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Quotes critical of evolution

Starrman said:
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…"
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Hmmmmm...
Oprah?
Tom Cruise?
George W. Bush?
 
wollery said:
Then would you care to address what form the "guide" might take and offer some way to detect it.
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Many think it can be detected through paranormal experiences, such as premonitory dreams or odd coincidences. But let's say you haven't had those. Why do you accept random mutations and natural selection as a sufficient explanation for the mind-boggling complexity of life when there is no plausible model showing how life could have evolved with only those factors and environmental pressures?

wollery said:
Otherwise all you are doing is sitting on the sidelines yelling, "I don't get it!"
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I'm not on the sidelines, I'm here. ;)
 
Belz... said:
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.
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What's missing is that you aren't taking probabilities into account. By your logic, no one should be surprised if the same person wins every lotto jackpot drawing with just a single ticket purchased in each drawing. After all, if there is a one in a million (or 10 million or 100 million, or whatever) chance of that person winning a given lotto drawing, (s)he could win every one of them. Correct?
 
Rodney said:
Many think it can be detected through paranormal experiences, such as premonitory dreams or odd coincidences.
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Well that completely fails to answer the question. What "many think" is not an adequate response.

So I repeat. What form does this guide take, and how might we detect it?

But let's say you haven't had those. Why do you accept random mutations and natural selection as a sufficient explanation for the mind-boggling complexity of life when there is no plausible model showing how life could have evolved with only those factors and environmental pressures?
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Because the evidence is that they are sufficient. The fact that nobody has yet produced a computer program capable of mimicking such a complex system of interactions and feedback loops is utterly irrelevant.

I'm not on the sidelines, I'm here. ;)
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Um, it was a metaphor. :rolleyes:
 
Rodney said:
What's missing is that you aren't taking probabilities into account. By your logic, no one should be surprised if the same person wins every lotto jackpot drawing with just a single ticket purchased in each drawing. After all, if there is a one in a million (or 10 million or 100 million, or whatever) chance of that person winning a given lotto drawing, (s)he could win every one of them. Correct?
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And you don't seem to understand how to form an analogy, or how probability works.

Yes, you should be surprised if the same person wins the jackpot every week, particularly if they're doing it with the same numbers, as this would show, quite definitely, that the lottery isn't random.

A better analogy would be to say that nobody should be surprised if the lottery is won almost every week by at least one person, and indeed, nobody is surprised, despite the probability, a priori, of a particular person winning it that week being several million to one against.

That's the difference between discrete and cumulative probability. You're applying cumulative probability to a situation which can only be assessed by discrete probability.
 
Rodney said:
Many think it can be detected through paranormal experiences, such as premonitory dreams or odd coincidences. But let's say you haven't had those. Why do you accept random mutations and natural selection as a sufficient explanation for the mind-boggling complexity of life when there is no plausible model showing how life could have evolved with only those factors and environmental pressures?


I'm not on the sidelines, I'm here. ;)
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New claims already, more arm waving, no evidence. Where is it not plausible. Evidence saying it is not plausible, tight arguments?
Remember bacteria and natural selection? You still haven't answered that question yet so I will remind you:
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.
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Rodney said:
What's missing is that you aren't taking probabilities into account. By your logic, no one should be surprised if the same person wins every lotto jackpot drawing with just a single ticket purchased in each drawing. After all, if there is a one in a million (or 10 million or 100 million, or whatever) chance of that person winning a given lotto drawing, (s)he could win every one of them. Correct?
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Care to explain your lack of understanding of statistics again, this is worse than the ganzfeld stuff Rodeney. Stop trying to pretend you understand statistics and science, maybe you should just believe in paranaormal powers and the authority of god and leave the science and math alone.


By your logic, no one should be surprised if the same person wins every lotto jackpot drawing with just a single ticket purchased in each drawing.
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Care to defend this foolish statement.

The probability of winning the lotto, assuming it is a blind draw, is the same for each set of unreplicated numbers. In the theory of natural selection there are a lot of 'tickets' that don't 'win'. There are do nothing mutations that don't win, there are detrimental mutations that don't win, the only 'tickets' that win are the ones that blindly through situation lead the mutation to have a reproductive success. Then there are the non-mutative effects that are also part of the process, there is variation in the genome that is caused by selective factors that are just part of the biology, like white fur in squirels. It has no particular advantage and some detriment in non-snowy climates but potentialy could have an advantage in a snowy climate.

The problem with your logic is that you are excluding all possibilities that occur and fail, not all tickets are winners. have you heard of sickle cell anemeia, it is a loosing ticket that has very detriment effects on the reciever. But it is not an intelligent design, it is a flaw in the hemoglobin complex, yet it is passed on, not because it makes people live's better (what you would expect from intelligent design), but because it allows people to survive another condition (malaria) long enough to reproduce before they die.

So what kind of ticket is that.

What about the people who die from cancer Rodeney, there tickets often contain information that makes them more vulnerable to cancer without apparent benefit to them, are thier tickets winners? How about cystic fibrosis? Are you sure that the natural selection theory is about all winning tickets? And that is not even discussing the anthropomorphic principle.
 
Rodney said:
I don't know of any cases of one species of bacteria changing by random mutations and natural selection into another species of bacteria.
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And the burden is on you to prove that, the theory of natural selections says that restricted mutation and reproductive success are likely to be the way that new species arise, two ,if not more people, have presented evidence that there is natural selection occuring in bacteria which leads to them eating nylon. Not part of intelligent or guided design.

In this forum Rodney, you must now prove that this does not support the theory of natural selection. before you can get to the point of speciation, you must show that argument. What evidence do you have that new species of bacteria are not arising?

Do you know that some species of bacteria swap genes without reproduction, how do you define 'species' in that case?

You are making three or four arguments at the same time in one lump, that is bad logic.

It would seem that you simultaneously are saying:
1. Abiogenesis is not a likely theory because it has not been replicated ina lab.
2.The theory of natural selection has not been demonstrated.
3. Speciation occuring through the potential process of natural selection has not been proven.

You need to decide what argument you are making at a given moment to be effective.

BTW your insistance on saying things like "Darwinism" as a opposed to sepciation through the process of natural selection and then saying other things like "but in 1957 they said they could create life in a lab' are demonstrations that you do not understand the word 'theory'. You are engaging in a debate tactic where you find an old definition and then attack that.


That shows that you think that 'darwinism' is some sort of 'doctrine', S.J. Gould made many publications addressing the original theory as expounded by Darwin, it is probably a third of his extensive writings(Gould). By saying silly stuff like" i am just taking dawinism to task' you show that you have not even begun to study the theory and the critiques of it from the people who have already studied it. the theory of natural selection has moved on.
 
I wonder how someone like Rodney would respond to phylogenetics or population genetics? In one, we see direct evolutionary relationships between species, and can trace the evolutionary line by things such as rooted trees and bootstrap analyses. In the other, we can calculate and predict the flow and ratios of alleles, the affect of migration, mutation, brith and death, and by fitnesses of particular alleles, within a population over many generations. We can see how the addition of new alleles into a population can lead to an overall increase in population fitness which leads to large numbers of alleles at particular loci. This is evolution, if a bit simplistic. We can model these things, and predict how a natural population would behave, and then see that we are essentially correct. I have done both these things myself, Rodney. Oh, but of course, we don't have any models. :rolleyes:

*Edited because I'm stupid*

ETA: It isn't always the case that a population will eventually come to have the highest overall fitness possible of that population. This is because evolution and natural selection is blind.
 
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Rodney said:
What's missing is that you aren't taking probabilities into account. By your logic, no one should be surprised if the same person wins every lotto jackpot drawing with just a single ticket purchased in each drawing. After all, if there is a one in a million (or 10 million or 100 million, or whatever) chance of that person winning a given lotto drawing, (s)he could win every one of them. Correct?
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I don't see how that has anything to do with lottery.

In your example, a specific combination needs to be drawn. For example, 3-5-16-22-31-35. Chances of getting that combination are low. Evolution doesn't work that way. There are no magical combinations. Various mutations occur here and there, most of them bad or otherwise non-beneficial, and they either stay in the gene pool or don't.

A better analogy with the lottery would have been to say that evolution is akin to someone, out of millions of lottery players, winning for a particular draw. (EDIT: I see Wollery has already made this point.)

Hopefully you didn't already know this.
 
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Foster Zygote said:
For God to exist he must have come from somewhere, right?
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Not necessarily, he/she/it could be eternal. Unless something can come from nothing, there must be something that is eternal. And that might be that which is called God.

God is also called The Creator, and if there is something that is eternal and something that is not, that which is not eternal must have come from that which is eternal since there is nothing else it can have come from.

--
im
 
immaterial said:
Not necessarily, he/she/it could be eternal. Unless something can come from nothing, there must be something that is eternal. And that might be that which is called God.
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What else might it be? Seriously--Why would the thing that is eternal have to be anything at all like what we call "God"? Indeed, why would what we call a god even have to be eternal? (After all, the Greek gods were not; they succeeded the Titans.) That which we call a god might just as easily be some Yahweh-come-lately, created by something else that may or may not have "always been" around.

What we know about time ends where time began--at the Big Bang. For something to be "eternal", it must have existed for as long as time itself, no? Why do you suspect that there must be a god that somehow has lasted longer than time itself? That concept might sound nice and poetic, but it is meaningless. Time as we know it began at the same time as space did. Any speculation about something "outside" of space or "before" time is just that--speculation.
God is also called The Creator, and if there is something that is eternal and something that is not, that which is not eternal must have come from that which is eternal since there is nothing else it can have come from.
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How is it that you can speculate about such matters? You are speaking about things that you can, by definition, have no experience of. It is every bit as logical to suggest that A) there is a long string of non-eternal things and no eternal things, B) there is only this one space-time that we are in, and nothing else, C) there was only one previous non-eternal space time prior to this one, D) there were precisely two previous non-eternal space times prior to this one, E) there were three...

My point is, you are speaking as if only one option makes sense, but you are speaking of events we have absolutely no access to. They are purely hypothetical. They are things we cannot help but be ignorant of.

The gods used to make sense. They were like us, only more powerful. But the more we learned, the less we needed them to account for. Now the only place for a god to hide is outside of space and time itself. How convenient--the one place we will never ever be able to look.
 
Didn't I read about a fungus colony under, I dunno, Michigan or someplace, that someone was speculating was not only the largest creature that has ever lived, but also the oldest? Lemme see now...

googlegooglegoogle...

Here it is.

ETA: On a reread, perhaps I was too elliptical. Mayhap this will help:

knEEl 3eFoUR You?R fuNGIbLe OVERloRDz! aLl YoUr fo?ReST ArE beLONg 2 us!!11!!
 
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immaterial said:
Not necessarily, he/she/it could be eternal. Unless something can come from nothing, there must be something that is eternal. And that might be that which is called God.

God is also called The Creator, and if there is something that is eternal and something that is not, that which is not eternal must have come from that which is eternal since there is nothing else it can have come from.

--
im
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But what if the universe is "eternal"? The idea that space/time may be spherical, in a sense, has a strong possibility of being proved correct. Saying that "the universe must have come from somewhere, but God is immune from the same problem of existence" only complicates the issue. Why is it that the universe needs a creator but the creator doesn't?
 
Rodney said:
I don't know of any cases of one species of bacteria changing by random mutations and natural selection into another species of bacteria.
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I'm going to use my psychic powers and guess you're going to claim that a bacteria that evolves the ability to eat nylon is an example of "adaptation" not speciation. I'll fill out my form for the million while I await your response.
 
Rodney said:
If pelicans evolve longer necks, are they no longer pelicans?
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Depends. Can they still interbreed with short-necked pelicans?


Read up on "ring species"; the question you ask is not as clear-cut as you would like it to be.
 
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