A question for those believing in Evolution

[lucaspa]

It is more concerned about the current time that's nice but...
I want to know what happens to this principle if you include the Darwinian Principles and the Geologic Time Scale with it. I am interested.
I will read more further about this to really find some flaws. As for now I'll take a rest.

____________________________________________________________
--"We observe things in the now! not delusions or imaginations of the future and the past"

These points are part of what Darwin talks about when he talks about the "struggle for existence". Population is held in check by various factors and thus there is a metaphorical struggle between members of a species for existence. This struggle provides part of the basis of natural selection.

Good luck at finding flaws. Notice that the web site is a class on ecology.

As to your closing quote, remember that the present is the way it is because the past was the way it was. So, if a past event leaves evidence that persists to the present, then we can "observe" the past.

 

[Valen]

Hard core evidence of mortality in nature? I've been giving you that.



Notice the "if" that started your sentence. Above you demanded hard core data, so please provide such data of catastrophes. What I am saying is that the DATA shows that, without catastrophes, populations are held in check.



LOL! I said for you to go look. I have a maple tree right beside my deck. I have swept at least 2,000 seeds from my deck this year and that is less than 20% of the area of the tree to drop seeds on. What I am saying is that YOU can find the necessary data. In fact, you already have. C'mon, you are going to deny that each tree produces thousands of seeds? Now, plug that into your calculations with your 'no mortality' assumption and see just how many trees you get at even 2,000 per year per year. In 20 years, you have 40,000 trees and now they are mature to produce their own seeds. That's 2,000 seeds per tree per year so we have, in another 20 years 160,0000,000 trees. And that is being conservative. Where are all those maple trees?




I'm using YOUR calculations and now you call that "assuming" and saying I should get raw facts. Thank you, you just described and condemned your own calculations. Nice of you to destroy your own arguments like that.



Again, thank you. Your original calculations discarded other informations, but now you say you shouldn't do that. Again, thank you for agreeing that your original calculations are wrong.



1. We have the OBSERVATION that the world is not overrun with maple trees or elephants. That is not an assumption.

2. You based a conclusion on assumptions about population increase rates and now you say those are "rather guessing or doubts". Again, thank you for agreeing that your original arguments are just guessing.

Valen, what I did was TEST your calculations by applying them to other situtations. Your conclusion was that humans hadn't been around long enough to have evolved otherwise there would be too many primates. However, if your calculations are valid, then they apply to ALL species, not just primates. So, I TESTED whether your calculations were valid by applying them to species we observe TODAY and seeing how many members of the species we should see IF the calculation method was true.

Since we don't see the numbers of maple trees or elephants we should IF your calculations are true, then the conclusion is that the calculations are false.

Notice that with elephants I made the SAME assumptions of birth rates you did.

Welcome to how science is really done, which is very different, as you see, from what Dr. Dino does.

solutions are made depending on what the problems state. Not on questions not stated by the problem.
You must observe stringent rules!

 

[lucaspa]

The problem about this is a constant at different productivity years this doesn't count valid all the time

But your calculation also makes population growth a constant over the years. So why object to that here. Pot, meet kettle.

Ok lets say the first fishes for example
(fish don't die easily unless of pollution or human interferences)

Data on that? Actually, fish get eaten by other fish all the time. And die "easily" in the process.

d = base on events like catastrophes or being eaten by a fish (but nature balance creates few casualties without man)

This is an error. All "nature balance" says is that births = deaths so that the population stays stable. Both b and d can be VERY large numbers, with corresponding high casualties.

What you have done is look at the population balance in most populations and concluded that very few individuals die. That doesn't work because you haven't looked at the birth rate.

b = what do you mean per day, month or year?

Any t you want, as long as b and d use the same time period.

 

[Valen]

These points are part of what Darwin talks about when he talks about the "struggle for existence". Population is held in check by various factors and thus there is a metaphorical struggle between members of a species for existence. This struggle provides part of the basis of natural selection.

i heard several of these things before but he is stating too much in the broad-spectrum. I need have lots of interrogation.

Good luck at finding flaws. Notice that the web site is a class on ecology.
I'll do my best.

As to your closing quote, remember that the present is the way it is because the past was the way it was. So, if a past event leaves evidence that persists to the present, then we can "observe" the past.

Science must concern itself with truths. What's the use of disbursing some vivacity if there is not enough reliability?
(I am in my old sef again)

--parting ways

 

[lucaspa]

solutions are made depending on what the problems state. Not on questions not stated by the problem.
You must observe stringent rules!

I am observing stringent rules. It is you who are not. Hypotheses MUST work on all similar situations, not just the one you want it to work on.

When you made your statements on primate reproduction and asked where all the primates were, you can't limit that just to primates. The calculations of population size must apply to ALL species to be valid, not just to primates.

So, IF your population size calculations are correct, THEN we can deduce they apply to maple trees, mosquitoes, elephants, fish, and every other species. After all, the equation didn't specify primates, did it?

So, to TEST the validity of your equation, we apply it to all other species. And then we ask the same question: where are all the maple trees, elephants, mosquitoes, etc.? Since the maple trees predicted by your calculations within 40 years aren't here, that means that your calculations must be wrong.

So I and others pointed out the exact flaw in your calculation: no mortality. You had every individual living and none dying before reproducing.

What you are doing, Valen, is a classic example of ad hoc hypothesis. You want to falsify evolution, so you make the ad hoc hypothesis that population growth is constant thru time and then calculate that there were no humans alive past 6,000 years ago.

The problem is that hypotheses, to be valid, can not ONLY apply to the narrow area for which they were devised. Instead, they MUST be INDEPENDENTLY testable. They must apply to all similar situations, not just the one you want it to.

For example, another classic ad hoc hypothesis was the hypothesis of the existence of Uranus to explain Neptune's orbit and prevent the falsification of Newtonian mechanics. However, the existence of Uranus could be tested by the use of optics and didn't depend on Newtonian mechanics. So this ad hoc hypothesis worked. Since then, the presence of another planet was also used to explain deviations in Uranus' orbit, and thus the discovery of Pluto. So the ad hoc hypothesis didn't ONLY apply to Neptune.

Do you follow?

 

[Valen]

I am observing stringent rules. It is you who are not. Hypotheses MUST work on all similar situations, not just the one you want it to work on.

When you made your statements on primate reproduction and asked where all the primates were, you can't limit that just to primates. The calculations of population size must apply to ALL species to be valid, not just to primates.

So, IF your population size calculations are correct, THEN we can deduce they apply to maple trees, mosquitoes, elephants, fish, and every other species. After all, the equation didn't specify primates, did it?

So, to TEST the validity of your equation, we apply it to all other species. And then we ask the same question: where are all the maple trees, elephants, mosquitoes, etc.? Since the maple trees predicted by your calculations within 40 years aren't here, that means that your calculations must be wrong.

So I and others pointed out the exact flaw in your calculation: no mortality. You had every individual living and none dying before reproducing.

What you are doing, Valen, is a classic example of ad hoc hypothesis. You want to falsify evolution, so you make the ad hoc hypothesis that population growth is constant thru time and then calculate that there were no humans alive past 6,000 years ago.

The problem is that hypotheses, to be valid, can not ONLY apply to the narrow area for which they were devised. Instead, they MUST be INDEPENDENTLY testable. They must apply to all similar situations, not just the one you want it to.

For example, another classic ad hoc hypothesis was the hypothesis of the existence of Uranus to explain Neptune's orbit and prevent the falsification of Newtonian mechanics. However, the existence of Uranus could be tested by the use of optics and didn't depend on Newtonian mechanics. So this ad hoc hypothesis worked. Since then, the presence of another planet was also used to explain deviations in Uranus' orbit, and thus the discovery of Pluto. So the ad hoc hypothesis didn't ONLY apply to Neptune.

Do you follow?

OK this is enough I will be at my most stringent point next time.

 

[lucaspa]

i heard several of these things before but he is stating too much in the broad-spectrum. I need have lots of interrogation.

Then read http://pages.britishlibrary.net/charles.darwin/texts/origin1859/origin03.html here because Darwin does go into specifics. Then read any book on population genetics, because they do the same thing.

Originally Posted By: lucaspa

As to your closing quote, remember that the present is the way it is because the past was the way it was. So, if a past event leaves evidence that persists to the present, then we can "observe" the past.

Science must concern itself with truths. What's the use of disbursing some vivacity if there is not enough reliability?

How do we arrive at "truths" in science? By TESTING statements about the physical universe. We can make statements about the past to test as long as there is evidence we can study in the present.

Valen, I hate to tell you, but practically ALL science deals with past events that we INFER happened by looking at the present. Most of those events happen in the RECENT past, but in the past nonetheless.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

I had a paper published (Tissue Engineering, 1(4): 345-353, 1995) describing an experiment for a possible treatment for osteoarthritis. We drilled a 3 mm diameter hole thru the articular cartilage and part of the underlying bone in the knee of rabbits. This diameter hole will not regenerate on its own and is an established model for osteoarthritis. In the defect in one knee we placed a polymer alone and in the other knee we placed polymer into which had been grown special cells, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs for short). Animals were euthanized at 6 and 12 weeks post-op and the defect removed for histological (under the microscope) analysis. At 6 weeks there was no difference between defects with polymer alone and defects with polymer-MSCs. Both contained cells but there was no identifiable cartilage or bone. At 12 weeks, the defects with polymer alone contained fibrocartilage (which is NOT the same as articular cartilage) and no bone. It looked like a big hole in cartilage and bone filled with scar tissue. In contrast, the defect with polymer-MSCs had a surface layer of articular cartilage and an underlying layer of bone. The edges of the defect could not be observed. The bone in the defect could not be distinguished from the surrounding bone. We concluded that the MSCs had formed the new cartilage and bone that now filled the defect. However, the point here is that we DEDUCED, or INFERRED, the differentiation of the MSCs to chondrocytes (cartilage cells) or osteoblasts (bone cells). We never observed it directly. In thinking about our current, and planned, experiments, this lack of direct observation will be true there also. The best, and most accepted, "proof" will be to insert the gene for beta-galactosidase into the MSCs. The beta-galactosidase produced by the labeled cells will stain blue with a chemical reaction. Therefore, we will see the chondrocytes and osteoblasts in the defect treated with polymer-MSCs turn blue, "proving" that the MSCs differentiated into these cells. But that is still inferrence, or "detective style reasoning". Everything we observed happened in the past, from a microsecond to 6 weeks before we removed the tissue at 12 weeks post-op. It is still looking at the result of a past event we will never be able to see in real time. This is no different than Darwin observing the Galapagos finches and INFERRING that evolution occurred.

Take one more example from the "inductive" sciences. This time chemistry. One of the first experiments I did in undergraduate organic chemistry was reacting organic acid with an alcohol to get an ester. Esters have distinctive odors that depend on the acid and alcohol used. My reaction produced an ester that smelled like bananas. My lab partner and I knew we had succeeded when we began smelling bananas. Did we ever see the 2 molecules actually come together to form an ester? No. We knew we had those 2 chemicals and that we got the reaction product. We DEDUCED the reaction took place, but never directly observed it. Except for behavioral biology, where the observed behavior can be observed in real time and videotaped, nearly every experiment I can think of in the "inductive" sciences involves deductive reasoning. All the events occur in the recent past, but the past.

 

[lucaspa]

OK this is enough I will be at my most stringent point next time.

That's not the goal. The goal is to teach you to abandon hypotheses when they are shown to be false by testing.

My Ph.D. mentor once told me "If you aren't making at least 2 mistakes a day, you aren't working very hard."

The whole process of science is throwing statements out to be tested. The key is not to get your ego involved so that you can't abandon a hypothesis when it is shown to be false.

Now, it would help if you would learn to test your own hypotheses before you post them, so that YOU can find the flaws in them.

However, I realize that you trust the professional creationists like Hovind to tell you the truth, so you accept their arguments as the truth. But you shouldn't. You should test their arguments also before you accept them. I know it will take a couple of times having us refute the arguments before you learn that the professional creationists are not totally trustworthy.

However, the goal isn't to embarrass you, but to teach you about science. Not just the particular facts and theories, but how science is done. IOW, the philosophy of science. Why and how we do what we do.

 

[Cantuar]

Your solution for the monkey breeding in 1,600,000 years...
Let's presume the following...
annual breeding rate is 1 for each pair:
m = 10
P = 1600000 of monkey breeding
no mortalities

Well, you could do that for human populations in Europe in the 14th century or Ireland in the 19th century, and you'd come out with any number of interesting answers - but you'd be missing the inputs of the black death in the first place and the potato famine in the second, which means that your interesting answers would be meaningless. You can't just assume "no mortality" and expect to get an answer that bears any resemblance to the real world.

 

[imagineer]

I can't actually believe Valen has carried on arguing this far...
Your arguments are moronic, you take no account of major factors. Simple mathematic solutions do NOT exist for everything. Obviously if we knew enough about every human that ever lived, we could write a mathematical formula for population growth, but it would be several volumes in size.

Seriously, how old are you? I can't believe your argument is this immature. People point out the obvious flaws in your argument and you reply with the same "Tell me the formula".

Breeding rates for creatures fluctuate, the UN might 'estimate' that the current rate is +1-2% perannum, but that doesn't mean it has always been like that.

 

[SAbercrombie]

I agree with the theory of evolution and am a Christian who believes in the supernatural.

You may find this surprising, but there are actually a good number of Christians out there who agree with the theory of evolution. Personally, once I started to critically study the YEC's claims that I used to publicly defend, intellectual honesty required me to change my position.

-jon

If evolution is the process of change in a certain direction, the set of prescribed movements or the process of continuous change from a lower, simpler or worse to a higher, more complex or better state - then why do we not continue to evolve.

Also it would seem to me it's not neccisarily evolution but more of an adaptation - the adjustment to enviromental conditions.

And the main question would be if evolution is the beginning of existance - how do hens lay eggs. One of them had to come first. If it was the chicken, well then where did that egg come from and if it is the egg well how did it get here to begin with. Plus you would have to have a rooster in there somewhere and since they come from eggs as well how do you think that the two of them would have been able to evolve in this huge world, find each other and then know that they were the mate for each other. I don't know if you have ever been around chickens much but we have. One of them drowned in the water bowl. They are not exactly smart.

Seems to me the only way is creation and there is only one creator. God. And I think that of all the animals he created some adapted and some didn't. I would be very interested in your response if you have the time. Thanks

 

[imagineer]

I find this argument particularly worrying, the creationist's question "We don't have all the evidence/there are missing links therefore evolution is a flawed concept."

If we had taken this stance with everything, we'd still be in the middle-ages. We had no evidence for the harnessing of the electron in 1066, but you're using a computer to visit this forum.

Just because we don't know everything NOW, doesn't mean we'll never know it.

The same goes for double-pump circulatory systems and other so called "missing-links"...

 

[ifriit]

If evolution is the process of change in a certain direction, the set of prescribed movements or the process of continuous change from a lower, simpler or worse to a higher, more complex or better state - then why do we not continue to evolve.

Perhaps because evolution is emphatically not the process you stated. However, we do continue to evolve.

Also it would seem to me it's not neccisarily evolution but more of an adaptation - the adjustment to enviromental conditions.

This seems a bit non-sequitur. What is it that you think is adaptation, and what kind of adaptation do you mean? Adaptation on a species level or on the individual organism's level?

And the main question would be if evolution is the beginning of existance...

Ack, no, no, no. Evolution is a biological process. It is not the beginning of existance.

...- how do hens lay eggs. One of them had to come first. If it was the chicken, well then where did that egg come from and if it is the egg well how did it get here to begin with. Plus you would have to have a rooster in there somewhere and since they come from eggs as well how do you think that the two of them would have been able to evolve in this huge world, find each other and then know that they were the mate for each other. I don't know if you have ever been around chickens much but we have. One of them drowned in the water bowl. They are not exactly smart.

In one sense, the egg came first. Egg-laying species flourished long before chickens ever existed; over time, some population of those reptilian ancestors became birds, and some subset of those became chickens.

As to where the egg came from, I don't honestly know. If you were to research the evolution of egg-bearing species, you might be able to find the information you are looking for.

Seems to me the only way is creation and there is only one creator. God. And I think that of all the animals he created some adapted and some didn't. I would be very interested in your response if you have the time. Thanks

Adapted to what? How?

 

[Saint Copernicus]

After reading and participating in a few of the threads in this forum, I need to ask a question, or few.

Of those who espouse evolution, do any of you believe in any sort of spiritual realm whatsoever?

Do you adhere only to what can be scientifically proven?

A very interesting question you ask, sir. The answer to your question is inherent in the fact that God created the earth, just as it says in the Bible, and that God made man and animals evolve over time. I adhere to what has been proven, and I believe that all of the aforementioned has, yes, been scientifically proven.

As far as there being a spiritual realm, I'm sure that science will one day find the pearly gates.

 

[lucaspa]

Ifriit provided a lot of that answers. I will simply add a few.

If evolution is the process of change in a certain direction, the set of prescribed movements or the process of continuous change from a lower, simpler or worse to a higher, more complex or better state - then why do we not continue to evolve. [/QUOTE}

Notice your "if". Evolution is not change in a certain direction. It is "descent with modification". And human populations are continuing to evolve. I've posted the evidence about that in at least 2 threads in the last week. I'll do it again here if you wish.

Also it would seem to me it's not neccisarily evolution but more of an adaptation - the adjustment to enviromental conditions.

Those "adaptations" are the "modification" in descent with modification. When those modifications accumulate to the point where the descendent population is different from the precursor population, then that is going to be evolution, isn't it?

And the main question would be if evolution is the beginning of existance - how do hens lay eggs.

Evolution is not the beginning of existence. Evolution is the explanation for the diversity of life on the planet. ALL scientific theories have boundaries. Evolution's is the existence of life. From Darwin:

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species, pg 450.

As to which gender came first, we can see in living species that this is a false question. The amoeba Dictyostelium is single-celled and all are identical, but they still engage in sexual reproduction. Then you have the species called volvox that are multicellular but with only two cell types: somatic (body) cells and gametes (ova and sperm). Yet the gametes are identical here; no "egg". After this, you can easily come up with a means of going stepwise into distinct gametes -- egg and sperm.

Seems to me the only way is creation and there is only one creator. God. And I think that of all the animals he created some adapted and some didn't. I would be very interested in your response if you have the time.

When you say "creation" what you mean, of course, is that God DIRECTLY MANUFACTURED each species in its present form. That idea was THE scientific theory in the early 1800s. It was shown to be false then even before Darwin published Origin. The reasons were more theological than scientific at that time. Saying God "created" each species this way makes God directly responsible for all the sadistic and stupid designs in nature. Since God is not sadistic or stupid this means that the special creation you are advocating is not acceptable for Christians. This is why evolution was so quickly accepted by Christians (before its acceptance by scientists). It got God out of a really bad fix that "creation" got Him into.

 

[Saint Copernicus]

"Evolution is not the beginning of existence. Evolution is the explanation for the diversity of life on the planet. ALL scientific theories have boundaries. Evolution's is the existence of life. " - above post

I disagree: I believe evolution has been proven by the Lord ALmighty Himself. I think that scientific fact has proven that evolution has occured, over the thousands of years, and that human beings evolved just like all other species evolved. In my field of study, I have found that evolution and a literal creation story are not that incompatible. I believe that science proves religion, and religion proves science.

So, b/c religion has no boundary, (in thought), then science, which is been given by the Lord ALmighty God Himself, has no boundary either. God Gave us our minds, and we are using them to the fullest of our abilities when we discovered the theory of evolution.

I believe that Christ believed Darwin as on the right track. God bless his soul.