Quotes critical of evolution

[Wowbagger]

How much time? Where is the model that shows what biologists believe to have happened in less than four billion years could plausibly have happened via an unguided process?

I still don't have time to write out a whole "Part III", yet. But, I happen to think 4 billion years is plenty of time for genetic structures to evolve the few changes necessary to take a single-celled organism into the team-coordinated colony we call multi-cellular life forms.

How well do you think Dawkins understands it? Does he have a degree in math or statistics?

Dawkins devotes much his life's work to examining just such statistics.
Of course, it is physically possible for Dawkins to be mistaken. (Many people devote their lives to mistaken beliefs, right?) But, so far, he has been successful and furthering our understanding of life, with them. So far, the science has held.
If his math was not accurate, that would probably not be the case.

 

[wollery]

I'm not sure if this was addressed to Rodney in particular or readers in general, but I'll have a go anyway.



It's possible to argue that a guided missile demonstrates non-intelligent guidance. I don't need to explain the origins of a guided missile in order to identify it as such, it's behaviour is recognisably different from an unguided, ballistic, missile.
If someone standing in the targetted location shouts "Who the f*** fired that?", it's a reasonable, if ill-timed, question. The response "Sorry, you can't ask that, it's turtles all the way down" isn't right.
It's quite possible to recursively analyse this set of systems and say the behaviour of the missile is the result of the non-intelligent guidance system, which was designed by human intelligence, which evolved (unguided).
In other words, the complexity of the complex system you're looking has unguided evolution as it ultimate origin, it's proximate origin may not be.

Guided evolution is a logically consistent possibility, that's what artificial selection is after all; the argument against it (pre-human) comes down entirely to the lack of any supporting evidence.

Indeed, but a predesigned unintelligent guide requires an intelligent designer, which again brings us to aliens or god, with all the problems that those options raise.

 

[Belz...]

Here are some interesting quotes

Here's that word, again.

 

[Belz...]

No, it doesn't help one iota because it's so general as to be meaningless. If random mutations and natural selection brought us to where we are today, why hasn't anyone been able to develop a coherent model explaining even a small portion of the progression?

We do.

Oh, wait...

- Do you believe in DNA ?
- Does it affect your physical characteristics ?
- Do you believe that random mutations exist ?
- Do you believe that environmental pressures can favour one mutation over another ?

Those are honest questions.

 

[Belz...]

The DNA of these microorganisms can be analysed as a matter of routine. Yet no microbiologist has so far announced observing the appearance of a new species of bacteria through the Darwinian process of the natural selection of genetic mutations (other than the bogus claims described above.)

So there are NO species of bacteria that only survive on nylon, a human creation ?

"If the natural selection of genetic mutations really were the primary driver of evolution, then there should be hundreds, or even thousands of new species appearing on an almost daily basis.

This man's building up a sizeable army of strawmen. Wonder who he'll invade with it.

Schoolkids should be able to breed new species on their classroom window sill.

With fruit flies, they can.

"What is true for rapidly breeding microrganisms is likely also to be true of much slower breeding multi-celled creatures; that far from being the driver of evolution, the natural selection of genetic mutations has a neglible effect on inheritance."

That seems to be a logical contradiction. I'll wait for your response to my previous post, however, to follow this up.

First, there is no plausible theory on how life could have come into existence randomly.

Strawman, again. It wasn't wandom, and evolution is not about the genesis of life.

 

[Rodney]

I've already addressed this, but since you've ignored that post I'll repeat it, and hopefully make it clearer.

To do this I'll follow the logic of guided evolution to its inevitable ends.

There are two possible ways that evolution could be guided;

1. The first of these is intelligently, i.e. something watches how things progress and tweaks them if it doesn't like what's happening. This intelligence has two possible forms, natural and supernatural.

1a. The natural would be some form of being which exists within the physical laws of our Universe, i.e. aliens. This however raises the question of how the aliens got to be so intelligent as to play with evolution without leaving any traces of their tinkering. They must be at least as intelligent and advanced as humans, and if evolution by natural selection can't work then logically something must have guided the aliens' evolution. But whatever it was that guided the aliens evolution must also have been intelligent and advanced and......... well I could keep going forever, an infinite regression of intelligently evolved creatures. You seem fond of calculating probabilities, so would you care to work out the probability of an infinite regression?

1b. The supernatural explanation is some form of intelligence that exists outside of the physical laws of our Universe, and is thus undetectable by any means. That would be god, and since it is undetectable it leaves science and becomes philosophy and theology. At which point all scientific enquiry comes to a halt and we have a god of the gaps. This effectively defaults to "Nobody knows how evolution works, so god did it!" There are no possible answers, so we should give up asking questions.

2. The second form the guide can take is non-intelligent. This must be some set of rules or laws which govern how evolution progresses. Well we have some evidence (a heck of a lot, actually) of how evolution progresses from the fossil record, bacteria, viruses, vestigial structures, etc. and these seem to show that creatures adapt to their surroundings. The big question, of course, is, "how do they adapt? What mechanism allows the adaptation?" Well, investigation of DNA seems to show that DNA itself changes randomly with some of these changes helping organisms to adapt positively, and some causing negative adaptations. Those adaptations which are positive allow the organism to thrive, whilst the latter usually result in the organism dying out. So the guide for non-intelligently guided evolution would seem to be pressure on populations from their environment, i.e. evolution by natural selection.

I predict, however, that you will completely ignore this post.

Wrong. I agree that we have some evidence of how evolution progresses, but I see no evidence demonstrating that evolutionary changes are due solely due to random mutations and natural selection.

 

[wahrheit]

Wrong. I agree that we have some evidence of how evolution progresses, but I see no evidence demonstrating that evolutionary changes are due solely due to random mutations and natural selection.

I'm really sorry guys, but I simply felt like it.

 

[Rodney]

Nylon eating bacteria

And you really, really do not want to get into an argument on the definition of bacterial species and the exchange of genetic material, unless of course you have a backgound in microbiology?

I don't, but I really don't see the big deal about nylon eating bacteria. Did someone once argue that random mutations cannot create new information? I never did -- only that the number of random mutations adding new information necessary to create the life we see today is so vast as to be the next closest thing to impossible.

 

[Rodney]

So I ask you again, how is bacterial resistance to antibiotics not an example of natural selection?

So let's say it is. Why aren't new bacteria being created?

 

[Rodney]

What definition of species is this author using, and for which organisms?

See this link -- http://www.alternativescience.com/speciation.htm

 

[Rodney]

We do.

Please tell me where I can find it.

Oh, wait...

- Do you believe in DNA ?
- Does it affect your physical characteristics ?
- Do you believe that random mutations exist ?
- Do you believe that environmental pressures can favour one mutation over another ?

Those are honest questions.

And my honest anwer to all is "yes." But I'm still trying to find "a coherent model explaining even a small portion of the progression."

 

[wollery]

Wrong. I agree that we have some evidence of how evolution progresses, but I see no evidence demonstrating that evolutionary changes are due solely due to random mutations and natural selection.

Then would you care to address what form the "guide" might take and offer some way to detect it.

Otherwise all you are doing is sitting on the sidelines yelling, "I don't get it!"

 

[Belz...]

And my honest anwer to all is "yes." But I'm still trying to find "a coherent model explaining even a small portion of the progression."

In that case I don't see how you could possibly have a problem with the model.

You agree that DNA is responsible, mostly, for a species' physical characteristics. You agree that DNA mutates over time and generation, you agree that this causes new information and new features to appear, and you agree that environmental pressures will tend to eliminate the individuals that aren't fit in their current setting.

I'm not sure exactly what's missing. Perhaps you could help me understand what the problem is, from your point of view.

 

[Dancing David]

So let's say it is. Why aren't new bacteria being created?

Who says that they aren't, some source that doesn't even say who the author is or cite thier sources Rodney?

Your claim, back it up.

Where is your evidence that new species of bacteria have not evolved.

Quotes and citations preferably from microbiology please.

 

[Starrman]

I found another quote against evolution - see if you can guess who it is from! Hint - the video of the quote being uttered was on MSNBC last night:

"‘If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…"

 

[Belz...]

If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges?

I don't know. What else are we going to do with our spare time ?

 

[Starrman]

I don't know. What else are we going to do with our spare time ?

Well - if you figure out who the quote is from, you may find that he found interesting ways to spend his free time.

My point in bringing this quote up is to demonstrate that you kind find all kinds of people to say all kinds of things about all kinds of things - none of that matters with regards to the scientific merits of something.

Evolution is true because evidence says it is, not because someone made a pretty quote about it. In much the same way, the theory cannot be falsified with a quote.

 

[Belz...]

I did get that. I was responding to the original author of the quote.

 

[wahrheit]

Evolution Violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Warning: the above link goes to Conservapedia, a "christian" conservative Wikipedia travesty.

(Off topic: Also check out their Commandments and article on abortion)

 

[Slimething]

...we all just came from the slime."

And what, might I ask, would be wrong with that?