Evolution Demonstrated In A Laboratory

[Elixir]

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.

Hardly a useful one. ‘As long as Precambrian remnants exist and people are examining them’, is a long time to wait for validation. Proving negatives is a difficult business under any circumstances.

 

[Bomb#20]

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.

Hardly a useful one. ‘As long as Precambrian remnants exist and people are examining them’, is a long time to wait for validation. Proving negatives is a difficult business under any circumstances.

True that. Haldane's point was to show that evolution is a formally falsifiable theory, not to show how to use it as a practical tool for figuring out what we're actually wondering about the future. "Are we going to find rabbits in precambrian rock?" stopped being an interesting question about a hundred and fifty years ago.

 

[Elixir]

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.

Hardly a useful one. ‘As long as Precambrian remnants exist and people are examining them’, is a long time to wait for validation. Proving negatives is a difficult business under any circumstances.

True that. Haldane's point was to show that evolution is a formally falsifiable theory, not to show how to use it as a practical tool for figuring out what we're actually wondering about the future. "Are we going to find rabbits in precambrian rock?" stopped being an interesting question about a hundred and fifty years ago.

Yeah, somewhere along the line crockoducks displaced Cambrian rabbits in the creationist hierarchy of “scientific doubts about evolution”. I kinda miss those Cambrian rabbits, though crockoducks would be equally disprobative.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Meanwhile, back in the lab.....

....
Scientists predict that sponges—among the most basic animals—arose a few hundred million years before the occurrence of the oldest confirmed fossil specimens, which date to about 500 million years ago. Now, in a study published today (July 28) in Nature, Elizabeth Turner, a geologist at Laurentian University in Canada, identified structures in 890-million-year-old fossils of organisms similar to modern bath sponges, potentially pushing back the emergence of the animals to at least that long ago.
......

Multicelled animals seem to go back 890 million years. No crockoducks though.

890-Million-Year-Old Fossils Are Sponges, Oldest Animals: Study

If confirmed, the findings indicate that animals appeared on Earth millions of years earlier than previously believed.

www.the-scientist.com

 

[steve_bank]

It would seem that the archeological record as it is is a problem for biblical creationist.

It does not seem likely any humans as we are today could have survived among the ancient critters. We'd be a lite snack, snacks on a toothpick at a party.

Even without science evolution is a logical conclusion.

 

[Bomb#20]

True that. Haldane's point was to show that evolution is a formally falsifiable theory, not to show how to use it as a practical tool for figuring out what we're actually wondering about the future. "Are we going to find rabbits in precambrian rock?" stopped being an interesting question about a hundred and fifty years ago.

Yeah, somewhere along the line crockoducks displaced Cambrian rabbits in the creationist hierarchy of “scientific doubts about evolution”. I kinda miss those Cambrian rabbits, though crockoducks would be equally disprobative.

Crockoduck? I guess that would be this guy...

Lagosuchus talampayensis

By José Carlos Cortés Etymology: Rabbit Crocodile First Described By: Romer, 1971 Classification: Dinosauromorpha Status: Extinct Time and Place: About 238 million years ago, in the Ladinian age...

a-dinosaur-a-day.com

It was one of the last intermediate forms on the way to dinosaurs, from the crocodile-like reptiles they evolved from.

(Or maybe it looked more like this:

It's hard to be sure from bones.)

 

[bilby]

Meanwhile, back in the lab.....

....
Scientists predict that sponges—among the most basic animals—arose a few hundred million years before the occurrence of the oldest confirmed fossil specimens, which date to about 500 million years ago. Now, in a study published today (July 28) in Nature, Elizabeth Turner, a geologist at Laurentian University in Canada, identified structures in 890-million-year-old fossils of organisms similar to modern bath sponges, potentially pushing back the emergence of the animals to at least that long ago.
......

Multicelled animals seem to go back 890 million years. No crockoducks though.

890-Million-Year-Old Fossils Are Sponges, Oldest Animals: Study

If confirmed, the findings indicate that animals appeared on Earth millions of years earlier than previously believed.

www.the-scientist.com

Well obviously they had sponges back then. They would have needed them in case they spilled their primordial soup.

 

[Elixir]

Crockoduck? I guess that would be this guy...

Lagosuchus talampayensis

By José Carlos Cortés Etymology: Rabbit Crocodile First Described By: Romer, 1971 Classification: Dinosauromorpha Status: Extinct Time and Place: About 238 million years ago, in the Ladinian age...

a-dinosaur-a-day.com

Nah. The one the creos demand “before I’ll believe evolution” looks like this:

 

[Learner]

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.

Why are bringing up more debunked complaints?

Missed asking..
...what was debunked ?

The "impossibility" of soft tissue "preservation" over millions of years.

Absolutely!

Briefly.
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.

So only the bones without soft tissue (almost all of them?) are millions of years old. Understood. Thanks for clearing that up.

Let me clear it up a bit more (I admit the post was a bit messy) II acknowledged him coming to the very particular part I was focusing on, hitting the mark, so to speak when he 'mentioned the impossibility on the 'soft tissue preservation' [...]. That's why I said absolutely when I asked what was debunked... he had got it, what it was I was underlining.

You didn't remotely answer my question.

I was dealing with two conversations in the above and you didn't actually ask a question, you merely 'understood' some 'statement line' that you apparently got from my post to Elixr.

But regarding the bones without soft tissue, that was understood to be millions of years old - Yes that was the case previous to Dr. Scweitzers experiments. She got quite a bit of flak for those experiments because soft tissue in fossils was inconceivable at the time. What has happened when experiments like hers got accepted.? Major (biased) recalibrations.

 

[Elixir]

regarding the bones without soft tissue, that was understood to be millions of years old - Yes that was the case previous to Dr. Scweitzers experiments. She got quite a bit of flak for those experiments because soft tissue in fossils was inconceivable at the time. What has happened when experiments like hers got accepted.? Major (biased) recalibrations.

Nope. That is the ignorant creo version of events. Ask Ms Schweitzer and the others DIRECTLY INVOLVED and you would learn (if you didn’t refuse to learn, as is your habit) that once the protein particles (not “soft tissue” in any conventional sense) were seen, they examined the conditions and made a discovery about the preservation of proteins in an environment rich in ferrous nano particulates. That discovery explained why they observed what they did in samples that were millions of years old. No recalibrations whatsoever, biased or otherwise.
God must be very dismayed with your dissemination of falsehoods!

 

[pood]

Looks like ”Learner” decided not to answer my question, but I think I have my answer now anyway.

 

[Learner]

It may not be the right answer. How long have you been waiting for?

 

[Elixir]

It may not be the right answer. How long have you been waiting for?

WHAT may not be the right answer to WHAT?
How long has WHO been waiting for WHAT? Are you waging a war against clarity?

Do you have anything other than waffling about your own doubts that science is right?

 

[Learner]

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.

Cheers pood for the question, I do believe in evolution in the sense that the processes of nature being systematically predictable & mechanical, is automation, so to speak. A different concept to the one that people sometimes try to suggest: i.e. "God and the angels pushing levers and are pulling strings in every aspect of our lives etc - and therefore "If you can't see strings being pulled by God in lab experiments then it can't be true, nor is God necessary".

 

[Elixir]

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.

Cheers pood for the brief question, I do believe in evolution in the sense that the processes of nature are systematically predictable & mechanical, on automation so to speak. A different concept to the one that people sometimes try to suggest: i.e. "God and the angels pushing levers and are pull strings in every aspect of our lives etc_ - "If you can't see strings being pulled then God isn't true nor necessary and so on.

Actually “Learner” nature is so chaotic that it is unpredictable except in very limited circumstances to very limited degrees. It is so unpredictable in the solutions its organisms on earth develop to solve problems, that it could appear to be magic. Or god.

 

[steve_bank]

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.

Cheers pood for the question, I do believe in evolution in the sense that the processes of nature being systematically predictable & mechanical, is automation, so to speak. A different concept to the one that people sometimes try to suggest: i.e. "God and the angels pushing levers and are pulling strings in every aspect of our lives etc - and therefore "If you can't see strings being pulled by God in lab experiments then it can't be true, nor is God necessary".

Parting asea to save the Jews, killing all life with a flood, Joshua blowing down the walls of an enemy are pretty big strings meddling with humans.

According to Joshua 6:1–27, the walls of Jericho fell after the Israelites marched around the city walls once a day for six days, seven times on the seventh day, and then blew their horns.

The biggest string of all is god impregnating a human woman giving birth to a son predestined to be tortured and executed to change the coarse of history.

A common thread in Christianity is the judgement, god knows and watches all and in the end yiu stand before god.

In the derived biblical time frame given humans bottle necked genetically through the ark with a handful of Jews you are hard pressed to explain all the human diversity today, and how it could have arisen so quickly post flood without an evolutionary process.

Same for the overall biodiversity.

 

[Learner]

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.

Cheers pood for the brief question, I do believe in evolution in the sense that the processes of nature are systematically predictable & mechanical, on automation so to speak. A different concept to the one that people sometimes try to suggest: i.e. "God and the angels pushing levers and are pull strings in every aspect of our lives etc_ - "If you can't see strings being pulled then God isn't true nor necessary and so on.

Actually “Learner” nature is so chaotic that it is unpredictable except in very limited circumstances to very limited degrees. It is so unpredictable in the solutions its organisms on earth develop to solve problems, that it could appear to be magic. Or god.

Pardon me, I mean predictable things in the 'natural world' like the obvious, such as people setting their charts and tables to, from continuous repeatable observations and results- as reference guides. Understanding enough of the universe 'so far' to work out 'all' sorts of formulas as one would expect for repeatable results etc. & etc..

 

[steve_bank]

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.

Cheers pood for the brief question, I do believe in evolution in the sense that the processes of nature are systematically predictable & mechanical, on automation so to speak. A different concept to the one that people sometimes try to suggest: i.e. "God and the angels pushing levers and are pull strings in every aspect of our lives etc_ - "If you can't see strings being pulled then God isn't true nor necessary and so on.

Actually “Learner” nature is so chaotic that it is unpredictable except in very limited circumstances to very limited degrees. It is so unpredictable in the solutions its organisms on earth develop to solve problems, that it could appear to be magic. Or god.

Pardon me, I mean predictable things in the 'natural world' like the obvious, such as people setting their charts and tables to, from continuous repeatable observations and results- as reference guides. Understanding enough of the universe 'so far' to work out 'all' sorts of formulas as one would expect for repeatable results etc. & etc..

The top level category of systems is chaotic. Causality rules in chaotic systems, but long term results based on current observation are unpredictable. Variables can bot be defined well enough.

Weather is a good example of chaotic systems. Computer modeling is good at accuratly predicting a weeks worth of temperatures and rainfall locally, but not 12 monhs or even 2 monts is impossible.

Under chaotic there are deterministic and probabilistic systems.

Deterministic is when you plug variables into a function and get a direct answer. For example if you drive at a constant speed for 1 hour at 1 km/hour you will have gone 1km.

Probabilistic is flipping a coin. For a toss there is no way to know if it will be heads or tails, but we know the average will be 50/50.

 

[Elixir]

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.

Cheers pood for the brief question, I do believe in evolution in the sense that the processes of nature are systematically predictable & mechanical, on automation so to speak. A different concept to the one that people sometimes try to suggest: i.e. "God and the angels pushing levers and are pull strings in every aspect of our lives etc_ - "If you can't see strings being pulled then God isn't true nor necessary and so on.

Actually “Learner” nature is so chaotic that it is unpredictable except in very limited circumstances to very limited degrees. It is so unpredictable in the solutions its organisms on earth develop to solve problems, that it could appear to be magic. Or god.

Pardon me, I mean predictable things in the 'natural world' like the obvious, such as people setting their charts and tables to, from continuous repeatable observations and results- as reference guides. Understanding enough of the universe 'so far' to work out 'all' sorts of formulas as one would expect for repeatable results etc. & etc..

The top level category of systems is chaotic. Causality rules in chaotic systems, but long term results based on current observation are unpredictable. Variables can bot be defined well enough.

Weather is a good example of chaotic systems. Computer modeling is good at accuratly predicting a weeks worth of temperatures and rainfall locally, but not 12 monhs or even 2 monts is impossible.

Under chaotic there are deterministic and probabilistic systems.

Deterministic is when you plug variables into a function and get a direct answer. For example if you drive at a constant speed for 1 hour at 1 km/hour you will have gone 1km.

Probabilistic is flipping a coin. For a toss there is no way to know if it will be heads or tails, but we know the average will be 50/50.

Good post.
Religious/superstitious people tend to credit their supreme being or prime cause, for all outcomes that are products of unpredictable, chaotic systems. They only grant science with the ability to “divine” completely deterministic outcomes, and their “god-of-the-gaps” takes care of the rest. YOU might not know whether the next coin flip will come up heads or tails, but their god does. The probabilistic convergence over time that predicts a 50-50 split is “God’s design”.
Very comforting. So much so that they willingly tolerate whatever difficulty arises from their error.

 

[steve_bank]

The last systems book I read put chaotic as the top category and deterministic as a limiting case of chaotic.

Similar principle to Newtonian being a limiting case of relativistic when v << C.

So even if we knew the mechanism of abiogenesis we would not be able to predict how evolution would go.

Small variations in initial conditions lead to wide variations in results over time. We would not be able to mathematically define the initial conditions with enough accuracy.

Plus random events like asteroid strikes.

I looked for it in the past but could not find it.

A simulation was done starting with a simple organism in water with a generic algorithm.

The result in an animation sowed a diversity of critters. Bottom crawlers to swimmers.