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Quotes critical of evolution

Davidjayjordan said:
Of course, there are multitudes of quotes against evolution religious theory because nature and creation itself is full of contradictions against this religion.

And so a few real quotes get through as the mainstream religionists can not censor every true scientist.

http://www.geocities.com/davidjayjordan/Evolutionisareligion.html
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I'm going to call both your claim and your geocities webpage link out as utter horsecrap. What exists are multitudes of quote mining results that are little more than elipses and selective editing. There are no quotes from scientists ever stating that evolution is anything other than science. And, if you could provide any serious quotes (and quotes aren't evidence, evidence is) contradicting evolution or calling it a "religion" or whatever should be availible on PubMed.

I await you PubMed search results, but I'm not holding my breath.
 
jimbob said:
how about this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strata_(novel)

creator has a sense of humour and is playing a practical joke by faking evidence for the age of the world and evolution and giving us the brains to deduce contra-biblical accounts of Earth's origin...

Jim,

OK I'm not an anti-evolutionist
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OK the URL failied:

it should be:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strata_(novel)

Terry Pratchett said:
The excavation showed that the fossilized plesiosaur had been holding a placard which read, "End Nuclear Testing Now".

That was nothing unusual.

But then came a discovery of something which *did* intrigue Kin Arad.

A flat earth was something new ...
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Jim
 
Why is rodney always regurgitating codswollap on this site? He goes to opposing sites, grabs their lies, and then spams them here, all over the place, in every thread he shows up in.

Then we have to try to refute every single drop of codswallop? I'm beginning to think we CAN write up guidelines on what kind of a troll can actually be banned at JREF. One guideline could be that the troll hasn't a single original idea, opinion or post. They are ALL grabbed from other sites.

At least when I post a citation, it is to back up what I already know. It's not used as just "lookit, this says something different than what YOU say". Also, I understand the context of what I quote at least 99.9% of the time. Not only that, I try to use CREDIBLE sources of information.

How about using your own head for once Rodney? Is there an ounce of logic you can begin to cultivate?
 
Rodney said:
So is the following contention by Milton true or false?

"Although making no public comment, Dawkins evidently took this point on board, because he dropped the claim from all later books and concentrated instead on attempting merely to mitigate the improbability of Darwinism by other means."
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Yeah, so? That is the nature of science, have you studied the development of quantum mechanics. Do you know how often Bohr changed his mind? Or Einstien for that matter. Or Gell-Mann and feynman? You contnue to pick at one point that someone may have made. The idea behind 'evolution' is the theory of natural selection, that traits will be chosen for which lead to reproductive success. Not that modern genetics shows that the galapagos finches are a single species, the point of that is that thgere is variation in a species which can lead to divergence based upon reproductive success. The galapagos finches show that diversity and given enough time may stop breeding with each other. The coyote and grey wolf are often thought of different species as is the 'dog', well they aren't. That does not mean that natural selection isn't at work, it is, or would appear to be.

The point is not that someone modifies thier position but that they continue to work on the theory.

The view of statistics in that article was bogish (to quote my students).
 
Rodney said:
Milton's claim preceded "The God Delusion", but in that book does Dawkins specifically take on the following assertions by Milton?

"In 1992, I pointed out in print that Dawkins’s suggestion is mathematically flawed. It is true of the probability of unrelated events (such as tossing a coin) but is untrue of related events such as the cumulative natural selection of random genetic mutations. Indeed it is the cumulative nature of natural selection (which Dawkins proposed as its greatest strength) that is in fact its greatest weakness from the point of view of its improbability.

"The need for genetic mutations to occur in the correct sequence to feed into the one-way accumulation of natural selection at just the decisive moment is the very factor that makes it so increasingly improbable as a natural mechanism.

"From a mathematical viewpoint, the probability of life evolving via the natural selection of ten big mutations is exactly the same as the probability of life evolving via ten thousand small mutations, if the order in which the mutations must occur is taken into account (and, of course, the order is crucial)."
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Set to the westminster Chimes:

Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
 
This -

wollery said:
Milton's reasoning only applies if the end product is predetermined. Milton is applying a priori reasoning from an a posteriori viewpoint, and assuming that the life we see today is the life that had to evolve. It isn't. The fact is that the a posteriori probability of evolution on earth producing the life that exists today is formally 1. If you don't set a target for evolution then random mutation can produce any outcome. It's anthropocentric arrogance that allows him to make such a basic mistake.
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Sorry, did you miss this reply first time round?
 
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T'ai Chi's response to the observation that the origin of life is a topic wholly unrelated to the topic of evolution by natural selection:
T'ai Chi said:
True, but for life to evolve it has to come from somewhere, right?
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Surely you're not arguing that life does not exist?

Once you have even a self-replicating molecule, you can begin evolution. The fact that we haven't been able to model the formation of a good self-replicating molecule is an example of our current ignorance. Our current ignorance is not proof or disproof of anything.

This business of calculating the odds against an event that has already happened is absurd. Imagine shooting a small bullet into a wall from a great distance away. Then draw a small circle around the bullet. What are the odds of that bullet landing in that circle? The answer is 1:1 because that is exactly what has already happened.
 
Rodney said:
What, specifically, is wrong with Milton's analysis?
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Lots of things.
See wollery post for starters.

Secondly he ignores the entirety of Dawkin's argument.

The probability of one animal making a large jump is smaller than the probability of one animal making a small change, this change being passed through the population, and one of any of these animals making the next jump.

Assuming the genes spread right through out a population of fixed size and a uniform mutation distribution and whatnot the probability of the first event occurring will be (Population size)^(number of steps -1) smaller than the probability of the second event occurring.

Basically, it is entirely wrong.
 
wollery said:
This -
Sorry, did you miss this reply first time round?
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No, I saw it, but it doesn't answer the question. Milton is not arguing that the life we see today is the only possibility, but rather that random mutations are just as likely be deleterious or produce lesser complexity as they are to be beneficial or to produce greater complexity. So, it's a tautology to say: "Well, we're here, so the cumulative effect of random mutations and natural selection must have led to the mind-boggling complexity of man, not to mention the complexity of other animals." Yes, we and they are here, but there are two other possibilities: (1) Evolution guided by some process, and (2) A special creation.
 
Jekyll said:
Lots of things.
See wollery post for starters.

Secondly he ignores the entirety of Dawkin's argument.

The probability of one animal making a large jump is smaller than the probability of one animal making a small change, this change being passed through the population, and one of any of these animals making the next jump.

Assuming the genes spread right through out a population of fixed size and a uniform mutation distribution and whatnot the probability of the first event occurring will be (Population size)^(number of steps -1) smaller than the probability of the second event occurring.

Basically, it is entirely wrong.
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If it's entirely wrong, how about a mathematical model demonstrating the plausibility of random mutations and natural selection producing man from a single-celled organism in under 4 billion years?
 
A good introductory text into population genetics, the field that
mathematically describes changes in the gene pool is:
Principles of Population Genetics, by Hartl and Clark , 1989, Sinauer,
Sunderland, Mass

None of the math is very daunting (it's just an intro text after all)
but it's really critical (IMHO) to understanding what evolution is all
about. And again, lots of refs.
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I suggest reading everything else at the link, after you read the book:

http://www.skepticfiles.org/evolut/biointro.htm
 
http://www.math.leidenuniv.nl/~verduyn/ndns-leiden/BioStoch28122005.pdf

46 pages on the mathematics of evolution in regards to genetics. Learn all you can, and develop some intelligent arguments. Note the disclaimer. Need brilliant minds to build onto the information.

As has been said, ignorance on a topic is not proof for or against it. At one time we humans couldn't even fly. Then somebody figured out how to build fraccin awesome airplanes.
 
AWWWW..Rodney!

Rodney said:
No, I saw it, but it doesn't answer the question. Milton is not arguing that the life we see today is the only possibility, but rather that random mutations are just as likely be deleterious or produce lesser complexity as they are to be beneficial or to produce greater complexity. So, it's a tautology to say: "Well, we're here, so the cumulative effect of random mutations and natural selection must have led to the mind-boggling complexity of man, not to mention the complexity of other animals." Yes, we and they are here, but there are two other possibilities: (1) Evolution guided by some process, and (2) A special creation.
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Do you suppose that "deleterious or...lesser complexity..."
mutations would be able to compete with the beneficial mutations??
Edgar says ,No!:jaw-dropp
 
Rodney said:
Yes, we and they are here, but there are two other possibilities: (1) Evolution guided by some process, and (2) A special creation.
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Only two? You lack imagination. What about "time is a loop and everything is its own cause" or "there are infinitely many universes all happening in parallel, so everything we imagine is true" or "there is no physical reality and we are dreaming ourselves" or "cosmic pirates stole our memories"?

If we're just going to support any idea, why not go hog wild? This will be great for science. If we don't require research or evidence, everyone will get published. Yay!
 
Rodney said:
No, I saw it, but it doesn't answer the question. Milton is not arguing that the life we see today is the only possibility, but rather that random mutations are just as likely be deleterious or produce lesser complexity as they are to be beneficial or to produce greater complexity. So, it's a tautology to say: "Well, we're here, so the cumulative effect of random mutations and natural selection must have led to the mind-boggling complexity of man, not to mention the complexity of other animals." Yes, we and they are here, but there are two other possibilities: (1) Evolution guided by some process, and (2) A special creation.
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You are absolutely correct that mutations are just as likely to be deleterious, but these mutations result in the organism with that mutation failing to procreate as well as its unmutated fellow organisms. This means that deleterious mutations are naturally deselected. Benificial mutations result in an organism procreating better than its fellow organisms, so its mutation is passed on to more of the next generation, and that generation pass on to more of the next, and so on.

It is indeed a tautology to say "we're already here, therefore the probability of us being here is 1". It's a tautology regardless of how you propose we got to this stage. That's the entire point. The fact that we're here doesn't actually say anything about how we got here (look up the anthropic principle). The argument that the probability is so low that it couldn't have happened randomly is saying precisely the opposite, and is thus erroneous. More to the point it completely ignores the main point of evolution, that benificial mutations will naturally be selected by means of population competition pressure. There's only so much food to go round, and there are always other animals that are out to get you, so those animals that are better at getting food and avoiding becoming food will be far more likely to pass on their genes, not to mention disease resistance. We can actually see in humans the effects of reducing this pressure (and improving medical science) - deleterious mutations are not efficiently bred out of the population, leading to people with various genetic diseases being able to lead full lives and pass on their genes. Selection pressure weeds out those organisms less fit for the environment in which they live.

So on to your two other possible scenarios;

1) Guided evolution. What is guiding the evolution? By Ockham's Razor you're invoking a guide where none is required, as you're ascribing to evolution anyway! Further, you have to explain a non-intelligent guide, or you raise the inevitable question, "where did the guide come from?" and a non-intelligent guide defaults to "selection pressure" and you have evolution by natural selection.

2) Special creation. This, by definition, requires a creator, that must be at least as complex as we are, which leads to the inevitable question, "where did the creator come from?" and from there it's turtles all the way down!
 
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