Skeptical

To say you missed my point is putting it mildly. You are basically looking at our particular planet, our particular sun and our particular small section of the universe and saying that the odds of life occuring _here_ by chance are infintesimal, so it _must_ be due to a creator. However, there are billions of other planets throughout the universe, the vast majority of which probably _don't_ have life. You can't just say our planet is special because life is here and not consider all the other planets where life could have occured but probably didn't. Your choosing to ignore the vast number of chances where life could have occured other than earth and simply looking at our planet and saying "look, we're special!". To take my dice analogy, your rolling the dice, picking one at random and saying "look, the chances of this particular die coming up 333,333 are infintesimal, it must be a special die!", and ignoring the number of dice rolled and the number of times they were thrown.

It's an analogy. I setup the criteria because I think it accurately refelcts the point I was making. The actual numbers are not the point, nor is "who" is rolling them nor is the "environment". Your not even trying to understand the point of the analogy but instead are asking meaningless questions. Your assuming before the question is even asked that a creator must exist, which is begging the question.

My point was quite simply that given an unbelievably large universe with an extraordinarily large number of planets and stars, it is quite reasonable to conclude that life would occur by chance somewhere at least once. Since, as far as we know, we are the only life in the universe, it is not far fetched at all to believe that we're the one die that came up with the "right" number for life to occur. It's only hard to believe if you consider the one "die" and ignore all the others that _didn't_ come up with the "right number".

So, the belief that the earth was the center of the universe is human arrogance, but the belief that life on _this_ planet out of the billions of possible planets is special is _not_ due to arrogance. Sure, I can see how my saying this is a "gigantic leap".

Really. Well, all I can say is that as long as one always has in one's back pocket the claim that "God did it" or "That's just God's mysterious ways", one always has a pat answer for any question whatsoever. That would seem to me to make ones life easier if ones cognitive faculties allow one to resort to these reasons.

I agree, I just don't see the method for how to consider non-empirical causes even if I think they are important.

OK Vander, I draw the line when you start telling lies about what I have said. You can say anything you want, but do not put words in my mouth I didn't say. I have _never_ said that I know my mind is empirical or that I know where "the world" comes from. That is a blatant fabrication. I have not lied about what you have said and I have tried to by civil to you, so I would appreciate it greatly if you would not misrepresent what I have said.

I don't know how many times I have to say something before you acknowlege it. I have stated to you again and again that even if I _wanted_ to consider non-empirical causes, I have no idea the process by which one would go about telling which posited non-empirical causes are real and which are just opinion, flights of fancy or just plain cognitive errors. You have repeatedly ignored this and jumped right into "you won't consider non-empirical causes...". If you have a method for differentiating non-empirical causes from opinion or error, demonstrate it.

Name one thing that is "obviously non-empirical" and then give me an explanation of the cause and explain to me in detail how you arrived at your "knowledge" of the cause.

According to websters online dictionary:

Empirical

1
a) Relying on or derived from observation or experiment: empirical results that supported the hypothesis.
b) Verifiable or provable by means of observation or experiment: empirical laws.

2 Guided by practical experience and not theory, especially in medicine

Seems pretty close to what I have been saying. If you want to argue with Webster, go ahead. You may also find of interest the defintions of opinion, speculative, theory and conviction.

As to your second question, I have said repeatedly that if you seriously want me to consider non-empirical causes, you will have to give me a specific methodology for how you determine non-empirical knowledge from opinion or cognitive error. You haven't even attempted an answer.


I answered this already, see my earlier post.

I _have_ tried to see your point, you just have continued to ignore my request. Show me how you know the difference between non-empirical "knowledge" and something which might be just an error or mistake. Show me, I'll consider it.

Actually no, since you haven't presented the one thing that might change my mind: a detailed example of how one differentiates between non-empirical "knowledge" and opinion, error, etc.

I will also note that you still have not addressed _at all_ how you can tell any particular effect you attribute to a non-empirical cause is the cause of God or Satan. I asked this several days ago and you asked me to be patient. I have been, and I'm still waiting for your response. This is essentially the same thing as asking for a methodology for differentiating between non-empirical causes, so you can kill two birds with one stone by simply addressing this question.

MrKrinkles

Vander,

This may be off topic, but I have to ask nonetheless: How would you behave differently if you discovered that there was no "God"? What sort of moral constraints would you no longer have? And why? Is your treatment of other people based only on punishments and rewards you think you may receive in an afterlife?

Brooks

Vanderzyden

Again, you regress into an insulting tone. But I am willing to proceed a bit further.

The evolutionist claims that all life descends from a single common ancestor, correct? But this claim isn't supported by--nor is it consistent with--phylogenetic speculation, since there is no universal tree. Do you agree with this or not? (Note: if you do not answer this question directly, then I will consider the matter closed.)

This is simply a claim that you haven't demonstrated:

-- Tell us: What makes molecular phylogeny precise or accurate? What is the benchmark upon which the precision is measured?

-- Please direct me to references which conclusive demostrate strong correspondence among many different molecular phylogenies.


IMPORTANT NOTE: If you continue with the insults just once more, I will make explicit note of your name and refuse any further dialogue with you. Do I make myself clear?

MODERATORS: Do you tolerate this behavior?

Vanderzyden

[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: Vanderzyden ]</p>

K

Vanderzyden:

You have not tried to refute my latest proof of evolution. I assume that means you accept it. If you still have questions about the details, post them here and I'll ask the Lord if He appears again tonight.

scigirl

{moderator hat on}

Please everyone - let's keep the insults to a minimum and stick to the TOPIC at hand. Thank you very much!

Scigirl

(P.S. Can someone remind me what the actual topic IS that we are supposed to be sticking to?? )

Vanderzyden

Rest assured that I am educated in this material, Baloo. Why do you question my honesty? Are there ethical issues under consideration, or are you digressing from the main issue? Nothing you have relayed here is really new, though you articulate it well. My concern is the silly comparisons that are made in the article that scigirl posted. Really does it make sense to talk about precision in phylogeny? Furthermore, I wonder why you are focusing on ensuring that I understand significant digits and not admitting that the comparison is a silly one. You don't even address it.

10^-11 or 10^-34 power are both very small values upon which to obtain measurement, especially when you consider the context for these measurements (physical attraction of large masses on one hand and the energy of a photon on the other). Neither may be compared with hypothetical homologous assumptions that underlie phylogenies.


I challenge anyone here to demonstrate even a remote comparison between the measurement of G and the "accuracy" or "precision" of phylogenetic trees.


Vanderzyden

Doubting Didymus

Vanderzyden, the only word I could see in my post that was offensive was 'stupid', and it referred not to you, but to your analogy of 'cutting down' the tree of life.

Yes, the claim is that all life descended from a common ancestor. And yes, standard phylogeny encounters a variety of problems when it is applied to organisms that might have been close to that relative.

BECAUSE OF LATERAL GENE TRANSFER AND ENDOSYMBIOSIS.

I get the feeling you are not sure what these terms mean. I am not trying to be insulting here, when I ask you: do you understand these concepts, and why they pose problems for molecular phylogeny at levels where they are possible?

I am not sure what you mean by 'no universal tree'. It is true that it is hard to say things about the early stages of the tree using phylogeny. This does not mean that the tree does not exist.

So its not the tree that has the problem, its just that the tool, molecular phylogeny, is very hard to apply to early levels.

An analogy: ordinary family trees use histrical tools, like documents, to construct a tree of a given families lineage. The 'theory' is that a british family should be traceable back to early historical times. So you do this, you get a tree, but what happens when you look at the very bottom? You find the earliest ancestor that historical methods can accurately discover. Why can't you trace your ancestral line even further back? Because there are no documents, or the documents are unreadable or destroyed. History has reached its limits with respect to your family tree.

Your argument amounts to saying that, because history can not trace your lineage back to ten thousand BC, then it is a flawed method and can not be trusted even for determining who your mother is.

That it why I called your analogy stupid (for which I now apologise), that if phylogeny can not make accurate statements about the origin of life, then not only is it useless today for more recent lineages, but the whole family tree is worthless.

Molecular phylogeny is measured by the benchmark of how well different trees produced by different DNA sections sync up with each other. The fact that they do this extremely well is good proof of the accuracy of molecular phylogeny. Note that I am specifically referring to areas of phylogeny that are not affected by lateral transfer problems.

If organisms were unrelated, we would not expect the trees produced by different sections of their DNA to be so very similar. I know you will consider this an unsupported assertion. See below.

Again, I must ask exactly what you want to see. Whose word do you trust on the matter? I have offered to find quotes from my biology textbooks that basically say 'different molecular trees coreespond to each other with remarkable accuracy'. Will these do?

Do you want us to find some actual phylogenic trees that have been produced by different phylogenists using different methods? Please be specific in what you want to see.

This bullying is extremely childish. If memory serves, you yourself have been extemely insulting to myself and many many others. Making a policy of excluding anyone who is rude to you is dangerous ground. If everyone else here decided to employ this strategy you would have no one to talk to. You may not realise, but you are often very annoying. I don't mean this as an insult, just that you should not get so shocked when people get irritated with you.

I welcome moderator feedback on my treatment of vanderzyden. Please inform me if I should supress my irritaion still further.

l-bow

Van,


I recallreading that even Darwin was willing to consider that life might be decended from more that one form. And did you look at figure 3? Why is/are there no branch(es) merging into branch _Animalia_? That means for animals, the making of "trees" is still possible. Even with insertions by viruses, since what happens in this case is that the virus takes along with itself a piece of the host's dna and then inserts itself, along with the host's dna, into the next host's dna (in other words the virus' dna code would give it away).

[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: l-bow ]</p>

Kevin Dorner

What behaviour? From what I see, it was stated that an analogy of yours was 'stupid.' This is to be distinguished from a direct attack upon yourself, such as a direct statement calling you 'stupid', instead of one of your statements, or one of your ideas.

I certainly have said stupid things in my time, so I don't fault a little criticism on the thing I said, not myself personally, if I do.

I don't exactly condone calling even an idea 'stupid' but it certainly falls outside the boundaries of intervention. Scigirl's reminder was appropriate.

[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: Kevin Dorner ]</p>

scigirl

Yes.

scigirl