Fred Reed on Evolution

[braces_for_impact]

So when Redi set up his famous scientific experiment proving that maggots came from eggs laid by flies and that they were not spontaneously generated from rotting meat, he really didn't prove anything?

but you can't prove evolution

Not even if I produced life in a test tube and got it to evolve?

Again, and again and again. Abiogenesis is not proof of evolution. Even so, we've evolved various organisms in and out of test tubes hundreds of thousands of times. Yet some still don't recognize this as "proof". Regardless of the organisms characteristics, they simply say "Oh, that's still yeast" or "still a paramecium" or what have you. Any gap in knowledge will be seized upon - never mind the fact that those gaps where their god acts and hides and issues edicts becomes smaller and smaller year after year. Never mind that they themselves have no theory, nothing testable, nothing with predictive value, nothing falsifiable. They'll just keep pointing fingers, using a lack of imagination, and misunderstanding the very theory they criticize all the while that theory is tested, makes predictions, gets refined, and continues to be useful day after day.

They're not interested in evidence. How many times have so many caught them lying to their followers? How many times have they been demonstrated quoting out of context dishonestly? Attempting to set up diploma mills, put their own journals together so they ca have "peer review", edit media dishonestly, etc? If you have evidence, if you're interested in truth, you don't require these techniques, and you don't excuse them.

 

[Oecolampadius]

No one has yet walked me through the process that would have caused these creatures to begin grabbing mosquitoes and laying eggs on them in the first place.

Do you imagine they just started laying eggs on mosquitoes at some point and it was a mutation that made them start doing that?

What else might have conceivably induced them to start doing it? But it is just not grabbing a mosquito and laying eggs on it, it is doing it without crippling the mosquito. The Wikipedia article on the bot fly notes that one species uses the house fly as its vector, carefully turning the fly over after grabbing it so as to be able to lay its eggs on the fly under its wings. Pretty ambitious mutations and selection going on there.

 

[Oecolampadius]

Again, and again and again. Abiogenesis is not proof of evolution.

Please pay close attention to what I said: "Not even if I produced life in a test tube and got it to evolve?" So in this experiment, I not only solve the riddle of the origin of life but actually get it to evolve. And by evolve, I mean become more complex, for example, single cell organisms evolving into multi-cellular organisms.

 

[Oecolampadius]

Yet some still don't recognize this as "proof". Regardless of the organisms characteristics, they simply say "Oh, that's still yeast" or "still a paramecium" or what have you.

Well aren't they right?

 

[braces_for_impact]

Please pay close attention to what I said: "Not even if I produced life in a test tube and got it to evolve?" So in this experiment, I not only solve the riddle of the origin of life but actually get it to evolve. And by evolve, I mean become more complex, for example, single cell organisms evolving into multi-cellular organisms.

I don't think that makes a difference, honestly.

 

[bilby]

Yet some still don't recognize this as "proof". Regardless of the organisms characteristics, they simply say "Oh, that's still yeast" or "still a paramecium" or what have you.

Well aren't they right?

No. They are committing an equivocation fallacy.

- - - Updated - - -

Do you imagine they just started laying eggs on mosquitoes at some point and it was a mutation that made them start doing that?

What else might have conceivably induced them to start doing it? But it is just not grabbing a mosquito and laying eggs on it, it is doing it without crippling the mosquito. The Wikipedia article on the bot fly notes that one species uses the house fly as its vector, carefully turning the fly over after grabbing it so as to be able to lay its eggs on the fly under its wings. Pretty ambitious mutations and selection going on there.

Argument from incredulity is a fallacy too.

 

[bilby]

Again, and again and again. Abiogenesis is not proof of evolution.

Please pay close attention to what I said: "Not even if I produced life in a test tube and got it to evolve?" So in this experiment, I not only solve the riddle of the origin of life but actually get it to evolve. And by evolve, I mean become more complex, for example, single cell organisms evolving into multi-cellular organisms.

The transition from unicellular to multicellular almost certainly took a long time.

You appear to think that it's a single step; but it's not - cells can have a wide range of different levels of cooperation, with unicellular life and fully multicellular life at opposite ends of a spectrum.

Your failure to recognise evolution when you see it is a problem; your failure to grasp what it would look like leads you to mistake an impossible challenge for a reasonable one - but that's not a problem for evolution, it's just a problem for you.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Do you understand, yet, why looking at Reed is a mistake?

Reed--The Prince of Fucking Darkness!

Please pay attention to the actual question being asked... If you could...

 

[Keith&Co.]

So when Redi set up his famous scientific experiment proving that maggots came from eggs laid by flies and that they were not spontaneously generated from rotting meat, he really didn't prove anything?

He DISproved that maggonts are generated by sunlight, but no, science doesn't do 'proof.'

but you can't prove evolution

Not even if I produced life in a test tube

Which is not evolution....

and got it to evolve?

Exactly. Your experiment would add to the observations made about life so far, but you'd still be a step away from 'look, i've proven what happened!" Couple steps, really. And a major misunderstanding of what science is and does.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Pretty ambitious mutations and selection going on there.

Not really. It would have been many mutations over a great many years.
You seem to see it as a Poof! Instant change from one mutation. That's not going to be the model in real research.
Maybe they started with more robust bugs and evolved gentleness that made smaller bugs possible.
Or maybe the bugs they started with evolved to require more gentleness and rewarded the botflies that adapted....

- - - Updated - - -

. And by evolve, I mean become more complex

See, when you say things like this, everyone thinks you're a creationist. Evolution isn't a matter of complexity. Some creatures evolved to be less complex. Snails losing their shell to be slugs for example, or species that lose teeth.

 

[Peez]

That's actually a pretty mundane explanation in the world of evolutionary biology. You could imagine any number of mutations encoding any number of arbitrary behaviors, most leading to the death of the organism, but one giving it a novel way of getting a leg up on the competition--and this one only has to happen once in several million years for it to be preserved, if it actually works.

The sad thing is that he isn't really even trying to understand.

This is my impression. He is being coy about it, acting like the unbiased outsider who has noticed this problem that perhaps all those scientists studying evolution somehow missed. When challenged he demands to know what bias he brings, but continues with convoluted arguments that just go 'round and 'round.

Peez

 

[Peez]

I don't go around believing in things that are real.

So you don't believe in evolution?

Do you believe in Evolution?

 

[Peez]

Proving that it was possible is not the same as producing the actual historical chain.

Well no shit, Sherlock. The only way to produce the actual historical chain would be to climb into a time machine and follow the bot fly back in time. Since that's not possible, scientists offer hypotheses as to how evolution might work to produce certain species. A laboratory experiment mimicking natural phenomena that trigger mutations producing a mosquito-grabbing bot fly would prove that such mutations could in fact occur in nature.

First, "proof" is for mathematics and alcohol, not science. In science, there is no such thing as proof. In science, there is empirical evidence.

Second, it has already been established that natural phenomena produce mutations. If you want to discuss the specific mutations that contributed to the genetic variance in traits that allowed the evolution of egg-laying behaviour in bot flies, you would first have to elucidate the specific genes that influence these traits. Running an experiment in which you observed a population of flies evolve from direct-human-egg-laying to mosquite-egg-laying would tell you precisely nothing about actual bot fly evolution.

Third, we don't have to identify the specific mutations to evaluate evidence that bot flies did in fact evolve by descent with modification.

Peez

 

[Sarpedon]

This sounds like some kind of Eastern mysticism (Quick, Grasshopper, what is the sound of one hand clapping?). Where did I ever say the bot fly was made?

Ah, dismissing a point because of its source, the mark of a true scholar! A good idea is a good idea, wherever it comes from. If ideas that come from asia are objectionable to you, need I point out the Greek Philosophers who said similar things? Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius come to mind. Heck, even the bible says that vanity and pride are the way to error. But you would rather label the idea "eastern mysticism" and dismiss it, because it is undesirable to you. Jesus said to be humble, but you, who pretend that he is important, edit that comment out. Because your religion is all about you and your ego. Your Jesus is merely a construct you have made to flatter yourself, rather than the 'real' Jesus.

Where did I ever say the bot fly was made?

You are saying it wasn't evolved. I can see through you. Behind all your words is something I've seen before and am very familiar with.

And with that, you attempt to dismiss all I wrote that easily tore apart everything you were saying. You didn't have a single word to say about all the transitional forms and successful reproductive strategies I mentioned. The kernel of your argument is that all the parts must appear in working order simultaneously to be successful, so therefore it couldn't evolve (and must therefore have been made, see, you don't actually have to say it). I demonstrated that each step of the process to get to the bot fly's 'strategy' is itself a successful 'strategy' used by a variety of animals.

Since you had no argument against this obvious fact, you resorted to childish and racist name calling and quibbling about words.

 

[Keith&Co.]

I am looking at nature for the answers--which means asking questions about how evolution works instead of taking it as an article of faith.

Reed says it's promoted as an article of faith.
But then, Reed maintains that abiogenesis is promoted as an article of faith by evolutionists.

Do you know of any textbooks that say 'evolution happened, just trust us?'
Or are they more likely to say 'evolution happens and this is how we know....' and 'this is what we think happened, and it's because of the following observations...'?

 

[abaddon]

Do you imagine they just started laying eggs on mosquitoes at some point and it was a mutation that made them start doing that?

What else might have conceivably induced them to start doing it? But it is just not grabbing a mosquito and laying eggs on it, it is doing it without crippling the mosquito. The Wikipedia article on the bot fly notes that one species uses the house fly as its vector, carefully turning the fly over after grabbing it so as to be able to lay its eggs on the fly under its wings. Pretty ambitious mutations and selection going on there.

I don't think my question was understood.

You seem to think a mutation made them suddenly start doing it, when they hadn't been doing it before, because you ask things like what caused them "to begin grabbing mosquitoes". One species is choosy about which is the safest place to lay eggs on a house fly. This was explained already far earlier in the thread. The eggs were getting laid all over so eventually a successful pattern emerged among all the billions of unsuccessful attempts.

I've seen this incredulity among creationists irt nature's complexity before. It's because they fail to grasp the extreme profligacy of nature. It's similar to how some would feel surprise that Joe Smith won the lottery. Joe and friends are surprised that it's Joe who "picked the right numbers", and they disregard that with so many losing tickets being bought that eventually some one of the tickets had to win. They focus on the wrong thing: the "winner", as if some mysterious thing "induced" him to do pick those numbers when it's the huge numbers of attempts that explain it.

 

[Oecolampadius]

. And by evolve, I mean become more complex

See, when you say things like this, everyone thinks you're a creationist. Evolution isn't a matter of complexity. Some creatures evolved to be less complex. Snails losing their shell to be slugs for example, or species that lose teeth.

You're really being obtuse here. The context of my statement was single-cell organisms evolving into multi-cellular organisms. If those first single-cell organisms all "evolved to be less complex," you wouldn't be here, would you?

 

[Oecolampadius]

He is being coy about it

*wink*

 

[Keith&Co.]

See, when you say things like this, everyone thinks you're a creationist. Evolution isn't a matter of complexity. Some creatures evolved to be less complex. Snails losing their shell to be slugs for example, or species that lose teeth.

You're really being obtuse here.

I really don't think so. Like 'missing link,' defining evolution as an increase in complexity is a sign of ignorance. Sure, some things DO grow in complexity due to evolution, but that's not the definition.

Things can evolve to lose complexity and it's no different.

The context of my statement was single-cell organisms evolving into multi-cellular organisms.

Yes, but you presented your definition of evolution as BEING an increase in complexity. The terms are not interchangeable.

If those first single-cell organisms all "evolved to be less complex," you wouldn't be here, would you?

Now you're leaping to an entirely different field to choose a new goalpost.
Yes, depending on how you define 'complexity,' our collective evolutionary history includes increases. But that's not the definition of what evolution is.

And your experiment would still not be a compelling case for the argument against creationists.

 

[Sarpedon]

Again, this error shows his mindset is backwards. Instead of looking at the process, he's trying to define the process with words to serve his preconceptions.