that may not have been so. You will find very little disagreement with the predictions and conclusions of the gene-centric viewpoint, because it is correct. Disagreements are more philosophical and about how to describe reality. See the wikpedia article for some examples.
We're talking about evolutionary science from one of the world's experts. PW was the one who brought it up, and then endeared himself to me forever by calling me a liar.
I'm willing to look at this stuff but I'm not going to put up with histrionics, pleonastics, and I will not respond to any red font post.
Perhaps you don't realise, but red text is only used to distinguish a responder from the original writer. It only indicates correction in your mind.
This response contains no corrections. It does contain red-coloured text, but I am not willing to pander to preferences for colour schemes without an objective reason. Better that you realise that red is not offensive except to bulls (well, except that's a myth and bulls are colour blind).
Do feel free to use red or any other colour in responses to me as long as your words are readable and can be distinguished.
Dec 15, 2014
0
#560
This is what I think is going to happen: I'll encounter one howler after another in Dawkin's book (I doubt most of his disciples read his stuff or certainly not critically) and then you will claim that his work is only of historical importance and has been superceded by (you name the author).
This is a scientific discussion. The first person who drags religion into it will be identified as an idiot.
Off-Topic once again....pleez 4give me....
Here are some wild assumptions I put 2gether.
Okay. Let's say there are very-very-very roughly 10 planets to each Sun in our Universe. And let's say there are 200 BB Suns in each galaxy. And that there are 200 BB galaxies in our Universe.
Okay. Certain scientific journals are guessing that our Earth was singularized just b4 the Big Bang to something a'O 1/8th of an inch in diameter - spherically (whew !). Okay....1.3 MM of today's Earth's can fit inside our Sun - they say - by volume.
Where am I going w/ all this ? Well, I did some calculations and the diameter of singularity of our entire Universe was very-very-very roughly 7400 miles in diameter at the moment of kaboom. Today's Earth is roughly 7900 miles in diameter.
So, at the instant b4 the Big Bang, the singularity of matter was a bit smaller than that of the Earth. Pretty far-fetched - like to the point of believing in magic....but okay.
Now, if we stay w/ what we know, the space-time continuum thing ?....then what was the matchstick that lit the bomb ? IOW's, what made it go boom ? Better yet, where'd this bomb come from ? And what was a'0 this bomb at the time ?
Remember, I don't rule anyone's guesses out - one is as good as the other. I will tho' view everything trying to use common sense first. After that, I will try thinking counter-intuitively....
....