anthrosciguy

And visit The Talk Origins Archive for information on evolution, including answers to what seems to be your questions.

Roland98

Prijambada, I. D., S. Negoro, T. Yomo and I. Urabe, 1995. Emergence of nylon oligomer degradation enzymes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO through experimental evolution. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 61(5): 2020-2022.

New information. Beneficial mutation. Be skeptical no more.

1veedo

First off, thats not how evolution works. These "mutations" are very small ones that tend to acumulate over time. (every once in a while there is a "big" mutation but most species evolve due to a collection of "small" ones)

This is a real, real good site: http://www.ebonmusings.org/evolution/

I especially recomend this article: http://www.ebonmusings.org/evolution/whatevoisnt.html I think you may be confused with random chance or Single-step selection or the "tornado in the junkyard"; reguardless, I recomend the whole article, not jsut those two targets.

Hope you learn something,
1veedo

1veedo

I think this is specifically what you're looking for.

Sparrow

If by 'commitment to materialist philosophy' you mean that scientists refuse to use the 'godidit' explanation, then you're at least partially correct. If a god entity can do anything, even bending or breaking well established laws (global flood? where did the water come from and where did it go?, etc.) and do it at anytime, then the predictive value of science is zero. If you drop a ball, you can predict when it will hit the ground, where it will hit the ground and how fast it will be going when it hits. Why can't an omnipotent god intervene? Science does not say god cannot intervene, but disregards the possibility because we cannot know a priori if he will or won't. Why is it we don't say ' If you drop a ball it will hit the ground unless god intervenes'?

This is, in my layman's view, the primary problem with viewing 'creation science' or ID as actual science. Neither has predictive value. If god can create a new species whenever he wants, where is the predictive value? it offers us no ability to do something more than we can already do.

I'm not sure why you think the evidence is meager. Perhaps you haven't really been exposed to the bulk of it. Read, study, ask questions, learn - I think you'll end up convinced. If evolution as a scientific theory is wrong, I think it will be shown wrong in a similar way that Newton's theory of gravity is 'wrong' (fails at relativistic speeds, but substantially correct). In other words, there may be a few details we don't understand, but it's basically correct.

espritch

Strictly speaking, the fact that life evolves was derived from observation of the fossil record well before Darwin. It was already well know that past life on this planet differed markedly from current life and that succeeding periods in Earth's history had been marked by replacement of existing faunas by new ones. As spontaneous generation as a source for these new faunas had been pretty well ruled out by direct experiment, the most likely explanation for the observed fossil record was that the new faunas had evolved from the older ones. All that Darwin and Wallace did was independently arrive at an explanation of the mechanism driving evolution.

While it may be true that scientists have a distinct bias towards naturalistic explanations (quite reasonable given that science can only deal with natural phenomena), it is even more true that evolution is preferred because there is no better alternative. Flood geology simply does not match the observed evidence and if we assume some repeated catastrophism to explain the observations, we are left to ask how a perfect creator manage to keep getting it wrong and had to keep painting over his canvas. Darwinian Evolution is the best fit with the observed evidence and requires the fewest assumption. It is for that reason, and that reason only, that it remains the preferred view of science.

RBH

Andrew wroteBelieving that makes it kind of hard to explain the thousands of scientists who are also Christians, some of them evangelical Christians, who accept that the theory of evolution is our best scientific exlpanation of the diversity of life on earth. They aren't committed to a "materialist philosophy."

RBH

Albion

You're saying that in order to support atheism, scientists (who you seem to think are all atheists) are applying the evidence outside its actual area of application. This is getting rather close to accusing scientists of professional misconduct, if not outright fraud.

KnightWhoSaysNi

Hello Andrew,

I was just curious if you've read Talk.Origin's 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent by Dr. Douglas Theobald. If you have, then I would be flabbergasted at your assertion that the evidence for evolution is "meagre."

For an example, read the section on endogenous retroviruses. If we were created and didn't share ancestry with other primates, then why do we share the remnants of retroviruses in our genes, at the same chromosomal locations, with other primates? It's the equivalent of detecting plagiarism by noting the copied "mistakes" from the plagiarized source. I cannot fathom how you might consider this as "meagre" evidence. It's really a devestating smoking gun.

In addition, if you think a materialistic philosophy is necessary to accept evolution, then how do you reconcile that with the fact that many Christians (and even some evangelical Christians) accept evolution? I think it's more so a philosophical commitment to religious orthodoxy that keeps many people from accepting evolution rather than alleged problems of the evidence behind evolution.

Jason

Andrew_theist

Hello all,

Does this mean something to everyone in this forum?

What does this mean? Doe this mean evolution was simulated to see how it works?

Do you really think this site is impartial and objective? Here is a short blurb on the philosophy of naturalism.

As stated before, naturalism is one of the basic principles around which all of science is organized. It states that supernatural causes and events must be ruled out; that everything that happens must have an understandable cause that is based on empirical evidence and obeys physical laws and causality.

Has this statement been proven scientifically? Is it a scientific fact that all phenomena must have a naturalistic explanation? According to this statement some form of evolution must be true because there is no other possibility. The author acts like to laws of physics are actual laws that must be obeyed. The laws of nature are merely observations of how matter behaves, unless the author is suggesting there is a forces that compels matter to behave as it does. If this is true only something outside of nature could force nature to behave in a certain pattern.

To put it another way, this scientist is not using naturalism: [A cartoon of mathematics with the writing ‘and then a miracle occurs]. This restriction to natural causes for natural events is what gives science its explanatory power. Divine intervention and miracles are ruled out; scientists cannot explain an event by saying "God did it".

I agree that scientists can’t explain how a phenomenon such as a computer works by saying God did it. But if the question were what caused a computer to exist saying intelligent beings designed and produced computers would have more explanatory power over some scenario of time and chance mindlessly creating computers.

They're not allowed to postulate that angels push the planets around in their orbits, or that insanity is the result of possession by malignant spirits, or that thunder and lightning are caused by angry deities, or, for that matter, that atomic nuclei are stable because tiny pink leprechauns hold the protons together. And, of course, the kicker, the one that gets creationists so upset: They're also not allowed to say, "Six thousand years ago, God created the heavens and the earth, and the beasts of the field, the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and created he man in his own image." Such a statement would be unscientific. Not necessarily wrong - just unscientific. If supernatural events do occur, science cannot study or explain them.

And there is some law that says the universe must be explainable and subject to scientific study? Naturalism is really a tautology because any explanation for an event is going to be considered natural no matter what it is. I am happy to concede that natural events have natural causes. But how do we know the cause of life or the cause of the universe was natural causes?

Why would you recommend an article that so shamelessly has an axe to grind? Here’s the first paragraph.

Many people who argue against evolution do so because they do not really understand it. The straw-man caricatures of evolution commonly presented by creationists are indeed illogical, implausible and unscientific. But they are precisely that -- straw men -- and do not accurately represent evolutionary theory. As will be shown, when presented in its true form, the theory of evolution is not only simple and plausible, but the only model of biological development that is scientific and consistent with the facts.

I am aware this is how evolution works on paper. On paper these minute changes over vast amounts of time produced plants, giraffes and humans. The most common examples of evolution are light and dark colored moths and finches. In both cases pre-existing characteristics such as color and beak size determined the shifts in populations. When the conditions returned so did the population ratio.

I am going to have to add Goddidit rationale to my list of most common atheist arguments. Of course science is the study of how things behave normally barring divine or human intervention. I agree if the universe is not uniform and predictable it would not be knowable by scientific means however there is no law or fact of science that all phenomena must be knowable by scientific means. I believe the reason science is works is because the universe was created by an intelligent designer which is precisely why it is uniform, predictable and subsequently knowable.

In practice this is not true. Humans create things using intelligence all the time and such things can be studied using the scientific method. It’s called reverse engineering.

The evidence for micro evolution is impressive. It’s the extrapolation to macro evolution that is meager. The evidence for micro evolution is often used to support macro evolution.

At this point I am only critiquing current evolution theory as an explanation of the variety of species we see I am not offering alternative explanations. Slamming alternative explanations doesn’t make evolutionary theory correct.