Neo-Darwinian evolution is in trouble INSIDE the scientific community

xianghua said:

not realy. in this case we can claim for convergent evolution (mammal evolve twice) or claiming that somehow its get to the wrong layer by an unknown geological process and so on. so no, such a fossil cant falsified evolution. even wikipedia admit it:


Precambrian rabbit - Wikipedia

"Even if the "Precambrian rabbits" turned out to be genuine, they would not instantly refute the theory of evolution, because that theory is a large package of ideas"-

very unscientific.

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It would put the theory in serious trouble at the very least.

But I agree, you are very unscientific. You were given several other examples besides that one, now you are merely grasping at straws.

dmmesdale said:

They have not found a last common ancestor (LCA) between apes and man according to this. What they do have is artists renditions.

BBC - Earth - We have still not found the missing link between us and apes

So how are we to find the LCA between a banana and a cockroach or a worm and a dolphin? Science proof? An artists rendition?

What Ardi may have looked like. There is your definite maybe. ^^^

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Sorry, but that is a very poor source. They should have said that we have not found the "missing link" between humans and other apes. But that is not a problem. Finding every species is never guaranteed, and in fact it is not expected. We have found our ancestors going back far enough so that creationists call all of them "apes" sooner or later.

Subduction Zone said:

It would put the theory in serious trouble at the very least.

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not at all, as i explained above and wikipedia admit. but you are welcome to ignore it.

xianghua said:

but the problem here is that it doenst prove any evolution.

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First off: there is no "proof" as in mathematics. The best science ever does is sufficiently explain as much of the variability of the data as possible.

That's it.

Of course transitional forms provide significant evidence of evolution! It's kind of EXACTLY what they do!

we can arrange vehicles in hierarchy: a car, a jeep and a truck.

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No offense but your example makes no sense. There is no reason to assume one developed out of the other.

If you insist on using a poor auto analogy try the Hummer. The original Hummer was a military vehicle. It became popular in the civilian market so GMC started to make them. The Hummer H1 looked in many ways like the Hummer used in military (presumably many changes were made to make it available to the civilian market). The H2 was slightly smaller because it was going into a market that was adapting to high fuel costs but still wanted to appeal to the testosterone crowd.

Finally the H3, a much smaller variant was, if I recall, built on a standard GMC SUV chassis. This allowed GMC to further penetrate the market (required hopefully less gas but still looked "manly"). As such we see the EVOLUTION of the Hummer in the market.

But even then, that has NOTHING TO DO WITH BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION.

but this order doesnt prove any evolution. even if vehicles where able to reproduce with variations over time, the best explanation will remain that those vehicles created by a designer and not evolve by a natural process.

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And here you show the problem with your original example: we KNOW cars are designed by people because we are people and we see people who are car designers. Life has no such data to support it.

Cars DO NOT SELF-REPLICATE, Cars do NOT HAVE A MECHANISM BY WHICH MUTATIONS CAN OCCUR, Cars DO have a means of filtering out maladaptive variants (crashes, general failure to operate, market dislike, etc.) But that's really the only thing that would be similar to biological evolution.

xianghua said:

not realy. in this case we can claim for convergent evolution (mammal evolve twice) or claiming that somehow its get to the wrong layer by an unknown geological process and so on. so no, such a fossil cant falsified evolution. even wikipedia admit it:

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If you came to the Smithsonian Natural History museum bearing a rock you claimed was from the Cambrian and it had a rabbit skeleton fossilized in it:

It would be SHOCKING, meaning it would be the first time in the long history of people collecting fossils in which a developed lagomorph was found in a Cambrian aged rock. It would, indeed, be at a time when even BACKBONES barely existed, let alone a fully-articulated spinal column. As such it would be investigated with SO MUCH SCRUTINY because it would literally overturn nearly 2 centuries of accumulated data.

Think about that for a second. 200-300 years of people pulling rocks out of the ground and nothing even REMOTELY like a rabbit has ever been found in the same rocks as a trilobite. Nothing even remotely like a rabbit or any mammal for that matter.

As such, right now the odds are such that you are WRONG about the age of the rock at the very least.

It could be and indeed science waits for that. But I wouldn't lay odds on it actually happening.

And in the end that is what science is: odds of making a correct interpretation of the data as we understand it now. Nothing more.

YES, you could stumble on a wallet filled with a million dollars tomorrow. But I wouldn't actually bother to live my life as if that is a DEFINITE thing that will help me pay my rent next month. I'd go to work instead.

xianghua said:

not at all, as i explained above and wikipedia admit. but you are welcome to ignore it.

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Wrong, you only hand waved. And you did not even touch the other examples given to you.

As you said, you were being very unscientific.

xianghua said:

but the problem here is that it doenst prove any evolution. we can arrange vehicles in hierarchy: a car, a jeep and a truck. but this order doesnt prove any evolution. even if vehicles where able to reproduce with variations over time, the best explanation will remain that those vehicles created by a designer and not evolve by a natural process.

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You could arrange those vehicles in such an hierarchy arbitrarily, but if you actually studied the historical development of the motor vehicle you would discover that the first powered vehicle was a truck, the second was a bus and the jeep not developed for another 150 years, well after both the car and the truck. The development of the motor vehicle does not exhibit a nested hierarchy--which designed objects generally do not--and the jeep is not a developmental transitional between a car and a truck.

xianghua said:

as for the batter explanation: the best explanation is that nature need a designer. like the best explanation for the existence of a self replicating organic robot is that it was made by a designer.

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What's the support for this explanation?

pitabread said:

I'm going to have to ask for specifics.

The only deliberate hoax I know of that might have been in a textbook would have been Piltdown Man. Beyond that, I'm highly skeptical of your claim that "all" the evidence for evolution turned out later to be false or a hoax of some kind.

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I already went over this in the thread.

Sanoy said:

I already went over this in the thread.

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No, you only made an unsupported claim.

Dirk1540 said:

That's like saying that the historical evidence that Jesus existed, and the historical evidence that Adam existed are one in the same because they are both studies of history. Although I could see you being someone who believes that the evidence suggests Jesus never existed.

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Hardly, the theory of evolution and common descent are one and the same. The Adam story is myth. I am not so sure of the historical existence of Jesus. And no, the evidence does not suggest that Jesus never existed, but the evidence for his existence is not nearly as strong as Christians seem to think that it is.

You keep claiming to be a champion of knowing what evidence is, and telling others that they don't understand evidence...yet you think that the amount of evidence for evolution that we can see in real time is equal to the theory of common descent?? i believe strongly in the big bang, but I don't believe it has equal evidence of the moon's existence, which I can see with my own eyes.

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Not necessarily a champion, creationists merely have a very very poor understanding of the topic. And for some reason they are afraid to learn. Please note how all creationists keep running away from the topic. None are willing to discuss it. That indicates to me that they know that they are wrong and are merely keeping themselves as ignorant as possible.

I am not an astrophysicist so for me the evidence of the Moon is stronger than that of the Big Bang. But if all you have is sight they can list several independent sources that support them. And in courts of law, history, and in science consilience is a very strong principle. One source of evidence can support an idea, but one source can always be wrong. But if multiple independent sources make a claim then that concept is much more strongly supported by then if it was supported by only one source.

For example in a court of law an eyewitness is nice, but eyewitnesses are not very reliable. In fact rather than an eyewitness detectives would gladly swap one of them for DNA evidence. And if you take DNA evidence, a fingerprint, tire prints, fabric fibers etc. and so on, that would totally trump just someone thinking that he saw something.

In the case of the Moon you can see the Moon. You can't see the expansion of the universe. Astronomers can. They can also measure the cosmic background radiation. They can also point to how the initial amounts of elements supports the Big Bang theory. There are probably other pieces of evidence too, but since they have far more sources than you would have with just your eyes they may be able to make a very cogent argument that they have more evidence:

Consilience - Wikipedia

Dirk1540 said:

You keep claiming to be a champion of knowing what evidence is, and telling others that they don't understand evidence...yet you think that the amount of evidence for evolution that we can see in real time is equal to the theory of common descent??

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How on earth can one have evidence of Universal Common Descent AND see life as it is today and not automatically believe that Evolution is likely true?

It is like looking at a glass of water at 1:15PM and coming back at 1:20PM to see the empty glass sitting on it's side in a puddle of water: it seems to indicate that indeed the glass was tipped over and spilled out its water.

Sure, it could be that someone came along, drank all the water, and then took a canteen from a wandering Bedouin and poured out a puddle around the glass, but how likely is it?

i believe strongly in the big bang, but I don't believe it has equal evidence of the moon's existence, which I can see with my own eyes.

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Do you believe in electrons? You've never seen one, but surely you must believe they exist, right?

Dirk1540 said:

Do you not notice how a lot of evolution debates begin?

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I've certainly seen a LOT of them over the last 37 years that I've been tracking on the topic.

WOW...do you guys realize that i talk to atheists who deny common descent?

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I see we need to do some remedial logic here:

If one believes in Common Descent it is nearly impossible to NOT believe in evolution. But if one believes in Evolution it is still possible to imagine a world in which universal common descent is NOT real.

All dogs are animals but not all animals are dogs.

The epidome of the objections that I deal with debating Christianity with people is that there's just not enough proof for something unless I see it with my own eyes.

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You'll have a tough time making that argument with scientists.

(If you'd like to hear this particular atheist's reason to be an atheist I would be glad to summarize it quite succinctly: I start with the null hypothesis that there is no God and test against the hypothesis. I read the BIble to see what God is supposed to be like --assuming we limit ourselves to just the Judeo Christian God--, and I listen to and read what countless Christians tell me about what God should be like. Then I examine my experience. So far I've failed to find any real compelling reason to reject the null hypothesis. I have seen no miracles and am aware of no real miracles that haven't been debunked or can be more easily naturally explained. I've not felt God's "presence" and in those cases where I felt really happy or good I simply assumed I was feeling happy or good. I could go on but you see the point).

Now, i have atheists in here trying to tell me that evolution that I can see with my own eyes is equal to common descent.

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No, no no. I brought up Universal Common Descent because it rests at the core of a series of reasonably good bits of evidence. If UCD is correct then Evolution is likely to be true. (Remember that remedial logic we went through just a few paragraphs back?)

This is actually a cool experience for me, the blatant hypocrisy.

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It isn't hypocrisy. It's your general lack of following the conversation. I apologize if it wasn't clear. Now that I know that we have to go back and cover some simple logic I hope it is more clear for you.

From now on whenever an atheist hits me with their favorite line of you can only really believe what you see, i'm gonna probe them with this question.

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You are drifting over into prideful territory. For one who is busy debating atheists you might want to get a better handle on what your God's book says about that stuff.

However, having said that I do have my doubts that many atheists will tell me that common descent (macro evolution) is as strongly grounded in proof as something they can see.

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There are so many things in the world that you and I believe in without even an ability to "see" them. You're working on a computer right now. Have you seen an electron?

Dirk1540 said:

Subduction Zone, I strongly believe that in a court of law a jury would be persuaded with the big bang evidence. But think about how quickly the decision would be made for the existence of the moon! Why? Better evidence. You'll never beat the evidence of seeing with your own eyes

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https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/

Subduction Zone said:

No, you only made an unsupported claim.

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I reported events I personally experienced. I'll be sure to video tape my entire life from now on. In fact I'm buying a body cam right now because I care that much about your doubt.

Dirk1540 said:

You're own word just deceived you!! 'Likely' true...vs that which you can literally observe in real time.

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-sigh-. It is hard when one tries to speak honestly about science.

I will repeat for what is likely the billionth time: science is ALWAYS going with the most likely explanation. There is no 100% perfect proof in science.

If you thought there was it is you who fail to understand science.

I really do feel sad that so many people never take science classes after high school because they would learn so much more about science.

(You would do well to dial back your "pridefulness" on this topic considering that you seem to be woefully uneducated in how science actually works.)