Evolution Demonstrated In A Laboratory

[Learner]

Yeah there's a verse somewhere about people professing to be wise, but turn out to be fools.

Yeah trying to feed you the truth could be considered a “tactic”. And calling it a tactic is probably a requirement for a person trying to deny the truth.
You don’t need to object so strenuously to the facts that are brought up here; the invincibility of your ignorance is not being contested.

But I have no issues with your impressive demonstrations and non either with our friend Dr. Schweitzer. Are we playing with straw again Elixir?

 

[Elixir]

I’m sure that any “issues” you have are entirely unrelated to the gulf between your superstitious beliefs and reality.

 

[pood]

Learner, your posts are pretty long, and honestly, I’m not getting what your problem is with evolution, if any. I see you state your basic beliefs as “Christ & common sense,“ yet I believe you’ve stated that plenty of theists accept evolution, which is true and a good thing. Do you accept evolution? If so, what is the argument going on here? If not, precisely what is it you do not accept, and why? Brevity and clarity would be appreciated.

 

[bilby]

Brevity and clarity would be appreciated.

Brevity and clarity would be astonishing.

 

[Elixir]

Learner, your posts are pretty long, and honestly, I’m not getting what your problem is with evolution, if any.

For the sake of trying to elicit the brief and concise response you request, I’ll offer a conjecture:
Learner wishes to preserve his view of a book as divine and infallible. That’s harder if the earth is ancient and evolution gave rise to humans.

Do you accept evolution? If so, what is the argument going on here?

More conjecture: like many creationists, Learner will profess to “believe in” evolution as an abstraction. But will not concede that it is a process gave rise to HSS and the rest of earth’s biodiversity without “divine” assistance.

 

[EricH]

Eric, that's fine, be blunt. I think for some, being blunt is expressing what one would like to think of another; being a preferred 'characterisation' of a person, who's being portrayed seemingly by a "fair" opinion presentation, which wouldn't really be quite an honest one.. This type of "bluntness" is not unusual.

I apologize for being blunt. It is almost never a good idea to to be rude as it is not conducive to a meaningful discussion. Lets move on. I am going to take one more shot at explaining why I feel the way I do, because I believe that you still don't understand my point.

SNAP! Baffling is mutual. What I find baffling is the insistent attempt to purposely distort my view on Schwetizer and her findings (oops, yes misspelling her name first time automatically stuck with me). like it is with one or two of you, this is pure classic straw-manning! Other than that this should confidently be a breeze for your responding argument, which uncannily is a response "to a non-existent argument" I never made. Such confidence should provide you (plural) the ability to underline, highlight or quote where it is, in any post, showing me arrogantly and boldly, disagreeing with Schweitzer.

Okay, lets do that. Lets track the history of our conversation to see how we got here. Lets point out things you wrote to highlight what you were trying to say. Its hard to tell what you mean sometimes as your posts are often rambling and incoherent, but you probably can't change that at this point, so we will not linger.

We were talking about fossils and you stated that there were issues with the fossil record. I asked you to clarify so we could discuss. I know a lot about fossils, and this is a subject close to my heart. This is my post:

Hi Learner. Sounds like you know what you are talking about. Can you cite a few of the known issues with the fossil record so we can discuss?

You specifically talked about a finding where soft tissue structure was found in the femur bone fragments of a T rex dinosaur. This is what you said:

Hi Eric,

I remember there were certain discoveries and experiments that's all. I got to go through old notes (better discussing via desktop- edited this post 7 times). Not going to give much on the top of my head, there were dating issues some years back, with fossil examinations, for example..finding soft tissue in dinosaur bones after the process of dissolving the minerals within the bones.

You claimed there were dating issues with the remains. You further went on to assert that this finding apparently called into question the age of the fossil. Your words:

The debunk isn't where you would logically conceive and expect it to be. The experiments were done! The logical thought of the observation: If it IS the case that soft tissue is found in the experiment...then the age of these particular bones thought to be 'millions of years old' may not be correct.

Next I asked you if you had read the research papers. I was familiar with this find and had been following the story, so I knew the age of the fossil was never in question as you had asserted. So I wanted to find out if you were familiar with the literature and the current consensus on the find.

Hi. I don't understand why you are not able make a cohesive argument to support your assertion that the fossil record "has issues". What was the issue with the so called soft tissue discovered under a SEM in a bone believed to be many millions of years old? Have you read the original paper, the peer reviews and further work that developed upon this finding? What is the scientific consensus on this finding today?

You said yes, you had read the papers. Which would suggest that you knew about the research, and you knew that the age of the bones had never had been in question, except perhaps in the minds of dishonest creationists. This is where you replied, and your statement is hard to misinterpret.

After-the-fact, well yes, naturally indeed!

So you had read the papers.

So lets get back o your subsequent response, and your outrage at being called out for propagating a lie.

SNAP! Baffling is mutual. What I find baffling is the insistent attempt to purposely distort my view on Schwetizer and her findings (oops, yes misspelling her name first time automatically stuck with me). like it is with one or two of you, this is pure classic straw-manning! Other than that this should confidently be a breeze for your responding argument, which uncannily is a response "to a non-existent argument" I never made. Such confidence should provide you (plural) the ability to underline, highlight or quote where it is, in any post, showing me arrogantly and boldly, disagreeing with Schweitzer.

You had told us that you had read the papers, but you were also telling us that the age of the bones was in question. This is a contradiction, as I have pointed out earlier. There are three potential explanations I can think of as to why you would falsely assert that the age of the bones was in question:

1. You had lied when you stated you had read the papers and were familiar with the scientific consensus.
2. You had read the papers but did not actually understand what was being said.
3. You had read the papers and were familiar with the consensus, but chose to lie in order to deliberately propagate an untruth.

I said that I thought option 2 was more likely, which would explain why I believed your behavior was foolish (you couldn't read plain English and were pretending to have knowledge that you did not have). Was I wrong? If I was wrong, please explain why.

As I said, I would need to revise (and refresh) a little, on a few things especially on Schweitzers current position, just in case it changed from her previous position (the change from the time when I was into all this some years ago,, plus other interesting discoveries and studies etc.). I've mentioned Schweitzer once or twice on the forum a few years ago (with the correct spelling). The link that you kindly provided, ' she concluded' or asking about the original paper is a misplaced in the way you're using it. - it's very useful information but
again... you're trying to address a non-existent argument.

Dr. Schweitzer's position, and that of her fellow investigators, has never been that the bones were dated incorrectly. This is clearly stated in their work, from the very beginning. They initially suspected, and then went on to rule out external biological contamination as an explanation for their find. They also conducted very dense research into the chemistry and environment of the bones and concluded that the combination of the chemistry in the bone and the thick bone layer surrounding the blood vessels protected some of the cells from being fully mineralized during fossilization, and the vessels and some of the erythrocytes were able to preserve part of their external structure without getting totally replaced with external minerals during the tens of millions of years that the bones remained buried in the rock.

Do you understand me now? Do you still assert that this find gives rise to questions about the dating methods or that the date of this fossil and millions of others are in question because of this find, as you had originally implied?

Also wanted to ask: does my post meet the brevity and clarity standards being discussed? Is it hard to understand? I ask because I feel that I am not getting through to Learner, and I want to change that.

 

[pood]

Clarity is fine, don’t worry about brevity. I think Learner has has lacked both brevity and clarity, but if there‘s a choice I’ll take clarity from him.

 

[pood]

More conjecture: like many creationists, Learner will profess to “believe in” evolution as an abstraction. But will not concede that it is a process gave rise to HSS and the rest of earth’s biodiversity without “divine” assistance.

Would that be correct, Learner?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Genesis 1 and 2 present us with two contradictory creation tall tales. Obviously Genesis is not true, useful, or divinely inspired by God. So right there we can see creationism is not true. As this thread started, science created a crippled micro organism, barely viable and living, and it evolved over 300 days into a robust organism.
Hard evidence evolution exists and works. Once simple organisms long ago made it over a certain level of viability, evolution likewise would have rapidly become a major factor for life. This idea is now no longer speculation.

 

[Elixir]

This idea is now no longer speculation.

Nope. Goddidit. He interfered with the experiment to tempt you*.

* (He's famous for that.)

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Yes, God in his infinite wisdom guides evolution. Flowers, puppies, kittens and cute little baby bunnies. God's plans are so wonderful!

But guinea worms, cholera bacteria, awful parasites, diseases, dangerous bacteria.
What was God thinking of here!? See the blog site Parasite Of The Day for a catalogue of horrors.

 

[pood]

“Divine assistance” is what Behe espouses, but he avoids those words, preferring the mostly anodyne “intelligent design,” even though everyone knows what he and his confederates mean. Behe, after all, is a Catholic.

It’s strange, this divine assistance intelligent design of Behe’s. He accepts evolution, he says, but there are certain things that evolution can’t explain, like the flagellum.

The flagellum, he tells us, is “irreducibly complex” and can’t evolve, even though it can, but never mind — suppose he’s right. What kind of divine assistance intelligent design is this?

God, Jesus, and the Hoy Ghost are watching real-time video of evolution proceeding along just fine, but wait, there’s a problem. The bacteria can’t seem to evolve a way to move around efficiently. This is a big problem, because bacteria are at the root of everything. If the bacteria can’t move around nicely everything might go to smash.

“I don’t get it,” God tells Jesus. “I put you in charge of the whole shebang, and you told me evolution would work just fine. You told me there was ‘grandeur in this view of life,’ that ‘from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.’”

“I think you’re mixing me up with someone else, Father,” a morose Jesus grumbles. “I never said that.”

“Don’t contradict your father, Jesus,” God snaps at him. “I’m infallible. You know that.”

Jesus covertly rolls his eyes. “Fine, father. Whatever you say. You know best. You’re right. You’re always right.” Inwardly, the Son of God is seething.

“Why don’t you put me in charge of evolution?” the Holy Ghost asks God.

“Be quiet, Holy Ghost. “This is between me and my son.”

“Your son! Your son! Your son always comes first. He was always your favorite. You always liked him better than me. But I can do stuff too, if you give me half a chance. After all, aren’t we a triune God? Aren’t we supposed to be co-equal?”

“Your job is to guide people in their decisions and protect them from physical and spiritual dangers, when and IF people ever evolve. Now be quiet. This is between me and Jesus. Unless we can find a way to get those motherfucking bacteria moving their asses, we may not even get to the Great Oxygen Catastrophe, much less to tool-making apes.”

“Jesus was always your favorite,” the Holy Ghost pouts. “You always liked him better than me.”

“What about it, Jesus?” God demands. “Unless we fix this glitch, your whole ‘let them evolve’ schtick is shot to shit, as opposed to my idea to create each of them according to their own kind out of nothing, as well as wrap up the whole beginning of the world in six days so on the seventh day I could kick back and watch the Yankees on the tube. But things aren’t shaking down the way you promised, son. Your evolution is looking like a bust.”

“No way!” Jesus responds.

“Yahweh,” Father says.

“Fine, Father,” Jesus says. ”I’ll get to work on it.”

And Jesus goes to his workshop and builds flagella which he personally attaches to the asses of all the bacteria that need them so they can scoot about a bit.

Is this how it’s supposed to work, this divine assistance intelligent design? If so, doesn’t that make the Holy Trinity look like Keystone Kops?

 

[Elixir]

FWIW, I don’t blame Behe for putting forth his irreducible complexity bullshit. I blame him for continuing to peddle it after it was proven wrong. That’s just scumbaggery, and so called Christians refuse to call him out on it.

 

[hyzer]

FWIW, I don’t blame Behe for putting forth his irreducible complexity bullshit. I blame him for continuing to peddle it after it was proven wrong. That’s just scumbaggery, and so called Christians refuse to call him out on it.

One of my favorite reads was the transcripts from Dover. The destruction of the Discovery Institute (and Behe in particular) was so complete that anyone with any integrity would have folded up shop and never mentioned it again.

 

[steve_bank]

I haven't looked at it in years. The Discovery Institute now calls itself a 'public policy think tank'.

The target audience for the Discovery Institute is not educated thinkers. It is the bible quoting book buying Christians.

If you have not seen it. It was always very slick, made to look like a government-science site. Looks lkie they expanded it. ID used be at the top page.

Discovery Institute

A public policy think tank advancing a culture of purpose, creativity, and innovation.

www.discovery.org

 

[Bomb#20]

That’s why the theory of evolution only explains observations. It does not predict outcomes other than change...

Sure it does. As Haldane famously pointed out, it predicts that if you go fossil hunting in Precambrian rock, the outcome will not be you finding a fossil rabbit.

That’s not a prediction of evolutionary theory, it’s a retrodiction.

Not according to Wikipedia.

"A retrodiction occurs when already gathered data is accounted for by a later theoretical advance in a more convincing fashion. ... An example of a retrodiction is the perihelion shift of Mercury which Newtonian mechanics plus gravity was unable, totally, to account for whilst Einstein's general relativity made short work of it."​

The relevant time making a -diction pre- or retro- is the time when the data is gathered, i.e. when the observation is made, not the time when the universe created the objects that would eventually be harvested for data. Einstein's general relativity not only retrodicted Mercury's orbit, but also predicted the existence of black holes and gravity waves, even though every black hole and gravity wave that we've ever observed already existed when Einstein came up with his theory. The critical point is that we had not yet observed them when the predictions were made.

This is the time difference that makes prediction better than retrodiction for testing theories. A successful prediction provides stronger support for a theory because we can ask "If the theory is wrong, how did we know what would happen?" With a retrodiction that question doesn't arise -- we knew what would happen because we'd already observed it. The time when the fossils/black holes/gravity waves were laid down is beside the point.

 

[Bomb#20]

That’s why the theory of evolution only explains observations. It does not predict outcomes other than change...

Sure it does. As Haldane famously pointed out, it predicts that if you go fossil hunting in Precambrian rock, the outcome will not be you finding a fossil rabbit.

That’s not an evolutionary outcome. Sorry I was imprecise.

No worries. I was assuming the point of predicting outcomes was for the sake of demonstrating evolutionary theory is correct, in line with the thread topic -- my bad. If you're interested in predicting future evolutionary outcomes for their own sake, the answer is a little different.

That’s why the theory of evolution only explains observations. It does not predict outcomes other than change...

Sure it does. Peter and Rosemary Grant spent almost forty seasons on a Galapagos island making quantitative anatomical measurements of Darwin's finches. They showed you can observe the weather this year, deduce the availability of different kinds of plant seeds next year, and predict the direction of evolutionary change in the native bird population two years from now. Wet weather now, softer seeds next year, smaller beaks in two years. Dry weather now, harder seeds next year, bigger beaks in two years.

 

[Elixir]

They showed you can observe the weather this year, deduce the availability of different kinds of plant seeds next year, and predict the direction of evolutionary change in the native bird population two years from now. Wet weather now, softer seeds next year, smaller beaks in two years. Dry weather now, harder seeds next year, bigger beaks in two years.

Yeah, some specific morphology may be predicteed as very likely to emerge under prescribed circumstances, and ToE does have both predictive and explanatory power, but satisfaction of creationist demands for jackalopes and crocoducks can't be predicted or ruled out by applying ToE to observations, other than to say they're a long way off. There are so many variables in a given organism, let alone an entire ecosystem, as to overwhelm our ability to catalog them in short order, even if we could identify them all. Evolutionary biologists I have encountered spend most of their study on existing biota and their interrelationships.
(Also, correlating seed abundance with beak length and such doesn't require ToE)

 

[pood]

That’s why the theory of evolution only explains observations. It does not predict outcomes other than change...

Sure it does. As Haldane famously pointed out, it predicts that if you go fossil hunting in Precambrian rock, the outcome will not be you finding a fossil rabbit.

That’s not a prediction of evolutionary theory, it’s a retrodiction.

Not according to Wikipedia.

"A retrodiction occurs when already gathered data is accounted for by a later theoretical advance in a more convincing fashion. ... An example of a retrodiction is the perihelion shift of Mercury which Newtonian mechanics plus gravity was unable, totally, to account for whilst Einstein's general relativity made short work of it."​

Note, howeer, that Wikipedia lists several examples of retrodiction. The quoted one is from a single individual giving his own take on retrodiction, or postdiction.

The next paragraph outlines a definition of retrodiction more in line with evolutionary biology, and even includes that field among those that use this form of retrodiction. I’d still say that strictly the statement that you will not find a fossil rabbit in Precambrian rock is a retrodiction in that it is a prediction about the past. However, not much turns on this distinction, if there is one. “Prediction about the past” is just fine.

 

[pood]

Thinking it over, I think “finding no rabbit fossil in the Precambrian“ cannot be a retrodiction under any sense of the term. It’s because it’s a prediction about something that will happen in the future — namely, not finding such a fossil no matter how many years in the future we dig for one. So, yeah, it’s straight up a prediction.