Vox Day's demolition of Darwin's Theory of Evolution

RC Tent said:

You might wish to note that I am not saying science is not real, or never discovers anything real - I am saying it is not an adequate means of discovering everything that is real, or testing for reality.

It can make discoveries about the physical or natural realm of existence - it cannot disprove the supernatural, indeed, in my opinion, it has no means of accurately exploring the spiritual.

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And when we talk about something physically real, such as the earth, it resides in the realm of reality where science may be applies to it. Thus, we can use science to determine the reality of an old earth.

The same goes for biological evolution. My faith based ideas cannot change the reality of evolution either. It simply is as it is, just as the earth is old.

KomatiiteBIF said:

No persons faith based ideas can change whether or not descent with modification occurs. Not can someone's faith based ideas change the fact that there is a fossil succession with transitionals. These simply exist in physical reality.

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Fossils deemed to be transitional exist.

Science based claims about the age of the earth exist.

The categorisation of a "transitional fossil" is based on currently accepted scientific theory, ideas in human minds. You believe that they prove evolution, as does all mainstream science, but that part is belief, and that is the part that actually makes it a transitional - not it's existence or that of the rock.

RC Tent said:

Fossils deemed to be transitional exist.

Science based claims about the age of the earth exist.

The categorisation of a "transitional fossil" is based on currently accepted scientific theory, ideas in human minds. You believe that they prove evolution, as does all mainstream science, but that part is belief, and that is the part that actually makes it a transitional - not it's existence or that of the rock.

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Transitional fossils are those objectively and quantitatively measured to be such. The age of the earth is the same case. Physics and reality are as they are. It is more than an opinionated claim, it simply is.

Nothing is proven in science, rather transitionals are plausibly explained in the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution does not make a transitional a transitional. Rather quantitative measurements are what make fossils objectively transitional.

For example: we can go back to tiktaalik again, for which an explanation for it's prediction has not been given by young earthers.

Tiktaalik has a neck that is unfused. This is a trait not found in fish, but is a trait found in tetrapodomorph. The fossil collection as a whole resides between strata of fish and tetrapodomorph, therefore, regardless of if biological evolution exists or not, here resides an objectively transitional fossil.

Even if the entire theory were thrown out with respect to genetic change. It would still remain as such.

Same with the age of the earth. An overturned angular unconformity exists, superpositionally below propogating faults of the late paleozoic.

What is real, simply is. No human opinion can change what takes time to form.

Just as, if we look at dinosaur tracks. Let's say there are 20 foot tracks. In physical reality, time must past for the animal to make the tracks. No faith based ideas can change this reality.

Oh, I agree too. If biological evolution no longer existed, we might change the name of a transitional fossil to something else. But they would not cease to exist as quantitative intermediates between fossils like them superpositionally and stratigraphically below and above.

And in the case of the earth, if hypothetically, all of the dinosaurs tracks were made instantaneously, then I would only be left with an idea that we have all been logically "tricked" by God into thinking that time must have passed.



The same goes in the case of geologic features that depict an old earth, if the earth were 6000 years old, I could not see it being anything more than a logical trick by God. Which of course is not of God's character to do.

Based on what we observe in physical reality, we deduce that dinosaur tracks were actually formed by animals walking. Such an event takes time to occur. Moreso than say, a fraction of a second.

With an old earth, based on what we observe in physical reality, we deduce that say, mountains were produced by slow processes that take millions of years to unfold. Such events take time to occur. Moreso than say, 6000 years.

Could the dinosaurs tracks have been formed in a fraction of a second? Anything is possible.

Could earth have been created yesterday? I suppose it is possible as well.

However, physical reality indicates that neither of these are true, just by the nature of how it exists. Dinosaurs presumably did not walk at the speed of light, nor did rocks presumably move at the speed of light either, based on what we know about life and rocks and physical reality, today.

To follow up on my last post. Some people like Noble mouse, suggest that the present cannot be used to gauge time of the past.


As if we could not deduce that more than half a second unfolded for these tracks to be formed by dinosaurs.

But I think most people recognize such a position as irrational. Based on what we know about the present and what we know about life, as it exists today, I think it is fair to suggest that the tracks likely took more than half a second to form.

Same with the earth. Based on what we know about rocks in the present time, just as easily as with the tracks, we can deduce that the planet is far older than 6000 years.

And I don't think there is anything irrational about either deduction.

And I think the alternatives of the tracks being formed in half a second, and the earth being formed in 6000 years, both draw into question, complicated questions of God's honesty in what has been created. Unless it were Satan fooling us into thinking that time is needed for animals to walk from one place to another.

I would even go further to question if the footprints in the snow outside my window, took time to form. Were they formed over time by someone walking through the snow from the storm we had on Wednesday? Or is this some kind of supernatural production that did not take more than a fraction of a second to form, much like the dinosaur tracks or the earth?

RC Tent said:

You might wish to note that I am not saying science is not real, or never discovers anything real - I am saying it is not an adequate means of discovering everything that is real, or testing for reality.

It can make discoveries about the physical or natural realm of existence - it cannot disprove the supernatural, indeed, in my opinion, it has no means of accurately exploring the spiritual.

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I've been telling you that for some time now.

KomatiiteBIF said:

With an old earth, based on what we observe in physical reality, we deduce that say, mountains were produced by slow processes that take millions of years to unfold. Such events take time to occur. Moreso than say, 6000 years.

Could the dinosaurs tracks have been formed in a fraction of a second? Anything is possible.

Could earth have been created yesterday? I suppose it is possible as well.

However, physical reality indicates that neither of these are true, just by the nature of how it exists. Dinosaurs presumably did not walk at the speed of light, nor did rocks presumably move at the speed of light either, based on what we know about life and rocks and physical reality, today.

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There are creationists that say God created this false signs to test our faith. To me, that attributes an appalling dishonesty on God's part, particularly with regard to astronomy. From time to time, we see a distant supernova, a star blowing itself out of existence. The usual creationist story is that God created the light on the way to the Earth, 6000 years ago. But then, He would be showing us evidence of a star that never existed. I just can't agree that God is dishonest.

sfs said:

I'd like to see that research, too, since that would be an absolutely stunning and unexpected find, given how extremely hew new, complex body plans there have been in the multi-billion year history of life on the entire planet. What does that have to do with your claim, though, that natural processes couldn't produce the information? Does this mean that you now agree that natural processes can produce large amounts of information, but that they can't produce the information needed for body plans?

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What it has to do with my claim is that there is no scientific proof that evolution can produce new body plans. Natural processes (random mutations + natural selection) cannot produce meaningful information. If random mutations are truly the vehicle by which new information comes about and upon which natural selection acts upon, then this is all just reduced down to probability and studies have been done showing that the probability of forming even a relatively small protein of 150 amino acids would be virtually impossible over the entire alleged age of the universe of 13.8 billion years.

It can't. How is that your question has nothing to do with the subject at hand -- the ability of natural processes to produce information. Do you think your body produced the new information by natural processes or not? It seems like a pretty straight-forward question.

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Right, the human body already had the information to be able to respond and develop the antibodies... it didn't 'evolve', new information leading to a different body plan did not occur.

]Since I've never seen anyone suggest that antibody creation proves anything about dinosaurs or birds, I guess everyone is on the same page. But we're talking about the creation of information, right?

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I didn't bring up antibody creation, just wanted to comment that this is not an example of evolution nor creating new novel information that would allegedly lead to evolution creating things like entirely new life forms as in the purported dinosaur-->bird transition.

Neo-Darwinian evolution was rejected by mainstream biology, starting at least in the 60s. I certainly reject it. So what? Evolutionary biology is still the core of biology, accepted by virtually all biologists of any and all faiths. Common descent has been accepted as a scientific fact for a century and is only becoming more secure with time, and the central role of natural selection to adaptive evolution is understood with more nuance now, but has not been seriously disputed.

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Common descent is implicit to the modern synthesis of neo-Darwinian evolution, so either it has been rejected by mainstream biology (did anyone bother to tell Dawkins?) or accepted as a scientific fact - can't have it both ways. A universal common ancestor to all life has no support from a scientific study/observation, as you've affirmed in that it would be an absolutely stunning and unexpected find. So what exactly is this 'scientific fact' based upon then? Never been observed, can't be reproduced, scientists from the creationist and ID camps are indicating that natural processes don't create new information that leads to new body plans... so I don't believe this 'fact' of common descent is supported.

The Barbarian said:

I've been telling you that for some time now.

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I knew long before I joined this forum.

NobleMouse said:

Common descent is implicit to the modern synthesis of neo-Darwinian evolution, so either it has been rejected by mainstream biology (did anyone bother to tell Dawkins?)

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I doubt Dawkins listened, if anybody tried.

RC Tent said:

No, there is no such thing as a "scientific" versus "religious" approach to nature...

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There is. I have each of them at different times. Sometimes, they come at the same time, and that's an amazing thing.

there is science, there is religion, there is art, there is maths, there is philosophy, there is history....every single one of those subjects can relate to nature.

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Different approaches. Walden taught me much about nature. But not how God made it, or the way endosymbiosis made trees possible.

Science is not the only one that can tell us something that is true.

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But for what it does, nothing else we can do, works as well.

You assume religion was at some point in time trying to be modern science, therefore it failed.

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It merely failed at trying to understand things like the nature of lightning bolts, the cause of diseases, and so on. That's no more a strike against religion than some atheists attempt to use science to disprove God is a strike against science. It's merely unwise people using the wrong approach.

You speak as though anything that refers to the physical or natural worlds is trying to be science - it is not.

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No, you still don't understand. Walden, for example, is not trying to be science (or religion,for that matter). It's using language and circumstances to investigate what it is to be human.

There were demons having a lot of fun with our ignorance about germs and disease for a while yes.

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But it wasn't exorcism that enlightened us. It was merely learning more about the world in which we live.

Democritus of Abdera, one of the first real scientists, remarked that people attributed everything they couldn't understand to gods, but that would mean there were an infinity of gods.

He was the first to hypothesize and then carefully test his idea by seeing if the idea held up. It's how he realized the existence of atoms.

It is not either it was demons, or it was germs, it was demons enjoying our ignorance about germs.

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So, our understanding of the nature of communicable disease came about by learning more and more about the world. Or it came about by our learning more and more about the world, and the decline in quality of demons assigned to keep us from learning that. One of those two.

RC Tent said:

Unless God is actually the spiritual source of all good scientific information, which being the designer and creator of the whole lot I believe He is.

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If He was merely a designer, perhaps. But He is omniscient, and has no need of design.

No, He did not leave us with a manual that can be followed such that we do not need to explore and use our intelligence to discover the physical properties of existence.

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By evolution, He made sure we were adapted to search and reason. He does almost everything by natural means in this world. Why wouldn't He? That's what He made nature for.

The Barbarian said:

But it wasn't exorcism that enlightened us. It was merely learning more about the world in which we live.

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Learning more true things about life really bugs demons - it makes them have to go away and find another way of being destructive. It is exorcism. It is not a formal exorcism (which if done well does also ruin their day) - but it is still the bad spiritual forces being driven off. It doesn't matter if the true thing is a scientific discovery.

RC Tent said:

Learning more true things about life really bugs demons - it makes them have to go away and find another way of being destructive. It is exorcism. It is not a formal exorcism (which if done well does also ruin their day) - but it is still the bad spiritual forces being driven off. It doesn't matter if the true thing is a scientific discovery.

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So Darwin's discovery of the way evolution worked was an exorcism against demons? Cool.

The Barbarian said:

So Darwin's discovery of the way evolution worked was an exorcism against demons? Cool.

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All true science is a way to annoy demons. All true anything pertaining to life and that enables us to better know God is.

NobleMouse said:

What it has to do with my claim is that there is no scientific proof that evolution can produce new body plans. Natural processes (random mutations + natural selection) cannot produce meaningful information.

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As I already pointed out, your last statement is trivially false, and you have dealt with a clear counterexample by simply restating the false claim. That makes it difficult to have a meaningful discussion with you. The development of new antibodies requires generating thousands of bits of meaningful information. You say that can't happen. It does.

NobleMouse said:

If random mutations are truly the vehicle by which new information comes about and upon which natural selection acts upon, then this is all just reduced down to probability and studies have been done showing that the probability of forming even a relatively small protein of 150 amino acids would be virtually impossible over the entire alleged age of the universe of 13.8 billion years.

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What studies? All the evidence I've ever seen says that small proteins can be generated by random mutation in noncoding sequence. Are you aware that when new genes appear in a species, they look exactly like mutated versions of noncoding sequence in closely related species (if they're not the product of gene duplication, transposition, or other known natural processes)? What is your explanation for that fact?

NobleMouse said:

Right, the human body already had the information to be able to respond and develop the antibodies

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Right -- it has the information needed to generate random mutations and select among them. Just as any living species has the information needed to generate random mutations and select among them. You have no problem with the first and think the first is impossible, for reasons you haven't given.

Let's try again. Does the DNA for a new antibody contain new information or not? Try just answering that question.

NobleMouse said:

Common descent is implicit to the modern synthesis of neo-Darwinian evolution, so either it has been rejected by mainstream biology (did anyone bother to tell Dawkins?) or accepted as a scientific fact - can't have it both ways.

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Um, what? That makes no sense. Common descent is accepted as a fact, while the neo-Darwinian synthesis has been rejected in favor of a much more complex understanding of evolution. You can reject a theory without rejecting all of the components of the theory. (The existence of things like koalas and toadstools was also implicit in the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Just because the latter was rejected doesn't mean we think the former don't exist.)

NobleMouse said:

A universal common ancestor to all life has no support from a scientific study/observation

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A universal common ancestor (or ancestral pool of interrelated life) is strongly supported by all available scientific evidence, something that is well known among scientists. You really should learn more about biology if you're going to lecture biologists about it.

In any case, in the context of the OP, universal common descent isn't really what's relevant -- we make much, much more use of local common descent, e.g. the common ancestry of all primates, or all mammals, or all vertebrates. This doesn't involve the evolution of new body plans, so do you have any quarrel with it?

I will now make the prediction that half of the above questions proposed by sfs will be ignored or left without a clear response.

sfs said:

A universal common ancestor (or ancestral pool of interrelated life) is strongly supported by all available scientific evidence, something that is well known among scientists.

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Was the universal common ancestry proved? - PubMed - NCBI

Darwinism: Six Scientific Alternatives on JSTOR

Looking for LUCA – the mother of all life

So is the difficulty of proving this, which you refer to as "fact".