Oolon Colluphid

I guess it's never occurred to you that being a sceptic is what scientists do for a living? That scepticism is at the core of science?

You see the thing is, there comes a point (in this case, after thousands of people have studied it for 150 years) when it's reasonable to say, "okay, that's demonstrated well enough, let's move on".

We 'meet your scepticism with ferocity' not because there's anything wrong with scepticism, but because your scepticism is born of ignorance of the subject. Not even that there's anything wrong with ignorance (it's why we have schools). But to mistrust something when you don't understand it -- but other people do, and do accept it -- is plain perverse.

Would you be equally sceptical of a gemmologist if he tells you that orthoclase feldspar is 6 on the Mohs hardness scale, or that the refractive index of corundum is such-and-such?

Would I be exhibiting a healthy scepticism if I were start saying that, say, Jenny Clack or Per Ahlberg may be wrong about the existence and significance of fish-tetrapod intermediates such as Acanthostega and Ichthyostega... or would I just be talking bollocks? I suspect they'd tell me to piss off and come back again when I can tell a hyomandibula from a palatoquadrate.

In other words, be sceptical by all means. I am. But give science some credit too: it works by scepticism, so while you may just have come up with some knock-out idea, there's a bloody good chance that it's already been thought of... and answered... at some point during the last few million man-hours of thought that's already been applied to the matter.

Sven

Some very good points... I've nearly nothing to add... except for repeating my questions again:

Andrew_theist:
Do you have problems with the theory of evolution, which explains the available evidence by mutations+selection (etc.).
or
Do you also have problems with the evidence for "macroevolution" (I assume you mean common descent) itself?

May I ask additionally if you know that these are two separate questions?

Your last post indeed sounded like if you had problems with the theory and the fact - but I'm sure it would help a lot if you could clarify your position for everyone here.

Asha'man

I think the evidence is indeed impressive. Amazingly so. There are literally mountains of evidence, you almost can’t dig anywhere on earth without finding more evidence. On top of that, the DNA evidence provides not only a smoking gun, but a confession, a security video recording the crime, and a dozen eyewitnesses.

Perhaps you are simply unaware of all the evidence, so you are not as impressed as you should be?

Not true. There are plenty of possible alternatives to evolution that don’t invoke an imaginary god. We could easily be the result of aliens who are conducting an experiment. However, there are no explanations whatsoever that fit the evidence as well as evolution does, so we discount the alternatives.

Actually, we reserve ferocity for the complete nutters, the ones who think flowering plants were created the day before the Sun, just as Genesis describes. :banghead:

What you are experiencing is very mild, we simply want to expose you to the evidence that you have missed. We have to ask you what you know in order to evaluate what evidence that is.

On the topic of evidence, how is your reading of 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution coming along? Are there any pieces you would like to discuss?

There are always scientists that push the envelope, that test the current assumptions, that try to shake the current structure apart. However, in the case of evolution, every such attempt has failed. Do you understand the implications of that? With all the theistic motivated attacks against evolution, there have been absolutely no successes in disproving evolution. In fact, such attacks often result in even stronger evidence in support of evolution, more paths of descent being resolved at a clearer level.

And, for every scientist that doubts evolution, there are a dozen named Steve that have no such doubts.

In the light of such failed attempts to falsify evolution, I think a high level of confidence is strongly warranted.

Albion

They have the choice of accepting the currently accepted scientific explanation or of rejecting it. If they have no scientific reasons to reject it, then they accept it. The thing that makes them atheists is that, having accepted that explanation, they take the further step - which is a theological as opposed to scientific one - of saying that the process has had no input from God at any stage. This is the same regardless of the scientific explanation involved, whether it's atomic theory, germ theory, relativity or whatever.

The difference between atheists and a particular subset of theists (i.e., creationists, both biblical and ID) is that the latter will reject the currently accepted scientific explanation for the origin of species on nonscientific grounds because they feel that their deity somehow needs to be given credit for doing more than creating and working via natural processes. The honest ones will say that's what they're doing; the rest will claim that their rejection is based on scientific grounds.

Advocatus Diaboli

What about people like me? I was an atheist way, way before I ever even bothered to think about things like evolution, or any other scientific theory.

Andrew_theist

Greetings all,

Saying I am skeptical of some of the broader claims of evolution is hardly throwing down the gauntlet. Most of the folks here claim to be skeptics true?

Would you classify this as micro evolution?

I read most of your essay. I don’t think it is very responsive to what I wrote.

I am aware many Christians accept evolution. I remain skeptical.

I am not a biblical literalist.

I have noticed anyone who is skeptical of evolution gets accused confusing abiogensis with evolution. I didn’t mention anything about life beginning. The discussion of the universe was a tangent brought up by another poster.

I think both sides of the issue have an axe to grind and I take both sides with a grain of salt.

Like the subject of his theory would you agree or disagree that it has descended through the generations with modification?

That has not been my experience with talk origins.

More later…

1veedo

It’s not about evolution. But when you claimed the creation of this universe is supernatural I figured I may as well put that on the table. If you look long enough you'll realize everything has a logical explanation; that's what naturalism is all about. When you find something that cant currently be explained by science, there's no reason to attribut supernatural explanation. We know that disease is. We know why the wind blows. We know why the sun "rises." We're even starting to understand the very deapest concepts to existence; the creation of this universe.

All these and more used to be explained by supernatural theories. Inductive reasoning my friend.

OneWayTraffic

Andrew it's been posted before but have you checked out endogenous retroviruses yet? There is no explanation for them except a) a deceptive god or b) common descent from a single ancestor.

Basically the process goes like this (I'm a layman at this so I'll probably mangle the finer points

Retroviruses(HIV is a good example) infect us by injecting their RNA into a host cells DNA. The location of the DNA to be overwritten is selected randomly. Since our DNA is many millions of base pairs long divided over several chronosomes the chances of any particular place being overwritten is rather small(winning lotto anyone?)

Out of the many retroviruses attacking us on a regualr basis a very few infect a cell related to reproduction. This retrovirus is then passed down in our DNA to the next generation. It's now in our DNA and that of our ancestors permanently.

So if two people have the same renmant of the same retrovirus in the same place in their DNA one can conclude that they got it from a common descendant. The chances of the two people being independently infected are vanishingly small.

So what happens if we share retrovirus fragments with a dog? With a chimp? And what if the number of virus fragments that any two animals share are directly correlated to their relative positions in the evolutionary tree? Design is not an explanation here; viruses are not part of our DNA, they are introduced from an outside source in a well studied process.

Sparrow

It appears that your thought process goes like this:

- In the realm of science, there is significant controversy over the factuality of evolution
- The site talk.origins seems to not address the existence of any controversy, and seems further to belittle alternative explanations which would better fit my philosophy
- therefore talk.origins is biased

Creation Science is not science.
Intelligent Design is not science.
The theory of evolution has withstood every scientific challenge thrown at it. There are no other scientific theories which come anywhere close to explaining the observed phenomena as well as evolution. If one is developed, it will replace evolution as the accepted best explanation. There is no significant controversy among scientists about evolution. Minor details may change as new information becomes available, but the basics are well understood.

KnightWhoSaysNi

Actually, I have heard some attempted creationist explanations, but they're incredibly lame.

One argument is that they're a result of the "Fall." Retrovirus remnants are merely degenerate DNA that turned into viruses. Another one I've heard is that ER's aren't actually ER's at all, but a kind of created genetic material meant to defend against viruses.

Jason