Teaching Evolution to Evolutionists

[Papias]

Montalban, there are many points where your question has been answered:

A. back in post #90, and in Mallon's post #118 above, we showed that independant criteria are used, so natural selection isn't a tautology.

B. Your assertion is simply a repetition of Gish's use of the same argument in his book, which was shown to be a PRATT then, it's no different now.

C. Shernren showed in post #106 that even using Montalban's own definition of what isn't a tautology, natural selection isn't a tautology.


D. It's worth pointing out that your refusal to see cause and effect can be applied to any science, rendering every science a tautology. For instance, medicine is a tautology because the drug that works best works best. Physics is a tautology because a force that attracts is a force that attracts. Rocket science is a tautology because the rocket nozzle that produces the most force is the rocket nozzle that produces the most force. Your entire argument (as with Gish's original argument) is nothing more than a word game followed by plugging one's ears and humming when the correct answer is explained.

Montalban wrote:

How does natural selection select in any manner like a breeder?

Because it causes some to reproduce, and others not to, based on independent traits that exist before the selection. In fact, in the case of natural selection, the selection process is more understandable, not less, because it a function of the changing environment.

I hope you see that understanding the selector isn't even needed (as you can imagine if you had an inscrutable human breeder, who could still breed different changes without us being able to know what she was aiming for). In either case you can see the selector as a black box - the initial population goes in, some are selected according to criteria, and an altered population results. Over time, the animals change radically in both cases.

Thus, your question of how natural selection is like a breeder (even though it has been answered ad nauseum, and it's answer is obvious even to my 9 year old kid anyway), isn't relevant.

Papias

 

[Matthijs]

I would also like to know that if selection needs a selector, if the OP thinks that we have been consciously creating penicillin-resistant Tuberculosis?

Either an environment can select based simply on survival, and we have a working explanation for the new strains of TB that are immune to old-fashioned antibiotics.

Or it cannot - but then where did the resistant TB come from?

 

[Montalban]

Montalban, there are many points where your question has been answered:

So why are you posting? …If you've nothing further to contribute?

A. back in post #90, and in Mallon's post #118 above, we showed that independant criteria are used, so natural selection isn't a tautology.

Post #118 is mine.

C. Shernren showed in post #106 that even using Montalban's own definition of what isn't a tautology, natural selection isn't a tautology.

I addressed this in post #107. He is wrong. In theory nothing need survive. He didn't (from recollection) address that counterpoint

D. It's worth pointing out that your refusal to see cause and effect can be applied to any science, rendering every science a tautology. For instance, medicine is a tautology because the drug that works best works best.

This is where your analogy actually fails. Medicine doesn't rest on the term "That drug which works best works best". It's not the foundation statement of medicine.

You don't have the 'founder of medicine' saying that this is the best explanation.

Medicine would accept that the best treatment is the best treatment. What's a treatment for you may not be for me, so doctors would look for the best treatment for you as opposed to that that works for me.

I noted that you can have a phrase "All knives are knives". This is a tautology. Because it is it doesn't stop a knife from being a knife. Being a tautology doesn't make it 'false'… which as noted here several times I'm not here to argue AGAINST evolution. I've noted that evolution will not fall down on the fact that this term "Survival of the Fittest" is a tautology.

What makes your arguments irrational is that it based on some knee-jerk reaction to anyone who's not an evolutionist raising a problem about evolution. Like a lot of religious zealots one sees they react by wanting to burn the heretic.

Thus, your question of how natural selection is like a breeder (even though it has been answered ad nauseum, and it's answer is obvious even to my 9 year old kid anyway), isn't relevant.

Let's look at this logically to determine intent.

If it were obvious to a 6 year old and not me that something is as you say it is, then telling me it is that obvious doesn't add to the conversation because, in theory, I could still not get it, and just telling me "You don't get it" doesn't help. Perhaps that happened to you in school that if you didn't understand something the teacher just pointed out over and over again how stupid you were and then suddenly you 'got it'. That would indeed be an interesting teaching method.

I however see it as one long ad hom, but it may not be your intent.

You're not the only one. There's been a huge swathe of indignant posts thinking that I'm here to tear down the temple of evolution.

However I feel that if your faith in evolution is that vulnerable to criticism it's not a well placed faith.

 

[Montalban]

I would also like to know that if selection needs a selector, if the OP thinks that we have been consciously creating penicillin-resistant Tuberculosis?

Darwin suggested that nature selects like a breeder does.

 

[Papias]

Montalban wrote:

So why are you posting?

Because you obviously still don't get it.

Originally Posted by Papias

A. back in post #90, and in Mallon's post #118 above, we showed that independant criteria are used, so natural selection isn't a tautology.

Post #118 is mine.

​

Thanks for the correction. Post #113.

Originally Posted by Papias

C. Shernren showed in post #106 that even using Montalban's own definition of what isn't a tautology, natural selection isn't a tautology.

I addressed this in post #107. He is wrong. In theory nothing need survive. He didn't (from recollection) address that counterpoint

​

Perhaps he didn't feel the need to because you didn't offer a counterpoint, but instead simply repeated Gish's misrepresentation of natural selection? Natural selection is explicitly a statement of "if you do x, y will happen", which is what yourself say is not a tautology. This can be seen by the independent criteria that Mallon and I have both supplied (those being the "x"), and "y" is survival & reproduction.
​

Originally Posted by Papias

D. It's worth pointing out that your refusal to see cause and effect can be applied to any science, rendering every science a tautology. For instance, medicine is a tautology because the drug that works best works best.

Medicine doesn't rest on the term "That drug which works best works best". It's not the foundation statement of medicine.


​

No, but all sciences rest on the approach that we can test the result of a factor, to see the result. That's what natural selection does. Because you are still ignoring the independent factors, (the animal properties like leg size, beak depth, etch) as factors, you are of course only talking about half the picture.

I noted that you can have a phrase "All knives are knives". This is a tautology. Because it is it doesn't stop a knife from being a knife. Being a tautology doesn't make it 'false'… which as noted here several times I'm not here to argue AGAINST evolution.

Then why do you continue to misrepresent natural selection? The paragraph above is a perfect example of you doing so, even after being shown.

What makes your arguments irrational is that it based on some knee-jerk reaction to anyone who's not an evolutionist raising a problem about evolution. Like a lot of religious zealots one sees they react by wanting to burn the heretic.

No, it's because you raise a (long exposed) misrepresentation and pretend it's a problem. I can't speak for everyone, but this kind of deception and anti-science attitude is likely the reason why hundreds of Christians become atheists every day - as statistics consistently show, and that's why I tend to point out what you are doing.

However I feel that if your faith in evolution is that vulnerable to criticism it's not a well placed faith.

I have no more faith in evolution than I have faith that the earth goes around the sun or that that US civil war happened. I point out misrepresentations on evolution just as I would in those topics, becuase it makes it look like Christians are ignorant or deceitful, which makes it much harder for me to welcome new Christians. However, that does make me wonder if you agree with this, from you denomination:

E.

Eastern Orthodox theology finds not real argument with evolution up to the creation of man. And even in that, there is a possibility of accepting some of what has been discovered and continues to be discovered by science.

Orthodox Research Institute




Papias

 

[Montalban]

Because you obviously still don't get it.

See my comments on this form of 'teaching.' The majority of your post is to repeat mantra-like that I've been shown somewhere else something. If you don't want to discuss things, that's fine.

I find it odd you conclude with an attempt to bring Orthodoxy into this. Your poorly referenced quote from an Orthodox site I find perplexing.

I say it's poorly referenced because the link you give doesn't go to the page with that quote.

"If you want to look to them they say "Over 120 years have passed since the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of the Species. While some scientists still agree with Darwin’s theory of the changeability of species, much discovery has been done since then to create doubt and suspicion among them. The conflict between creationism and evolution has been primarily a struggle between Roman Catholics and Protestants, on the one hand, with scientists, on the other. You will find very little writing in Orthodox Christian circles." stated
here

Which is consistant with my position. But it's perplexing in the context of a thread where I've said I'm not arguing against evolution. Perhaps you're just skimming through my posts.

 

[Matthijs]

Darwin suggested that nature selects like a breeder does.

Whats your point?

 

[shernren]

I addressed this in post #107. He is wrong. In theory nothing need survive. He didn't (from recollection) address that counterpoint.

Because it wasn't much of a counterpoint. In fact, it basically destroys your entire case.

If nothing survives (and according to you, that is entirely possible), then a fortiori the fit need not survive.

And if the fit need not survive, then the "survival of the fittest" is clearly not a tautology.

QED.

 

[Montalban]

Whats your point?

0.0000000001

What's yours?

 

[Montalban]

Because it wasn't much of a counterpoint. In fact, it basically destroys your entire case.

If nothing survives (and according to you, that is entirely possible), then a fortiori the fit need not survive.

And if the fit need not survive, then the "survival of the fittest" is clearly not a tautology.

The problem is still with your camp.

If everything died then nothing was fit to survive. Evolution is about 'survival of the fittest'. If they died, then they weren't fit to survive because they didn't survive.

Nothing less of a tautology has been established because all that didn't survive weren't fit to survive.

QED

There's no place that I said that the unfit would survive or that the fit would die. Perhaps you're like many here reading something else?

Your point about things dying was not much of a point.

 

[Matthijs]

0.0000000001

What's yours?

oh at least, 10, because I am a bi-winner with adonis genes and tiger blood. Obviously.

 

[Montalban]

oh at least, 10, because I am a bi-winner with adonis genes and tiger blood. Obviously.

Adonis? I've only got Levis

 

[Mallon]

Because it wasn't much of a counterpoint. In fact, it basically destroys your entire case.

If nothing survives (and according to you, that is entirely possible), then a fortiori the fit need not survive.

And if the fit need not survive, then the "survival of the fittest" is clearly not a tautology.

QED.

Clearly, "survival of the fittest" is a tautology to Montalban because he WANTS it to be a tautology. Any other reasoning need not apply.

 

[Montalban]

Clearly, "survival of the fittest" is a tautology to Montalban because he WANTS it to be a tautology. Any other reasoning need not apply.

Nothing need survive.

Sorry that your mates don't have a point

 

[shernren]

There's no place that I said that the unfit would survive or that the fit would die.

About a week ago, you said:

At best you have a situation where 'natural selection' co-exists with these random acts and therefore what is not 'fit' survives because natural selection didn't take any action which in no way negates that natural selection is about that which survives survives.

​

 

[Montalban]

About a week ago, you said:

​

So? I was referring to your best argument.

 

[shernren]

I don't see how the exact argument you are addressing vitiates the fact that you are contradicting yourself.

 

[Matthijs]

ok - how about

"Genes and groups of genes that help to build bodies that are better at surviving increase their frequency in the gene-pool"

 

[Montalban]

I don't see how the exact argument you are addressing vitiates the fact that you are contradicting yourself.

You've not shown this. At best you've used an example of me saying "At best..." followed by your own position.

Apparently you think that natural selection would be refuted if everything died.

 

[Montalban]

ok - how about

"Genes and groups of genes that help to build bodies that are better at surviving increase their frequency in the gene-pool"

Which is only determined if they survive.