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For scientists who accept evolution

hammegk said:
I admit I missed that. Or perhaps you think canids are not canids?
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He twists. He turns. But he can't get off the hook.

Note he has quietly shifted up the taxonomic hierarchy to pretend that he was talking about the family canidae instead of a species. (Well, actually he'd already inflated his ideas up to genera while obtusely insisting "dogs is dogs" includes wolves"

Let's give you a clue, Hammy, if you call everything on Earth the same species then "micro"-evolution can explain everything with no awkward species boundaries to cross.

"lifeforms is lifeforms"

Job done.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
He twists. He turns. But he can't get off the hook.

Note he has quietly shifted up the taxonomic hierarchy to pretend that he was talking about the family canidae instead of a species. (Well, actually he'd already inflated his ideas up to genera while obtusely insisting "dogs is dogs" includes wolves"
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And he's laying the groundwork for order Carnivora as well, did you notice?

I can see the rear-guard now, frantically doing research to support the idea that there's something fundamentally different about eukaryotic bacteria that separates them in an unevolvable way from prokaryotic....
 
drkitten said:
And he's laying the groundwork for order Carnivora as well, did you notice?

I can see the rear-guard now, frantically doing research to support the idea that there's something fundamentally different about eukaryotic bacteria that separates them in an unevolvable way from prokaryotic....
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It would be funnier if their attempts to influence education were not so serious.
 
Badly Shaved Monkey said:
He twists. He turns. But he can't get off the hook.

Note he has quietly shifted up the taxonomic hierarchy to pretend that he was talking about the family canidae instead of a species. (Well, actually he'd already inflated his ideas up to genera while obtusely insisting "dogs is dogs" includes wolves"

Let's give you a clue, Hammy, if you call everything on Earth the same species then "micro"-evolution can explain everything with no awkward species boundaries to cross.

"lifeforms is lifeforms"

Job done.
Click to expand...
Now we could agree, if it wasn't for the fact that the fossil record doesn't agree -- having all those lurches-to-something-totally-new with no gradient -- and everything ever seen in the petri dish, or the fly cage, never even implies a critter's ability to make such a lurch-to-new-species.
 
hammegk said:
everything ever seen in the petri dish, or the fly cage, never even implies a critter's ability to make such a lurch-to-new-species.
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This is simply a lie. Critters have been observed to "lurch-to-new-species," as was pointed out to you upthread. Check out the relevant talk.origins page for a rather boringly long and detailed list of observed speciation events under every widely discussed potential definition of species.

Oh, but I forget. Now you want not lurches to new species. but lurches to new... genus? family?
order? How far up the taxonomic hierarchy are you planning on going? To the best of my knowledge, you're right that nothing in a test tube has ever been observed to change genera. I don't think I've heard any reports that someone's bacteria suddenly shouted "Shazam!" and turned into a platypus. Obviously, evolution must be false if something that has never been predicted to be observable in the lab (because of the length of time it takes) has never been observed in the lab.

The 2000-year old lifespan of redwood trees is also obviously also a just-so story, since no one has ever managed to grow a 2000-year old redwood from a seed in the lab. Obviously, all those apparently old redwoods were cleverly constructed in a suburb of Burbank, California, by a top secret defense contractor in the 1960s, just to throw off biologists.
 
drkitten said:
This is simply a lie. Critters have been observed to "lurch-to-new-species," as was pointed out to you upthread. Check out the relevant talk.origins page for a rather boringly long and detailed list of observed speciation events under every widely discussed potential definition of species.

Oh, but I forget. Now you want not lurches to new species. but lurches to new... genus? family?
order? How far up the taxonomic hierarchy are you planning on going? To the best of my knowledge, you're right that nothing in a test tube has ever been observed to change genera. I don't think I've heard any reports that someone's bacteria suddenly shouted "Shazam!" and turned into a platypus. Obviously, evolution must be false if something that has never been predicted to be observable in the lab (because of the length of time it takes) has never been observed in the lab.

The 2000-year old lifespan of redwood trees is also obviously also a just-so story, since no one has ever managed to grow a 2000-year old redwood from a seed in the lab. Obviously, all those apparently old redwoods were cleverly constructed in a suburb of Burbank, California, by a top secret defense contractor in the 1960s, just to throw off biologists.
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I just love verbal bludgeonings like this. :D
 
I thought this quote from John Stewart Mill did justice to what's going on in this thread:

The most universal of the forms in which this difference of method is accustomed to present itself, is the ancient feud between what is called theory, and what is called practice or experience. There are, on social and political questions, two kinds of reasoners: there is one portion who term themselves practical men, and call the others theorists; a title which the latter do not reject, though they by no means recognise it as peculiar to them. The distinction between the two is a very broad one, though it is one of which the language employed is a most incorrect exponent. It has been again and again demonstrated, that those who are accused of despising facts and disregarding experience build and profess to build wholly upon facts and experience; while those who disavow theory cannot make one step without theorizing. But, although both classes of inquirers do nothing but theorize, and both of them consult no other guide than experience, there is this difference between them, and a most important difference it is: that those who are called practical men require specific experience, and argue wholly upwards from particular facts to a general conclusion; while those who are called theorists aim at embracing a wider field of experience, and, having argued upwards from particular facts to a general principle including a much wider range than that of the question under discussion, then argue downwards from that general principle to a variety of specific conclusions.
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emphasis mine...


Does anyone have any comments?

Flick
 
stamenflicker said:
I thought this quote from John Stewart Mill did justice to what's going on in this thread:

The most universal of the forms in which this difference of method is accustomed to present itself, is the ancient feud between what is called theory, and what is called practice or experience. There are, on social and political questions, two kinds of reasoners: there is one portion who term themselves practical men, and call the others theorists; a title which the latter do not reject, though they by no means recognise it as peculiar to them. The distinction between the two is a very broad one, though it is one of which the language employed is a most incorrect exponent. It has been again and again demonstrated, that those who are accused of despising facts and disregarding experience build and profess to build wholly upon facts and experience; while those who disavow theory cannot make one step without theorizing. But, although both classes of inquirers do nothing but theorize, and both of them consult no other guide than experience, there is this difference between them, and a most important difference it is: that those who are called practical men require specific experience, and argue wholly upwards from particular facts to a general conclusion; while those who are called theorists aim at embracing a wider field of experience, and, having argued upwards from particular facts to a general principle including a much wider range than that of the question under discussion, then argue downwards from that general principle to a variety of specific conclusions.
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emphasis mine...

Does anyone have any comments?
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It's kind of like saying you're a "healthy skeptic" and the rest of us are "convinced scientists".
 
chipmunk stew said:
It's kind of like saying you're a "healthy skeptic" and the rest of us are "convinced scientists".
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Yes, but Mill goes on to make a great case as to why I might be wrong. :)

It's really a good read, I'm thinking maybe making his essay the POM, if there would be any takers.

Flick
 
No. That just points out the difference between Inductive and Deductive scientific methods. So?

Hammy said:
If you get off on circularity, bs & blather, why not?
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How, exactly, is the circular?
 
stamenflicker said:
I thought this quote from John Stewart Mill did justice to what's going on in this thread:


But, although both classes of inquirers do nothing but theorize, and both of them consult no other guide than experience, there is this difference between them, and a most important difference it is: that those who are called practical men require specific experience, and argue wholly upwards from particular facts to a general conclusion; while those who are called theorists aim at embracing a wider field of experience, and, having argued upwards from particular facts to a general principle including a much wider range than that of the question under discussion, then argue downwards from that general principle to a variety of specific conclusions.
Click to expand...

emphasis mine...

Does anyone have any comments?

Flick
Click to expand...
He's got that almost exactly the wrong way round.
 
hammegk said:
Now we could agree, if it wasn't for the fact that the fossil record doesn't agree -- having all those lurches-to-something-totally-new with no gradient -- and everything ever seen in the petri dish, or the fly cage, never even implies a critter's ability to make such a lurch-to-new-species.
Click to expand...

Oh, I wish you'd make your mind up. If you are given a nearly complete spectrum of small changes you declare them to be one species no matter how wide the gap between the extremes of the spectrum. If there are any gaps then you declare yourself the victor.

You really are a legend in your own mind.

Out here in the real world we see the hairpin bends in your "thinking"
 
drkitten said:
The 2000-year old lifespan of redwood trees is also obviously also a just-so story, since no one has ever managed to grow a 2000-year old redwood from a seed in the lab. Obviously, all those apparently old redwoods were cleverly constructed in a suburb of Burbank, California, by a top secret defense contractor in the 1960s, just to throw off biologists.
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Hey, Hammy, we got her, right? I mean, it was done in Glendale, California, not Burbank. These silly evolutionists just can't get their facts straight.
 
Time for another reminder-

Hammy, you still have not explained your "thinking". I think that needs to be kept at the forefront of these exchanges.
 
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