Kevbo

Of course, because there is a physical force that restricts building height - gravity. There isn't a corresponding force in evolution.

Malachi256

"Like I said, I weep for my country. The reason you can get away with that is that this subject has been gutted in high school science curricula. It's a shame.

I teach it at the college level. The first thing we have to do is remedial biology, to correct the piss-poor job most high school teachers have done."


Slamming high school teachers now?

At what point in our history was the curricula "gutted"? I was never under the impression that macro-evolutionary teaching was a major part of intro-biology. Dissecting frogs and studying photosynthesis seem more standard to me.

I had phenomenal public high school teachers and curriculum - my bio AP teacher happened to be a creationist, and he prepared my friend and I quite well for the AP... both got 5's.

The reason you have to do remedial biology is because students are being given high school diplomas based on increasingly watered down standards (or standards that aren't keeping up with current knowledge), mostly due, IMO, to the total lack of proper parental and societal role modelling. Males in general are dropping like flies, as far as academic performance goes, because they are so unmotivated...

You drop by an honors or AP class, and I'll bet you good money the most consistent variable is not the teacher, not the curriculum, but the parental involvement. Successful students have involved parents, as a generalization.


And I teach community college... not much different, but enough =)

pz

The only one you have mentioned is that you do not believe it is testable or observable. Are you conceding that the sole objection you have offered so far is completely invalid?

Please do go on and tell us what your single (to spare us that novel) best reason to reject macroevolution might be.

I think I'd also like to see your single best reason to reject the established age of the earth, as well.

If you'd like, you could put each of those in a new thread. This should be fun.

Malachi256

Kev

Perhaps

I'd say chaos/entropy/randomness is a pretty nasty force against macroevolution.

Populations tend to exhibit a reduction in allelic diversity over time, as opposed to a bolstering of it. Only the biggest populations seem to remain stable.

All significant adaptive radiations (that I've seen) leading to "new" species, or at least novel forms within a species, seem to be cashing in on already present allelic diversity, as opposed to generating their own. This is something I'm actually interested in looking more into... is there any evidence that, say, the Galapagos finches had novel mutations leading to any of their forms, or are they all like domesticated dogs... just re-arrangements of already present alleles? Or maybe I'm wrong about the dogs too *shrugs*.


Likewise, mutations by their nature are very destructive. Seems like you've got to have a measure of faith that natural selection will continue to weed out the vastly disproportionate negative mutations, while keep enough neutral or positive ones around to allow for a significant evolutionary change.



Irreducable complexity is an old argument, which ultimately requires a situation by situation analysis of. Haven't done much work with it, and while Dawkin's explanation for possible eye/bat evolution in Watchmaker was plausible, it hasn't exhaustively convinced me.

beastmaster

Not so. Evolution (including macroevolution) is no more incompatable with Christianity than are heliocentrism and round-earthism. The vast majority of Christians accept the fact of evolution without any discomfiture to their theological beliefs. Any paradigm-shattering stakes you see in this question lie in your own non-omniscient imagination.

Not really. Your ascription to certain medieval beliefs in no way threatens our confidence in the non-existence of supernatural entities. What appalls members of this Board, if I may speak for them, is that a teacher of Biology (!) favors a book of mythology in explaining the origin of species and dating the age of the earth over the countervailing mountain of evidence and scientific consensus in favor of common descent and an old earth.

Malachi256

pz

Not today =) Gotta go cause you to weep for the country pretty soon (I teach night classes... ugh)


The fundamental reason?

That'd have to be my dad. He loves me, my mom, my brother, his friends, and even strangers in a manner that exhibits the reality of Christ to me. He claims that he is the way he is because of Jesus Christ. That is the largest stone in my foundation.

And that's the shortest answer you'll get out of me......


I don't think there's anything invalid about saying that I cannot observe macroevolution happen.

Single best reason for bein' Young Earth? I'll have to think about that.

I hope it's fun for you, it's quite a rush for me =)



Edit: Beast - atheists were getting excited about my beliefs long before I was a teacher =P As far as theistic evolution... *shrugs* I think it's an extremely weak position, and I've met very few christians in my own life who believed it and also struck me as really living up to the meaning of Christian. Obviously there are exceptions.

pz

So you really lack any rational, scientific reason. OK. That's exactly what I expected.

Dr.GH

Because I would like to know what university or campus, is doing such a piss poor job of education. It is not personal information, it is information about a so-called place of higher education.

Your faculty should not be accredited to award degrees. You should not be entitled to teach in a well run school. Go teach bull shit to other fool's children at a creato school that welcomes stupidity and lies. If you are in a public school in California teaching creato lies, you should be ashamed. You are in direct violation of the California Curriculum Guidlines, you are violating the Constitution, your are in violation of your contract, and you are violating the trust of the children, and their parents. They have the RIGHT to a good education. A creationist can not teach science, as they have not learned any.

RufusAtticus

And how many of those are actually testing the "supernatural" power of prayer? None are. Why? Because you can't test supernatural forces; they deny all forms falsification. "Why didn't the prayer work? Well they just didn't pray right." For someone making alot of fuss about the scientific method, you sure need a refresher course on how we scientists actually work.

You do realize that this was done over a hundred years ago as scientists evaluated the evidence and determined that their creationist models didn't fit it. You know what we have found though? Evolution and an old earth not only fit the data that we have, but as new data is collected they fit better. Can you find a single thing in biology that is inconsistant with evolutionary theory, specificially universal common descent with modification?

The flaw you are making here is to consider experimention distinct from oberservation. They are both forms of data collection. Prediction and peer review are forms of data analysis.

Who's saying that?

Once again you show a faulty notion of the scientific method. The "repeatable" reqirement in science is not that some experiment can be done multiple times. Its that the data collection is analysis are reproducable.

And you know this how? Because you've studied macroevolution and participated in the peer review process? The fact is that you have a false perception of how it works.

For starters, "evolution" is a scientific concept. Is the study of evolution a scientific endevor? Yeap. Just like the rest of science, evolutionary biology develops hypotheses and theories and tests them against data, gathered from both observations and manipulations. Such data collection and analysis are repeatable and many labs often collaborate and compete on the same topic.

The study of macroevolution is no different in these respects. For example, the most popular way now to test hypotheses of macroevolution is to use molecular data, either sequenced DNA or protein. Data is gathered from many organisms, representing multiple species. Statistical and computational techniques are then preformed on the data to determine the relationships of the organisms to one another, and the statistical significance of the organisms. Both the statistical analysis and data collection methods are falsifiable and repeatable, and hence well within the realms of scientific investigation.

Well then you need to get a copy of Gould's last book, the Struction of Evolutionary Theory.

Doubting Didymus

Well bloody well hullo Malachi, and welcome to the IIDB evolution forum.

You may be experiencing that feeling usually reserved for finding onesself in a vat full of sharks. That'll be just because it's been some time since a creationist willing to actively discuss this topic without preaching and hellfire has shown up here. (All the other ones either left without finishing, or inexplicably turned into theistic evolutionists, go figure).

First thing I'd like to talk to you about is this thing called Macroevolution. You might be under the impression that the word has a definite meaning that most biologists agree on. You'd be wrong, surprisingly enough. The word macroevolution has many and various meanings even, (especially) among biologists. A sample: 'anagenesis = macroevolution', 'common descent = macroevolution', 'large scale morphological change = macroevolution', 'the ecologically and geologically influenced patterns of evolution on a grand scale = macroevolution', 'Evolutionary phenomena not encompassed by microevolution (that is, things like adaptive radiation, phenotypic plasticity, mass extinction, evolutionary trends = macroevolution'.

I myself started a thread here not so long ago, in an attempt to clarify once and for all what the word actually means.

The meaning of Macroevolution

The answer, apparently, is that it means a huge spectrum of various, often only loosely related things. As such, no-one is legitemately able to use the word without providing a clear definition of what they mean by it. You've called it "significant change among higher taxa", the meaning of which is not immediately obvious. It sounds like you mean anagenesis, or possibly large scale morphological change, or more likely both. In any case, you're going to have to make it really clear what you mean, because theres no common definition of macroevolution for us to fall back on.

Ta for now, and welcome once more. I hope you stick around in the face of adversity. I'll finish with one more question for you: have you ever heard of endogenous retroviral insertions?