What prevents macro-evolution?

sphenisc said:
Poppycock, You made four claims in four sentences, the first I will agree with, the other three are YOUR claims - you provide evidence.
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Negatory. The burden of evidence does not work this way. What about that don't you understand?
 
BillHoyt said:
Negatory. The burden of evidence does not work this way. What about that don't you understand?
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All of it
From Wikipedia " burden of Proof"
Science and Other uses
Outside a legal context, "burden of proof" means that someone suggesting a new theory or stating a claim must provide evidence to support it: it is not sufficient to say "you can't disprove this". Specifically, when anyone is making a bold claim, it is not someone else's repsonsibility to disprove the claim, but is rather the person's responsibility who is making the bold claim to prove it.
 
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On a lighter note, it would appear that I did unearth some other arguments in ID against "macroevolution" specifically besides the old chestnut of intermediate forms not being equipped to survive.

There is the "information theory" approach, which posits that in a decaying system (a description of genetics subject to mutation) no information can be added through the error producing mechanism. In other words, asking for new information in evolution would be like asking for ice to form in warm water: while it is technically possible, it is so unlikely as to be ludicrous. This is not a valid argument, but it represents a summation of one of the information based arguments.

Probability based arguments exist as well, arguing for an astronomically unlikely series of events having to occur (and in this way they are kind of a new incarnation of unfit intermediates) resulting in the idea of irreduceable complexity. It's odd, but until this conversation I hadn't realized that "irreduceable complexity" was just the same old chestnut served up in a pie.
 
sphenisc said:
All of it
From Wikipedia " burden of Proof"
Science and Other uses
Outside a legal context, "burden of proof" means that someone suggesting a new theory or stating a claim must provide evidence to support it: it is not sufficient to say "you can't disprove this". Specifically, when anyone is making a bold claim, it is not someone else's repsonsibility to disprove the claim, but is rather the person's responsibility who is making the bold claim to prove it.
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Please read this again. It supports my point entirely, but you've missed its meaning.
 
sphenisc said:
I don't know, I guess because the people who claim it isn't can't be bothered to support their claim?
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Please go back and review my second commentary. I have supported the initial statement that macroevolution is referring to microevolution across species boundaries, that ID does not support such an idea, and that it specifically posits multiple mechanisms that go against macroevolution and/or prevent it being likely.
 
Crispy Duck,

The basic ID claim is that certain biological features are "irreducibly complex." By that they mean, there is no way it could have arisen in pieces, steps or stages. What they actually demonstrate with this claim, I'm afraid, is that they both lack the imagination to see how those steps could have arisen and been supported by selection pressures, and that they've not reviewed the clear and compelling evidence that the very features they point to as irreducibly complex did the very thing they say was impossible - arose piecemeal.
 
sphenisc said:
I don't know, I guess because the people who claim it isn't can't be bothered to support their claim?
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Well, it's hard to provide evidence for that ID is not a scientific theory when nobody wants to say what this scientific theory actually consists of. I mean, when the most prominent IDers like Behe and Dembski can't provide anything but strawmen attack on evolution, cheap rhetorics, and downright lies, then one has to wonder what the so-called "theory" of ID is about, eh?
 
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sphenisc said:
I don't know, I guess because the people who claim it isn't can't be bothered to support their claim?
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*SIGH* A scientific theory is an explanation. One thing that makes it science is that it has predictive power. If the predictions hold true via observation or experimentation, then our confidence in the theory grows. ID does no such thing, therefore it's not science.
 
BillHoyt, what part of the last sentence don't you get??



PatKelley said:
Ah, so then more evidence.
QUOTE]

My apologies, I thought I'd responded to this commentary, but checking back my post seems to have disappeared (ahem...) I take it this is the second commentary you refer to?

Quote 1 - doesn't refer to ID, so I don't see how it can be used to argue that ID prevents macroevolution.

Quote 2 - this is from Scott Thile, a Piano and Instrument Technician, is there a reason you regard him as an authority on ID. Even if there is a reason, there is nothing in the quote which says ID prevents macroevolution.

Quote 3 - this appears to argue exactly opposite of your claim. It is microevolution per se which constrains macroevolution, ID relaxes, indeed permits macroevolution in ways which microevolution wouldn't allow.

I'm not sure I follow your final points. Perhaps you could simplify them for me a bit?

Thanks
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Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Raise your hand if you're starting not to give a damn whether people think ID is the cat's pajamas.

:greekflag

~~ Paul
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Nah, the cat's pajamas are clearly irreducibly complex. What good would the cat's half-pajamas be? None whatsoever. Clearly selection could not have support half-pajamas long enough for the cat's pajamas to have evolved.
 
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