Book Recommendation: Proof of Evolution

[Mindlab Expositor]

I know he's respected. I just can't shell out the money right now.

You can listen to Gould for free on YouTube. Gould begins at about 7 min 30 sec.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht4x2-jwMu8[/YOUTUBE]

Cool.

You can tell that guy reads a lot. His hair is great.

 

[fromderinside]

I won't be reading Gould anyway.

That's an odd prejudice.

Why would you not want to know what the leading mind in the field had to say?

He was far more respected than some in this thread comprehend.

Ohcomeonnow! We all comprehend his brilliance. Some just see the political aspects of his thinking which, to them, constitutes a bastardization of the science jaundicing their views on his theories containing such garbage. It's doesn't hurt that most of those who don't adore the pompous ass have a more scientific than political view of evolution theory.

As for evidence. Provide some if you will. I do mean evidence not just so-isms.

Finally. Wow, his primary and explicitly stated credentials are those of an amateur historian and paleontologist. I'd give him more than that. He's also a endearing political apologist and very talented writer and speaker. The 'science' of paleontology doesn't get to the roots of things beyond that of interesting discussion. Now if he were a Nobel Prize winning Physicist and an amateur philosopher ( Percy W. Bridgman) I might give him a bit of credit of knowing scientific method when he writes about such as the philosophy of science. Gould had neither the scientific nor the historical analysis chops to proselytize about punctuated evolution.

Describing historical changes in physical attributes does not make an evolutionary argument if you must know. Neither Gould nor Chomsky, another political sage with whom I have angst, have constructed theories that can meet the test of genetics.

Sure. I'm biased. I really don't think much of scientists who venture into the power aspect of the public square to validate their viewpoints. Consequently I'm a bit down on  Richard Dawkins and  Daniel Dennett with respect to evolutionary theory too. One must inform oneself on what is correct and important in such a evolutionary theory. I choose to rely on the most compact theories that match observation with historical evidence with biology, particularly genetics and physiology, into an overriding theory that stands test in all those fields.

The video? Taking a teachers mechanism for connecting studies, that of relating a back reading of causality as a mechanism for guiding one through a field of study, as a historical summation. No scientist I know understands things that way, yet there he goes using it as a critique of the science itself. Great for history useless for science. Why do you think I focused on Just so. Couldn't be more political.

I was warned away from the temptations of politics and fame by study of such as Lysenko who set back Russian behavioral study 40 years at least using such levers.

 

[untermensche]

That's an odd prejudice.

Why would you not want to know what the leading mind in the field had to say?

He was far more respected than some in this thread comprehend.

Ohcomeonnow! We all comprehend his brilliance. Some just see the political aspects of his thinking which, to them, constitutes a bastardization of the science jaundicing their views on his theories containing such garbage. It's doesn't hurt that most of those who don't adore the pompous ass have a more scientific than political view of evolution theory.

You might give a specific example.

Please provide ONE example of Gould's political thinking and how it bastardized his thinking on Evolutionary Theory.

Just ONE.

As for evidence. Provide some if you will. I do mean evidence not just so-isms.

Evidence of what?

The man was prolific. He wrote a lot. He did hard science with his studies of snails and he wrote a serious and dense text and he wrote many lighter pieces to try to educate ordinary people about the Theory of Evolution.

What more evidence do you need?

Finally. Wow, his primary and explicitly stated credentials are those of an amateur historian and paleontologist.

He taught at Harvard. Hardly an amateur. But maybe you could tell me where the pros teach and do research.

Gould had neither the scientific nor the historical analysis chops to proselytize about punctuated evolution.

It is punctuated equilibrium, and there really aren't any serious criticisms of it that Gould didn't dispel when alive. Yet since he is dead many of these criticisms live as zombies and some that have little knowledge buy into them.

Neither Gould nor Chomsky, another political sage with whom I have angst, have constructed theories that can meet the test of genetics.

I agree in one regard.

Gould and Chomsky do stand on one side and many present day scientists stand on another.

I believe Gould and Chomsky will eventually win out, but I will be long dead before that happens.

 

[Underseer]

Ohcomeonnow! We all comprehend his brilliance. Some just see the political aspects of his thinking which, to them, constitutes a bastardization of the science jaundicing their views on his theories containing such garbage. It's doesn't hurt that most of those who don't adore the pompous ass have a more scientific than political view of evolution theory.

You might give a specific example.

Please provide ONE example of Gould's political thinking and how it bastardized his thinking on Evolutionary Theory.

Just ONE.

As for evidence. Provide some if you will. I do mean evidence not just so-isms.

Evidence of what?

The man was prolific. He wrote a lot. He did hard science with his studies of snails and he wrote a serious and dense text and he wrote many lighter pieces to try to educate ordinary people about the Theory of Evolution.

What more evidence do you need?

Finally. Wow, his primary and explicitly stated credentials are those of an amateur historian and paleontologist.

He taught at Harvard. Hardly an amateur. But maybe you could tell me where the pros teach and do research.

Gould had neither the scientific nor the historical analysis chops to proselytize about punctuated evolution.

It is punctuated equilibrium, and there really aren't any serious criticisms of it that Gould didn't dispel when alive. Yet since he is dead many of these criticisms live as zombies and some that have little knowledge buy into them.

Neither Gould nor Chomsky, another political sage with whom I have angst, have constructed theories that can meet the test of genetics.

I agree in one regard.

Gould and Chomsky do stand on one side and many present day scientists stand on another.

I believe Gould and Chomsky will eventually win out, but I will be long dead before that happens.

Maybe Gould didn't believe in Obama's secret weather weapon? If that doesn't prove that Gould was a liberal extremist and a bad scientist, then I don't know what counts as proof.

 

[Starman]

I was warned away from the temptations of politics and fame by study of such as Lysenko who set back Russian behavioral study 40 years at least using such levers.

I just read a brilliant article comparing Lysenkoism with global warming. Both were promoted by politicians, rather than science.
Stalin would tolerate no dissent from this theory which served his political purposes so well. Likewise the political purposes of worldwide redistribution
in the name of "saving the planet" from "global warming."

On the topic of evolutionary "fact, fact, fact," in the words of Richard Dawkins, if in "fact" evolution is so demonstrably and absolutely factual, then why have its proponents been so reprehensibly dishonest for over a century, including to this very day?

Dawkins is lauded here for his brilliance, and his book, The Blind Watchmaker, is cited as excellent reading. Not so much.

page 21: “The living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the APPEARANCE OF DESIGN . . . the ILLUSION OF DESIGN AND PLANNING.”

Most things which have been designed, such as houses, cars, and computers, would have the "appearance of design," wouldn't they.
This is logically because they were in fact designed. Wordplay is a poor substitute for logical and rational thinking. 2001, a Space Odyssey, was a very popular movie. Everyone who saw it presumed that the single granite obelisk found on the moon was conclusive proof of some intelligent agent. Not one person anywhere claimed it was "the illusion of design and planning." How much more design is found in the human body than in a tall, smooth rock.

page 37: “Our modern hypothesis (evolution) . . .”

Ah yes, written in 1859. "Modern."

page 41: “Measuring the statistical improbability of a suggestion is the right way to go about assessing its believability. Indeed it is a method that we shall use in this book several times. BUT YOU HAVE TO DO IT RIGHT.”

Dawkins did not "do it right" by any stretch. Examples follow.

page 46: “I don’t know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare.”

One line of 100 characters can be randomly typed on a keyboard of about 50 characters, not even counting case. 1/50 x 1/50 x 1/50... 100 times is far more impossible than Dawkins' own definition of "impossible," viz. 1 chance in 10^40.
Moreover Dawkins' "allows" only events as likely as 1 chance in 10^20th.
Repeating tries forever is not "once chance."

page 315: “Dover’s alleged rival to natural selection could never work, not just never in a million years, but never in a million times longer than the universe has existed, never in a million universes each lasting a million times as long again.”

The reference is one chance in 10 to the 301 power. Human hemoglobin has 528 amino acid sequences. The space (number of possible combinations) of a polypeptide 50 sequences in length is greater than 10^650. If there were 10^10th combinations which work identically (which there are not), then the probability of constructing human hemoglobin is 1 chance in less than 10^640th. This is ridiculously more "impossible" than Dawkins' own definition of "impossible," 1 in 10^40th.

 

[dystopian]

Oh joy, the good old watchmaker's analogy. I didn't think anyone could seriously still use that one today.

 

[Starman]

page 113 of Blind Watchmaker: “Ernst Mayr rather unkindly remarks that Jenkin’s article ‘is based on all the usual prejudices and misunderstandings of the physical scientists’.”

Dawkins, pointing out the "unkindness" of Jenkins? How rich from someone who earned millions of pounds peddling hate and intolerance, such as The God Delusion.

page 139; “Given infinite time or infinite opportunities, anything is possible.”

This is not remotely true. First, there is not "infinite time." There is only 13.8 billion years.
Secondly, there are not infinite opportunities. The universe has only 10^80th fundamental particles.
Third, anything is assuredly not "possible," including examples Dawkins gives of a cow jumping over the moon.

page 146: (Our ‘maximum amount of luck’) is one chance in 10 to the 20th power."
page 160: “ . . .it is possible for a marble statue to wave at us. It could happen....It is theoretically possible for a cow to jump over the moon with something like the same improbability.” (Of 1 chance in 10^301)

After defining "impossible" as 1 chance in 10^40th, he argues the possibility of 1 in 10^301st. This is a book of science?

page 171: “A1>A2. B1>B2"

This is a more sophisticated version of Dawkins' "science" of "A>B>C>D".
It is mere alphabeticization, not science.

page 215 (evolution is "explosive")
page 271 (evolution is "constant")

"There's something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact." - Mark Twain

page 230: Evolutionists “despise so-called scientific creationists”.

page 251: "redneck creationists"

page 316: "Naive Bible-thumper"

What was that about the "unkindness of Jenkins"?

Hatred compounded by ignorance and nonsense. Richard Dawkins.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I was warned away from the temptations of politics and fame by study of such as Lysenko who set back Russian behavioral study 40 years at least using such levers.

I just read a brilliant article comparing Lysenkoism with global warming. Both were promoted by politicians, rather than science.

1984.

It's the scientists that are promoting global warming, the politicians are denying it.

On the topic of evolutionary "fact, fact, fact," in the words of Richard Dawkins, if in "fact" evolution is so demonstrably and absolutely factual, then why have its proponents been so reprehensibly dishonest for over a century, including to this very day?

You don't understand what you are arguing.

page 21: “The living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the APPEARANCE OF DESIGN . . . the ILLUSION OF DESIGN AND PLANNING.”

Most things which have been designed, such as houses, cars, and computers, would have the "appearance of design," wouldn't they.
This is logically because they were in fact designed. Wordplay is a poor substitute for logical and rational thinking. 2001, a Space Odyssey, was a very popular movie. Everyone who saw it presumed that the single granite obelisk found on the moon was conclusive proof of some intelligent agent. Not one person anywhere claimed it was "the illusion of design and planning." How much more design is found in the human body than in a tall, smooth rock.

So would things like a snowflake.

page 37: “Our modern hypothesis (evolution) . . .”

Ah yes, written in 1859. "Modern."

Compared to pre-Darwin times it is.

The reference is one chance in 10 to the 301 power. Human hemoglobin has 528 amino acid sequences. The space (number of possible combinations) of a polypeptide 50 sequences in length is greater than 10^650. If there were 10^10th combinations which work identically (which there are not), then the probability of constructing human hemoglobin is 1 chance in less than 10^640th. This is ridiculously more "impossible" than Dawkins' own definition of "impossible," 1 in 10^40th.

A standard deception of the anti-evolutionists. Yeah, the odds of randomly creating something like human hemoglobin is beyond any reasonable chance. The problem with this argument is that such things don't need to be created from scratch in one step.

You're repeating standard arguments that have long been refuted.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Most things which have been designed, such as houses, cars, and computers, would have the "appearance of design," wouldn't they.
This is logically because they were in fact designed.

But a well-designed golf course, or garden, or back-yard pond may NOT have the appearance of design, if a lot of effort were put into making it seem natural in origin.
And people detect things in Rorschach blots that were not put there.
So our subjective evaluation of design is not something that can be reliably used to detect the act of designing a product.

That's what Dawkins was talking about.
No word game. Just the fact that we humans tend to assign agency, to see patterns, to 'detect design' where there may not be one.

 

[ApostateAbe]

Please recommend a book that offers the best evidence for evolution.

Thanks.

My recommendation is not a book but TalkOrigin.org's 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. It is not just a case for the skeptics but also a great primer on evolutionary theory. The web format means being able to easily search and focus and follow links and so on.

 

[untermensche]

The reference is one chance in 10 to the 301 power. Human hemoglobin has 528 amino acid sequences. The space (number of possible combinations) of a polypeptide 50 sequences in length is greater than 10^650. If there were 10^10th combinations which work identically (which there are not), then the probability of constructing human hemoglobin is 1 chance in less than 10^640th. This is ridiculously more "impossible" than Dawkins' own definition of "impossible," 1 in 10^40th.

These odds are complete fabrications.

Molecules do not form based on odds. They form based on electrical properties and surrounding conditions, like pH.

 

[Kharakov]

What are the odds that the kinetic energy that is present in a water molecule in your blood would travel and be exchanged by matter/gluons throughout the history of the universe and specifically cause part of the motion of the water molecule in your blood at this point in time?

Pretty fucking small. This energy has been present since the beginning of time, moving around, being exchanged, traveling through spacetime, jiggling, being emitted by fusion, being passed by other jiggles.....

The amount of data to track the exact energy? Astronomical..

 

[Starman]

The reference is one chance in 10 to the 301 power. Human hemoglobin has 528 amino acid sequences. The space (number of possible combinations) of a polypeptide 50 sequences in length is greater than 10^650. If there were 10^10th combinations which work identically (which there are not), then the probability of constructing human hemoglobin is 1 chance in less than 10^640th. This is ridiculously more "impossible" than Dawkins' own definition of "impossible," 1 in 10^40th.

These odds are complete fabrications.

Molecules do not form based on odds. They form based on electrical properties and surrounding conditions, like pH.

Polypeptides consist of long chains of amino acids which combine in a very precise sequence. Now if one or two of these amino acids is more likely to form the sequence than any of the others, based as you say on its "electrical properties and surrounding conditions," then it would be the only link in the sequences. This is never ever the case. All twenty are of approximately equal likelihood to be added at any given time. Which of the 20 is next is a matter of 1 chance in 20, or probability.

Your denial is inconsequential to reality.

 

[untermensche]

These odds are complete fabrications.

Molecules do not form based on odds. They form based on electrical properties and surrounding conditions, like pH.

Polypeptides consist of long chains of amino acids which combine in a very precise sequence.

Yes, thus the word "poly".

Now if one or two of these amino acids is more likely to form the sequence than any of the others, based as you say on its "electrical properties and surrounding conditions," then it would be the only link in the sequences.

No, this does not follow.

This is never ever the case.

Because it does not follow from anything.

All twenty are of approximately equal likelihood to be added at any given time.

Nonsense.

Which of the 20 is next is a matter of 1 chance in 20, or probability.

Again, complete nonsense pulled from thin air.

Your denial is inconsequential to reality.

You haven't demonstrated the right to pass judgements about "reality".