Solus

Hi guys. I'm a long time lurker, first time poster. I used to participate in discussions on alt.atheism, but have been out of the loop for a while.

Anyway, there is a discussion on another forum about evolution/intelligent design. I have addressed all the points that this particular arguer has made several times, but instead of actually addressing them he simply sidesteps them. I am getting tired of making a point only to have it ignored. I feel that my arguments are not hitting home whatever critical point he is missing. Thus, I was hoping that I could get some ideas for a more complete argument from you guys. Any points you could help me on would be helpful. Here is his latest, most complete post:

Wounded King

You might want to read

Grant BS, Wiseman LL.

Recent history of melanism in American peppered moths.

J Hered 2002 Mar-Apr;93(2):86-90

Where they discuss variations in allele frequency. This is clearly an example of natural selection, it is not an example of speciation, but neither is it meant to be.

As to the suggestion that Melanism has been around in peppered moths for thousands of years, I should be interested to see any evidence, since the first recorded occurrence was only seen in 1848.

Solus

Thak you, Wounded King. That is good information. It should be simple to disprove his whole moth argument with this.

The real crux of his argument is that complexity can't arise without design. He just evades my arguments to the contrary. On top of that he seems to be missing some key premise about how natural selection works - despite my fairly clear description of the basic process. I think I am unable to get through as it's been a long time since I have debated regularly and can't seem to word my argument in definite enough terms.

Wounded King

If your interlocutor is a really dyed in the wool creationist I doubt your terms could ever be defined enough. Not that its only Creationists that can be dogmatic and close minded.

Solus

No. He implies he is an agnostic - though he refuses to state his beliefs explicitly. He even claims to have previously believed in evolution, but then found too much "evidence" otherwise.

Peez

Hi Solus,

Here are a few random comments:You could offer Darwin’s original definition: “...individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other hand, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favourable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection.” (from The Origin of Species). A more modern definition would be “Differential success in the reproduction of different phenotypes resulting from the interaction of organisms with their environment.” (Biology, Sixth Edition. Campbell and Reece. 2002.)? You should be able to find a similar definition in any good introductory biology text book, or indeed at many web sites such as TalkOrigins. I have found that virtually all creationists are ignorant of the actual definitions of such terms, and often base their arguments on their own (often bizarre) definitions.Nope, that is not what biologists mean by natural selection.Who knows what is meant here by "evolutionary”, but natural selection is certainly not evolution. Natural selection can cause evolution, though it does not always.This is pretty funny coming from a creationist.It is quite obvious that he/she does not understand it. You might ask him/her to explain “natural selection,” “evolution,” and “descent with modification from common ancestors,” then point out their errors.More evidence that this person does not understand natural selection. It should be obvious to anyone who understands even the basics that natural selection does not involve intelligence at all.Is there anything intelligible in that sentence?This is an unsupported assertion, but in any event has nothing to do with evolution. Evolution concerns what happens to life once it exists. Where life came from is not covered by evolution, and in fact Darwin implied a supernatural origin of life.I think that what this person is trying to claim is that if we don’t know where life came from, then we can say nothing about evolution. Leaving aside for the moment that Christians seem to have trouble explaining where their god came from, this is a vacuous argument. If the creationist wishes, they can start with the assumption that one or more gods created the original life. This changes nothing about the massive evidence that living things have evolved from common ancestors, nor about the usefulness of the theory of evolution as a mechanism.Typical creationist tactic: stick to vague allegations with no support at all (even assuming that he/she is making any sense here). Note that creationists like to alternate between claiming that scientists stick to dogma and refuse to change their minds, and claiming that scientists change their minds so often that they cannot be trusted.Note that scientists never “prove” anything, at least not in the sense of establishing something beyond all doubt. Scientists try to disprove things, and when they fail often enough they start to accept that maybe the hypothesis is true. Eventually a hypothesis may be accepted as a “scientific fact,” but even then it is only accepted provisionally.More evidence that this person does not understand evolution by natural selection. Natural selection is, by definition, non-random.This person seems to have no idea what a “theory” is, either.It is amazing how many errors these people can fit into a single sentence. Evolutionary processes are not always random, in fact evolution by natural selection is by definition non-random. Evolution by natural selection, or by genetic drift, is “purposeless” and “totally lacking in any planned intelligent design,” but evolution by artificial selection (such as has occurred in many domesticated populations) certainly has purpose and is directed by intelligent beings with plans. Of course, evolution does not make any attempt to address “the cause of everything in earth and sky.”I presume that he/she is getting at the origin of life, which as I said has nothing to do with evolution. Even so, they are out to lunch. Atoms do not behave randomly. Mix some oxygen and hydrogen and light a match: the atoms do not make molecules at random, they make the same molecule over and over and over again (trillions of trillions of times with even a modest amount of these materials)... water. More to the point, amino acids do form spontaneously in non-living systems, according to NASA. This person has to be an idiot to spout such drivel.Wrong again. Evolution does automatically produce a new species, that is a process called speciation. And it has been observed as it happened a number of times, as described at TalkOrigins. No, it’s not, but the point that this person seems to be trying to make is that mutations never produce useful DNA. This is, of course, false. Already covered.That is debateable, but in any event irrelevant. As I pointed out earlier, speciation has been observed. But you might ask this moron to try to define a “species” and exactly what speciation involves.

It is pretty clear that this person is not going to change his/her mind (who was it that pointed out that one cannot reason a person out of a position that they did not reason themselves into in the first place?), but respond with the lurkers in mind. Good luck.

Peez

Nic Tamzek

A grade-A moron you've got right there.

Psha! Even YECs know that amino acids can be produced by an electric spark in a reducing atmosphere.

Regarding peppered moths:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/#moths

Monkey

Grab yourself and Ecology textbook and check out the section on Natural Selection. If will (or should) provide you with descriptions of stabilising, disruptive and directional selection with examples and how natural selection acts to increase the average fitness of a population.

According to most Biology and Ecology textbooks, natural selection is most certainly evolution. According to Krohne (2001), the the text book for our university, natural selection is an "...evolutionary process by which allele frequencies change from one generation to the next to reflect the differential success of different genotypes in surviving and reproducing".

Solus

Thanks guys. I should be able to make a pretty convincing argument with this information. Ultimately it may have no effect on him at all - as already pointed out, some people will never change no matter how much evidence there is against their assertions. At least I will have tried though.

Peez

Hi,

Unfortunately, there is some confusion caused by the fact that there are two ways of interpreting “Natural Selection.” I don’t have Krohne (2001), but it seems to use “natural selection” in the sense that John Endler used it, that natural selection refers to differential reproductive success of different genotypes (which often results in a change in allele frequencies). The other way to understand natural selection is that it refers to the differential reproductive success of different phenotypes, which would only have the potential to cause a change in allele frequencies if the phenotype is heritable.

If we look at a few text books for university level non-major biology courses (biology courses for people students not in a biology program): Leaving aside for the moment that I do not agree with what some of what these definitions state, some go with the Endler sense of natural selection and some go with the other, but none state that natural selection is evolution. Now for a few from general biology texts for university biology majors: We see the same story here, some define natural selection in terms of genotypes and some in terms of phenotypes, but natural selection is not defined as the same thing as evolution. Just two more definitions, from text books used in university evolution courses: The last definition given does imply that natural selection is evolution, though not that evolution is natural selection. Thus, it may be argued that there is no consensus on the exact definition of “natural selection,” but it is useful to distinguish between “natural selection” and “evolution” because it is useful to distinguish between a mechanism that may cause evolution and an actual evolutionary change per se. Note that genetic drift may also cause evolution, and natural selection (in the sense of phenotypes or genotypes) might not cause an inheritable change from one generation to the next. I believe that it particularly useful to make this distinction when explaining evolution to creationists, who tend to confuse the fact of evolution (descent by modification from common ancestors), the process of evolution (an inheritable change in characteristics of individuals in a population from one generation to the next), and the theory of evolution (the mechanisms by which evolution proceeds, essentially mutation, natural selection and genetic drift).

Peez