Spurious Quirk

Not so. Naturalistic predictability is based on the observation that thus far the universe has displayed uniformity and predictability (as far as we can tell). To some extent the modern principle of uniformity probably is a carry-over from an earlier age when predictability was assumed because of the supposed nature of god; yet it does have evidenciary support on its own -- that is to say it works, and always has worked.

Cheers

Goober

ROFL!!! Theophilus, Mr "I've never been to the EC forum in my life" sits here an asserts that no one has provided any evidence for evolution.

Why don't you go over to EC and ask, or even do a little reading on your own? Here is an excellent place to start: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Laughable. The current hypothesis is that 'life' began as simple RNA molecules. We know they exist. We know they can form abiotically in the right conditions. We know that early earth had these right conditions. We know microevolution takes place, it has been observed. And of course we have loads of evidence for macroevolution. These are not "random proccesses", there is plenty of evidence. No offence, but you need to do a little reading on abiogenesis and evolution, because your ignorance of these topics shows.

beausoleil

Why do we think patterns from the past will continue in the future?

Because they always have so far!

Naturalisitic predictability appears to be based on itself.

Goober

Hey Theophilus,

Make sure you go visit the thread Jobar started for you in EC.

Heres a link

Calzaer

Why, the only TRUE god, of course! Polytheism is so dumb! One god verses many gods? Occam's razor takes ca... uht-oh.

bd-from-kg

[/b]theophilus:[/b]

Evolution is a scientific theory; naturalism is a metaphysical theory. Do you have any idea what you�re talking about?

This is yet another demonstration of your ignorance about scientific methodology. In the first place it has been observed. (If you�re too lazy to look for articles at talk.origins or even to look at the thread Jobar set up for you in the E/C forum, here are a couple of links: Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events.) But even if not a single actual instance of speciation had been observed directly, it wouldn�t mean that we don�t know that it has occurred. To illustrate, suppose that a murder has been committed, and it is found that: (1) the suspect�s fingerprints are all over the murder scene; (2) forensic analysis yields a perfect match between the rifle marks on the bullet that killed the victim and the suspect�s gun; (3) blood that matches the victim�s perfectly through DNA analysis is found on the suspect�s clothes. At that point we know that the suspect was at any rate at the scene of the murder at some time, that the victim was killed with the suspect�s gun, and that the suspect got the victim�s blood on his clothes,. Do we know with absolute certainty? No, nothing is absolutely certain in this world. But we know with a very high degree of confidence. How do we know these things? Because past events leave traces in the present. These traces are how we know 99.99% of what we do about the past.

In the case of evolution the most obvious traces, of course, are fossils. But the most conclusive traces can be found in DNA. The evidence of evolution provided by DNA analysis is far more conclusive than the evidence I cited above; in fact, it leaves no room for doubt in the mind of any sane person familiar with it. Of course it�s possible that God arranged the DNA evidence to fool us into thinking that evolution occurred, just as God could have arranged the fingerprint, forensic, and DNA evidence at the murder scene in such a way as to fool the investigators. Indeed, all of the traces by which we deduce what�s happened in the past could have been arranged by God to fool us. But this kind of hypothesis is not taken seriously by sane people, for what I hope are obvious reasons.

The DNA evidence is discussed in Part 4 of the 29 Evidences for Macroevolution mega-article cited earlier, and in considerable detail Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics.

Sure, it�s a complex process, just as the weather, or the formation of a galaxy, is a complex process. But it doesn�t require the �simultaneous, precise occurrence of a huge number of biological/chemical/cosmological elements�. This is confusing the process itself with a high-level theory of the process. In same way, if you ask how a certain casino made money on a given day, one type of answer would be a complete accounting of the myriad of transactions that took place in the casino that day. But a far simpler high-level explanation would be in terms of probability theory. The latter would fail to explain why each individual bet came out the way it did, but it would be far more informative as an explanation of how the casino came to make money.

And by the way, where did you get the weird idea that something has to have direction in order to qualify as a process?

Jobar has saved me the trouble of looking up the appropriate articles and providing links to them. (Thanks, Jobar.)Anyway, anyone who�s at all serious about looking into this question is thoroughly familiar with the talk.origins site. If you really want to talk intelligently about evolution, you really have to go there and read at least the main pages. Otherwise you�re just going to continue to look silly.

No, they�re not. The honest creationists who were willing to have their theses tested by the same criteria as any scientific theory conceded defeat sometime around 1880. Today there�s no one pretending to defend �scientific creationism� seriously but a few charlatans and quacks.

Real scientists offer fairly detailed theories, make actual predictions (as detailed as possible) and are willing to let their theories stand or fall based on the results. �Creation scientists� do none of these things. Whenever one of their ridiculous attempts to explain away the overwhelming evidence for an ancient earth and common descent is blown away by still more evidence, they just concoct an even more ridiculous explanation in its place. What they are absolutely unwilling to do is to abandon the �creation� hypothesis itself. None of their �theories� has anything like the level of detail and specificity to be taken seriously as a scientific theory nowadays. If you were familiar with the scientific literature in any field (I exclude pseudo-sciences like sociology) the hand-waving nature of what creationists call �theories� would be immediately obvious to you.

Here are a couple of interesting article about �creation science�: Scientific Creationism and Error and Creationism: Bad Science or Immoral Pseudoscience? (mainly about Duane Gish). You can find links to lots more here.

Not really. Most scientists were creationists, at least up to around 1800, but this was never proposed as a scientific theory; rather, it was believed because the Bible said so. By 1800 the geological evidence was overwhelming that the earth was very old � much older than the Bible implied � and the fossil evidence made it very clear that there had been a long succession of species over much of that time. By 1850 a large number of scientists had concluded that, at least in a great many cases, these species had descended from earlier ones, but there wasn�t a good theory as to how this could have happened. So by the time Origin of Species appeared, creation (at least as described in Genesis) was no longer part of the �existing framework� in any sense.

But that�s not what I was really talking about. A good analogy would be the germ theory of disease vs. special relativity. The germ theory fit comfortably into what was already known: it was already known that there were very small organisms both inside and outside the human body; that many of them were animals, which meant that they lived by ingesting organic matter. It was a simple step to suppose that some of them could live parasitically on the human body and thereby cause problems for it. By contrast, special relativity required a radical new way of thinking about matter and energy, space and time. Evolution is much closer to the germ theory than to relativity in terms of how much modification of the existing framework was needed to accommodate it. The fact that some people had the absurd idea that diseases were caused by demons or by God (as a punishment) is irrelevant; this was never a scientific hypothesis.

�Natural selection� is just a name for how known natural processes must work in the context of living things; it does not involve any new entities, physical laws, or mysterious coincidences. Anyone who understands it cannot doubt that it occurs. �Survival of the fittest� is a confused and misleading term for it; Darwin never used the phrase.

First off, we�re not talking about how life began. That�s a separate subject called abiogenesis. At this time there is nothing like an accepted or satisfactory theory of abiogenesis, and no reputable scientist pretends that there is.

Second, when people call evolution a �random process�, they generally mean to imply that things like the eye were produced by �pure luck�, which is absurd. To be sure, some aspects of evolution are random; for example, the specific species that it produces are essentially random. But many aspects of it, such the tendency to create a greater variety of species as time goes on, or the tendency of organisms to be well adapted to their environment, are not random.

Finally, which is simpler: �All of the millions of snowflakes that fell last night were created by essentially the same natural process�, or �Each snowflake was handcrafted specially by God� ? Which is simpler, �Each of the eight million or so species was created specially by God� or �Each species was created by the same natural process� ?

Um , how exactly is this responsive?

We�re talking about how OR is to be applied in actual cases. If we interpret the term �simplest hypothesis� as simplistically as you want to, OR collapses into total nonsense. The motions of the planets are surely explained more �simply� by saying that God pushes them. By comparison GR is ridiculously complex; obviously it should be discarded as an explanation.

As for those �nonexistent� transitional forms, here�s
the part of the 29 evidences article that deals with transitions. And here�s another article on the subject: the Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ (You really need to explore the talk.origins site. You�re embarrassing yourself.)

That�s a pretty amazing statement considering that practically all scientists for a very long time were theists. Even today a very large number of scientists are theists. Do all of those theistic scientists have an unshakable naturalistic bias? Are they all lying?

If you want to be taken seriously, show us how this supposed �naturalistic bias� manifests itself (other than in a nearly universal belief in evolution, which is after all the very thing that you�re invoking it to explain). In what other ways has science gone wrong by failing to consider supernatural theories?

What exactly do you consider a �meaningful answer�? How have you �explained� something if your purported �explanation� is consistent with the exact opposite state of affairs? And how does a God-based hypothesis help us to make predictions? We have no idea what God might do next. Anything that happens can be �explained� in terms of the �God hypothesis�. A theory that is consistent with any possible evidence is no theory at all; it�s just a lot of meaningless noise.

Their theories, like all scientific theories, were based on the assumption that nature is orderly. The further premise that this order was produced by God is superfluous. Anyway, there�s no way to test the hypothesis that nature is orderly, and it yields no specific predictions � which is to say that it�s not a scientific hypothesis� � certainly not in the sense that I was obviously referring to. This assumption that nature is orderly is a premise that underlies the whole scientific enterprise. And it�s undermined by claims that God intervenes in this universe, and especially by claims that He intervenes by creating traces of apparent past events that never occurred � i.e., by deliberately deceiving us.

Theophilus, the theory of evolution is at least as well-established as almost any scientific theory you can name. The claim that Julius Caesar wasn�t really assassinated would be more plausible. You�d do well to abandon this absurd crusade for a position that was decisively defeated over a century ago. What next? Are you going to put on a Confederate uniform and go out looking for Lee�s army?

theophilus

Yeah, right. That's why everytime I've asked for this evidence (just one uncontrovertable piece will do), all I get is silence. I'm willing to predict (on the basis of past behavior) that you'll be no different - yes, I'm asking you to provide any piece of this "load." Otherwise, I'll conclude that it's a "load" of a different type.

theophilus

[QUOTE]Originally posted by bd-from-kg

[b]This is yet another demonstration of your ignorance about scientific methodology. In the first place it has been observed. (If you�re too lazy to look for articles at talk.origins or even to look at the thread Jobar set up for you in the E/C forum, here are a couple of links: Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events.)

This is not only dishonest (this is not evodence for macro-evolution except by a wholly unwarranted extrapolation), but a confirmation that evolution is held as an article of faith, not as a compelling scientific theory.

You want iron-clad proof of any argument for creation but you're willing to accept minor, artificially induced changes in plants and germs as proof that man evolved from swamp slime.

To claim that evolution is a scientific theory "like" all other scientific theories is simply false. Other scientific theories, gravity, are intended to explain observable phenomenon, an apple falling; evolution explains nothing, because there is no observable phenomeon.

Get real!!

theophilus

Wayne Delia

Ockham's Razor is not "ipso facto disproof" of anything, much less God. It is a general guideline that the simplest explanation of a particular phenomenon (i.e. the scientific theory of evolution explaining how things evolve) is preferable, and probably more correct, than unnecessarily multiplied entities (i.e. the theory of evolution fairies somehow magicking all the observed mechanisms of evolution).

Either you misunderstand Ockham's Razor, or you deliberately made a strawman argument out of it.

WMD ("Occam's Laser")