If evolution is true- create life

[mindlight]

I definitely don't agree with this. Sure, being able to duplicate process implies better understanding, but not being able to duplicate a process doesn't mean we don't understand the process.

For example, we can't duplicate a hurricane, does this mean we don't understand hurricanes? To be honest, your work as a programmer (? correct me if I'm wrong) is completely different from academic jobs.

It's really hard to explain, but one way to examine it is kind of like the difference between an engineer and a scientist. A scientist comes up with the theories, the engineer applies them. Both are important, and both use different metrics to rate performance of work. I don't think your example applies to scientific research.

Silly me and I thought that a good definition of science was the ability to replicate a phenomena having observed and deduced the conditions in which it was possible. That unless the experiment was repeatable it was not verifiable and would thus never be accepted by the scientific community.

We cannot duplicate a hurricane but we can create a wind using different pressures. That is just a matter of scale the same principles can be applied at a lower level.

I understand the difference between my Computer development role and an academic position - I have been both. I would say that one thing I have learnt from working in the business world is that accountability and therefore authenticity is best enforced in practice rather than theory. I plan what I build extensively and I test these plans against the views and expectations of others however the definitive test comes in the actual rollout of what I build and in the responses of the user community to these creations.

Sometimes users have expectations that the technology simply cannot cope with. Similarly sometimes academics come up with theories too far removed from reality to actually work in practice. I regard that chasm between theory and practice as being a problem the two need to be connected.

Similarly I can say God is the creator not only cause there are signs of his intelligence in the created order but also because of Christs creation miracles for instance e.g. the wedding feast at Canaan or the feeding of the 5000. These miracles provide a proof that God is the Creator, as Christ demonstrated that.

Academic scientists who lack the humility to see that their theories are unproven can be dangerous. In the end the ability to duplicate or improve on a process or too combine processes in a larger whole is the definitive test of understanding. Evolution and abiogenesis remain unproven theories until they can be duplicated.

 

[random_guy]

Silly me and I thought that a good definition of science was the ability to replicate a phenomena having observed and deduced the conditions in which it was possible. That unless the experiment was repeatable it was not verifiable and would thus never be accepted by the scientific community.

We cannot duplicate a hurricane but we can create a wind using different pressures. That is just a matter of scale the same principles can be applied at a lower level.

A good definition of science is the study of natural phenomena by applying the scientific method. Now, your original argument was if blank was true, why can't we recreate it. You just changed your argument in the second paragraph. That's what I was arguing.

You don't need to recreate a process to show understanding. You show that the principles behind the process works. We can cause speciation in a lab, we can cause mutations in a lab, we can artificially select in a lab, so by your same analogy, it's just a matter of scale with the same principles applied at a lower level. So what's the problem with evolution?

 

[mindlight]

A good definition of science is the study of natural phenomena by applying the scientific method. Now, your original argument was if blank was true, why can't we recreate it. You just changed your argument in the second paragraph. That's what I was arguing.

You don't need to recreate a process to show understanding. You show that the principles behind the process works. We can cause speciation in a lab, we can cause mutations in a lab, we can artificially select in a lab, so by your same analogy, it's just a matter of scale with the same principles applied at a lower level. So what's the problem with evolution?

I can see what you are saying but it is a very large jump to make to go from the kinds of things you mention above to the validation of the whole sweep of evolutionary theory. Whereas if I blow up a balloon and then release the air I get a wind which although not quite a category 5 is still a wind. The principle that air will move from an area of high to low pressure is a sound one and can be demonstrated. Whereas the notion that life can spontaneously spring from a collection of amino acids has not and nor has the broad sweep of evolution that more primative organisms can be cultivated into higher forms that would then be able to reproduce by them selves.

You need to qualify your assertion that speciation is possible in a lab. Some plant hybrids have been created usually within the same broad families or in such a way that the dominant patterns remain intact, dogs have been bred into all kinds of perculiar shapes but I do not see some kind of cat-dog transgenic animals breeding outside my window right now. The ability to reproduce is a test as to whether true speciation has occurred.

The kinds of shared ancestors proposed by evolutionary theory require the paths to their present forms to be more carefully mapped. The large jumps between the various states of evolution cannot be explained in terms of natural selection.

The arguments about the natural selection mechanism being demonstrable on lower levels fails in its linkages with the higher levels of this debate. Localised examples about red and grey squirrels and butterflies adapting to their environment do not prove evolution only that a degree of adaptation and flexibility is necessary by any species if it is to survive in the broadest sets of circumstances.

To prove that we evolved from ape like ancestors you'd have to take the same ancestor type and then guide its evolution into a human being. That is a long term experiment and it has not been done. I am not sure that human beings could do such thing let alone how moral such a process would be

 

[shernren]

You need to qualify your assertion that speciation is possible in a lab. Some plant hybrids have been created usually within the same broad families or in such a way that the dominant patterns remain intact, dogs have been bred into all kinds of perculiar shapes but I do not see some kind of cat-dog transgenic animals breeding outside my window right now. The ability to reproduce is a test as to whether true speciation has occurred.

Evolution does not predict that there will be cat-dog mating. Evolution isn't the business of jumping over cladistic boundaries, but creating new ones. This is often easy to overlook because we live during a time when all the major kingdoms, phyla, orders etc. have already been relatively fixed.

Evolution doesn't create cat-dog intermixable hybrids. It should create reproductively isolated populations of, say, cats, that are not only isolated from dogs but also from other cats.

To prove that we evolved from ape like ancestors you'd have to take the same ancestor type and then guide its evolution into a human being. That is a long term experiment and it has not been done. I am not sure that human beings could do such thing let alone how moral such a process would be.

It would actually be moral considering you'd start by experimenting with apes and not humans. But I think the experiment is something that is theoretically, but not practically, repeatable. What I mean is that theoretically, if one takes the hominid evolution theories seriously, if we recreated the ecological niches into which hominids radiated to produce humans, we should be able to observe this evolution. But it would happen over a very long period of time, and in any case we have long since destroyed or let other species take over the niches which theoretically drove human evolution.

 

[random_guy]

I can see what you are saying but it is a very large jump to make to go from the kinds of things you mention above to the validation of the whole sweep of evolutionary theory. Whereas if I blow up a balloon and then release the air I get a wind which although not quite a category 5 is still a wind. The principle that air will move from an area of high to low pressure is a sound one and can be demonstrated. Whereas the notion that life can spontaneously spring from a collection of amino acids has not and nor has the broad sweep of evolution that more primative organisms can be cultivated into higher forms that would then be able to reproduce by them selves.

You need to qualify your assertion that speciation is possible in a lab. Some plant hybrids have been created usually within the same broad families or in such a way that the dominant patterns remain intact, dogs have been bred into all kinds of perculiar shapes but I do not see some kind of cat-dog transgenic animals breeding outside my window right now. The ability to reproduce is a test as to whether true speciation has occurred.

The kinds of shared ancestors proposed by evolutionary theory require the paths to their present forms to be more carefully mapped. The large jumps between the various states of evolution cannot be explained in terms of natural selection.

The arguments about the natural selection mechanism being demonstrable on lower levels fails in its linkages with the higher levels of this debate. Localised examples about red and grey squirrels and butterflies adapting to their environment do not prove evolution only that a degree of adaptation and flexibility is necessary by any species if it is to survive in the broadest sets of circumstances.

To prove that we evolved from ape like ancestors you'd have to take the same ancestor type and then guide its evolution into a human being. That is a long term experiment and it has not been done. I am not sure that human beings could do such thing let alone how moral such a process would be

I really hope you just didn't you the cat-dog argument or that you didn't really mean it. It brings up bad memories of a horrible Utah House Representative. He wanted to teach Divine Design so that kids won't feel bad being taught they came from monkeys. He said he didn't believe in evolution because he's seen a cat and he seen a dog, but never a dat. Anyone that states something like that shows they don't understand evolution.

Anyway, back to the arugment. What do you call Therapods, dinosaurs with bird-like characteristics? Are they transitional? We never see any distinct boundary that prevents things like reptiles and birds from blending together. Instead, we find transitional forms like theropods.

However, this misses the main point. We can cause speciation in the labs (defined as a new species) and we know that speciation leads to evolution. Just like how certain pressure systems forum hurricanes, speciation is a result from evolution. Why do evolutionists need to show a barrier exists when no evidence in the fossil record or in nature is there evidence of a barrier? How come you don't ask hurricanists to show that a barrier prevents little winds from becoming a hurricane?

PS: As for speciation, using the scientific definition, not the Creationists one, there's no doubt that it occurs. Heck, I've done it at the biology labs at my college.