Skepticism and Evolution

plumjam said:
Really? Apart from variations within limits where and when has evolution been observed?
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Define the limits of these variations and the mechanism that prevents these variations from becoming larger over time.
 
plumjam said:
Really? Apart from variations within limits where and when has evolution been observed?
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What "limits"? Where is the mechanism for these limits?

Do you have doubts about stellar evolution? The stars are inacessible, cannot be experimented with and are very, very hot. How can we possibly have any understanding about how they evolve? :boggled:
 
drkitten said:
Perhaps. Perhaps this evening I'll get a call from Barack Obama asking me to be his National Science Advisor come January. But I'm not especially sanguine about either prospect.
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Can I be your page?

I look forward to hearing more about this "pet theory" plumjam refers to.
 
joobz said:
Yes, I did think it was a refreshing approach. However, I also demontrated clearly that it was an argument based upon the human's inate pattern recognition ability, which is easily fooled.
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That is a self-refuting statement. You used your pattern recognition ability to recognise the pattern of argument to which you refer.
 
quixotecoyote said:
Did anyone who participated in the 'narrative' thread not see this coming?
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That plumjam would claim some credit for truethat's arguments, completely misunderstand if not misuse it and then come around and do some trolling?

Saw it from light years away.
 
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plumjam said:
That is a self-refuting statement. You used your pattern recognition ability to recognise the pattern of argument to which you refer.
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obviously, it was a paraphrase of my argument which I explain how we avoid relying on simple pattern recognition.
perhaps you'd like to refute the actual argument and not my obvious summation.
joobz said:
Pardon my crude summation, but I think you are saying myth is a language used that resonants with a person on a particular level.

I see a strong parrallel in this definition to that of the Supreme Court's view of Obscenity.

Originally Posted by ~ Justice Potter Stewart, in Jacobellis Vs. Ohio, Jun 22, 1964
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material ... but I know it when I see it."

pardon the elipsis, I can't find the full untrunctated quote.

This definition is, in some ways, acceptable for obscenity, because 1.) Obscenity changes with the times and 2.) it requires a pattern recognition.

And I think your classification of mythology is a pattern recognition classification. This isn't a bad thing, rather quite a complex/advanced view.

Humans are extremely good at pattern recognition. We are able to view/understand a set of ideas and recognize patterns that fit in with other things of our experience. We are able to, quite rapidly, define things into categorical bins: obscene/not obscene, Myth/not myth, sprial galaxy/lenticular galaxy/elliptical/irregular/other.

On the other hand, computers are quite terrible (still) at doing this type of binning. It requires a series of "fuzzy" assumptions and blurring of distinctions to see the whole pattern. The Computer could count the number of tress, but can't tell you about the forest. In fact, scienctists have started taking advantage of humans natural capacity for pattern recognition in the categorizing galaxies from photos. (I can't find the ref right now)


Now, the problem with our ability to do pattern recognition is that it is extremely easy to see a pattern and make a false classification. We can look at a tree, and see a face in the bark. We can make out a castle in the clouds. But these observed patterns do not reflect the reality of what is being observed.

As such, regardless of how arbitrary the definitions may be, we must define the categories and apply tests to see if what we observe is indeed what we claim to see.
For a face to be a face, It should have 2 eyes, a nose a mouth. That tree doesn't have those things, it has a knot of wood a circular scar and some loose bark. while, those things look like they come together as a face, it isn't a face.

Note that these definitions are extremely difficult and vague. A face could have 1 eye. A face could have no nose. We've seen examplse of people with faces such as those. So we must be willing to be a bit flexable in making our tests. We could apply multiple definitions for face and see how many work. If they don't, then it seems clear that what we observed isn't a face at all.


In this regard, yes, evolutionary theory and the Big bang thoery have elements which give the pattern of myth. After all, they attempt to address fundemental questions that many myths try to address, "Why are we here?" "Why are we different from other things?" "HOw did all this come to be?"

But this is really only a type of Pareidolia. The evolutionary theory, unlike myths, is testable and supported by all observed evidence. It is impossible to discuss it's implications without sounding mythical, but sounding mythical and being a myth are not the same thing. We must gaurd ourselves against seeing the face in the tree and therefore believing that the tree was once a person.



Plumjam, I believe this point relates back to our previous discussion on micro vs. macroevolution. You recognize a pattern. One which makes you say that
this is microevolution and this is macroevolution. As patterns, I'm willing to accept that these definitions are hard to make. However, it is my belief that you are seeing a pattern that isnt there. A face in the tree.

if you wish to claim that macroevolution is impossible and therefore TOE is impossible, we MUST define what it means to be macroevolution. Otherwise, all you are doing is creating an illusion and using that illusion to disprove evolution.
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You'll notice that I even used this explanation to address an earlier discussion of ours.

I can't help but notice that you didn't address it.
 
plumjam said:
Really? Apart from variations within limits where and when has evolution been observed?
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How convenient. Any examples given by me, or anyone else, will be considered to be inside these 'limits' I suppose.
To walk a mile, you first have to take one step. I'm guessing that what you are asking for will amount to an example of someone jumping a mile.
 
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quixotecoyote said:
Did anyone who participated in the 'narrative' thread not see this coming?
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I bailed on the "narrative" thread before it filled the first page, and was totally blindsided by the content-free OP that kicked off this one.
 
plumjam said:
Really? Apart from variations within limits where and when has evolution been observed?
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For any lurkers who don't know any better, you should be informed that Plumjam is a creationist shill. Follow this thread for a time (if he continues to post, that is) and we shall point out the most common creationist arguments that he makes and how to refute them. It will become readily apparent that his methods of argumentation are quite dishonest.

He is already displaying one of the most common misconceptions put forth by creationists when making their bogus arguments: that no one has ever observed speciation (the evolution of one species into another).

This is patently false, and PJ has had this pointed out to him numerous times, via links such as these...

Observed Instances of Speciation

Long Term E-Coli Evolution Experiment

Another tactic which PJ will likely employ is ignoring any criticism of his points. Instead, he will likely defer to a strategy known as the "Gish-gallop", whereby he will make a claim (often a vague one), ignore the criticism of his claim, and go on to make another vague claim. Then he will repeat the process again and again - often, after a time has passed and new people come into the thread, he will repeat an earlier debunked claim.

Lastly, it should be noted that creationists will often employ another strategy, which is often hidden in the subtext of the discussion. They will continually criticize (and do a very poor job of it) the theory of evolution, as if this somehow advances their own views (ID-creationism).

In fact, even if evolutionary science were 100% incorrect, this would not yield any validity to "intelligent design" or any other version of creationism. To think otherwise is to engage in a basic logical fallacy - in order to make the case for ID-creationism, folks like Plumjam must provide positive and testable evidence for their views. And, to date, despite numerous challenges on numerous threads, PJ and other creationists have not provided one single testable hypothesis to determine the validity of their views. The same is true in terms of the broader scientific community - no test of ID has been proposed for scientists to examine.

Hence, ID-creationism isn't science - at best, as advocated by its proponents, it is crackpot pseudoscience. Until shown otherwise, keep it where it belongs - in the Religion & Philosophy threads.

PS: Since you're here PJ, how about addressing a claim you made weeks ago in another thread but "Gish-galloped" away from when I challenged you? That is, you have made numerous insinuations that there is a vast, atheistic conspiracy to purge academia of theists who do not cater to what you call "Darwinist dogma". Please provide solid evidence of this claim - naming one specific case will do...

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? :rolleyes:
 
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Gord_in_Toronto said:
What "limits"? Where is the mechanism for these limits?
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If you don't believe there are limits perhaps you should go and breed a completely new and viable life-form from a "previous" life-form. Maybe start with a kind of plant, and end up with a worm or a stick insect of your own creation. The Nobel Prizes are awaiting you.
In the TOE, there is supposed to be enormous plasticity, so the above should be possible.
Of course nothing anything like this is ever achieved. Selective breeding pushes the limits of variation but stays within them.
As to the "mechanism" for these limits.. well you would have to ask the geneticists about that. But I don't think they really have any idea yet.
The answer, I reckon, will be due to informational constraints.

Say I have a Shakespeare sonnet. No random changing of its letters is going to turn that sonnet into a 3 hour long play, or a 400 page novel, or a telephone directory, or a haiku poem. Also, the likelihood of random changes to the letters over an extended period improving the effectiveness of the Shakespeare sonnet, as meaningful and beautiful poetry, would be so vanishingly improbable that a man would need to be irrational to believe that such a process is essentially what lies at the heart of the enormous diversity and complexity of life.

In biology if you try to randomly change the global organisation of the genetic information by, for example, changing the number of chromosomes ,you get a deleterious, often fatal, consequence to the organism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneuploidy
In the analogy, this could be one example of trying to turn a sonnet into a play. It just doesn't work, and is typically damaging.
[/QUOTE]
 
Note to lurkers, observe PJ's last post carefully...

1. more (unjustified) criticism of evolutionary science,

2. no response to the criticism of his claims about speciation / no reference to the links I provided,

and

3. a curious ignoring of my direct challenge to him at the end of my previous post.

Watch this thread for more of the same...

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? :rolleyes:
 
MM's successful prediction rate just eclipsed Sylvia Browne's
 
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plumjam said:
If you don't believe there are limits perhaps you should go and breed a completely new and viable life-form from a "previous" life-form. Maybe start with a kind of plant, and end up with a worm or a stick insect of your own creation. The Nobel Prizes are awaiting you.
In the TOE, there is supposed to be enormous plasticity, so the above should be possible.
Of course nothing anything like this is ever achieved. Selective breeding pushes the limits of variation but stays within them.
As to the "mechanism" for these limits.. well you would have to ask the geneticists about that. But I don't think they really have any idea yet.
The answer, I reckon, will be due to informational constraints.

Say I have a Shakespeare sonnet. No random changing of its letters is going to turn that sonnet into a 3 hour long play, or a 400 page novel, or a telephone directory, or a haiku poem. Also, the likelihood of random changes to the letters over an extended period improving the effectiveness of the Shakespeare sonnet, as meaningful and beautiful poetry, would be so vanishingly improbable that a man would need to be irrational to believe that such a process is essentially what lies at the heart of the enormous diversity and complexity of life.

In biology if you try to randomly change the global organisation of the genetic information by, for example, changing the number of chromosomes ,you get a deleterious, often fatal, consequence to the organism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aneuploidy
In the analogy, this could be one example of trying to turn a sonnet into a play. It just doesn't work, and is typically damaging.
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Oh Plumjam still haven't done this:
Define the limits of these variations and the mechanism that prevents these variations from becoming larger over time.
Using vague, " I don't know but the geneticist must know." is unsupportive of your argument. Try again.
 
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Has Plumjam had the concept of randomness in relation to evolution explained to him?

(I can guess the answer!)
 
plumjam said:
If you don't believe there are limits perhaps you should go and breed a completely new and viable life-form from a "previous" life-form. Maybe start with a kind of plant, and end up with a worm or a stick insect of your own creation. The Nobel Prizes are awaiting you.
In the TOE, there is supposed to be enormous plasticity, so the above should be possible.
Of course nothing anything like this is ever achieved. Selective breeding pushes the limits of variation but stays within them.
As to the "mechanism" for these limits.. well you would have to ask the geneticists about that. But I don't think they really have any idea yet.
The answer, I reckon, will be due to informational constraints.
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Good god, how many times does it have to be said? Humans don't live for hundreds of thousands of years. If we did, then we could breed such things.
Can you even tell that you are spouting the same rubbish over and over in every thread you participate in? I'm new and I'm bored of you.

plumjam said:
Say I have a Shakespeare sonnet. No random changing of its letters is going to turn that sonnet into a 3 hour long play, or a 400 page novel, or a telephone directory, or a haiku poem. Also, the likelihood of random changes to the letters over an extended period improving the effectiveness of the Shakespeare sonnet, as meaningful and beautiful poetry, would be so vanishingly improbable that a man would need to be irrational to believe that such a process is essentially what lies at the heart of the enormous diversity and complexity of life.
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If your poem made millions of copies of its self, and you burned all the ones that ended up with a gibberish word and did not copy off them... aw I'm not even going to bother, this is a ridiculous analogy and you know it. What makes a sonnet good at surviving? Does it just have to have words? To rhyme? You might as well say that 'sex theory' is bollocks because you can't cut in half a male and female and stick the halves together to get a new person.
 
D'rok said:
MM's successful prediction rate just eclipsed Sylvia Browne's
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Why thank you. I have also, with this prediction, established a better success record than any "theory" of ID-creationism - namely, I actually made a prediction :D
 
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