Fairytale?

[razzelflabben]

Actually, this sort of question betrays a misunderstanding of what the theory of evolution is about.

The theory of evolution is not about the history of evolution. The theory does not, in principle, predict the history.

The theory of evolution is about the process of evolution--about how evolution happens.

I take it you actually have no difficulties with the process of evolution. You understand about mutations and variation and natural selection and speciation. Right? And you agree this has all been observed, so we know that evolution happens and how it happens.

Now what is the relation of the process to the history of evolution?

1. The process of evolution presumes a history of evolution. From the existence of the process we can infer that today's species are descendants of earlier species and that they can be grouped via their relationship to common ancestors among those earlier species.

What that does not tell us, however, is which species are closely related to each other via a recent common ancestor. That is information we have to reconstruct from morphological, paleontological and genetic evidence.

Note, however, that the theory of evolution is not affected by whatever particular history we reconstruct. If the evidence showed that humans were more closely related to seals than to chimpanzees, that would still be consistent with the theory of evolution. (It would imply that we have a different bodily configuration than we do, but it would still be a theoretical possibility.)

2. What applies to recent evolutionary history also applies to more remote evolutionary history. Just as in genealogy. Once we have grouped siblings according to their common parent, we can then group these groups by common grandparent, then group the larger groups by common great-grandparent, as far back as a universal common parent (e.g. mitochondrial Eve or chromosome Y Adam).

So with species.

Now what the theory tells us is that whatever historical reconstruction we end up with, it will take the same form as a family tree---namely a nested hierarchy. The theory does not, in itself, tell us where the phylogenic tree is rooted. (It doesn't even tell us if there is only one tree or several). And it doesn't tell us in what directions it will branch or which species past or present will be on which branches. That is information we have to reconstruct from the data. But, what the data tells us about the history does not affect the theory---unless and until we have data that sits outside the nested hierarchy.

Any history of species' ancestry that respects the form of nested hierarchy would support the theory of evolution.

So we do not have to confirm the particular history we have reconstructed in order to validate the theory of evolution.

The standard phylogeny supports the theory of evolution because it is a nested hierarchy, and because the same nested hierarchy is confirmed by multiple lines of evidence. But any biological nested hierarchy would do the same.

3. Once we have a relatively certain partial reconstruction of the history of evolution, we can use the theory to predict how the unknown portions of the history can be filled in. This is akin to knowing that if a train went from Montreal to Toronto, it must have passed through Kingston on the way.

So, once it was fairly clear that whales evolved from terrestrial mammals, we could imaginatively envision what sort of species would exist during the transition from land to water and predict that somewhere in the fossil record we would be likely to find such species. And lo and behold! we have found such species.

One can even get more detailed. One of the key changes that would have to occur in whale evolution is changes in the ear to go from the poor hearing terrestrial animals have in water to the excellent underwater hearing of whales. Study of intermediate fossils show exactly the sort of changes in the ear predicted by the theory.

Even more spectacular was the successful prediction of an early species in the fish->tetrapod lineage which led to the discovery of Tiktaalik roseae.

In addition to being able to predict from partial evidence what we will find at various points in the fossil record, researchers studying how viruses mutate are now beginning to predict successfully how the flu virus will mutate in the future so that we can be prepared for next year's flu bug with the appropriate medication.


So to get back to your question. It is not really a question about whether evolution happened in the past. The multiple lines of evidence supporting the standard phylogeny do that already. What you are really asking is whether we have reconstructed the phylogeny correctly. But that is neither here nor there with validating the theory of evolution.

Have we reconstructed the phylogeny correctly? In part, yes. And parts are still unknown and parts will need correcting as we get new data. What is important is that all of the known data supports the standard phylogeny.

Furthermore, the only theory that predicts a phylogeny such as the standard phylogeny is the theory of evolution. I say "such as the standard phylogeny" rather than "the standard phylogeny" because the theory does not predict the particular history of evolution on earth. It predicts a history.

If we ever find another planet with evolving biological life on it, we can predict from the theory of evolution that it too will have a history in the form of a nested hierarchy. But we will have no idea what that history was until we start reconstructing it.

So the kind of question you are asking, while valid in determining exactly what the history of evolution was on earth, really does not impinge on the theory of evolution at all.

nice to see you back, how are you feeling?

 

[Inan3]

Wow. Did you really just tell me that you knew all about God and Jesus and the various subtleties of Christian theology before being told about it? While still a pre-verbal infant???

That is the most amazing claim I've seen on this board.

Bar none!

I would have to say this is about as close to a miracle as I've read.

I would ask for proof, but I don't even know where to begin to think what proof of this claim would look like.
So you, before you could speak or read, knew about the Jews? You knew about Grace vs Works? You knew that Jesus was a descendant of a Bronze age king named David who was chosen by God to be the righteous branch of Jesse?

You know he didn't say that. You made it up. So you are going to have to provide your own proof for such an absurd assumption.

Wow. FoeHammer. I mean WOW.

Jaw-droppingly WOW.

So, being as you are, a miracle person, have you had any luck in converting the majority of people on the earth to your insight and knowledge?

I am stunned.

Oh just quit with the drama! You don't have to stoop so low TMT, you're an intelligent man. Just use that intelligence and quit with the pretense, it's not necessary. Be nice, be real!

 

[Inan3]

Error Double Post

 

[Inan3]

---

 

[thaumaturgy]

You know he didn't say that. You made it up.

Accuse me as you like. He appears to believe in the Judeo Christian God, Yahweh, and since the CHOICE of a God is VERY important, I assumed he meant he believed in the God he worships before having heard about this god.

Or do you think that Muslims are saved even if they don't convert to Christianity? Do you believe worshippers of the Canaanite gods are saved?

So you are going to have to provide your own proof for such an absurd assumption.

I was merely making a point about belief. It is not only important that you believe but that you believe in the right thing.

Did you miss the part about the fact there are multitudes of often contradictory versions of God?

Did I not make that point CRYSTAL CLEAR?

Oh just quit with the drama! You don't have to stoop so low TMT

I asked him in POST # 543 the following question:

So you knew about God before being told about God?

You knew that there was a being who was that being than which none greater can be conceived, had "necessary existence", who chose a small group of individuals on the eastern side of the Mediterannean Sea as his "Chosen People", and who, after several thousand years of sin by all people (chosen and non-chosen) decided that he must come back to that same place and arrange to appear as a human who was simultaneously all-God and all-human and arrange to have himself sacrificed to himself to atone mankind to himself thereby eliminating the need for many of the Laws he had previously established and which he, himself in the form of the all-human version of himself, said would never pass away until the end of the earth, and then this same God-man resurrected 3 days later to ascend into heaven to sit at the right hand of himself to later judge the quick and the dead, forever and ever, amen....without ever being told about this?

To which he replied in Post # 548:

Yep.As I said, it's in the BIOS.

FoeHammer.

So please tell me where I messed up again?

you're an intelligent man. Just use that intelligence and quit with the pretense, it's not necessary. Be nice, be real!

I think I was quite real. I asked a question, he answered it. Then he realized he hadn't read the entire question. That is not my fault, nor is it my problem if he didn't read it thoroughly. He prematurely answered thinking I only asked him about "god" not about "Yahweh-God". Since I believe that what you believe is easily more important than that you simply believe, I thought it was a fair question and one clearly laid out.

It is also not my problem that you apparently didn't read it either.

I apologize if I lost you there somewhere.

 

[FoeHammer]

Indeed it matters which God you believed in right?

What I added was merely that you beleived in the JUDEO CHRISTIAN God.

My point being to hopefully get you to think about your statement and what it says about your belief.

If you knew God existed before you were told about him, then which god? Aharu Mazda? Al'lah? Remember, the one you choose is the one you will have to take direction from and whose, often quite specific laws you will have to follow. And from whom salvation is aviable. In the case of the Christian God there is only one path.

Do you see my point now? Just having a feeling of "god" doesn't say anything about which god.

That's precisely why we have so many different gods and goddesses to choose from.

And that is one other reason, for me, to realize that this "feeling of god" is exactly useless to tell me what to believe or do in accordance with "god".

Does that clarify my point?

I said I knew that God existed. Name, character and purpose didn't strike me as important at that time. Suffice it to say that I had an instinctive knowledge of the existence of God How I came to know it was The God of The Bible took quite a few years, no small amount of experience (some bitter) and quite a bit of coming to terms with but that, I suppose, is for another thread in another forum.

FoeHammer.

 

[thaumaturgy]

I said I knew that God existed. Name, character and purpose didn't strike me as important at that time. Suffice it to say that I had an instinctive knowledge of the existence of God How I came to know it was The God of The Bible took quite a few years, no small amount of experience (some bitter) and quite a bit of coming to terms with but that, I suppose, is for another thread in another forum.

FoeHammer.

Actually it is an interesting point. See, if God is to have any real meaning or relevancy (be it to science or life in general) then just "feeling god" is not the same as "feeling Yahweh", especially in light of the very real fact that there are a ridiculously wide varieties of God many of which are mutually exclusive.

So it is like me saying "I feel there is an even prime number greater than 2".

I will readily grant I extrapolated your argument and then asked it back to you with the additions of all the fundamental features of Yahweh. That way I could find out if your "feeling" of God was in any way meaningful.

I could easily "feel" there are any number of things that are not "real". The only point at which my "feelings" are useful in is if those same feelings can lead to some deeper understanding.

Alternately I could say "I feel there is something out there." Does that say anything with content? Something? "out there"? where? what?

That was my whole point all along. I did not intend to twist your words or add to them, and that is why I asked the question in Post #543.

 

[Inan3]

Accuse me as you like. He appears to believe in the Judeo Christian God, Yahweh, and since the CHOICE of a God is VERY important, I assumed he meant he believed in the God he worships before having heard about this god.

Or do you think that Muslims are saved even if they don't convert to Christianity? Do you believe worshippers of the Canaanite gods are saved?



I was merely making a point about belief. It is not only important that you believe but that you believe in the right thing.

Did you miss the part about the fact there are multitudes of often contradictory versions of God?

Did I not make that point CRYSTAL CLEAR?




I asked him in POST # 543 the following question:




To which he replied in Post # 548:




So please tell me where I messed up again?



I think I was quite real. I asked a question, he answered it. Then he realized he hadn't read the entire question. That is not my fault, nor is it my problem if he didn't read it thoroughly. He prematurely answered thinking I only asked him about "god" not about "Yahweh-God". Since I believe that what you believe is easily more important than that you simply believe, I thought it was a fair question and one clearly laid out.

It is also not my problem that you apparently didn't read it either.

I apologize if I lost you there somewhere.

I knew you could more intelligently get your point across without the drama.

 

[wmc1982]

you people have spent this much time debating with your distorted human minds on an issue that none of you can understand even close to perfection.

What a waste of LIFE. Please go LIVE and stop arguing about it.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

you people have spent this much time debating with your distorted human minds on an issue that none of you can understand even close to perfection.

What a waste of LIFE. Please go LIVE and stop arguing about it.

Yes, because a poster connstantly sits on the edge of his seat between posts. It's inconceivable that between posts someone could, say, have a life.
Shock, horror.

 

[MrGoodBytes]

you people have spent this much time debating with your distorted human minds on an issue that none of you can understand even close to perfection.

What a waste of LIFE. Please go LIVE and stop arguing about it.

Said the man with five kiloposts per year.

 

[Vene]

you people have spent this much time debating with your distorted human minds on an issue that none of you can understand even close to perfection.

What a waste of LIFE. Please go LIVE and stop arguing about it.

What is this 'life' you speak of?

In all seriousness, some of us have an interest in the natural world and want to discuss it. That's the point of a forum.

 

[thaumaturgy]

you people have spent this much time debating with your distorted human minds on an issue that none of you can understand even close to perfection.

What a waste of LIFE. Please go LIVE and stop arguing about it.

Ouch! You are calling the attempt to understand the nature of our existence a "waste"? That's sad.

I'm a scientist. I work with coatings. If you knew the type of coatings I worked with (and you actually do), you would say "Huh, there's actually people who study THIS??? Ugh! That must be dull."

But you'd be wrong. It might be dull to YOU, but some of us can make an entire existence of just studying little clay particles in water.

A waste? Hardly! Investigating and learning and debating ideas is never a waste. Even if you debate against someone who you will never convince!

 

[Aron-Ra]

you people have spent this much time debating with your distorted human minds on an issue that none of you can understand even close to perfection.

This was exactly my point, that no one can claim to "know" anything about God. Yet they still pretend to.

What a waste of LIFE. Please go LIVE and stop arguing about it.

I joined this forum more than two years before you did. Yet you have hundreds more posts than I do. How can that be?

During these last three years, I went back to college and got an Associates of Science degree. What have you done with your life since joining this group?

 

[Gracchus]

you people have spent this much time debating with your distorted human minds on an issue that none of you can understand even close to perfection.

What a waste of LIFE. Please go LIVE and stop arguing about it.

Said the man with five kiloposts per year.

And look at that reputation! wmc1982 has a reputation of 213,662 with only 5,003 posts. How sad that “This member has disabled Find All Posts”, so we cannot examine easily his magnificent rhetoric. (But he did not disable "Show my reputation level.&#8221

"Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.
What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?"

 

[FoeHammer]

Then there is no way to determine that and demonstrate it for anyone else.

It being common sense means that I don’t have to demonstrate anything of the sort to anyone with any common sense and for those who have none it would be pointless to even try.

You need something objective or your claims will be indefensible.

I think Common sense is probably the nearest anyone can get to objective. Other than that you have personal subjective perception and interpretation.

Yet you wrote this post anyway, and addressed it to someone who also does not believe in "something from nothing" by any means. Worse, you admit you believe everything did come from nothing, and you believe it happened by magic!

Where have I admitted that I believe that everything came from nothing and that it happened by magic?

Where do you believe all matter in the universe came from then?

Goddidit.

If you don't believe God "spoke" the universe into existence, then how do you think it happened?

I believe God commanded it and it was so.

Hey, you're the one who claims to believe in things which you also believe to be impossible.

Where have I made this claim?

Actually you yourself said that it is impossible for something to come from nothing, and that is what you've always said you believe actually happened. If you've changed your mind about that, please explain what it is you believe now.

Where have I said that I believe that something came from nothing?

I didn't say 'abiogenesis'. And why would I, since that's not "something from nothing" in anyone's perspective? The example I was talking about was big bang cosmology. My prediction was accurate.

In which post did you make this prediction? I’ve looked but can’t find it.

I do think it is impossible to live without science. It is possible to live without faith however.

What do you mean by science in this instance?

It means it wasn't "chance".

Then what was it?

I don't have faith, and don't need it.

Yes you do and yes you do. As soon as you accept anything that you are unable to demonstrate to be true you have in fact demonstrated a need for, and that you have, faith. The un-proven and un-provable uniformitarian assumption, that the present is the key to the past, An arbitrary categorization of life, fossils in general and fossils which “look” intermediate in particular and variation within kinds that you believe produced different kinds.

Science is an abundantly productive process with a long history of profound success

Incredible isn’t it when you stop to consider that you believe our thoughts are merely the result of random chemical reactions.

-while religion tends to be absolutely wrong about absolutely everything all the time,

Absolutely, absolutely?

and even admit they will lie to promote what they "just gotta believe" no matter what.

References, examples?

So what choice do I have?

Jesus Christ or not.

Perhaps what you have is more "common" than it is "sense" because you do still believe that everything magically came from nothing, do you not?

No I do not. How many times have I got to tell you before it sinks in?

Meaning that everything came from nothing as a result of a magic invisible man chanting an incantation spell.

Wrong! Again.

Nice, but not likely given what we know about physics and thermodynamics.

Show me a citation from someone who proposes that one.

Why do you need a citation? Once you have eliminated God as creator and the universe having always existed then what have you left?

I don't have faith in anything. But I did strongly prefer the 'steady state' universe until I tried to defend it before a couple of astrophysicists. They effectively proved their point, forcing me concede that a big bang eruption was in fact the only option supported by any evidence at all, and there is a lot behind it. But that isn't what you pretend it is. Its more related to the string theorists' idea that I mentioned before. So I will go with a fourth option; all mass, energy, space itself, and even time -erupted into this dimension from a quantum singularity, which may have been caused by rift in the space/time continuum.

Your fourth choice doesn’t even begin to answer the fundamental question it just pushes it back. Where did the “quantum singularity” come from? If there was no space where did it exist if there was no time when did it exist? If there was no energy what caused it to expand? If there was no mass what expanded? If the universe is all there is what is it expanding into.

Although I would happily entertain any other explanation which has both evidenciary support and explanatary power at least equivilent to current cosmology.

Yes you rely on the “expertise” and explanations of others yet insist that you have no faith in anything… LOL

I didn't like being proven wrong. So I try to minimize the number of times that happens. You don't apparently don't mind it so much, because you still parrot the same nonsense even after you know its been disproved.

The only way you could avoid being wrong as far as I am concerned would be to stop replying to my posts because you are constantly wrong but that isn’t going to happen is it? You ego won’t allow it.

FoeHammer.

 

[Loudmouth]

It being common sense means that I don’t have to demonstrate anything of the sort to anyone with any common sense and for those who have none it would be pointless to even try.

If we don't agree then it isn't common sense.

Where have I admitted that I believe that everything came from nothing and that it happened by magic?

Which was quickly followed by,

Goddidit

Fairytale? Sure is looking that way.

 

[FoeHammer]

No. You're out of context. The very next line from the same source you cite defines faith in the religious context;

2. belief that is not based on proof:

Well that doesn't define my faith as I have the universe as proof of Gods existence.

I have tried to explain the shortcomings of using erroneous common useage when another more accurate context specifically applies. But since that doesn't suit your deceptive purpose, you will never correct your error.

I have made no error.
Faith - confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another's ability.
Confidence/trust, that’s what I have in God, I have faith in His ability; it is no more complicated than that. You have confidence/trust in scientists; you have faith in their abilities.

FoeHammer.

 

[FoeHammer]

If we don't agree then it isn't common sense.

Or you don't have any.

Which was quickly followed by,

Fairytale? Sure is looking that way.

Firstly I don't believe that God is nothing and secondly I don't think the word magic is appropriate when talking about an omniscient, omnipotent being.

FoeHammer.

 

[Nathan Poe]

secondly I don't think the word magic is appropriate when talking about an omniscient, omnipotent being.

FoeHammer.

Odd -- I'd consider "magic" to be the only appropriate word when dealing with omniscient, omnipotent beings.