What if the Theory of Evolution is Right? (Part I)

Don't worry Hap....Rocky (why do I call him that ?........) just met his match w/ you and Einstein and he's having trouble accepting that - that's all.

It's safe to assume the weight of a photon is zero for now, since it is so small as to make no difference to any observation that can be made. If that ever changes, it will be time to think otherwise.

Al was a theoretical physicist, and one with the rare distinction of having been the discoverer of one of the great theories of science. His theory has been well-tested.

It is not really meaningful to think of the speed of light varying, since it is a sort of conversion factor between spatial and temporal co-ordinates. The things that it makes sense to consider varying are the dimensionless constants of physics. There are many observations which give every reason to believe these are genuinely constant in all places where observations have been made (this includes fairly near the Big Bang).

[Just for clarification, your last post is extremely far from being an accurate characterisation of my attitude to people who hide from scientific facts. If you really think otherwise, you have a comprehension problem].

@ Elroch

Then you obviously are not keeping up with the latest conspiracy theories from the Radical Right:

From:http://www.anti-relativity.com/

A little known fact is that Relativity is the only pillar of science still hotly contested in scientific circles even after 100 years of supposed acceptance. While other widely accepted ideas such as Evolution may still be contested, it is always in association with religious beliefs. Relativity’s dissenters share no common religious background or reasoning. Their contentions are purely scientific in nature. Most people’s first thought is, “Surely the people who do not agree are the same group of people insisting congress is populated by aliens”. However, I’d like to introduce you to some of the scientists and inventors who fall in with the dissenters.

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or:https://answersingenesis.org/astronomy/cepheid-confusion/

ScienceNOW: “Objects in the Telescope May Be Closer Than They Appear” Is “distant starlight” as distant as we think?

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As for the Speed of light: http://www.creationism.org/ackerman/AckermanYoungWorldChap08.htm

The most powerful evolutionist "age argument" for most thinking persons has been that based on the measured speed of light and the time it would take light to travel from distant objects in the heavens. We hear of stars and galaxies that are believed to be millions and even billions of light-years from earth. Even if scientists are greatly mistaken in their views about the size of the universe and distance to the far reaches of the cosmos, surely it must be admitted that these distant objects are far in excess of a few thousand light-years away. If so, how can the entire universe be only a few thousand years old?.....................Barry Setterfield examined these data, and—much to his amazement and in spite of everything he had learned from his professors and textbooks—the figures showed a clear and distinct pattern of decay with the passage of time. The speed of light has not been constant; it was faster in the past.

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But wait! The nefarious Liberal Conspiracies continue!

http://www.earthage.org/continentaldrft/continental_drift.htm

The theory of Continental Drift is also one of the primary lines of reasoning by popular science publications and the "scientific establishment" (of believers) to promote an old earth. 

Since many creationists (both scientists and non-scientists) claim that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, the question that needs to be addressed is whether or not there is any evidence to suggest that this event took place rapidly within the recent past.  For those who accept that the Bible is accurate, both historically and otherwise,  the answer is simple since it tells us plainly that the earth was divided in one man's lifetime.

Thank Goodness we have those hard-working Creationists out there, protecting us from the Evils of Liberal Scientists!

An interesting essay I just found on the origin of On the Origin of Species.

http://www.scientus.org/Wegener-Continental-Drift.html

 Charles Darwin was missing a mechanism for the inheritance of beneficial traits when he published the Origin of Species in 1859. Darwin had amassed a huge amount of evidence that supported some type of adaptive process that contributed to the evolution of new species. He argued that with the natural variations that occur in populations, any trait that is beneficial would make that individual more likely to survive and pass on the trait to the next generation. If enough of these selections occured on different beneficial traits you could end up with completely new species. But he did not have a mechanism for how the traits could be preserved over the succeeding generations. The dominant theory of inheritance at the time was that the traits of the parents were blended in the offspring. But this would mean that any beneficial trait would be diluted out of the population within a few generations. This is because most of the blending over the next generations would be with individuals that did not have the trait.

The lack of a mechanism to preserve traits didn't seem a problem. Within 5 years, Oxford University was using a biology textbook that discussed biology in the context of evolution by natural selection. The textbook stated, "Though evidence might be required to show that natural selection accounts for everything ascribed to it, yet no evidence is required to show that natural selection has always been going on, is going on now, and must ever continue to go on. Recognizing this is an a priori certainty, let us contemplate it under its two distinct aspects." At Oxford, evolution by natural selection had gone from hypothesis to a priori certainty in the space of 5 years. The scientific community (excepting a minority of skeptics) chose to ignore the lack of mechanism. 

The mechanism that explained the preservation of beneficial traits was published shortly after the Origin of Species. Unfortunately it was ignored. In 1865, an obscure Augustinian monk from Moldavia presented a paper to the Natural History Society of Brunn where he discussed the results of experiments on pea plants. The results presented by this monk, Gregor Mendel, pointed to traits being inherited 'whole' (also known as particulate inheritance), and that certain traits (recessive traits) that disappear in one generation can reappear in a following generation (see Mendel and Evolution). This would have gone a long way in plugging at least one hole in the Darwin's theory. Mendel's work was largely ignored until about 1900. Shortly afterward it was incorporated into our modern view of evolution known as the 'modern synthesis'.

Yes, varelse1, on the earlier post about relativity denialists . For some reason, every crackpot thinks he has refuted Einstein, but most of them don't bother trying to overturn Schroedinger or Dirac or Gell-Mann or whatever.

But that's the beauty Schroedinger! If you refute him, who is to say he was wrong, before you refuted him??

I disagree with the essayist here. The textbook said that natural selection was a certainty, NOT the effects of it. This is the same as me often saying natural selection is essentially a tautology. Evolution requires both natural selection and mutation, and is about the effects of their combination.

   "a priori" is a giveaway here. It is a philosophical term.

   Science is not philosophy. (btw..."tautology" is also a common term in philosophy.) And, as I've said before, epistemology and cosmology in philosophical terms is dead. Science killed it.

   In math or science, instead of "a priori" the more tangible, solid term woud be: axiomatic.

   Philosophy and religion get away with a lot of "a priori" based on nothing but miasmic vapor and belief.

   In math or science, when you say something is axiomatic, it had better be capable of bearing objective scrutiny.

   For example, Descartes said the only one thing he could know for certain was that he could "think". This was an apriori. It may have been his "a priori" but it was nothing more than an omphaloskepsistical opinion. Therefore, he built a false syllogism upon a faulty first premise. That's why Descartes was wrong when he said: "I think; therefore I am." (Oh, I'll probably be challenged on this one...most people think that he was being axiomatic...when he was really just full of religious "a priori" bologna.)

    If I were to say, as a premise, that the circumference of a circle is equal to the radius squared times 3.14...then I am starting with an axiom and building from there a syllogism based on hard, scientific facts instead of a philosopher's navel-gazing "a priori".

Here's a statue complex in Rome of four men practicing omphaloskepsis (navel gazing). One is e99, another is hapless....

And how exactly do you refute "I think"? Or are you saying you are not thinking?

Couldn't be Adam....they say he didn't have a belly button........

Pawnwhacher -

I think your formula is false also. It will give you the area of a circle not the circumference.

I stand correcteded...pi x  d (or  2pi  x r)

A Freudian slip...lol.

Read this book and you'll have the answer:

http://www.amazon.com/Descartes-Error-Emotion-Reason-Human-ebook/dp/B00AFY2XVK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418764332&sr=8-1&keywords=descartes%27+error+emotion

Thanks, will take a look.

You are welcome.

   Now, explaining what I meant could take many paragraphs. The book is written by a neurologist. Basically, where Descartes erred is that he can "know" nothing. Then he has an "a priori"...I can "think". From there, he "proves" soup to nuts all the way up to God and angels.

   His basic premise was false. (And, no, I'm not saying he couldn't think. Hint: But you do first need a brain in order to be able to think. So, "I am (have a brain), therefore I think"...but he had it backwards. Also, he went on to "prove" his relgious beliefs from this premise. No actual proofs needed...omphaloskepsis at its finest.

Yes, it's a joke starting with self-perception and claiming rigorous inference of something more fundamental. However, I am still happy to believe I and the world exist for similar reasons (without raising it onto a pedestal and calling it philosophy). But then belief and certainty are just states of mind as well...

In the new international bird study, 48 species representing every avian order had their entire genomes mapped. Nature news believes the suite of genes in the vocalizing birds including parrots, hummingbirds and songbirds evolved several times over. 😕 That would be over 50 different genes simultaneously evolving in several different species. These genes were not found in non vocalizing birds.

Now for the kicker. Homologues of these more than 50 genes in vocalizing birds have been found in humans. These genes are not found in non human primates.

Also connective neurons and motor neurons have similar structures and neural pathways in the vocalizing birds and humans. Common descent or common design?

It stretches credulity that these vocalizing systems could evolve independently several times over in birds and humans.

Lady Kensington ?....birds of a feather flock 2gether ?...it's like a hen house in here ?....is there a pecking order ?....the early bird gets the worm ?

Oh Austin.....stop teasing me....you're sooo bad !........ 

Your credulity is so easily strained it is a state of constant collapse. It needs replacing with something more capable of dealing with reality.

There is a crucial difference between independent evolution and what would be the predictions of the ID hypothesis (if it had any).

In evolution, close relationships always indicate close ancestry of the same genes. While it is possible to reproduce short paths of evolution involving very small numbers of mutations, albeit not in an entirely predictable way (eg in the Lenski experiment), there are just too many possibilities for long paths of mutations to be repeated (some other good alternative is likely to happen to occur).

This is why there are a wide range of completely independent genes that are used in the 150 or so designs of eyes that have evolved. Close similarity of genes indicates common ancestry in evolution, and that is what is always found.

ID, by contrast, is supposed to involve an agent at least as intelligent as a modern genetic engineer - who finds no problem using genes from across the entire range of species in other species, because the genetic code is (almost) common. Such an agent is distinctly absent from the genomic database, which is on its way to including genomes of a vast range of species, perhaps millions as the technology advances. The REAL agent of evolution is absolutely constrained by the known naturalistic mechanisms - ancestry and limited horizontal transfer.