No. Nowhere have I said, "There's nothing to say that evolution can't do such-and-such, therefore it CAN do such-and-such."
No, you didn't say it
can for that reason, true.
I was pointing out that you were using the absence of awareness of a mechanism -P which prevents mechanism M from producing the disputed result U as
evidence that M can produce U.
What I am saying is that changes of the type described by "macro" evolution are explainable by the processes that we KNOW take place with microevolution, albeit on a much longer time scale. And the records we have (fossils, changes in DNA etc) that contain data and evidence about such timescales show that the microevolution processes do indeed operate on the macroevolution timescale.
As I have said, the fossil record is evidence as it shows how animal body forms have changed over time. DNA evidence can also tell us how closely related two modern species are - that is, how long ago the most recent common ancestor of the two lived.
This is what I have been talking about. Fossils and DNA are having the presuppositions of Naturalism applied to them in order to come up with interpretations.
Of course someone operating under Naturalism will draw these kinds of conclusions because they are consistent with the way they view reality.
An equally intelligent and skilled scientist who does not think according to Naturalism can look at DNA and see evidence of a programmer at work. In that framework it is logical that animals that are more similar in structure will also have many similarities in their DNA. It does not prove relation. It is the evidence that we have regardless of how we view the world and it provides circumstantial support to both positions when examined within their paradigms.
Why do you think that there is little science involved?
Because I have gone through an immense amount of the literature on the fossils that are claimed to be intermediates.
Many of them are nothing but fragments, if you can find images of the fossils at all. There are beautiful illustrations of what they looked like which fill in details that we have no evidence for. Even many of the skeleton replicas are more than 85% made up, some even more. We are given tales about how they lived and when, what they ate, how they bred, what their ancestors were, and who their descendants were, all from a few fossilized remains.
There is little to no science to substantiate the claims I have read.
Bear in mind that humans have been doing it for only a few thousand years, as you said. nature's been doing it for millions.
For the sake of discussion I'll say that you are right. Even still, we have something that is a great multiplier versus nature's millions of years and that is our intellect.
We can protect what we manipulate from predation, makes sure its needs are met and intentionally direct the genetic progress, ensuring no progress is lost as it is in nature.
We have put flies and bacteria through how many generations all the while forcing mutations on them and manipulating their genes? Still, they have not produced anything more than flies and bacteria.
If it is so simple for nature to take us from bacteria to all that has ever lived, surely we can do it in a short time.
glad you agree.
Given that evoluytionary theory is based on testing of DNA and other such testniques which are expressable in mathematical terms, I don't think that it counts as a philosophy. After all, isn't philosophy inherently subjective? How can one test it in the real world?
Evolutionary theory was around a while before DNA ever came in to view.
Again, I don't have any issue with the fact that an equine type could produce horses, ponies, zebras, and donkeys. I do have an issue with calling it 'evolution', but that is semantics. I am more concerned with concepts.
I reject universal common descent because I do not see any evidence for it that does not require me to accept the tenets of Naturalism, which is philosophy. The scientific evidence, shed of any philosophical conjecture, seems to indicate that universal common descent is not at all probable.
I won't say that there is no subjectivity that goes into philosophy. Every person who thinks practices philosophy whether they realize it or not, so there is a great deal of subjectivity in that sense.
On a higher level, I think philosophy isn't nearly as subjective. The primary function of philosophy is to get to what is reasonable, logical, and true. While subjectivity is impossible to avoid as humans, I think philosophy has some potent tools at its disposal to keep subjectivity as minimal as is possible.
If by naturalism, you mean the scientifically accepted theory of evolution, no you don't need it to understand water. But you don't need electrical theory either. Just because a theory doesn't say something about a particular thing, doesn't mean that the theory is useless.
Naturalism: a philosophical paradigm whereby everything can be explained in terms of natural causes. Physical matter is the only reality -- everything can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena. Naturalism, by definition, excludes any Supernatural Agent or activity.
This is getting rather political and outside the scope of the topic, but science isn't trying to do away with religion. it's trying to do away with religion taught as science.
I do not endorse religion taught as science. More generally, I do not endorse philosophy taught as science.
My issue isn't that we can't teach Genesis in astronomy or biology, it is that adherents to a particular philosophy (Naturalism) have sought to define it as science, establish it as the absolute truth and authority on every aspect of existence, insulate it from any challenge in any thought discipline, and to mandate that it is taught as fact to people starting from the earliest possible age.
If you are truly against ideologies being taught as objective science, you should be aghast at the current state of things regardless of what you believe.
Why couldn't God have used the naturalistic explanations as a tool for creating those life forms?
In the broader sense, without getting too much into theology, God could create some things via natural mechanisms. He couldn't have used 'naturalistic' mechanisms because, by definition a naturalistic process is one the forbids God or anything outside our physical universe from playing any role in it. This isn't just a matter of semantics. Words have meaning.
Universal common descent isn't a concept that is based on solely observable natural processes. It hinges on unobserved, hypothetical,
naturalistic processes.
I've watched some of the videos. Thanks for linking them. I'll finish watching them, but they don't really seem to document many of the claims so far. Much of what they show are things I've studied previously and most of it suffers from the same requirement of accepting assumptions that I don't think are justified. I'll try and get back about them when I've had time to go a bit more in depth and digest them.
true, but if a scientist's investigation of the real world shows him something that couldn't exist if his assumption was true, he throws out that assumption.
Ideally, yes. The problem is that a person's way of seeing and interpreting the world isn't as easily abandoned as a failed theory.
By way of example, I have come to believe in God and in Jesus Christ. When I was convinced of the truth of Christ's claims, my paradigm shifted. Things that a moment before I viewed and interpreted one way, I now saw in a completely new light. It was not an easy point to come to and I grasped at anything I could, to the point of absurdity, to deny the truth but eventually I could no longer deny it and I had to abandon my previous paradigm for the new one.
In the same way, many people are committed to Naturalism and cannot imagine viewing the world in any other way. As a result, they accept some pretty absurd and illogical ideas so that they do not have to let it go.
How so? Look at evidence in the real world. Say, "Maybe that stuff works b mechanism X." Then go out and see if there is anything that shows that mechanism X can't occur. If you find such a thing, you may need to re-evaluate or even dismiss the idea of mechanism X, depending on what you find.
I was referring to your claim that science doesn't start with assumptions. You would have no hypothesis to test if you didn't begin with assumptions. That's all I was saying.
You asked what would be different about babies if kissing got people pregnant. I said that the reproductive organs would need to be in a different place, and thus we would see babies being born with their reproductive organs in a different place. What's the problem there?
I know what you said but it was an analogy. I wasn't asking what would have to be changed in the human schematic to make impregnation via kissing possible.
Let me try to clear this up Forget the kissing analogy.
We have explanation A and explanation B for the same result C. I hold A, you hold B. The question was if B were true, what would be different about C? My point is that if B were true, since it is an explanation of C, C should still be true. This is why I said it is a meaningless question.
That's all I was trying to say with the analogy.
My claim is that everything we see in both DNA and the fossil record supports the claim that evolution takes place.
There are many things we could see in both that would prove that evolution could not be responsible, and yet we never see any of those things.
What I see in DNA supports the claim that it is a result of design. The foundation of our disagreement is philosophical, not scientific.
If this is true, how do you explain things like societies where human sacrifice was the norm? Cannibalism? Women as property? Black people as property?
Failure to follow absolute moral principles isn't evidence against them. It is evidence that people are sinful.
If there were no true morals, why would any of the mentioned acts be wrong? We might not prefer them, but we couldn't legitimately call them wrong.
I think there's a thread in this discussion. Perhaps we should start a new thread and move the discussion about absolute morality over there?
Sure. Send me a link when you find it.
