e99: "I'm pretty sure the Cambrian explosion falsifies common descent!"
"pretty sure"?! Prove it.
"Besides, it's up to the claimant to prove something PW"
So where is your proof? Or is there nothing from you other than more "hot air"?
What if the Theory of Evolution is Right? (Part I)
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This is starting to sound like,prove that pink unicorns don't exist!☺
Dec 22, 2014
0
#764
einstein99 wrote:
I saw a story of two cosmologists this year who want to change the definition of a theory. They suggest that if a story is sufficiently adequate and explanatory, then it should pass as a theory. So much for experimental and empirical evidence.
This overthrows every definition of theory for the last several hundred years.
This is an interesting point, motivated by a special characteristic of cosmology that it is about one unique object. But I think they are simply wrong. A theory that makes no predictions is an empty theory, even if it explains known facts. A good theory needs to at least permit the possibility of further observations that it can be checked against. As far as I know, all aspects of cosmological theory fall into this category, so there is no necessity for redefinition.
Of course, this is merely a semantic point anyhow, but a potentially confusing one. It would be a bad idea to corrupt the term "scientific theory" in this way, because it would be source of confusion concerning other theories.
The reason it is just a semantic point is that if there was a global declaration that the word "theory" would mean something different, this would make no difference to the standing of well-tested theories such as the Theory of General Relativity or the Theory of Evolution.
The first was tested with atomic clocks Elroxh, where's the rest for the story of common descent?😕
einstein99 wrote:
This is starting to sound like,prove that pink unicorns don't exist!☺
IOW you could not prove your assertion.
The best explanation for the Cambrian is that God created all the different phyla, classes, orders and species Pawn Whacker. He created 16 phyla, 30 classes, and many more orders and species in 5-6 million years.
Even the experts agree, like Gould and Dawkins, that the inception of modern multicellular life didn't evolve by way of some smoothly transitioning evolution in 5-6million years. If you can't show some other mechanism or a better explanation for the Cambrian animals than God remains the best explanation.
In fact common design out does common descent on all levels. Best explanations beat stories like common descent every time, especially when there's no experimental or empirical evidence to back it up.😉
Dec 22, 2014
0
#769
I am alarmed by the characterization of a theory as well-confirmed, if not absolutely certain.
A theory is one thing; a really, really well-confirmed theory is another.
A theory need not be confirmed at all. In order to be scientific, it does have to be (potentially) testable.
But scientists mostly deal with really, really well-confirmed theories, like the theory of general relativity and the theory of evolution. These *are* very close to having the status of observed fact (in their domains of applicability, anyway--you can't use general relativity at the quantum scale very well). And for *general* statements about the world rather than for *specific* statements about individual details of the world, they are the closest thing to observed fact we have. So, the theories we usually find ourselves mentioning are ones that are really, really well-confirmed.
However, the theory of general relativity was a theory--and a scientific one--before it was really, really well-confirmed. The mere use of the word "theory" does not imply well-confirmedness.
gopher_the_throat wrote:
pawnwhacker - the pope has also conceded the issue of how old the universe and earth are. He's pretty modern on these points. What he and I do not concede at this point is that genomic and fossil evidence do not constitute proof that there is no underlying designer. That is, you can keep making the pile of genomic and fossil observations larger and larger but by examining this evidence, how can you tell if it was design changes or random shuffling of molecules?
Yes, I am aware that he has jumped onto the intelligent design bandwagon. I call this "revisionism". When I was a boy, I was taught that the Pope is infallible on religious matters (which this certainly is).
Before: Yahweh, Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve, 6,000 years ago.
Now: Jesus, no place in particular, no Adam or Eve, 4,500,000,000 years ago.
Makes sense to me.
Regarding your other comments, I can agree that the "first cause" is still uncertain. But that doesn't mean that it was the God of the Bible by default.
Aliens seeding the Earth? Possible. Meteors or asteroids striking the Earth with organic molecules? Possible.
There has been some progress in the lab creating a simulation of the early Earth. I am not up-to-date or an expert on this, however. Proof will be "in the pudding" if results are ever achieved here.
Even so, the questions will remain. How did the aliens, meteors or asteroids obtain the first organic molecules? Or perhaps the molecules were assembled randomly and after billions of random encounters, the right mix of atoms formed the first organic molecule by utter chance.
Even if some of these questions were to be answered, we'd still have questions about how the very first atom was created. And who/what/how was the big bang started? What happened before the big bang?
But I'm also telling you that even if we had answers to all these questions, we'd still have diverse religions. Too, each diverse religionist considers all the others but their own as a big, fat lie. IOW, they are all atheists about every other religion than their own (how convenient).
People get very, very personal and comfortable with their religious beliefs, and they do not want their bubble burst. That's the bottom line.
And on Christmas Eve, I am going to a family dinner where prayers will be said, and I will bow my head in silence (and respect), and you can bet your bippy that I will not try to burst anyone's bubble. 
Edit: The only part where I have to wince is when they include me, the patriarch, in their prayers and ask for my redemption (from what?!) and salvation (to where?!). Nonetheless...mum's the word.
Dec 22, 2014
0
#771
Elroch wrote: MindWalk replies in red: I want to emphasize that I would normally put things as you are putting them. This is because I normally do make, at least implicitly, the fundamental epistemic and fundamental assumptions ("FEMA") that lead to trusting our best scientific findings and theories as giving us our best knowledge of the world. It's just that it gives us that knowledge *conditional upon the acceptance of those fundamental assumptions*. So, an ordinary knowledge claim like "Tigers have internal organs (despite my never seeing them)" implicitly has the form, "If FEMA, then tigers have internal organs (despite my never seeing them)." I normally accept FEMA just as much as you or anyone else does--I don't normally walk around seriously doubting the existence of physical reality, for instance--so I normally make the same sorts of claims you make below. It is only when thinking about what those FEMA really are and about how they affect what knowledge claims we accept that I will make some of the statements I'm making now. As to other statements, they reflect the instrumentalist/realist question of whether theoretical entities are real or whether instead our speaking of them is just a convenient fiction.
MindWalk, you can surely see what I mean. As a child you could see a tiger and be sure there is a tiger. Notice that this assumes that I was once a child, and in order for me to agree that I was once a child, I have to at least implicitly make fundamental assumptions about the veridicality of memory. I experience what seem to me to be memories--what seem to me to be mental phenomena indicative of previously-experienced mental phenomena (so, I call to mind what seems to me to be a memory of playing backyard football as a child, and I assume that I am not experiencing this "memory" for the very first time--I assume that I have experienced it before, and that it is indicative of my having once actually experienced the sensations of playing backyard football; but maybe I haven't--maybe I'm a robot just now switched on, fully stocked with false "memories"). And I also take my memories about the world really to be memories about a world that has existed for a while. But maybe the world just came into existence a moment ago, and me with it, fully stocked with false memories that seem to be memories of living in that world. How would I tell the difference? I couldn't. I normally just assume that my memory is veridical in those two ways and just say, "Yes, I was once a child." But there really are fundamental assumptions hiding in such a simple statement. But now you can look at a tiger and rationally realise that this means that there is light coming from the Sun interacting with the tiger and re-emitted light that interacts with molecules in your eyes in a way what leads to a pattern in the neurons in your brain that you associate with the concept of a tiger. Having made various fundamental epistemic and metaphysical assumptions, yes, I agree that the enterprise of science has been carried on by many people over a period of time and that it makes sense for me to accept the well-confirmed results of science as giving me my best description of the world that I assume I live in. But notice a point not depending on FEMA: the more theoretical theoretical entities become--the more removed from my own sensory experience they become--the more I have to wonder whether their usefulness is instrumental rather than descriptive of actual reality. Are there magnetic fields making iron filings line up in pretty patterns when placed on sheets of paper atop magnets? Or are there only iron filings lining up in pretty patterns when placed on top of sheets of paper placed over magnets, and is talk of "magnetic fields" just a useful way of talking about the situation without actually telling me about metaphysically existent magnetic fields? Yes, this question has to do with a fundamental notion of existence--but that fundamental notion of existence stems from my having certain mental phenomena, like tiger-ish mental images, and building up a mental real-world world-model, and projecting outward to suppose that something in an externally existing world--namely, a tiger--corresponds to my tiger-ish mental image. I don't have that same internal, mental experience-external, real-world existent correlation in the case of magnetic fields. Should I still think of magnetic fields as metaphysical existents? I do not think it is absurd to ask that question. It is the instrumentalist vs. realist question with respect to theoretical entities. I am normally a scientific realist and take magnetic fields to be real metaphysical existents, but here, I want to point out the issue.
You rightly know this mechanism of detection and identification works from experience (it has served you well, even if perhaps you have not run into many tigers?), but you can also see that you are relying on a system that is looking for patterns in an electromagnetic signal. Moreover, you have nothing but this sort of information on which to base your knowledge (I am including second hand information of a similar sort). I will point out that this all rests on an understanding of electromagnetism that involves theoretical entities like photons. What we really see are flashes on screens and pointers pointing to numbers on dials, and so on. We therefore get some distance away from the internal, mentally-experienced mental-phenomena correspondence to projected elements of a putative external, objectively existing reality when talking about theoretical entities like photons, so the instrumentalist/realist question can arise. (Again, I normally take the scientific realist side of that debate and think of photons as real and think of scientists as making statements that are intended to be about real photons. I am only pointing out the instrumentalist side.)
You also know that tigers are made of matter and what you see is interactions with that matter.
So while once you knew you saw a tiger without concern about the mechanism, you now know enough to realise what you are really relying on. Obviously, most of the time you can ignore this, but it matters to this discussion. I agree that we build up a store of knowledge and a depth of understanding of our modeling of a projected external, objectively existing reality based on the best efforts of the best scientists ever to have lived. I emphasize again that I would normally say exactly what you are saying and am simply trying to examine how fundamental assumptions affect what we say and giving instrumentalism a fair shake. I have to go play pinochle now. Christmas family time, you know.
Dec 22, 2014
0
#772
einstein99 wrote:
The best explanation for the Cambrian is that God created all the different phyla, classes, orders and species Pawn Whacker. He created 16 phyla, 30 classes, and many more orders and species in 5-6 million years.
To zealots, the time this took seems to decrease every time the subject arises! The simple fact is that no scientist would say there is a reason to believe a large number of phyla appeared in a window so short. What you are doing is either fabricating this number because it would appear to help your misguided New Age invention, or echoing some incompetent who made up such a figure. Given the nonsense they spout, I am sure someone else has made this up.
Having said that, how long does a phylum take to appear? No time at all. When a line bifurcates, this happens inconspicuously in a generation. It is only much later that the lines diverge to a large extent and they are large branches of the tree of life.
It's amusing that your specific cult of New Age creationists have to dig 500 million years back in the fossil record to find a place where things are not so obviously the result of evolution that it looks dumb to suggest another mechanism. Of course you forget that there is no reason to invent a creation in the early Cambrian, because there is no ancient myth that comes close to claiming this fantasy. Indeed I have heard you describe the hotch potch of nonsense you believe in and it is as far from Genesis as the Lord of the Rings is.
Pre-Cambrian fossils (children of an earlier god?)
Early Cambrian fossils (miracles required?)
Real Timeline of Cambrian Evolution
Tommotian and atdabanian. That's the explosion. 5-6 million years. Bowring, MIT Geochronologist. Valentine and Erwin, Smithsonian paleontologists
Dec 22, 2014
0
#774
As I have pointed out, it takes no time at all for a bifurcation to occur (given the opportunity - vacant niche, changed environment, one crucial difficult evolutionary step making many others possible), but everyone agrees that evolution progressed at a rapid rate (about 5 times the average) for a longer period than that.
See Berkley University's summary, for example. "The Cambrian was a time of great evolutionary innovation, with many major groups of organisms appearing within a span of only forty million years"
There are no experts who believe any magical intervention was required. Certainly it's an interesting time, a bit like the 20th century compared with the previous couple of millennia in human history.
Of course, you are basing your views on an obsolete understanding from before Edicarian animals were discovered. There is much more continuity in the record now.
The answers to all your questions are to be found in this paper (which I have referred to on several occasions):
Rates of Phenotypic and Genomic Evolution during the Cambrian Explosion (October 2013)
To quote the highlights:
- The Cambrian explosion (evolution’s “big bang”) is compatible with Darwinian evolution
- Anatomical and genetic evolution occurred 5 times faster during the early Cambrian
- Bayesian methods can infer evolutionary rates in deep time, using living taxa
- The study concerns arthropods, but the results are likely applicable to most of life
The Ediacaran phauna were not like the Cambrian animals, not even bilateran. No organs, no digestive systems, no skeletons, no chordates, definitely not precursors.
No evidence that evolution happened faster during Cambrian, besides there was no precursors anyway.
The 5-6 million years is the explosive part of the Cambrian, the 16 phyla, 30 classes etc. The experts agree on those figures. The rest of the Cambrian produced only a few phyla, classes, etc.
Well, I just learned that phyla is the plural of phylum. Now, things are crystal clear...lol.
But, here (to whom it may concern), from ask.com:
In biology, a phylum (/ˈfaɪləm/; plural: phyla)[note 1] is a taxonomic rank below kingdom and above class. Traditionally, in botany the term division is used instead of "phylum", although in 1993 the International Botanical Congress accepted the designation "phylum".[1][2] The kingdom Animalia contains approximately 35 phyla; the kingdom Plantae contains 12 phyla. Current research in phylogenetics is uncovering the relationships between phyla, which are contained in larger clades, like Ecdysozoa and Embryophyta.
Phylogenetics is pseudo science Pawn Whacker. No co-option happens between homologue genes. This has been proven through several experiments by Thorton, Axe, and Gauger. Axe and Gauger just finished another big one this summer. Besides, 35% of mitochondrial genes give a morphological tree lots of contradictions.
I have no idea whether phylogenetics is science or pseudo science. I know many things but that is not one of them...lol.
Saying that, I can see why you think it is pseudo science because you refute the theory of evolution. I don't say this as a criticsm but as an observation.
So, because you claim that it isn't real science leaves me in a position to seek further, objective, unbiased data. This I will do. But for now, my hourglass is running out of sand. Later...
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Phylogenetics?o=2801&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
Dec 22, 2014
0
#779
pawnwhacker wrote: MindWalk replies in red:
I have no idea whether phylogenetics is science or pseudo science. I know many things but that is not one of them...lol.
Saying that, I can see why you think it is pseudo science because you refute the theory of evolution. I don't say this as a criticsm but as an observation. I think "refute" is the wrong word. He denies it. He argues against it. But I don't think he refutes it, as that would mean that he had actually shown it to be false.
So, because you claim that it isn't real science leaves me in a position to seek further, objective, unbiased data. This I will do. But for now, my hourglass is running out of sand. Later...
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Phylogenetics?o=2801&qsrc=999&ad=doubleDown&an=apn&ap=ask.com
Dec 23, 2014
0
#780
There is only one explanatory theory of the nature of life. It predicts that if you take different organisms, the relationship of their genes is consistent with the difference in the time to their common ancestor.
For example, take the species: human, chimpanzee, mallard (all with fully sequenced genomes). Where related genes are found in all three species (which is often) how many mallard genes do you think are closer to the human version than the chimpanzee version? What would you expect if these organisms had no common ancestry?
Every gene provides a crude idea of relationship between organisms, roughly based on the time to a common ancestor, and these relationships are correlated across tens of thousands of genes in a way that could not occur by chance. The non-chance element is common ancestry of the organisms carrying all of the genes in parallel.
There is not the slightest reason why this would be so without common ancestry: geneticists find that genes can be transferred across all branches of the tree of life without problems and perform useful roles.
Ho-hum. Would any of you evolution adicts like to get down to do actual experiments that would go to the heart of your argument?