Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Blinn · 09-16-2002, 01:38 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Vanderzyden:

May I repeat, yet again, that I reject evolution on the lack of convincing evidence.

Based solely on what I've seen you post with regard to chromosome fusions and related material, I would suggest that your rejection of evolution is in fact, not based on a lack of evidence, but rather on your apparent inability and/or refusal to understand the evidence.

Vanderzyden · 09-16-2002, 03:18 PM

Skeptical,

Let me refine the question:

Where do YOU get your concepts of God and Satan?

The reason I ask is because you appear to have you own ideas, but you are unwilling to seriously consider the sources from which they originate. My contention has been that these sources may be evaluated both scientifically and philosophically, in a manner not too different from an evalution of nature.

If you want to know what it's like to live underwater, ask a fish.

Vanderzyden

Doubting Didymus · 09-16-2002, 03:32 PM

Van,

There have been a couple of threads now that address both evidence for evolution and some of your own objections, but which have never been graced by your presence. Ever since the chromosome challenge (where it seems you dismiss the evidence because you 'anticipate corroboration'), you seem to be limiting yourself to only philosophical debates, yet still claim a 'paucity' of evidence for evolution.

I humbly suggest that you take the discussions about naturalism and empiricism to philosophy or science, and devote more time here in evolution/creation to discussing the actual evidence, so that you might actually be justified in making the claim that the evidence is scarce.

Vanderzyden · 09-16-2002, 04:03 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Skeptical:


Two simple questions, that can more or less be answered with a yes or no.

1) Do you accept that it certainly _looks_ like descent with modification occured? (leaving out the mechansims for how this occured)

2) Does your "persuasive evidence" for evolution include answering questions from philosophy and other non-scientific disciplines as you have indicated in your past posts?

One difficulty is that you require binary answers with no explanation. Sorry, I can't do that with the questions you are asking. The length of this thread is surely evidence of that.

Answers:

1) No. There is close similarity. But there are also immense differences when we considering entire organisms. As I have shown, homology is not the equivalent of common descent.

2) You already know that my answer is yes. We have made only slight progress in our discussion because you will not admit that you operate daily upon the assumptions you have made regarding non-empirical phenomena:

Quote:

Originally posted by Skeptical:

"Proof" is a very strong word. At most I would say it is reasonable for each of us to believe we are in control of our own minds and reasonable for us to think that others have their own minds. It is in no way proof and it may be an especially weak hypothesis if we start postulating invisible, powerful entities that cannot be detected through any empirical means who have unknown agendas.

Ah, so you don't like the word "proof". Well, neither do I. In fact, I like the words "reasonable", "demonstration", and "persuasion". I appreciate that you say that it is reasonable to believe we are in control of our minds. That is the closest we will come to "proof". What puzzles me is that you refuse to consider other non-empirical propositions to be reasonable:

Quote:

Originally posted by Skeptical:

I have _experienced_ my mind, I have not _experienced_ God or Satan or aliens or any other hypothetical non-empirical entities. This is a clear difference. I have not experienced other minds, but I see what can reasonably be assumed to be the actions of other minds. As I have stated several times now, even if I grant you only 2 non-empirical entities, God and Satan, you cannot choose _even between these 2_ which of them might be the cause of particular data. That is a serious problem for anyone who wants to take the idea of non-empirical entities as causes of empirical data seriously.

Are you certain that you have not experienced God? It would seem that you insist that the experience must be direct. You must see his face, or perhaps inscriptions on the walls of Yosemite. To you, secondary effects are insufficient. Many people have made reasonable inferences from the created order that Something is the cause of it. Furthermore, it is quite easily inferred from the intricate details and exacting specifications that very special attention was given in the making of the universe (especially Earth). I've asked this concerning God existence in the EoG thread: Is it not possible that some people are in denial, and choose to affirm what they comfortably prefer to believe?

You may remember our discussion of guilt, and my hint at morality. How do you know that these do not have a supernatural cause? Note that I am not asking merely for your opinion in this case. Rather, I am asking if you are aware of a convincing demonstration.

I think I now understand your disposition. I will elaborate upon this at length in the BC&A thread, but let me put the short version here. Tell me if I am wrong:

You are choosing to believe what you want to believe. The requirement in any reply or evidence is that it must meet your expectations. You maintain inflexible beliefs. The questions you pose are not asked to discover the truth, but to show others that any view that is contrary to the skeptical/materialist/naturalist position is nonsense.

Is this a fair assessment?

Here is a practical test: Name one thing that has surprised you--one thing that you thought you knew well--but turns out to be substantially different from your preconceptions. Perhaps you won't mind sharing what it is.

Thanks,

Vanderzyden

wade-w · 09-16-2002, 04:29 PM

Quote:

You are choosing to believe what you want to believe. The requirement in any reply or evidence is that it must meet your expectations. You maintain inflexible beliefs. The questions you pose are not asked to discover the truth, but to show others that any view that is contrary to the skeptical/materialist/naturalist position is nonsense.

I can't believe you actually have the gall to type that, Vanderzyden. Replace "skeptical/materialist/naturalist" with xtian/fundamentalist/creationist" and that is a very accurate description of all of your posts on this board. It also proves that despite your claims of a "scientific" education, you have no clue what science is about.

monkenstick · 09-16-2002, 04:32 PM

if you still reject common descent Vanderzyden then I question whether you've even read this thread;

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=001356" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=001356</a>

when can we expect your explanation for why this isn't evidence of common descent? It irritates me that you claim there isn't any evidence for Common descent when you haven't adressed my challenge yet.

Lizard · 09-16-2002, 04:40 PM

Reposting this question, since Vander seems to have missed it the first time. I trust we will have an answer soon.

Quote:

Vander,

I expect you have already read "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution"

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/" target="_blank">here</a>

and found all of them specious. Can you please go through them one by one and explain why? Or hey -- I'm feeling generous. How about just three?

[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: Lizard ]

Blinn · 09-16-2002, 06:33 PM

never mind

[ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: Zetek ]

scigirl · 09-17-2002, 08:16 AM

Ok, about my claim that evolution has more proof than gravity. . . (bold added by me of course)

<a href="http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html" target="_blank">http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html</a>

Quote:

The stunning degree of match between even the most incongruent phylogenetic trees found in the biological literature is widely unappreciated, mainly because most people (including many biologists) are unaware of the mathematics involved (Penny et al. 1982; Penny and Hendy 1986). Penny and Hendy have performed a series of detailed statistical analyses of the significance of incongruent phylogenetic trees, and here is their conclusion:

(Penny and Hendy 1986, p. 414):
"Biologists seem to seek the 'The One Tree' and appear not to be satisfied by a range of options. However, there is no logical difficulty in having a range of trees. There are 34,459,425 possible trees for 11 taxa (Penny et al. 1982), and to reduce this to the order of 10-50 trees is analogous to an accuracy of measurement of approximately one part in 10 to the 6th."

For a more realistic universal phylogenetic tree with dozens of taxa including all known phyla, the accuracy is better by many orders of magnitude. To put the significance of this incredible confirmation in perspective, consider the modern theory of gravity. Both Newton's Theory of Universal Gravitation and Einstein's General Theory of Relativity rely upon a fundamental physical constant, G, the gravitational constant. If these theories of gravity are correct, independent methods should determine similar values for G. However, to date, very precise independent measurements of the gravitational constant G disagree by nearly 1% (Kestenbaum 1998; Quinn 2000). Here is how David Kestenbaum describes the current scientific status of the theory of gravity, as reported in the prestigious journal Science:

"While the charge of the electron is known to seven decimal places, physicists lose track of G after only the third. For some, that's an embarrassment. 'It grates on me like a burr in the saddle,' says Alvin Sanders, a physicist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Over the past few decades, he and a handful of other physicists have dedicated themselves to measuring G more accurately. To their dismay, they've come up with wildly different values. 'You might say we've had negative progress,' says Barry Taylor, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland. ...
'Nobody understands it [the far-out results of the PTB, the German standards lab in Braunschweig],' says Meyer. 'They must have made an unbelievable mistake, but we cannot find it.' ... says Terry Quinn, 'we may just have to throw the PTB result out.'" (Kestenbaum 1998)

Over two years later, the same Terry Quinn (of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures [BIPM] in S�vres, France) summarized the situation in a review for the journal Nature:

"The current interest in measuring G was stimulated by the publication in 1996 of a value for G that differed by 0.6% from the accepted value given in the previous 1986 CODATA report. To take account of this, the 1998 CODATA report recommends a value for G ... with an uncertainty of 0.15%, some ten times worse than in 1986. Whereas the other fundamental constants were more accurately known in 1998 than in 1986, the uncertainty in G increased dramatically. The G community appeared to be going backwards rather than forwards." (Quinn 2000)

Nevertheless, a disagreement of just under 1% is still pretty good; it is not enough, at this point, to cause us to cast much doubt upon the validity and usefulness of modern theories of gravity. However, if tests of the theory of common descent performed that poorly, the standard phylogenetic trees independently determined by morphological and molecular methods would have to differ by more than 25 branches (out of 30)! In their quest for scientific perfection, some biologists are rightly rankled at the obvious discrepancies between some phylogenetic trees (Gura 2000; Patterson et al. 1993; Maley and Marshall 1998). However, as illustrated in Figure 1, the standard phylogenetic tree is known to 41 decimal places, which is a much greater precision and accuracy than that of even the most well-determined physical constants. For comparison, the charge of the electron is known to only seven decimal places, the Planck constant is known to only eight decimal places, the mass of the neutron, proton, and electron are all known to only nine decimal places, and the universal gravitional constant has been determined to only three decimal places.

Here�s Figure 1:

So, my statement that we have more data to establish macroevolution than gravity still holds. So there, and no offense to the physicists in the crowd

scigirl

Nat · 09-17-2002, 11:52 AM

Quote:

So, my statement that we have more data to establish macroevolution than gravity still holds. So there, and no offense to the physicists in the crowd

No offense taken by me - I freely afmit that we don't really understand gravity. We can describe its effects across macroscale distances, but we can't explain it worth a damn. It is probably the single greatest question in physics today.

09-16-2002, 06:33 PM	#328
Blinn Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2001 Location: Ohio, USA Posts: 1,162	never mind [ September 17, 2002: Message edited by: Zetek ]</p>

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

09-16-2002, 03:18 PM	#322
Vanderzyden Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: California Posts: 694	Skeptical, Let me refine the question: Where do YOU get your concepts of God and Satan? The reason I ask is because you appear to have you own ideas, but you are unwilling to seriously consider the sources from which they originate. My contention has been that these sources may be evaluated both scientifically and philosophically, in a manner not too different from an evalution of nature. If you want to know what it's like to live underwater, ask a fish. Vanderzyden

09-16-2002, 03:32 PM	#323
Doubting Didymus Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: East Coast. Australia. Posts: 5,455	Van, There have been a couple of threads now that address both evidence for evolution and some of your own objections, but which have never been graced by your presence. Ever since the chromosome challenge (where it seems you dismiss the evidence because you 'anticipate corroboration'), you seem to be limiting yourself to only philosophical debates, yet still claim a 'paucity' of evidence for evolution. I humbly suggest that you take the discussions about naturalism and empiricism to philosophy or science, and devote more time here in evolution/creation to discussing the actual evidence, so that you might actually be justified in making the claim that the evidence is scarce.

09-16-2002, 04:32 PM	#326
monkenstick Regular Member Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Australia Posts: 214	if you still reject common descent Vanderzyden then I question whether you've even read this thread; <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=001356" target="_blank">http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=58&t=001356</a> when can we expect your explanation for why this isn't evidence of common descent? It irritates me that you claim there isn't any evidence for Common descent when you haven't adressed my challenge yet.

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.