Responding to Justa's Comments On Evolution

[justlookinla]

No, YOU can't.

I can.

The trail always leads back to Darwin.

 

[DogmaHunter]

The trail always leads back to Darwin.

Only if you go back in time.
And why would you want to do that in science?

We know more today then 200 years ago.
It's a ridiculous idea that we should ignore 200 years of progress to stick to what some dude said 200 years ago.
Back then he had remarkable ideas and turned the natural sciences on his head. That's why his name resonates through the ages.

And that's about it.

When you enroll in a biology course, you use a 21st century textbook. Not Darwin's Origin of Species.

At least try to be a bit rational.

 

[justlookinla]

Only if you go back in time.
And why would you want to do that in science?

We know more today then 200 years ago.
It's a ridiculous idea that we should ignore 200 years of progress to stick to what some dude said 200 years ago.
Back then he had remarkable ideas and turned the natural sciences on his head. That's why his name resonates through the ages.

And that's about it.

When you enroll in a biology course, you use a 21st century textbook. Not Darwin's Origin of Species.

At least try to be a bit rational.

Look, I don't blame folks for wanting to reject Darwin's guesses and suppositions.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Look, I don't blame folks for wanting to reject Darwin's guesses and suppositions.

Nobody is rejecting anything in particular.

People are merely suggesting to you that if you wish to make a point about biology, it's just silly (to say the least...) to use sources of 2 centuries ago. The guy didn't even know about genetics, for crying out loud!

There's only one person here obsessed with the dude and incapable of talking about Biology without mentioning him... and that's you.

 

[justlookinla]

Nobody is rejecting anything in particular.

People are merely suggesting to you that if you wish to make a point about biology, it's just silly (to say the least...) to use sources of 2 centuries ago. The guy didn't even know about genetics, for crying out loud!

There's only one person here obsessed with the dude and incapable of talking about Biology without mentioning him... and that's you.

We're talking about a particular view within evolution.

 

[loveofourlord]

When God created, humans were a surprise to Him?

God intended for human like beings, but his intention was sentient animals with a soul, after all unless you want to argue god some how looks like humand, he was refering to our soul when he spoke of, "Make man in our image."

 

[justlookinla]

God intended for human like beings, but his intention was sentient animals with a soul, after all unless you want to argue god some how looks like humand, he was refering to our soul when he spoke of, "Make man in our image."

Ok.

 

[loveofourlord]

Ok.

I know you disagree, but I find the evidence for evolution extremly compelling and facinating, and enjoy how intricate and amazing it is. So in my mind/knowledge evolution is correct, so short of some huge evidence wich I've never seen disproving evolution, or I accept it and god. Other wise I would reject god, but I know he's real.

thats the issue we have, with how much I know, understand and have learnt about evoloution your guys arguments don't work because they have flawed reasoning and falicies. I can only go where the evidence leads, wish I could explain it all, but probably need a chalkboard or something heh, I so often find trying to translate ideas into words just doesn't work for me.

 

[whois]

It's just that the paper seems to be setting up and saying, "this is what we need to figure out, here are some first steps". And this is pretty typical within the scientific literature.

a couple of things about smiths paper.
first complexity.
smith uses the word then mentions transitions., then lists those transitions.
one of those is the acquisition of language.
i wouldn't necessarily call this an increase of complexity, but smith does.
anyway, smith is right in stating complexity is very hard to define.
second is the date, this stuff was still being passed around as late as 1995.
in other words "these are the problems, and this is what needs to be done" was current as of then.
at the very same time we had people running around saying evolution is a fact, we have it solved, and other etched in stone types of things.

To quote PZ Myers:

It’s a superficial ploy creationists play. They don’t have any scientific literature of their own, so they go rummaging about in the genuine scientific literature and start pulling out fragments that show disagreement and questions in the evolutionary community. And that is so trivial to do, because they don’t grasp something obvious and fundamental: every science paper has as its throbbing heart a question and an argument. Seriously. Every single paper on evolution is arguing with evolution, probing and pushing and testing. I am not at all impressed when some clueless dingbat pulls up Alberch’s paper titled “Problems with the interpretation of developmental sequences” and crows about finding a paper that talks about “problems”. Problems are what we’re interested in.​

not everyone that questions current thinking on this subject is a creationist.
eldredge, gould, ayala, koonin, noble, none of these people are creationist, but they had serious questions about what was then known about current theory.
koonin has the hardest job, because he wants to integrate ALL of life into the theory, not just plants and animals.
this is why he says darwinism belongs in a museum, because it only dealt with certain types of life, not all of it.
genomic research, molecular biology, and statistical physics is going to allow this to happen​

Let it be known that my opinion towards you is considerably less hostile (and justifiably so) than PZ's opinion towards the person he was referring to, and I have nothing to say about your motives.

like i said before, many, many, times, i'm not arguing for a god, but i do have an open mind.

Well great. Then do you accept that Koonin accepts common ancestry, descent with modification, and natural selection? And do you accept those things?

yes, i believe koonin publicly endorses evolution.

Yes, I did. It was dealing with a specific issue in a specific branch of Drosophilia. We can expect this kind of thing to pop up every once in a while, mainly because taxonomy is not as precise as genetics is when it comes to phylogeny.

the part i posted was in direct reference to the TOL and made no mention of drosophilia.
let's see, ah:
At least three processes complicate such a view of a tree of life, horizontal transfer, symbiogenesis, and differential lineage sorting of genes. Each of these processes are at odds with fundamental assumptions of the Modern Synthesis.
...
Nevertheless, molecular characterization of transposable elements in the late 1970s finally undermined the view of the genome as a static, well-organized library of genetic information
...
Similarly, modernist preconceptions led some to discount the importance of endosymbioses in the origins of new life forms, like eukaryotes. Broad theories of endosymbiotic origins for species had been suggested in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries [7], but were ignored save for a few well-established cases like lichens. By the 1980s, the evidence for symbiogenesis in major cell biological events was voluminous
...
These phenomena complicate the tree of life. Rather than a graph connecting species, the tree of life itself is hierarchical: A universal tree of species is largely a human-imposed ideal because the components of any particular species have evolutionary histories that are not congruent with each other.
-The new biology beyond the Modern Synthesis.htm

as you can see, there is no mention of drosophilia

Yep.

and?
any comment on why there was a linearly decline in fitness, not in 5 or 6, or most, but in ALL lines tested?

 

[justlookinla]

I know you disagree, but I find the evidence for evolution extremly compelling and facinating, and enjoy how intricate and amazing it is.

What view of evolution? The view where humanity is the result of only naturalistic mechanisms or the view of evolution is the result of theistic involvement. Or neither?

So in my mind/knowledge evolution is correct, so short of some huge evidence wich I've never seen disproving evolution, or I accept it and god. Other wise I would reject god, but I know he's real.

So you reject evolution of the kind where humanity is the result of only naturalistic mechanisms?

thats the issue we have, with how much I know, understand and have learnt about evoloution your guys arguments don't work because they have flawed reasoning and falicies. I can only go where the evidence leads, wish I could explain it all, but probably need a chalkboard or something heh, I so often find trying to translate ideas into words just doesn't work for me.

What evidence, based on the scientific method, do we have for theistic evolution?

 

[loveofourlord]

I would say naturalistic, I put god back towards creation of the universe, he knew how things could turn out eventually, he's all knowing all powerful, he setup the universe so that life such as us would form and evolve, it would eventually be inevitable.

Again evolution is naturalistic, but god set the rules.

To go back to a previous conversation, with the Flagellum experiments, god created a system where DNA would rotate through combinations and if something broke there was the ability for another mutation to form.

God doesn't need to program DNA to do X, he can setup the rules in a way that DNA when it formed would do these things, that life would go through many forms and change, experimenting and finding the best solutions for various problems.

To me the fact that we come from earlier life is amazing, that while we have a soul, we are still part of nature, that were not fully seperate, not something so disconected.

Oh and PS your quote broke took me a moment to figure it out.

 

[justlookinla]

I would say naturalistic, I put god back towards creation of the universe, he knew how things could turn out eventually, he's all knowing all powerful, he setup the universe so that life such as us would form and evolve, it would eventually be inevitable.

Again evolution is naturalistic, but god set the rules.

Does this explain the presence of programming/information within humanity?

To go back to a previous conversation, with the Flagellum experiments, god created a system where DNA would rotate through combinations and if something broke there was the ability for another mutation to form.

Why isn't that programming?

God doesn't need to program DNA to do X, he can setup the rules in a way that DNA when it formed would do these things, that life would go through many forms and change, experimenting and finding the best solutions for various problems.

That's programming, pre-conceived, pre-planned, programming.

To me the fact that we come from earlier life is amazing, that while we have a soul, we are still part of nature, that were not fully seperate, not something so disconected.

We are the highest order of God's creation though, aren't we?

 

[DogmaHunter]

We're talking about a particular view within evolution.

Again, no.

I'm just talking about mainstream biology.

YOU are talking about some particular view. A view that is quite irrelevant to mainstream biology.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I would say naturalistic, I put god back towards creation of the universe, he knew how things could turn out eventually, he's all knowing all powerful, he setup the universe so that life such as us would form and evolve, it would eventually be inevitable.

Again evolution is naturalistic, but god set the rules.

To go back to a previous conversation, with the Flagellum experiments, god created a system where DNA would rotate through combinations and if something broke there was the ability for another mutation to form.

God doesn't need to program DNA to do X, he can setup the rules in a way that DNA when it formed would do these things, that life would go through many forms and change, experimenting and finding the best solutions for various problems.

To me the fact that we come from earlier life is amazing, that while we have a soul, we are still part of nature, that were not fully seperate, not something so disconected.

Oh and PS your quote broke took me a moment to figure it out.

I don't get how some theists insist on have their deity create all life forms as is. As if it takes away some of the "power and awe" of their god, if this god's creation act was done through evolution.

Consider this.... which is the most impressive engineer?

- The one who creates a fully functional machine
or
- The one who creates a fully functional self-assembling machine?

Off course, I'm an atheist and thus don't believe in any gods.
But if I would be a theist, I sure would think that the deity that creates a self-assembling machine would be a lot more impressive...

 

[loveofourlord]

Does this explain the presence of programming/information within humanity?



Why isn't that programming?



That's programming, pre-conceived, pre-planned, programming.



We are the highest order of God's creation though, aren't we?

DNA isn't information nor programming your kinda begging the question when you imply that. Because again it's chemistry, DNA creates errors, errors create mutations, mutations lead to changes, changes lead to new species, new species lead to big changes over time, it's chemistry, you guys should learn the concept of anology. We are the highest here yes, and he created the universe to end up with something like us, but why assume that humans was the form he prefered, rather then something that some day could be with him.

 

[loveofourlord]

I don't get how some theists insist on have their deity create all life forms as is. As if it takes away some of the "power and awe" of their god, if this god's creation act was done through evolution.

Consider this.... which is the most impressive engineer?

- The one who creates a fully functional machine
or
- The one who creates a fully functional self-assembling machine?

Off course, I'm an atheist and thus don't believe in any gods.
But if I would be a theist, I sure would think that the deity that creates a self-assembling machine would be a lot more impressive...

hehe I wish the rest got it as much as you did :> I've been trying to argue that for the last ...about 24 hours hehe.

 

[DogmaHunter]

DNA isn't information nor programming your kinda begging the question when you imply that. Because again it's chemistry, DNA creates errors, errors create mutations, mutations lead to changes, changes lead to new species, new species lead to big changes over time, it's chemistry, you guys should learn the concept of anology. We are the highest here yes, and he created the universe to end up with something like us, but why assume that humans was the form he prefered, rather then something that some day could be with him.

I feel compelled to object to the bolded part.

This implies that we are some kind of end-product of the evolutionary process.

I don't think you actually meant it that way, but still.

 

[loveofourlord]

I feel compelled to object to the bolded part.

This implies that we are some kind of end-product of the evolutionary process.

I don't think you actually meant it that way, but still.

well intelligence wise we are heh.

 

[whois]

DNA isn't information nor programming your kinda begging the question when you imply that.

i disagree.
judging from what i know about DNA, it can easily be compared to some type of bar code.
not only is this information, it's coded information.

here, check this out:
ds9a.nl/amazing-dna/

 

[loveofourlord]

i disagree.
judging from what i know about DNA, it can easily be compared to some type of bar code.
not only is this information, it's coded information.

here, check this out:
ds9a.nl/amazing-dna/

Calling it information is again begging the question, as it's not information in the way you would like to imply, it's chemistry, and interesting link, though funny how it actually backs up my side of this, you can compare it to computer code, but you can only compare it, in computers errors cause problems, in DNA they ultimatly lead to new life forms and novel features, scientists speak in anologies and best comparisons, but it doesn't make these things and not perfect ones.

DNA is a self replicating, self changing strand of chemicals, that interact to form living things, it's the interaction with the genes and the other parts of the cell that form life, the DNA creatures proteins that intearct with other proteins and the cell to form a living body, it's closer to oragami then a blueprint. A change in the way a protein, changes how it folds, wich changes how it interacts with other proteins wich alter the shape, and function of the living organism.

I don't see how this counts as code, or instructions, it's chemicals creating chemicals that interact with chemicals that happen to form complex structures, that allow something to survive, or do better. There is no goal in the DNA, no plan. it's all chemistry all the way down.