RufusAtticus

Probably not since such an alter would only exist in his head. The point is that Bergman, your "refuting" source, is not a scientist. He is an instructor at a community/technical college who lacks a scientific degree and doesn't do scientific research. Thus his opinionated writtings do nothing to challenge the concensus of professional biologists.

He is just another example of AiG inflating flacid creationist credentials.

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: RufusAtticus ]</p>

Xixax

It would probably help in future discussions then if you found the relevant sources of information that made you capable of taking part in a debate on them. I am by no means an expert, but I definitely understand the issue enough that if forced ( by a lack of other more qualified people around ), could debate the issue with confidence.

It didn't take an extremely long time to acquire this familiarity either, only weeks. ( It is like Dawkins explanation of the simplicity of physics, the complexity and mystery behind it is generally propagated by those who wish to seem complex and mysterious. )

The context of evolution is not something that can accurately be described as an assumption. No more than when someone talks of the orbits of satellites is making an assumption of gravity. It is backed by enough supporting facts that it can be considered a given when it is not the subject of inquiry itself.

The companies decoding the human genome are not only doing the work so that we have more evidence of evolution. Really, I doubt proving evolution is even a major goal of their work. They are much more interested in the immediate medical benefits that would come from a deeper understanding of the genome. Since they are not looking to expand the evidence of evolution, and it is so well supported without any new evidence anyway, it is treated then as the context for which the data makes sense.

At this day and age, I doubt many grants would be given to companies whose sole reason for research would be the proof of evolution. It's so well supported already, that any further funds spent is really only for the benefit of those still wrapped in the emotional, religious, and philosophical webs that block them from accepting the direction the evidence points.

And the cosmetic similarities between us and apes is not the answer to the question at all ( the question being, "Why are we similar?" ). Sure, the apes may on some level notice similarities, but that doesn't give us the information we're looking for.

But that would be of much less use if we did not understand why we have ailments and genomes similar to dogs and mice.

It's also not the only place evolution is helping us in a real way. Antibiotics are the easiest example of how evolution greatly benefits our ability to treat disease. The predictive qualities of evolution are it's greatest future potential.

Well, I think the issue here is less about the reliability of the theory, and more about your desire to view the data and let it lead where it may. If you steer the information with a purpose in mind, and that purpose is to defend a position you had before you saw the data, and is contrary to the overall picture the data paints, there is little that will convince you.

However, if you let go of your presumption long enough to let the data be it's own guide, you'll see it's not only a reliable theory, it's remarkably simple and understandable at it's highest level. It will then help make sense out of biology in general.

I can say ( as I think I remember Bubba saying in another post ), that my interest in biology was minimal until I finally let go of my preconceived notions regarding evolution. Once I realized it was not only plausible, but that it was also the only plausible answer to the diversity we see in life, I was in awe. Add to that the amazement of realizing how ( as Dawkins puts forth eloquently in _The_Blind_Watchmaker_ ) it was also inevitable once organic compounds began to self replicate, and you suddenly have a student extremely eager for information.

Had I been given this information in High School instead of the heavily guarded misinformation I was fed instead ( I grew up in the Corn Belt, the Northern version of the Bible Belt ), I would probably be in Med School right now in the midst of an internship. Instead, I'm just starting.

It was nice to see you leave open the possibility, but I think as a further step you should not only leave it open, but consider it for a moment. Not on an emotional basis ( the gut reaction you have to doing that is probably similar to the one I had originally, feeling almost guilty at the thought ), but just on the basis of refusing to believe a lie and ignore the reality around you.

( Edited a few spelling mistakes )

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: Xixax ]</p>

dk

<ol type="1">[*]Doubting Didymus: Pardon me if this sounds rude, dk, as that is not my intent. But do you have a point of some kind? I am quite seriously having some problems trying to work out what you are actually trying to say.
dk: I’m saying the evidence was overstated in the context of evolution.[*]Doubting Didymus: I appreciate the admission that you would have to change your outlook if the evidence is convincing, but you also admit a total lack of knowledge in the field and an apparent unwillingness to discuss the technical evidence.
dk: Then recognize all rational people want science to succeed. But there are many examples of people with the wrong number of chromosomes, there are many birth defects none, to my knowledge, offer much hope as an evolutionary mechanism.[*]Doubting Didymus: So what is your actual point about the fused chromosomes?
dk: I think it’s possible, but unlikely. I’d like to know how this relates to Downs Syndrome and other birth defects. I’d like to know more about error correction at germination and retroviruses. None of this appears to be directly related to evolution, but could have baring on evolution. At some point the knowledge base will offer reliable insights about what it means to be a human being, or a monkey, but I think evolution could put many people out on a limb and saw the branch off.[/list=a]

• Doubting Didymus: Remembering that the evolutionary explanation for this phenomenon is that our chromosome is similar to an apes two chromosomes, because we each got our chromosomes from the same ancestor. This explanation fits all the evidence (why there are extra centromeres, why the chromosomes are similar etc), regardless of which came first, the evidence or the question.
  dk: All what evidence, trying to deduce from what exists, what a thing came from or will become is fraught with problems. I’m a network analysis and have done some reverse engineering but in my opinion its monkey play compared to DNA. It’s a hit and miss art that requires a sound foundation and a detailed description at every layer, whether the detail makes sense or not. Miss a single component and some nonsense down the line can blow the whole stack apart, and must be torn down layer by layer, and component by component by component by component until the missing element presents itself. You guys act like DNA is a simple matter of identifying pieces, speculating what pieces might plausibly fit, and construct a multi-layer model absent hard facts, so I think you guys in many respects are chasing your tails. The closest analogies I can offer is to reverse engineer 5 gigabytes of machine language output by several different compilers and interpreters. There are a lot of “do loops”, “conditional branches” and masks that are redundant, but 90% of the code is error correction developed over decades, with all kinds of nonsense left over for backward compatibility. You can tell me DNA is simpler, but I don’t buy it, and we’re not talking about decades but millions of years. It seems to me you guys need to get a grip on reality. I might be wrong but I doubt it.
• Doubting Didymus: You seem to be wanting this evidence to 'prove' evolution, but you have a slightly faulty concept of what is going on in this case.
  dk: I’d be happy if a single mechanism in mammals could be identified, tested and proved reliable. I’d like to see an open discussion to draw a line between macro and micro evolution. That would be a solid starting point.
• Doubting Didymus: The thing about theories in science is that, when some evidence arises, it is matched to the theory to see if it can be explained by that theory. If the theory provides a perfect explanation for the data, then the data is said to support the theory.
  This is what people mean when they say that theories can not be 'proven' in a sense, they can only be supported or unsupported by evidence.
  dk: I understand the concepts of plausibility and possibility, I’m talking about reliability, and the reliability of evolutionary science stinks. For the last 3,000 years there have clearly been patterns that span across all life forms, this really doesn’t comment of evolution but life as it exists.
• Doubting Didymus: So, in this case, the fused human chromosome supports the theory of common descent, because it is explained by the theory. Why is the human chromosome similar to two ape chromosomes joined end to end? Because we both share the same ancestor, who passed the same genes on to our line and the chimpanzee line. Why are ours fused, and apes not? Because a telomeric fusion occured after we split from apes.
  dk: That’s a possibility, but it is not a mechanism or even a proof of viability, much less reliability. I mean what does cold fusion, a perpetual motion machines, or a lever long enough to move the earth say about the solar system, mechanics and technology, not much.
• Doubting Didymus: Its a slightly different concept from the 'proof' you are probably used to. When you see your car outside your window, you say that the location of the car is proven to be ouside your house. If science addressed the question formally and technically, it would first pose a hypothesis: that your car is parked outside. Then it would collect data, by a visual test. (looking for the car). Ideally any variables would be controlled and multiple tests with various testers would be performed, the results of which would no doubt be: 'visual tests show that light forming the shape of a car radiates from a location ouside your house'.
  Does the hypothesis explain this data? Yes, it does: The car shaped light is emanating from your car, which is hypothesised to be present at that location. The hypothesis is supported by the visual evidence. Further supporting evidence from more tests also support the hypothesis, and it is now the theory that your car is outside. In a technical sense, 'proof' never enters the process. Alternative hypotheses are still possible, but the only question to ask is: do the other hypotheses explain the data better?
  dk: No, it is not the only question. I might live on a neighborhood where everybody drives the same car, the criterion changes. I might live in a neighborhood where cars get boosted every night, the criterion changes. The point being that the particulars may (or may not) conform to systematic or general rules. Science needs higher standards, not lower. You guys are taking a beating on reliability, not science, whether you realize it or not. When the public says they don’t believe in evolution they mean, “We don’t have confidence in evolutionary science”. Evolutionary science responds with happenstance, anti-creationism escalatory rhetoric and pie in the ski. It’s a problem, because there’s more and more misinformation. The question should be, “Does the theory contain the data? or “Does the data contain the theory?”. In science it’s the latter, but I suspect I’ll get a lot of argument from some people.

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

KnightWhoSaysNi

dk,

Here's a question that you may want to consider. What would you consider good evidence to be for common ancestry between chimps and humans? What should we predict to find if this was the case?

RufusAtticus

Duh! Chimps givin birt to humans. I cant beleive you evilutionismist don't undersand tat.

K

A Bible verse stating so . Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Unfortunately, with presuppositionalists I think there is a lot of truth to my little jab.

Dr Rick

The evidence supports evolution as strongly as the evidence supports heliocentrism, and that is not an overstatement.

<strong> Not all people understand science; those that do recognize that evolution is the only scientific explanation for all of the evidence.

<strong> That mutations can occur at all is predicted and indeed necessary for evolution but is not in any way accounted for by intelligent design or creation.

<strong> Superstition and religion fail much more often than science.

<strong> Do you have a better way of studying the material world? Astronomy, geology, and meteorology depend in great part upon observation, too. Are you seriously going to argue that reading religious texts to explain these sciences is better than looking at the evidence rationally? That's essentially what you are doing when you argue for intelligent design as an alternative to evolution.

<strong> Your analogy would work if you told us that most of the computer code you reverse engineered had no programming function.

Computer code is intelligently designed, DNA is not.

<strong> Strawman fallacy

<strong> That's a terrible analogy: code for "error correction" is still code and bears no similarity to non-encoding DNA.

<strong> Spectacularly irrelevant conclusion hinged upon a strawman fallacy: You can tell me the Earth is flat, but I won't buy it; therefore, your arguments about evolution are wrong.

<strong> Those that are wrong usually do.

<strong> <a href="http://www.talkorigins.org" target="_blank">www.talkorigins.org</a>

<strong> The reliability of evolution is excellent; it reliably explains all of the available evidence, and accurately predicts what we will find. Evolution predicts that we will not find a rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian strata, and we do not. Evolution predicts that we will find more similaraties between monkey and human DNA than bumblebee and human DNA, and we do. Intelligent design and creation do not reliably explain or predict anything.

<strong> This looks an awful lot like that whole pretext/context gibberish, again.

<strong> It's an explanation for the observed phenomena, unlike creation.

<strong> Speaking of not saying much...

<strong> ...and saying lots of nothing.

Rick

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

dk

<ol type="1">[*]Xixax: It would probably help in future discussions then if you found the relevant sources of information that made you capable of taking part in a debate on them. I am by no means an expert, but I definitely understand the issue enough that if forced ( by a lack of other more qualified people around ), could debate the issue with confidence.
dk: The thread has followed from a challenge to a science teacher. I suspect chromosome fusion directly relates to Downs Syndrome and other genetic defects, and could have impacts upon evolutionary science.[*]dk: answer is all to ready, nobody raised the question because everybody mistook the pretext of evolution for context. Clearly patterns are repeated across the DNA of all living creatures, but I would expect this to be the case on appearances alone, and even a monkey knows they have fingers and toes like people, even if they can’t count to ten. The genes certainly prove life manifests the same patterns, again and again and again, but this evidence has been around since the 12th Century ( Fibonacci). I don’t see how this proves evolution is a blind undirected process, or a directed designed process; and its quite possible there’s evidence for both. If Newton and Einstein saw design in the universe then that’s great, and if Heisenberg and Bell see only random variables that’s even more wonderful.
Xixax:- The context of evolution is not something that can accurately be described as an assumption. No more than when someone talks of the orbits of satellites is making an assumption of gravity. It is backed by enough supporting facts that it can be considered a given when it is not the subject of inquiry itself.
dk: Satellites are applied technology, and deploy technology for all kinds of reasons, as a matter of fact. Evolution covers every aspect of science in one form or another. Specifically the evolution of life is about the laws that govern life on several levels, but the scope of the evolution in the broadest terms covers all aspects of all life, hence in its own right is as much a philosophy as a science.[*]Xixax: The companies decoding the human genome are not only doing the work so that we have more evidence of evolution. Really, I doubt proving evolution is even a major goal of their work. They are much more interested in the immediate medical benefits that would come from a deeper understanding of the genome. Since they are not looking to expand the evidence of evolution, and it is so well supported without any new evidence anyway, it is treated then as the context for which the data makes sense.
dk: Very good, so you agree evolutionary science is ancillary to the human genome, medical applications, and health. I agree that the work done by the genome project adds to the knowledge base of evolutionary science.[*]Xixax: At this day and age, I doubt many grants would be given to companies whose sole reason for research would be the proof of evolution. It's so well supported already, that any further funds spent is really only for the benefit of those still wrapped in the emotional, religious, and philosophical webs that block them from accepting the direction the evidence points.
dk: I’m not contrary to evolutionary science, but I don’t see how religion is a threat to evolutionary science, anymore than literature, opera or architecture. Its only when we get into matters of education, dogma and doctrine that evolutionary science becomes contentious.[*]Xixax: And the cosmetic similarities between us and apes is not the answer to the question at all ( the question being, "Why are we similar?" ). Sure, the apes may on some level notice similarities, but that doesn't give us the information we're looking for.
dk: I disagree, women get boob jobs for appearances. Science doesn’t need a boob job, and morphing fossils into people is a boob job fashioned to titillate not educate. Chromosome fusion is science, and I look forward to a credible response in the context of the birth defects that inflict monkeys and people. How this bares on evolution could be important, or it could be purely a medical matter.[*]dk:The only progress I’ve noticed come from the genome entails defective chromosomes of inbred dogs and lab mice that match similar ailments in people, and this analysis is systematic, not evolution based.
Xixax: But that would be of much less use if we did not understand why we have ailments and genomes similar to dogs and mice.
dk: That’s subjective. Maybe if science hadn’t gotten preoccupied with Darwin’s finches, survival of the favored races and biometrics they would have taken the time to read Mendel’s paper on genetics, and we’d have a cure for cancer, AIDs and MDR microbes. I don’t know, and I don’t see any point in debating alternate time lines. I’m willing to state post facto, evolutionary science thus far has been so unreliable it has done more harm than good.[*]Xixax: It's also not the only place evolution is helping us in a real way. Antibiotics are the easiest example of how evolution greatly benefits our ability to treat disease. The predictive qualities of evolution are it's greatest future potential.
dk: So far, nobody has brought a drug derived from the human genome to market, and they have tried to get several drugs approved. The human genome companies have begun recruiting leadership from other areas to bolster their image. Please read the article I posted on page 1 of the thread. I could effectively argue that the random undirected processes evolutionary theory demands innately lack predictive qualities. But I don’t want to go there, because it’s off topic. .[*]dk:But let me repeat, if the theory of evolution ever proves reliable, then I'm all for it.
Xixax: Well, I think the issue here is less about the reliability of the theory, and more about your desire to view the data and let it lead where it may. If you steer the information with a purpose in mind, and that purpose is to defend a position you had before you saw the data, and is contrary to the overall picture the data paints, there is little that will convince you.
dk: Well the issue for me is reliability. Let me say it this way. Nobody can challenge the science used to build automobiles. But at another level we need to challenge the reliability of the technology as the horse that drives civilization. In fact it seems likely trains and switching technology would be more efficient, cost effective and environmentally friendly. However we frame the issues presents the solution. Yesteryear, people participated in a vision of the future by holding World Fairs that showcased new technology. There are detailed plans for Eastern Cities designed back in 1820, that still function as a blueprint for growth. A few years ago a vast system of tunnels was found connecting the buildings of downtown Chicago when pillions punched to flood the entire area. What a great idea though! I’m not against evolutionary science, but I think its foolish to call it reliable, or to base civilization’s future upon its maturity. I think evolutionary theory is being officiously framed as a solution, where it should be studied as a problem. Lets get real, as a culture we devolved from Mozart to Gangster Rape. Sorry I journey off the beaten path again.[*]Xixax: However, if you let go of your presumption long enough to let the data be it's own guide, you'll see it's not only a reliable theory, it's remarkably simple and understandable at it's highest level. It will then help make sense out of biology in general.
dk: Ok, I’ll buy that, but then I don’t understand the political battle. If you have confidence in the theory, then let the science persuade, not judges, demagogues and bureaucrats. I mean the absurdity of a biology Prof publicly calling for a loyalty oath does more harm to evolutionary science than all creationists put together. Engage the debate as an opportunity, not an opportunity to beat people with a stick.[*]Xixax: I can say ( as I think I remember Bubba saying in another post ), that my interest in biology was minimal until I finally let go of my preconceived notions regarding evolution. Once I realized it was not only plausible, but that it was also the only plausible answer to the diversity we see in life, I was in awe. Add to that the amazement of realizing how ( as Dawkins puts forth eloquently in _The_Blind_Watchmaker_ ) it was also inevitable once organic compounds began to self replicate, and you suddenly have a student extremely eager for information.
Had I been given this information in High School instead of the heavily guarded misinformation I was fed instead ( I grew up in the Corn Belt, the Northern version of the Bible Belt ), I would probably be in Med School right now in the midst of an internship. Instead, I'm just starting.
dk: I find your last few paragraphs persuasive. Personally I don’t think the purpose of life is to selfishly pass on one’s DNA, but hey if that’s what rocks you jock it’s a free country. I don’t want my kids in k0-k12, or my neighbor’s kids, forcibly indoctrinated with a curriculum designed to induce selfishness as the purpose of life, especially under the authority of science.[*]Xixax: It was nice to see you leave open the possibility, but I think as a further step you should not only leave it open, but consider it for a moment. Not on an emotional basis ( the gut reaction you have to doing that is probably similar to the one I had originally, feeling almost guilty at the thought ), but just on the basis of refusing to believe a lie and ignore the reality around you.
dk: We are different people, as a person I owe you respect consonant with human dignity. We do not agree on many personal matters for philosophical reasons, but that’s not slight against you. Philosophically speaking ‘reality’ is often misunderstood. I know I’ve wandered off the thread, but am genuinely interested in the part chromosome fusion plays in birth defects.[/list=a]

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

Dr Rick

This pretext places your chain of non sequitors, factual errors, fallacious analogies, gibberish, and strawmen into context; you simply do not understand evolution.

Read; the answers are out there for you to learn, if you want to.

Rick

MOJO-JOJO

all thumbs today

[ October 11, 2002: Message edited by: MOJO-JOJO ]</p>