Why do people believe in evolution?

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

'successful computer evolutionary simulations'

^ I think that gets to the core of the issue.

I make a distinction between computer models and computer simulations

We can model a trebuchet, with known values for weight, potential energy, air resistance etc, and hence pretty accurately predict how far it can fling an object with a simple shape

Most flight 'simulators' on the other hand do not accurately model the physics of air molecules on control surfaces etc, they just simulate what you'd expect an aircraft to do when you fly it.

The crucial difference with the latter again is anticipation, you are working around a desired outcome, not an unknown one. if 'Tierra' had not been made to work to some extent, you would not have been playing around with it.

My program worked also, it just needed a lot more nudging towards desired goals than I would ever have thought - to the point that I did not present it as proof of the power of natural selection on random mutation, to my skeptical friend, because I knew it would be a cheat on my part.

The simple point is that evolution is a process of trial-and-error from the chemical evolution of proto-life to the earliest life - the tweaks and refinements that we see in simple organisms were selected for in simpler organisms - they were what persisted, baked in by selective pressure, and the tweaks and refinements for them were what the prior chemical evolution produced, by trial and error.

It was the result half a billion-odd years of trial and error across an entire planet of varying environments with great surpluses of free energy driving the generation of increasing chemical complexity to maximise its dissipative effect.

IOW the process of evolution of life itself evolved from simpler processes under thermodynamic pressure.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The principle (heritable variation with natural selection) is effectively just an algorithmic summary, but it hides a wealth of important detail. It's ironic that many early attempts to get something interesting from evolution simulators and cellular automata involved many hours, days, and weeks of pseudo-evolutionary trial and error by the programmers

Well there you go, with a lot of applied creative intelligence, we can eventually produce a very crude simulation of the real thing.

Who's side are you debating on now?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Just one example of science v atheism, or 'methodological naturalism' - imposing arbitrary rules rather than following the evidence wherever it leads, whatever the implications

As I said, there's a significant difference between science and the people who do science.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Well there you go, with a lot of applied creative intelligence, we can eventually produce a very crude simulation of the real thing.

Who's side are you debating on now?

Perhaps you missed the irony of their success being the result of a trial-and-error process, i.e. literally an evolutionary process.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Perhaps you missed the irony of their success being the result of a trial-and-error process, i.e. literally an evolutionary process.

Like the Wright brothers, most creative pursuits are likewise, and planes have evolved along with our digital information systems.

i.e. intelligence is the proven creative method here, achieving the same by chance is not

 

[Guy Threepwood]

As I said, there's a significant difference between science and the people who do science.

'Science progresses one funeral at a time" Max Planck

 

[Frank Robert]

'Science progresses one funeral at a time" Max Planck

Sounds like you are complaining that science is self-correcting but without that ability science would have long ago taken the path of 1000s of deities that met their funerals.

 

[Astrophile]

Sure, but as in steady state, big crunch, phrenology, human evolution based around Piltdown man etc-
it leaves a lot more freedom for speculation, ideology, peer pressure, when a theory cannot be directly demonstrated.

The steady-state hypothesis was proposed by Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold in 1948. It remained controversial for 17 years - it was strongly opposed by George Gamow and Martin Ryle, for example - and was disproved in 1965 by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background. Many scientific controversies, such as those over spontaneous generation, continental drift, and the origin of the craters of the Moon, have lasted much longer than 17 years.

If you google on 'Your years of toil said Ryle to Hoyle' you will find some amusing verses by Barbara Gamow (George Gamow's wife) about the big bang-steady state controversy.

 

[Astrophile]

But steady-state was the default assumption in the absence of contrary evidence (until Hubble);

So far as I can remember, even in the early 1960s, some form of big bang hypothesis (such as the 'primeval atom' model of Lemaître) was the favoured cosmological model. The steady state hypothesis was effectively disproved by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965; this disproof didn't have to wait for the Hubble Space Telescope.

 

[SelfSim]

The steady state hypothesis was effectively disproved by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965; this disproof didn't have to wait for the Hubble Space Telescope.

I think FB may have meant Edwin Hubble's observations there(?)

 

[AV1611VET]

Why do people believe in evolution?

Evolution assures that, no matter what you do: from shielding your children from harm to eating them; from loving your neighbor to hating them and driving them away with bodily harm; from adopting a child, to kidnapping one for your own; no matter what you do, it's all relative.

 

[SelfSim]

Science works by testing ideas however it can; inference and interpolation are powerful tools, and untestable predictions of well-established theories carry greater weight than untestable speculations. Ideas that haven't been tested or can't be tested remain speculative or hypothetical, whether the popular media or scientists themselves claim otherwise. Science rightly has a degree of inertia to novelty and has evolved techniques and methodologies to minimise the influence of human bias and dishonesty and to self-correct.

'untestable predictions of well-established theories carry greater weight than untestable speculations' ... is dependent on (individual) human biases there ..

 

[SelfSim]

Evolution assures that, no matter what you do: from shielding your children from harm to eating them; from loving your neighbor to hating them and driving them away with bodily harm; from adopting a child, to kidnapping one for your own; no matter what you do, it's all relative.

That's just your own personal belief ..

 

[AV1611VET]

That's just your own personal belief ..

Whether you give your own life to help a stranger in trouble, or just take the attitude, "I don't want to get involved," it's relative.

The bottom line, is that it anesthetizes one to the concept of "sin."

I'm wondering if Saul of Tarsus, who started out a Pharisee ...

Acts 23:6 But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.

... if he didn't at one point embrace [prescience] evolution and become an atheist ...

Romans 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

Then, when he got saved and became the Apostle Paul, he was able to make this statement ...

Romans 7:9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

He was "alive without the law once."

Probably during his time as an atheist; not cumbered down with the concept of "sin."

But when he got saved, he realized that he had been living in sin all along.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Sounds like you are complaining that science is self-correcting.

Well science won out over atheism in this case so I'm not complaining!

but without that ability science would have long ago taken the path of 1000s of deities that met their funerals

are you alluding to survival of the fittest amongst deities?

 

[SelfSim]

Whether you give your own life to help a stranger in trouble, or just take the attitude, "I don't want to get involved," it's relative.

The bottom line, is that it anesthetizes one to the concept of "sin."

I'm wondering if Saul of Tarsus, who started out a Pharisee ...

Acts 23:6 But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.

... if he didn't at one point embrace [prescience] evolution and become an atheist ...

Romans 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,

Then, when he got saved and became the Apostle Paul, he was able to make this statement ...

Romans 7:9 For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.

He was "alive without the law once."

Probably during his time as an atheist; not cumbered down with the concept of "sin."

But when he got saved, he realized that he had been living in sin all along.

Yet another confused individual from history. Unfortunately he didn't have the benefit of being able to distinguish reality from belief back then (due to a lack of the availability of objective thinking).

 

[Guy Threepwood]

The steady-state hypothesis was proposed by Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold in 1948. It remained controversial for 17 years - it was strongly opposed by George Gamow and Martin Ryle, for example - and was disproved in 1965 by the discovery of the cosmic microwave background. Many scientific controversies, such as those over spontaneous generation, continental drift, and the origin of the craters of the Moon, have lasted much longer than 17 years.

If you google on 'Your years of toil said Ryle to Hoyle' you will find some amusing verses by Barbara Gamow (George Gamow's wife) about the big bang-steady state controversy.

After calling it 'religious pseudoscience' Fred Hoyle went to his deathbed in 2001 still refusing to accept the Big Bang.

It's very difficult to change your mind after mocking something for so long, or you become all the things you accused others of.

 

[AV1611VET]

Yet another confused individual from history. Unfortunately he didn't have the benefit of being able to distinguish reality from belief back then (due to a lack of the availability of objective thinking).

And how many scientists today can't distinguish total reality due to adherence to the scientific method as the be-all/end-all method of knowing the universe?

 

[Astrophile]

I think FB may have meant Edwin Hubble's observations there(?)

Thank-you for your reply. You may be right, but I think that there may be some confusion here. Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) measured the radial velocities of the galaxies and discovered that almost all of them were receding from the Milky Way, and that their radial velocities were directly proportional to their distances. Before Hubble's time, astronomers thought that the universe was static; indeed, most astronomers thought that the 'extragalactic nebulae' were part of our own Galaxy rather than being independent 'island universes'. Edwin Hubble's observations disproved this 'static universe' model and showed that the 'extragalactic nebulae' were star systems of the same type as the Milky Way.

However, the pre-Hubble 'static universe' model was not the same as Hoyle's 'steady-state' or 'continuous creation' model. Hoyle accepted that the universe was expanding and therefore that the density of matter ought to decrease, but he thought that new matter was continuously being created in the form of hydrogen atoms to maintain a constant density. This newly created hydrogen condensed into new galaxies and stars, with the result that the universe was eternal and looked much the same at all times. Hoyle called this 'the perfect cosmological principle'.

 

[SelfSim]

And how many scientists today can't distinguish total reality due to adherence to the scientific method as the be-all/end-all method of knowing the universe?

As most here seem to know, your version of what you have 'total reality' mean there, is a total belief, (by way of that also being your personal preference) .. and yet you persist in using the term 'the universe', which was distinguished by science.
You are confused by beliefs (as was 'Paul' thousands of years ago). You should update yourself .. (he couldn't).