Why evolution isn't scientific

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Kylie

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You have not the foggiest clue of what reality even is actually. You simply refer to your baseless belief system as 'reality' in a cheap and crass attempt to elevate fables from the so called science fantasy factory.

And yet what I have works. Funny that.

Now are you going to do something other than your typical childish insults and name calling when it comes to science? Or are you actually capable of having an adult conversation about the topic?
 
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the iconoclast

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Sorry but I do not make friends with people who ignore an fairly understood post:

Hey hey realitycheck :) Well thats a shame but i agree your post was fairly easy to understand. Good work!

If you could indulge me, please do not make assumptions about my person or underestimate me. I refrain from such things when i enter a conversation, i recommend you do the same and please do not get reactionary or emotional. :)

Ps I dooooo like a bit of pizzazz and being familiar, if you do not like these qualities i recommend running for your life and reporting me to the nearest re education camp.

You need to learn what the fallacy of argument from authority actually is ...

In which a claimed authority's support is used as evidence for an argument's conclusion.

Do i get an a?

Anyways, i guess what comes next is to test. Im convinced that evolution is an appeal to authority, you are convinced it is true and based on evidence.

Lets test the evidence and examine it. :) - Lucky you have supplied some reading material, lets see what convinces you. :)

The scientific consensus is different.

You are right! It is different, it would be an appeal to many authorities!

Using a consensus is a way that a layperson can trust science. A group of scientists use their expertise and evaluate the evidence for and against a scientific theory.

That was fairly easy to understand too! :)

If the majority agree that the evidence supports the theory then it is foolish for a layperson to disagree.
I see so if a majority of ppl agree on a belief held without proof - theory is supposition (.eg an assumption or hypothesis). Then the authority's support is used as evidence for an argument's conclusion. The layman would be foolish to disagree? Did i get that right? What you think?

Consider having an illness and going to 100 doctors. 97 say you have A and this is the treatment for A. 3 say you have B and this is the treatment for B. Which treatment do you take? The rational, reasonable action is to follow the scientific consensus.

It may surprise you that im aware that we have discovered treatments to specific diseases, concluded that some symptoms mean problems and can visually inspection much of the human anatomy.

Im not interested in advances in healing or a person's ability to diagnose a disease rare or common. This example is being used as an agruement for evolution. Are you suggesting re evolution that a proposition must be true because many or most people believe it?

The question is a bit silly, the iconoclast, because it suggests that you have forgotten what you have learned in high school about evolution.

Please excuse me, i did not think it was silly or i wouldnt have asked. Please do not try to undermine me or paint an unflattering picture of me.

I was told once there is never such a thing as a silly question, just a silly answer. Anways my dear, i was not taught evolution when i was at school many years ago. We have detected an assumption!

Or that you do not know about Google or Wikipedia

I do have access to the internet and a working brain. What i learn about evolution i learn from you atheists. :)

. Or that I can read your mid and knoww hat you would find "convincing".

Dude, wanna know anything about me, ask?

An answer is remember what you read in your high school biology textbooks which should have good evidence about evolution (maybe not in Texas!).

Continuing on with your assumption. You are correct that im not from texas. Heads up "im aint from around here" :)

An answer is Google 'evidence for evolution". An answer is evolution.

Remember what i said about silly answers. Now we are even! :)

Scientific theories are built on bodies of evidence. There is occasionally a single item of evidence that makes a scientific theory obviously correct. This is not the case for evolution otherwise Darwin's books would have been a few pages long!

A suppossition (.eg a belief held without proof; an assumption or hypothesis.) based on or characterized by the methods and principles of science, are built on a large amount or collection of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid.

The scientific communities support is used as evidence for an argument's conclusion. Using this consensus is a way that a layperson can trust science. Notice the use of the word trust. Faith - 100% or complete trust.

I think you are helping me understand things much better.

If you are being honest

Hahaha nice i love that, if you are honest then you will do this. How can you school me on logical fallacies when you pull out a gem like that?

then 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. The Scientific Case for Common Descent is a good place to start.

Thank you for directing me to a site that begins with this sentence

"Evolution, the overarching concept that unifies the biological sciences, in fact embraces a plurality of theories and hypotheses"

Anways lets dig in.

"Universal common descent is the hypothesis that all known living, terrestrial organisms are genealogically related."

"Modern organisms are the genetic descendants of one ancient, original species"

Im fascinated. What is this one ancient original species? Does this mean a pig and a human have a common ancestor? If so what is this marvelous creature?

My personal "one example" that convinces me is Prediction 4.5: Molecular evidence - Endogenous retroviruses. This is easy to understand. There are viruses that insert their DNA randomly into host DNA. That can happen in germ line cells (sperm or ova) and become part of the genome of a species. Two species that share a set of ERV get that set from a common ancestor.

It was fairly easy to understand. :)

"Endogenous retroviruses provide yet another example of molecular sequence evidence for universal common descent."

Im curious what is with this disclaimer at the bottom after confirmation?

"It would make no sense, macroevolutionarily, if certain other mammals (e.g. dogs, cows, platypi, etc.), had these same retrogenes in the exact same chromosomal locations. For instance, it would be incredibly unlikely for dogs to also carry the three HERV-K insertions that are unique to humans, as shown in the upper right of Figure 4.4.1, since none of the other primates have these retroviral sequences."

What does that mean?

ETA: You also need to read other replies to your posts and not ask basically the same question again.

I will ask questions until i get answers. Once i get an answer ill ask for an explanation! If i distrust authority and examine the evidence - ask questions and test - I should be highly correct? That is what you said?

Reality check - "One reason that science is highly correct is because scientists are taught to distrust authority and reexamine the evidence."

Why do you believe i can not question scientific authority and examine their evidence when you allow scientists this opportunity?

You have not done this but there is a rather nasty tactic that I have seen from cranks in other forums of asking every poster in a thread the same question.

So which is it?

Have i basically asked the same questions or have i not? The previous statement suggests i have and now you suggest i do not?

It is nasty because they are trying to waste peoples time with questions they probably know the answer to.

Are you suggesting that i am being nasty and wasting your time? You do realise you have no obligation to engage me. Do you even know why you want a conversation with me?

I did not engage you, you engaged me. Did you engage me to complain about people wasting your time?


It seems after this remark you want to hurt my feelings or attack my person.

Why?

They also go on about any trivial differences between the replies in order to further waste time.

It seems a bit redundant to make this remark. If by 'they' you mean to refer to me, it seems like you have only yourself to blame for any wastage of time. Unless for some reason you felt it was necessary to go off track and tell me about your feelings?

What u think?

Dood get back to me, i definitely want to continue. :)

Cheers
 
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the iconoclast

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Or are you actually capable of having an adult conversation about the topic?

Hey kylie :)

Still working on our conversation. It is slightly delayed as the wonderfull and extraordinary @RealityCheck01 has engaged me.
 
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pitabread

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again irrelevant. we are talking about the question of possible small steps, so it doesnt matter if its alive or not since its irrelevant to that question.

Of course it's relevant. Biological evolution deals with living things. Cars don't evolve (biologically).

Again, you really need to learn the difference between living and non-living things. If you don't understand the very basics you can't have a real conversation about biology. And right now you clearly don't understand the basics.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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yes it does. its showing that a living thing cant evolve stepwise since it need at least several parts to be functional.
Ah, OK. It sounds like what you really mean is that you can't see how stepwise evolution could give rise to creatures that need several parts to function. If you'd have asked about this at the start, we could have avoided a lot of wasted time and posts.

The key concept here is the evolution of multicellularity - this occurred in conditions where undifferentiated clumps of cells were more successful in survival and reproduction than single cells (clumping could be a result of a change to the cell membrane that made cells more likely to stick together after division).

The major advantage of multicellularity is functional specialisation through differentiation - cells becoming specialised for certain roles makes for more efficiency overall.

Here's a hypothetical: suppose a cell in the clump of cells has a mutation that causes it to produce a protein that makes food particles stick to its surface, or an enzyme that makes it easier to absorb food particles; that would be an advantage, so that trait would be likely to spread - a clump whose cells all had the new gene would have a huge advantage. Such a clump could absorb more food and grow bigger than the others, but its size would be limited because cells too far from the surface would be starved of energy from nutrients, especially as they would also be expending energy producing this protein that was only effective at the surface.

So there would be a selection pressure for the cells to develop differently at or near the surface vs inside the clump, so the cells inside the clump didn't waste energy producing this protein. Suppose a mechanism evolves (a regulator gene) that can suppress a gene if the concentration of some other chemical in the vicinity is high. Inside the clump, where all the cells are surrounded on all sides by other cells, the concentration of the various chemicals they produce is higher than on the surface, where those chemicals are constantly washed away; so it won't be long (in evolutionary terms) before the novel food gene in the cells inside the clump is suppressed by the regulator gene, which gives them an advantage - more energy, so they can grow larger, or whatever.

Now the inside cells have become functionally different from the surface cells, and this difference continues to increase, as the regulator evolves to become able to effectively switch whole segments of the genome on or off - the outside cells become specialised for food absorption and protection, and the inside cells specialise in converting the nutrients to products that all the cells need. The surface cells stop wasting energy making products the inside cells can make for them, and the inside cells, protected and supplied with nutrients, become increasingly fragile and unable to engulf food for themselves. The two types of cells work together far more effectively than the original single cells, but neither can survive alone.

That is a simple form of stepwise evolution of functionally separate but co-dependent parts.

The gene regulator mechanism which activates or suppresses genes according to chemical gradients that indicate where the cell is in the organism, is a key development - it gets copied, modified, extended, and eventually becomes part of a complex cascade of regulation that controls gene expression to enable the organisms to evolve advantageous shapes by distinguishing axial (anterior-posterior), lateral (left-right), and dorsal-ventral axes, and to produce consistent proximal-distal limb development.

That was just a hypothetical example, far too simple to be real; but it's an echo of what did happen early in evolution - similar gene regulators have been found in all bilaterians, they're known as Hox genes, and they are almost identical in all creatures - there's no significant difference between fruit fly Hox genes and human Hox genes, and if you replace a fly Hox gene with a chicken Hox gene, it will develop normally. Mess with the Hox genes or the chemicals that trigger them, and you'll mess up the creature's body plan, cause it to grow limbs in the wrong place, etc.
 
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Hey hey ...
I write an educational post and get "Hey hey" idiocy and questions.

"One reason that science is highly correct is because scientists are taught to distrust authority and reexamine the evidence." applies to scientists because they are taught and they have the knowledge and expertise to form relevant questions and know the evidence.
The questions from the iconoclast are that he is ignorant about evolution because he does not know about the evidence for evolution. No knowledge and expertise = no ability to form relevant questions and know the evidence.
That scientists are taught to question is not applicable to the iconoclast since that is more a post-graduate thing.

Cannot understand that "You have not done this" is that he has not done the rather nasty tactic I have seen elsewhere.
Cannot understand the subject of a sentence: "they" is in the context of cranks in other forums.
 
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pitabread

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since ic systems exist in both living and non-living things- you are wrong.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that living and non-living objects are defined differently. You still need to learn the difference, because it is something you continue to struggle with in these discussions.

If you're trying to make an argument about non-living things there is no reason to assume that the same argument equally applies to living things. Your attempts to do so on this forum are just an example of the False Equivalence Fallacy. Which is something else you continue to struggle with.
 
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dad

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I don't think you know what "etymological basis" means.
Then tell us, if the dictionary meaning doesn't apply.
et·y·mo·log·i·cal
/ˌedəməˈläjəkəl/
adjective
  1. relating to the origin and historical development of words and their meanings.
 
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