I may have discovered the best evidence for evolution

[Zosimus]

Natural selection is falsifiable, it's just not falsified. Are you sure you know what the word means?

All right. Let's imagine that we have an island with a species of finch on it. On that island we release a breeding pair of domestic house cats.

Please indicate what possible outcomes might be observed that would falsify the theory of natural selection.

 

[Loudmouth]

Oh is that your argument.

Horse Struck By Lightning And Killed | WNEP.com

Falsified.

Unless, of course, you think the horse was struck and killed by lightning because of a heritable trait.

I said that heritable traits were a factor in determining survival, not the sole indicator. Random occurrences will be spread evenly across all organisms in a population, so they can not drive change. Fitness, as determined by heritable traits, is non-random.

This was already covered in the Luria and Delbruck paper.

http://www.genetics.org/content/28/6/491.full.pdf

 

[Loudmouth]

Your challenge to me is, apparently, to prove using pure logic, that germs cause disease or something along those lines. Yet you are asking me to prove something that is unproven.

That's kind of the point. Your requirements for theories are so high that you can't even accept the findings that microorganisms cause infectious disease.

Thank you for proving our point.

 

[Zosimus]

That's kind of the point. Your requirements for theories are so high that you can't even accept the findings that microorganisms cause infectious disease.

Thank you for proving our point.

Once again, you don't get it. Let's suppose that I feel completely fine and healthy. I have no problems physically. Yet I go in for a chance blood work and soon the doctor calls me on the phone.

"I've got some bad news," he says.
"What's that?"
"You're HIV positive."
"So what?"
"It means you're sick."

So let me get this logic straight. Even though I feel fine, and have no symptoms, I have a disease because microorganism (x) was found in my bloodstream. This is proof, I suppose, that microorganisms cause disease.

Sounds circular to me.

Of course you can also have diseases without microorganisms. Cancer springs to mind.

Strangely enough, often the way to prevent yourself from getting a disease with microorganisms is to infect yourself with microorganisms. This is called "vaccination."

I also note that "Scurvy is a disease caused by a diet that lacks vitamin C..."

What is scurvy? What causes scurvy? - Medical News Today

In short, I think your claim is a little too broad.

 

[Loudmouth]

Once again, you don't get it. Let's suppose that I feel completely fine and healthy. I have no problems physically. Yet I go in for a chance blood work and soon the doctor calls me on the phone.

"I've got some bad news," he says.
"What's that?"
"You're HIV positive."
"So what?"
"It means you're sick."

So let me get this logic straight. Even though I feel fine, and have no symptoms, I have a disease because microorganism (x) was found in my bloodstream. This is proof, I suppose, that microorganisms cause disease.

Sounds circular to me.

Of course you can also have diseases without microorganisms. Cancer springs to mind.

Strangely enough, often the way to prevent yourself from getting a disease with microorganisms is to infect yourself with microorganisms. This is called "vaccination."

I also note that "Scurvy is a disease caused by a diet that lacks vitamin C..."

What is scurvy? What causes scurvy? - Medical News Today

In short, I think your claim is a little too broad.

You prove my point once again.

 

[Zosimus]

You prove my point once again.

It's strange how proving you wrong time and time again only proves your point.

Are you sure you're not a Christian?

 

[PsychoSarah]

Name one doctor who has been successful 99.9999999999 percent of the time.

Said doctor must have seen 1,000,000,000,000 patients in his lifetime and failed with only one. Assuming the doctor is 969 years old (the supposed age of Methuselah when he died) and the doctor started seeing patients at the first second of his life, the doctor still would have had to see more than 32 patients a second without sleeping from the moment of his birth to have that kind of success rate.

Furthermore, what does a doctor's success rate have to do with a scientific theory? Absolutely nothing as far as I can tell.

Here's an equivalent question for you: Would you rather worship a God who created 99.9999999999% of the universe or one who only created 0.00000000001% of it?

I was comparing the amount of support for evolution to the support held by alternatives, although in more of a reference sort of way than it precisely reflecting reality.

 

[Loudmouth]

It's strange how proving you wrong time and time again only proves your point.

You proved me right. The level of denial necessary to deny the evidence for evolution also leads to a rejection of Germ theory.

Your view of science is so twisted and turned around that you have to reject the most well supported theories in science.

 

[Zosimus]

I was comparing the amount of support for evolution to the support held by alternatives, although in more of a reference sort of way than it precisely reflecting reality.

So you think that Darwinism has made 1 trillion predictions of which one of them was wrong?

Out of curiosity, which prediction was wrong?

Is there a list of the other 999,999,999,999 that were right?

 

[Split Rock]

You only answered half the question. You indicated why you think intelligent design isn't falsifiable

However, you didn't get my point. I don't think intelligent design is falsifiable. I think it's unfalsifiable. I think it's as unfalsifiable as natural selection.

I thought I gave an example of how evolution could have been falsified when we started sequencing genomes. Did you miss that one?

 

[Zosimus]

You proved me right. The level of denial necessary to deny the evidence for evolution also leads to a rejection of Germ theory.

Your view of science is so twisted and turned around that you have to reject the most well supported theories in science.

All right–have it your way. Heart disease, cancer, scurvy, etc., are all caused by germs.

 

[Zosimus]

I thought I gave an example of how evolution could have been falsified when we started sequencing genomes. Did you miss that one?

Since we weren't talking about evolution, I didn't see the relevance of your post.

 

[Split Rock]

Your challenge to me is, apparently, to prove using pure logic, that germs cause disease or something along those lines. Yet you are asking me to prove something that is unproven.

So I will throw down this challenge to you: If you can prove, scientifically, that God exists, then I will prove, logically, that germs cause disease. Then, together, we will prove using logic and science that the Flying Spaghetti Monster created God.

So then, do you agree with any of the following:

1. Logical proofs do not help us understand the natural world around us.

2. Germs don't cause disease.

3. Zosimus shouldn't go to the doctor if he is sick.

 

[Split Rock]

Panspermia. Punctuated Equilibrium. Lamarckism.

And what is the evidence that supports them? (that was the second half of the question)

 

[DerelictJunction]

All right–have it your way. Heart disease, cancer, scurvy, etc., are all caused by germs.

Is this the thread where you intend to display everything you are ignorant about? Or is this simply another example of your disingenuous nature?

The Germ Theory of disease doesn't claim that ALL illnesses are caused by microbes. Perhaps you missed that in your research.

 

[Split Rock]

Since we weren't talking about evolution, I didn't see the relevance of your post.

So, your problem is solely with natural selection? How about genetic drift and gene flow? You realize that these are all mechanisms of evolution... right?

 

[Dizredux]

Zosimus

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: Scientific "Proof", scientific evidence, and the scientific method

Copyright © 1999-2012 by Douglas Theobald, Ph.D.

What is meant by scientific evidence and scientific proof? In truth, science can never establish 'truth' or 'fact' in the sense that a scientific statement can be made that is formally beyond question. All scientific statements and concepts are open to re-evaluation as new data is acquired and novel technologies emerge. Proof, then, is solely the realm of logic and mathematics (and whiskey). That said, we often hear 'proof' mentioned in a scientific context, and there is a sense in which it denotes "strongly supported by scientific means". Even though one may hear 'proof' used like this, it is a careless and inaccurate handling of the term. Consequently, except in reference to mathematics, this is the last time you will read the terms 'proof' or 'prove' in this article.

Zosimus

So that means that every time someone on here, such as Loudmouth, says that science has proved... or nested hierarchies prove... etc., he is carelessly and inaccurately handling the term–according to Douglas Theobald, Ph.D.

What does that have to do with evolution? I can guarantee the Loudmouth understands that science does not "prove" anything in the sense of formal logic. Don't you understand that all science is provisional in nature?

Theobald

What exactly is the scientific method? This is a complex and contentious question...

Zosimus

(emphasis added). Yes, it is contentious. People on this forum may indicate that all the ups and downs are solved and that anyone who doesn't agree with their private interpretation of said theory "knows nothing about the scientific method," but in reality they know less about the scientific method than they pretend to.

Irony abounds here.

Theobald

..., and the field of inquiry known as the "philosophy of science" is committed to illuminating the nature of the scientific method. Probably the most influential philosopher of science of the 20th century was Sir Karl Popper.

Zosimus

A favorite of mine, too. I especially agree with Popper when he says that induction is invalid and that science doesn't use induction.

Again valid and invalid are not terms used with inductive logic. Do not you understand this?

Theobald

Other notables are Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos,...

Zosimus

Another favorite of mine. Lakatos said, "...nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific..."

Care to give a cite on this. I am interested in the context.

Theobald

Feyerabend, of course, is the person who argued that there is no such thing as a scientific method.

Zosimus

I agree with him.

I suspect you misunderstand him. As I remember, he feels that there are no rules that are always used by scientists. This is more or less true but has nothing to to with the issues under discussion.

Zosimus

This is not the place to delve into an explication of the various philosophies represented by these scholars. For more information I refer you to their works and to the discussion presented by John Wilkins in his Evolution and Philosophy FAQ. Personally, I take a Bayesian view of the scientific method in principle (Jaynes 2003; Salmon 1990), and a Likelihoodist stance on evidence in practice (Burnham and Anderson 2002; Edwards 1972; Royall 1997), and these views will come through in how I present the evidence for common descent.

Not much to do with the issues but thanks for reminding me of John Wilkins. I have been meaning to buy his book and did so a few minutes ago.

Well, I'm not a Bayesian, and I'm not a Likelihoodist. In fact, I am here hoping to debate these things with someone who knows what they are and can actually defend them. Rather than finding that, I find someone who says "That has nothing to do with science and hypothesis testing," and "did you read any of Theobald's essays?"

Since you seem to know so little about evolution and science I stand by what I said.

Zosimus

Yes, I've read his essays. His essays disagree with you.

Did you read the ones on macroevolution? Funny in that while you say he disagrees with me, I don't find much to disagree with him.

Zosimus

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one,

Where did I say that the TOE was the only possible one?

Zosimus

take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

You are challenging me on something I never said and somehow think that it makes a point.

Simply enough you may have read on the more exotic aspects of the discussion on science but you do not seem to have much of a grasp of the basics of the TOE nor do you seem to understand the basics of logic especially talking about the uses of the concept of validity with inductive reasoning.

Just for fun, here are a few comments from Theobald that you seemed to have missed. From "What is Meant by "Scientific Evidence" for Common Descent? "

Scientific theories are validated by empirical testing against physical observations. Theories are not judged simply by their logical compatibility with the available data. Independent empirical testability is the hallmark of science—in science, an explanation must not only be compatible with the observed data, it must also be testable. By "testable" we mean that the hypothesis makes predictions about what observable evidence would be consistent and what would be incompatible with the hypothesis. Simple compatibility, in itself, is insufficient as scientific evidence, because all physical observations are consistent with an infinite number of unscientific conjectures. Furthermore, a scientific explanation must make risky predictions— the predictions should be necessary if the theory is correct, and few other theories should make the same necessary predictions.

Are There Other Scientifically Valid Explanations?

The worldwide scientific research community from over the past 150 years has discovered that no known hypothesis other than universal common descent can account scientifically for the unity, diversity, and patterns of terrestrial life. This hypothesis has been verified and corroborated so extensively that it is currently accepted as fact by the overwhelming majority of professional researchers in the biological and geological sciences (AAAS 1990; AAAS 2006; GSA 2009; NAS 2005; NCSE 2012; Working Group 2001). No alternate explanations compete scientifically with common descent, primarily for four main reasons: (1) so many of the predictions of common descent have been confirmed from independent areas of science, (2) no significant contradictory evidence has yet been found, (3) competing possibilities have been contradicted by enormous amounts of scientific data, and (4) many other explanations are untestable, though they may be trivially consistent with biological data.

When evaluating the scientific evidence provided in the following pages, please consider alternate explanations. Most importantly, for each piece of evidence, critically consider what potential observations, if found, would be incompatible with a given alternate explanation. If none exist, that alternate explanation is not scientific. As explained above, a hypothesis that is simply compatible with certain empirical observations cannot use those observations as supporting scientific evidence.

Somehow you missed all of this that directly addresses the subject and wondered off into some epistemological side alleys. Gee! Why is that not surprising.


All you seem to be doing is just playing epistemological games and showing off what what you think is your brilliance by referring to the more exotic aspects of a subject while not understanding the basics.

While interesting in spots, your arguments are becoming more than a little boring and rather silly.

Dizredux

 

[Zosimus]

So then, do you agree with any of the following:

1. Logical proofs do not help us understand the natural world around us.

Disagree. Logical proofs underpin all of math, and science is completely useless without math.

2. Germs don't cause disease.

Agree. Some germs, such as those found in yogurt, are beneficial for the body. Other germs, such as those that make beer, do not affect the body at all. Many other germs do not affect healthy human beings at all. Additionally there are many diseases, such as heart disease, that occur without the presence of germs.
[/QUOTE]

3. Zosimus shouldn't go to the doctor if he is sick.

Agree. Doctors normally cannot tell the patient more than the patient knows himself. Doctors are normally expensive. Many doctors cause more harm than good. Finally, the human body, if well maintained, usually cures itself. Most common remedies, such as amoxicilina and paracetamol, can be purchased over the counter without a prescription.

 

[Zosimus]

And what is the evidence that supports them? (that was the second half of the question)

Your question presupposes that evidence can support a theory. This has repeatedly been proved false.

 

[Zosimus]

So, your problem is solely with natural selection? How about genetic drift and gene flow? You realize that these are all mechanisms of evolution... right?

I have never once denied that the frequency of alleles can vary from generation to generation. I just never understood the logical behind the statement:

Since the frequency of alleles changes from generation to generation, all living species share a common ancestor.

I must be missing a premise. Maybe you could provide it.