It's more complicated than that. Antibiotic courses aren't perfect killers. They prevent an extremely harsh challenge to bacteria, but not an insurmountable one. That's why carrying out the full course of treatment is important in order to prevent resistant strains from evolving and spreading. If you give a weakened course of antibiotics, the survivors are statistically likely to include those bacteria who are in some way helpfully more hardy in facing up to it. The next generation of bacteria at that point will start from that place, and the further variations can build off of it. This process can happen over and over without the spreading population of bacteria ever getting to full resistance: but it builds to it as this strain encounters more and more weak courses of antibiotics. Over time, antibiotic use WILL tend to preserve ONLY those bacteria hardy enough to defeat that particular antibiotic, meaning that this strain will begin to become more widespread. So there is really nothing all that wrong with "new resistant strains have arisen because of the use of antibiotics."
"Your message reminds me of the Popper's objection to evolution: it is impossible to disprove it since whichever way organisms turn out is fine from the evolutionary standpoint. He concluded then that evolution is not a scientific theory according to his definition."
"Of course proving the non-existence of God is equally impossible."
Not exactly a point for God. Proving the non-existence of gruphhalumph is equally impossible too.
"You should feel free to demonstrate such people beliefs to be wrong - but if you're going after apologists I'd suggest you start with "there is no god because" - and try to follow with something logical"
Sorry, nope. If an apologist thinks there is a God, that's their case to make. No one has to start with "there is no god because..." It's also important to differentiate between arguing against REASONS given for a belief, and having to take on the burden of proof for proving that the negation of those beliefs is true.
Well, I didn't say it was happening or not: just pointing out that the fact that what the word monkey means doesn't really make any sense, so it doesn't make that much sense to get upset about people calling apes monkeys. Whatever the first Catarrhini was, it would have almost certainly been called a monkey, for instance.
You're wrong, or at least not understanding what I'm saying. I'm saying that if the term "monkey" is made monophyletic, then the common ancestor it would include would also be a common ancestor of all apes. As it is, the term "monkey" doesn't really mean anything in the very real sense that the two things called monkeys are more dissimilar than one is to apes, a non-monkey.
To be fair, we DON'T know if a viable hybrid is possible or not. It's not, as some think, impossible (even a different number of genes is really not as big of a deal as some think: sure doesn't stop rats), but we don't have any evidence of it either, and there's certainly no evolutionary reason why this compatibility would HAVE to be conserved, hence no reason to expect that it has been. After two species split from each other, even the tinest change becomeing fixed in one species but not the other could make hybridization impossible. Or, of course, it could just be happened to be conserved also. We just don't know.
I dunno: the bonobo strategy of having sex with you in order to relieve stress would be pretty incapacitating. Imagine a platoon of soldiers coming upon a platoon of naked prostitutes. It's not immediately obvious who would come out on top of that encounter.
nitpick: only because the term "monkey" is polyphyletic and incoherent (it was made up to describe two different groups of primates based mostly on tail-having, even though apes are ultimately a subset of one of those sorts and not of the other). If we try to associate the word monkey with any real taxons in taxonomically consistent fashion, then apes are, indeed, a subset of monkeys and hence monkeys themselves.
I'm not sure I follow the logic of your question. Are you implying that chimps are somehow more advanced than parrots, and so we should assume that anything a parrot can do, a chimp can do better? Why should an ability in one animal translate into another on a completely different branch of the animal kingdom?
Seriously. I'd like to see mr. smarty pants who thinks mimicry is something only other animals do learn language or build a society without exposure to other humans doing it. The fact is, a HECK of a lot of human ingenuity is built on some very hefty cultural and social bootstrapping. It is precisely because we are more ADEPT at mimicry that we are so powerful and intelligent, not because we have something even better than it.
"I did not respond to your implication because it is completely unfounded and untrue. I believe physical evidence is the cornerstone of the scientific process."
Whatever. The point is, I don't see you picketing courtrooms demanding that a time machine be invented before forensic evidence can be presented.
"Perhaps it does in your mind, but it does not in mine. "
Dollars to doughnuts, that's because either you don't know the evidence, don't understand it, or don't care.
That's the creationist "everyone must go blind because we choose to" line. Not going to fly.
"We should show them the evidence that supports "the holocaust happened" and the evidence that supports "the holocaust didn't happen" and let them decide what they believe. "
The evidence doesn't support the "holocaust didn't happen" claim. In elementary school, what we teach kids is history, not any fairy story anyone proposes that for some reason deserves equal time merely because someone said it.
"Isn't that the scientific method?"
The scientific method is about the evidence. The evidence is what's taught. Not cherry-picked or anything else.
"So, if 4 out of 5 biologists believe it, it is true?"
This is like arguing with the guy from Memento. YOU were the one who claimed that there was some level of support in the scientific community for creationism and ID.
And biologists don't "believe" anything: they look at what the evidence supports.
"--Should we also take a neutral point of view on the holocaust, astrology, numerology and 2+2=4?-- Yes. "
So we should teach kids that the holocaust happened, but also that it didn't happen? That 2+2=4, but also it could equal 5 or 2.3, or 6.12 ?
"--Should we simply stop teaching science altogether?-- No, I'm not sure why you think that's what I'm saying."
Well, what you are essentially asking is that we stop teaching science (i.e., the evidence) and start teaching all the different things people believe.
"I think you must be working on a different definition of neutral. I think "based on evidence rather than opinions" is neutral."
So then, you have no complaint with the way science is taught then?
"The standard of proof for a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt". If you want to talk about evolution in those terms, I don't believe it has met that standard. "
First of all, you completely dodged the implication of the question which was to ask why you scream bloody murder over physical evidence used in science but not in court.
Second of all, evolution has not only met the reasonable doubt standard, but also the "no one can supply any other alternative that explains all the evidence" standard.
"I agree with your logical analysis, but it does not address my point. I said, "X is possible does not imply X occured". Your statement (as I understand it) is, "X is the only possibility implies X occured"."
Of course it addresses your point. If we nail down virtually every physical factor that would be implied by something happening and then rule out all the possible alternatives, it's just dishonest to say that we're merely talking about vague possibility. In science, what you say is technically the case, but in terms of applying that standard consistently, it's extremely dishonest. You don't run around saying that it's merely possible that the Battle of Gettysburg occured, even though history uses the exact same empirical standard as science.
"You clearly don't spend much time reading old code. I see many of those "issues" with the programs I work on every day."
Again, I don't think you're thinking very clear about this. The point is not that human designers can't be sloppy. The point is that the artifacts of even a human ingenuity are simply missing entirely from DNA. Most tellingly, despite the fact that HUMAN genetists today can swap entire genes across even kingdoms of life to gain useful effects with no downsides, we don't see this in nature. We see nested clades in genetics like everything else, not good ideas developing somewhere and then used across the board.
"It's also difficult to look at someone else's code and know exactly why they did what they did in any program that's more than a couple thousand lines. Maybe "the designer" coded the DNA in a particular way for reasons we don't see because it's hard to analize the potential interactions of every gene in the entire genome."
If all you are saying is that a designed code can look exactly like non-designed code, then you aren't really saying much, and you clearly aren't getting what I was saying. The possibility that one can identify artifacts of design is one I was considering because it MIGHT help the ID, but it turns out it doesn't. Essentially agreeing that it doesn't, as you are doing, doesn't really help your case much. And it only underscores how eager ID proponents are to hide themselves from any testible hypothesis: i.e. hide from doing science.
This boy is just one of countless individuals who belies the creationist refrain that mutations never observably add "information" to a genome, or positive effects. This is a particularly large effect mutation, which is not the general case for what I'm talking about, but like the family with unusually dense bones, tetrachromatism in women, immunity to LDH cholesterol toxicity, and so on, its just one more example of how there are countless changes going on in the human gene pool even in very recent history, much less on the scale necessary for evolution (which don't even really require such large leaps).
Positive, of course, is in the eye of the beholder and the environment and the tradeoffs involved. But how can you argue that information hasn't been added?
"Science is not about the known, it's about the proposed which seems to fit the facts and has not yet been disproven."
In a technical sense, sure. But this is true of everything, and I doubt it stops you from speaking of knowledge and facts anywhere other than where science differs from your beliefs. In the colloquial sense, it's perfectly appropriate to speak about what we know from science.
"This is an incredibly bold statement. What evidence do you offer to support this concept?"
It would only be bold if the evidence wasn't there. But it is. I'm not just offering some evidence. I'm offering ALL of the evidence. Every piece of evidence tells not only my story, but it's a VERY particular story that fits together in a particular way in very fine detail.
"I believe that a few thousand years ago the earth experienced a global geological event which dramatically changed the landscape and ecosystem - perhaps even ripping the upper crust of the world apart and a worldwide flood occurred."
Belief is one thing. The evidence says this never happened. If something like this HAD happened, it would be incredibly obvious: there are countless things that would be true about virtually every rock formation worldwide by implication that are not true. And instead, we have a very clear geological record which in all sorts of little details large and small confirms what is the basic geologic science today. No global flood: no evidence of this anywhere. Instead, a geologic column universal to the world in which fossils are laid down in patterns that only make any sense at all in the context of millions of years. No flood could lay down the highly complex and ordered patterns we see there, which bear no relation to bouyancy, but rather terrestrial geography impacting the movement and development of creatures over millions of years.
Interestingly, the people who originally discovered this were all creationists: all the people who you say interpret things in the creationist way. They tried to establish their beliefs by science but found that the evidence said otherwise.
To give you an example of what I mean, consider the continents of South America and Africa. The fact that they appear to fit together is no mistake: as I noted, we have large complex patterns of mineral deposits that match up with each other, now separated by thousands of miles of ocean. We know that these two continents were once joined and that they separated slowly: at a rate of not much faster than a centimeter a year. In between them is a trench from which the molten elements under the Earth's crust are welling up. This welling occurs today at a particular rate, and the plates the two continents sit on are moving away from each other at this rate. How do we know this? Let me count the ways. When the welling happens faster or slower, it shows up in the way that the rock cools and hardens underwater. If it once did move faster, we'd know by looking at the rock (as we can in places where it IS moving slower or faster elsewhere in the world). In fact we'd also know because the amount of force necessary to move the plates apart at the rate that would be needed to conform to a 6000-year old earth would litterally shatter the plates in countless places: they physically can only remain whole IF they move below a certain rate. But they are not shattered apart.
But we're only just getting started. All of the above doesn't just suggest "old" it suggests a particular age. Every other physical chain of evidence we can think of to test this against also doesn't just say "old": it gives a particular age. The SAME age. When we radio-date the rocks near the trench, they are young. As we move away from the trench on either side, these recorded ages increase. When we reach the two continents themselves, where they match, we end up not just with some old dates, but with the same dates. You might argue that perhaps once radioactive elements decayed faster, but if that had happened, it would be obvious. You do
"I mean no disrespect, but your argument is absurd. It's not a genetic recipe,"
As I explained, that's exactly what it very literally is. Calling it absurd is not the same thing as arguing otherwise.
"it's the creation of a person - a unique person - as long as food and shelter are present, a BABY is born."
As long as two people meet and try to have kids, a BABY is born: it's the same thing: a potential, not an actuality.
What is unique about a person is a particular unique _existence_, not a unique set of genes. Genes are just instructions on how to go about building a person a certain way: how to GET to that point. The fact that they are unique or not is irrelevant. Twins and clones are no less people in every sense. Human Chimeras are not two people, even though two different genomes fuse in utero to create them.
And again, calling it "food and shelter" is not only inapt but emotionally overwrought. The vast majority of everything we know as a person simply isn't there yet.
"To suggest otherwise is written smoke and mirrors. While you throw around scientific terms, the information above is inaccurate and misleading."
Again, saying so isn't the same thing as arguing so or showing why it is.
"Well, since you don't know me, you don't know if that's all I do."
The only appropriate response to a holocaust going on in your neighborhood is armed resistance. I can't imagine any other response being even close to appropriate. I don't think you are thoughtless and lazy: I think you are using rhetoric way out of proportion to what is reasonable given the situation. The idea that simply from the moment of conception there is something of moral value breaks just about every convention of what morality is supposed to be ABOUT that I can think of. I think intuitively most people know this, which is why given the choice between saving a baby from a fire at a fertility clinic or saving a vat of up to even an infinite number of fertilized eggs (or unfertilized! It doesn't matter because fertilization isn't fundamentally necessary to start the process), almost everyone would save the baby, no matter what their rhetoric on the issue of abortion or stem cell research.
"It's not that I misunderstand the mechanics of the evolutionary theory. "
I think you've several times already admitted to and demonstrated not understanding them. This isn't meant as an insult, but simply an observation of the things you have said and argued.
"I find the theory lacks credibility for a number of reasons."
Dollars to doughnuts, those reasons are a collection of very standard arguments developed by creationists so that they sound plausible on the surface, despite them grossly misrepresenting and simply ignoring the bulk of the evidence. Again, not a slight on you, but that's been my experience, time and time again.
You want me to agree to disagree, and maybe that's that, but I most certainly don't accept the idea that creationists are "dealing with the same evidence and interpreting it differently" or any of these other canards. Creationists are not working within the paradigm OF evidence. And that's okay, but it's neither science nor empirically sound and I object to it being presented as such.
"Just because it's widely accepted does not make it right."
I don't think that's a serious argument anyone is making.
"This is why it is not credible to say that if we have minute changes which are favorable, and those changes occur over a long enough time frame, a new creature emerges which is fundamentally different from the creature up the chain."
Not at all. You misunderstand me. A mammal is very very different from a single celled eukaryote. I don't know what "fundamentally" different would mean: fundamentally, all life related and modifications of the same core principles. However, no matter how different a mammal is from a single celled creature, it is still a SUBSET of eukaryotes, not something completely new and different. This isn't just a matter of creative definition, but a real and very important implication of the idea that all life is descended in nested categories: the pattern we find universally throughout life on earth.
"To suggest that all creatures today came to be as a result of simple creatures who were modified a little at a time and got more complex in the process is.... ridiculous."
I don't really understand why anyone could think so. It seems not only perfectly plausible, but given the evidence, the inevitable and unavoidable conclusion.
"Furthermore, punctuated equilibrium was proposed because a philosophical naturalist named Gould concluded that "philetic gradualism" "was never seen in the rocks" so he proposed that even kookier theory."
Again, I don't understand how someone who says things like this can really be claimed to be well versed in what they are criticizing. Be honest: do you even REALLY know, off the top of your head, what phyletic gradualism is or why Gould thought it was wrong? And how can Gould's explanation be kooky? His basic idea is no more kooky than the idea that the pace of morphological evolutionary change is not constant. This idea, by the way is not only not original to Gould, but was stated by Darwin many times, long before we even had a picture of the fossil record.
"We're not going to agree. I believe that you're smart, educated, and absolutely convinced that your worldview is correct. "
Again, while I understand the sentiment to want to agree to disagree, I ALSO fundamentally disagree on your framing of the differences. I'm not pushing a worldview outside of the idea of looking at what the evidence shows. I have next to no confidence that you are really confronting or understanding the nature of the evidence in regards to evolution.
"It has little to do with Darwin except show he is wrong to a degree."
Were you under the impression that anyone, including Darwin himself thought he was right about everything having to do with biology? For goodness sakes, he got the basic mechanism of heredity wrong (though by the time he figured this out, he didn't have time to track down the accurate picture, sadly despite the answer sitting on his bookshelf unread in the form of Mendel's paper on genetics). Darwin was a pretty quiet dude who spent most of his life dissecting barnacles and wondering about stuff, not a saint.
"I'm talking about the new religion that is darwinism or something simular who claim we came from monkeys and vice versa. "
If you don't even understand what evolution says, how can you possibly credibly criticize it as being dogmatic, let alone wrong? Evolution isn't a religion and "Darwinism" as such exists only in the mind of paranoids. The evidence for common descent and evolutionary change as the driving force is overwhelming and clear.
From the way you post though, I seriously suspect that you are not a creationist, but are, in fact, a troll posing as one.
You post basically explains the reason why having "equal time for creationism" or ID stickers or whatever is a bad idea for everyone. It would put the teacher in EXACTLY that position. First they have to teach creationism, and then they turn to all the evidence against it? That's exactly what we don't want.
When science classes stick to teaching science, there is no real need to get into religious arguments. You learn the science, no one makes any grand metaphysical claims, you go home and believe whatever you want.
"So while you see certainty as not possible regarding God (presumably because of the lack of observation) someone with a biblical view regards certainty as coming from the revelation (the bible) and any contrary observable evidence is seen as a temporary condition which will eventually change to conform to the revelation."
The problem is larger than that. Relevation does not solve it, because any being sufficiently more powerful than man but whom cannot be understood by man could have any motive or purpose at all in giving out particular revelations to folks. There still is no degree of certainty there, and the more one claims that God is unknowable, revelation or no, the more unreasonable it is to say anything about God with any degree of certainty at all.
"We don't see these birds in transition to something radically different, merely to variants of the original kind - a specific kind of bird."
This is a really important misconception. Evolution does not describe the transition of one thing into something "radically different" in a very real sense. Evolution describes descent with modification within nested categories.
Look at humans. In terms of the significant morphological features that distinguish us from other life at each different taxonomic stage, we are STILL in virtually every respect, a part of every level of taxonomy our ancestors belonged to. What I mean by that is that our ancestors were apes, and we are still apes. Every feature you can pick out that distinguishes an ape from a non-ape within the group primate is a feature that we human beings STILL have. In the same way, we are still apes, still primates, still mammals, still tetrapods, still vertebrates, still eukaryotes, and still all the other levels in between that I skipped. What that means is that along our line of ancestry, we changed somewhat, but stayed fairly close to form in terms of all the different possible radical changes.
We find this same pattern everywhere we look. Even the seeming exceptions only prove the rule on closer inspection. For instance, tetrapods are a group of 4-legged creatures. However, snakes and dolphins are both "still" tetrapods even though they lack, at least in an obvious sense, these features. But look a little closer and you find on both things like developmental embryonic leg buds, or atavisms that reveal legs (just like some humans are born with tails: not dolphin tales or dog tails, but distinctively primate tails: for some reason (ahem, common descent) atavisms reflect only our ancestry rather than any random old trait from anywhere in the animal kingdom), and in fact you find that their whole body structure is distinctively the halmark of a modified _tetrapod_ form, rather than of just any old vertebrate form.
Dogs do not evolve into cats. A common ancestor carnivore evolved into both. In doing so, it's descendants did not "radically" change: instead its descendants were gradually modified in several different directions, none particularly radical, but leading steadily away from each other in their development. The result might involve many differences between the various lines, but all are distinguishable and group together with each other against all other life.
The implication of this is important. You often hear creationists asserting that however much we breed X, we never get not-X. Well, in fact, they are correct! That is exactly what evolution suggests: they just don't understand how it works. Their statement is identical to the claim that however much we breed mammals, the result is always mammals. And it has been! Likewise for eukaryotes: all we seem to get is different types of eukaryotes (some that operate alone, some that colonize all together: a relatively minor, non-radical, difference in behavior). The same is true for fruit flies. No matter how much the descendants of fruit flies change, they will all always group together as fruit flies against all other sorts of flies.
Slashdot Mirror
It's more complicated than that. Antibiotic courses aren't perfect killers. They prevent an extremely harsh challenge to bacteria, but not an insurmountable one. That's why carrying out the full course of treatment is important in order to prevent resistant strains from evolving and spreading. If you give a weakened course of antibiotics, the survivors are statistically likely to include those bacteria who are in some way helpfully more hardy in facing up to it. The next generation of bacteria at that point will start from that place, and the further variations can build off of it. This process can happen over and over without the spreading population of bacteria ever getting to full resistance: but it builds to it as this strain encounters more and more weak courses of antibiotics. Over time, antibiotic use WILL tend to preserve ONLY those bacteria hardy enough to defeat that particular antibiotic, meaning that this strain will begin to become more widespread. So there is really nothing all that wrong with "new resistant strains have arisen because of the use of antibiotics."
"Your message reminds me of the Popper's objection to evolution: it is impossible to disprove it since whichever way organisms turn out is fine from the evolutionary standpoint. He concluded then that evolution is not a scientific theory according to his definition."
Popper recanted this and admitted that he misunderstood the concept.
"Of course proving the non-existence of God is equally impossible."
Not exactly a point for God. Proving the non-existence of gruphhalumph is equally impossible too.
"You should feel free to demonstrate such people beliefs to be wrong - but if you're going after apologists I'd suggest you start with "there is no god because" - and try to follow with something logical"
Sorry, nope. If an apologist thinks there is a God, that's their case to make. No one has to start with "there is no god because..." It's also important to differentiate between arguing against REASONS given for a belief, and having to take on the burden of proof for proving that the negation of those beliefs is true.
Well, I didn't say it was happening or not: just pointing out that the fact that what the word monkey means doesn't really make any sense, so it doesn't make that much sense to get upset about people calling apes monkeys. Whatever the first Catarrhini was, it would have almost certainly been called a monkey, for instance.
You're wrong, or at least not understanding what I'm saying. I'm saying that if the term "monkey" is made monophyletic, then the common ancestor it would include would also be a common ancestor of all apes. As it is, the term "monkey" doesn't really mean anything in the very real sense that the two things called monkeys are more dissimilar than one is to apes, a non-monkey.
Luckily they also have individual-unique fingerprints so they can't get away with it for long.
To be fair, we DON'T know if a viable hybrid is possible or not. It's not, as some think, impossible (even a different number of genes is really not as big of a deal as some think: sure doesn't stop rats), but we don't have any evidence of it either, and there's certainly no evolutionary reason why this compatibility would HAVE to be conserved, hence no reason to expect that it has been. After two species split from each other, even the tinest change becomeing fixed in one species but not the other could make hybridization impossible. Or, of course, it could just be happened to be conserved also. We just don't know.
I dunno: the bonobo strategy of having sex with you in order to relieve stress would be pretty incapacitating. Imagine a platoon of soldiers coming upon a platoon of naked prostitutes. It's not immediately obvious who would come out on top of that encounter.
"Chimps are not monkeys."
nitpick: only because the term "monkey" is polyphyletic and incoherent (it was made up to describe two different groups of primates based mostly on tail-having, even though apes are ultimately a subset of one of those sorts and not of the other). If we try to associate the word monkey with any real taxons in taxonomically consistent fashion, then apes are, indeed, a subset of monkeys and hence monkeys themselves.
I'm not sure I follow the logic of your question. Are you implying that chimps are somehow more advanced than parrots, and so we should assume that anything a parrot can do, a chimp can do better? Why should an ability in one animal translate into another on a completely different branch of the animal kingdom?
Seriously. I'd like to see mr. smarty pants who thinks mimicry is something only other animals do learn language or build a society without exposure to other humans doing it. The fact is, a HECK of a lot of human ingenuity is built on some very hefty cultural and social bootstrapping. It is precisely because we are more ADEPT at mimicry that we are so powerful and intelligent, not because we have something even better than it.
"I did not respond to your implication because it is completely unfounded and untrue. I believe physical evidence is the cornerstone of the scientific process."
Whatever. The point is, I don't see you picketing courtrooms demanding that a time machine be invented before forensic evidence can be presented.
"Perhaps it does in your mind, but it does not in mine. "
Dollars to doughnuts, that's because either you don't know the evidence, don't understand it, or don't care.
"At some point, it always come down to belief."
That's the creationist "everyone must go blind because we choose to" line. Not going to fly.
"We should show them the evidence that supports "the holocaust happened" and the evidence that supports "the holocaust didn't happen" and let them decide what they believe. "
The evidence doesn't support the "holocaust didn't happen" claim. In elementary school, what we teach kids is history, not any fairy story anyone proposes that for some reason deserves equal time merely because someone said it.
"Isn't that the scientific method?"
The scientific method is about the evidence. The evidence is what's taught. Not cherry-picked or anything else.
"So, if 4 out of 5 biologists believe it, it is true?"
This is like arguing with the guy from Memento. YOU were the one who claimed that there was some level of support in the scientific community for creationism and ID.
And biologists don't "believe" anything: they look at what the evidence supports.
"--Should we also take a neutral point of view on the holocaust, astrology, numerology and 2+2=4?--
Yes. "
So we should teach kids that the holocaust happened, but also that it didn't happen? That 2+2=4, but also it could equal 5 or 2.3, or 6.12 ?
"--Should we simply stop teaching science altogether?--
No, I'm not sure why you think that's what I'm saying."
Well, what you are essentially asking is that we stop teaching science (i.e., the evidence) and start teaching all the different things people believe.
"I think you must be working on a different definition of neutral. I think "based on evidence rather than opinions" is neutral."
So then, you have no complaint with the way science is taught then?
"The standard of proof for a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt". If you want to talk about evolution in those terms, I don't believe it has met that standard. "
First of all, you completely dodged the implication of the question which was to ask why you scream bloody murder over physical evidence used in science but not in court.
Second of all, evolution has not only met the reasonable doubt standard, but also the "no one can supply any other alternative that explains all the evidence" standard.
"I agree with your logical analysis, but it does not address my point. I said, "X is possible does not imply X occured". Your statement (as I understand it) is, "X is the only possibility implies X occured"."
Of course it addresses your point. If we nail down virtually every physical factor that would be implied by something happening and then rule out all the possible alternatives, it's just dishonest to say that we're merely talking about vague possibility. In science, what you say is technically the case, but in terms of applying that standard consistently, it's extremely dishonest. You don't run around saying that it's merely possible that the Battle of Gettysburg occured, even though history uses the exact same empirical standard as science.
"You clearly don't spend much time reading old code. I see many of those "issues" with the programs I work on every day."
Again, I don't think you're thinking very clear about this. The point is not that human designers can't be sloppy. The point is that the artifacts of even a human ingenuity are simply missing entirely from DNA. Most tellingly, despite the fact that HUMAN genetists today can swap entire genes across even kingdoms of life to gain useful effects with no downsides, we don't see this in nature. We see nested clades in genetics like everything else, not good ideas developing somewhere and then used across the board.
"It's also difficult to look at someone else's code and know exactly why they did what they did in any program that's more than a couple thousand lines. Maybe "the designer" coded the DNA in a particular way for reasons we don't see because it's hard to analize the potential interactions of every gene in the entire genome."
If all you are saying is that a designed code can look exactly like non-designed code, then you aren't really saying much, and you clearly aren't getting what I was saying. The possibility that one can identify artifacts of design is one I was considering because it MIGHT help the ID, but it turns out it doesn't. Essentially agreeing that it doesn't, as you are doing, doesn't really help your case much. And it only underscores how eager ID proponents are to hide themselves from any testible hypothesis: i.e. hide from doing science.
You don't know what information is, do you? Adding and subtracting genes is not the same thing as adding or subtracting information.
In the same way chipping away at a block of stone towards building a statue adds information.
This boy is just one of countless individuals who belies the creationist refrain that mutations never observably add "information" to a genome, or positive effects. This is a particularly large effect mutation, which is not the general case for what I'm talking about, but like the family with unusually dense bones, tetrachromatism in women, immunity to LDH cholesterol toxicity, and so on, its just one more example of how there are countless changes going on in the human gene pool even in very recent history, much less on the scale necessary for evolution (which don't even really require such large leaps).
Positive, of course, is in the eye of the beholder and the environment and the tradeoffs involved. But how can you argue that information hasn't been added?
"Science is not about the known, it's about the proposed which seems to fit the facts and has not yet been disproven."
In a technical sense, sure. But this is true of everything, and I doubt it stops you from speaking of knowledge and facts anywhere other than where science differs from your beliefs. In the colloquial sense, it's perfectly appropriate to speak about what we know from science.
"This is an incredibly bold statement. What evidence do you offer to support this concept?"
It would only be bold if the evidence wasn't there. But it is. I'm not just offering some evidence. I'm offering ALL of the evidence. Every piece of evidence tells not only my story, but it's a VERY particular story that fits together in a particular way in very fine detail.
"I believe that a few thousand years ago the earth experienced a global geological event which dramatically changed the landscape and ecosystem - perhaps even ripping the upper crust of the world apart and a worldwide flood occurred."
Belief is one thing. The evidence says this never happened. If something like this HAD happened, it would be incredibly obvious: there are countless things that would be true about virtually every rock formation worldwide by implication that are not true. And instead, we have a very clear geological record which in all sorts of little details large and small confirms what is the basic geologic science today. No global flood: no evidence of this anywhere. Instead, a geologic column universal to the world in which fossils are laid down in patterns that only make any sense at all in the context of millions of years. No flood could lay down the highly complex and ordered patterns we see there, which bear no relation to bouyancy, but rather terrestrial geography impacting the movement and development of creatures over millions of years.
Interestingly, the people who originally discovered this were all creationists: all the people who you say interpret things in the creationist way. They tried to establish their beliefs by science but found that the evidence said otherwise.
To give you an example of what I mean, consider the continents of South America and Africa. The fact that they appear to fit together is no mistake: as I noted, we have large complex patterns of mineral deposits that match up with each other, now separated by thousands of miles of ocean. We know that these two continents were once joined and that they separated slowly: at a rate of not much faster than a centimeter a year. In between them is a trench from which the molten elements under the Earth's crust are welling up. This welling occurs today at a particular rate, and the plates the two continents sit on are moving away from each other at this rate. How do we know this? Let me count the ways. When the welling happens faster or slower, it shows up in the way that the rock cools and hardens underwater. If it once did move faster, we'd know by looking at the rock (as we can in places where it IS moving slower or faster elsewhere in the world). In fact we'd also know because the amount of force necessary to move the plates apart at the rate that would be needed to conform to a 6000-year old earth would litterally shatter the plates in countless places: they physically can only remain whole IF they move below a certain rate. But they are not shattered apart.
But we're only just getting started. All of the above doesn't just suggest "old" it suggests a particular age. Every other physical chain of evidence we can think of to test this against also doesn't just say "old": it gives a particular age. The SAME age. When we radio-date the rocks near the trench, they are young. As we move away from the trench on either side, these recorded ages increase. When we reach the two continents themselves, where they match, we end up not just with some old dates, but with the same dates. You might argue that perhaps once radioactive elements decayed faster, but if that had happened, it would be obvious. You do
"I mean no disrespect, but your argument is absurd. It's not a genetic recipe,"
As I explained, that's exactly what it very literally is. Calling it absurd is not the same thing as arguing otherwise.
"it's the creation of a person - a unique person - as long as food and shelter are present, a BABY is born."
As long as two people meet and try to have kids, a BABY is born: it's the same thing: a potential, not an actuality.
What is unique about a person is a particular unique _existence_, not a unique set of genes. Genes are just instructions on how to go about building a person a certain way: how to GET to that point. The fact that they are unique or not is irrelevant. Twins and clones are no less people in every sense. Human Chimeras are not two people, even though two different genomes fuse in utero to create them.
And again, calling it "food and shelter" is not only inapt but emotionally overwrought. The vast majority of everything we know as a person simply isn't there yet.
"To suggest otherwise is written smoke and mirrors. While you throw around scientific terms, the information above is inaccurate and misleading."
Again, saying so isn't the same thing as arguing so or showing why it is.
"Well, since you don't know me, you don't know if that's all I do."
The only appropriate response to a holocaust going on in your neighborhood is armed resistance. I can't imagine any other response being even close to appropriate. I don't think you are thoughtless and lazy: I think you are using rhetoric way out of proportion to what is reasonable given the situation. The idea that simply from the moment of conception there is something of moral value breaks just about every convention of what morality is supposed to be ABOUT that I can think of. I think intuitively most people know this, which is why given the choice between saving a baby from a fire at a fertility clinic or saving a vat of up to even an infinite number of fertilized eggs (or unfertilized! It doesn't matter because fertilization isn't fundamentally necessary to start the process), almost everyone would save the baby, no matter what their rhetoric on the issue of abortion or stem cell research.
"It's not that I misunderstand the mechanics of the evolutionary theory. "
I think you've several times already admitted to and demonstrated not understanding them. This isn't meant as an insult, but simply an observation of the things you have said and argued.
"I find the theory lacks credibility for a number of reasons."
Dollars to doughnuts, those reasons are a collection of very standard arguments developed by creationists so that they sound plausible on the surface, despite them grossly misrepresenting and simply ignoring the bulk of the evidence. Again, not a slight on you, but that's been my experience, time and time again.
You want me to agree to disagree, and maybe that's that, but I most certainly don't accept the idea that creationists are "dealing with the same evidence and interpreting it differently" or any of these other canards. Creationists are not working within the paradigm OF evidence. And that's okay, but it's neither science nor empirically sound and I object to it being presented as such.
"Just because it's widely accepted does not make it right."
I don't think that's a serious argument anyone is making.
"This is why it is not credible to say that if we have minute changes which are favorable, and those changes occur over a long enough time frame, a new creature emerges which is fundamentally different from the creature up the chain."
Not at all. You misunderstand me. A mammal is very very different from a single celled eukaryote. I don't know what "fundamentally" different would mean: fundamentally, all life related and modifications of the same core principles. However, no matter how different a mammal is from a single celled creature, it is still a SUBSET of eukaryotes, not something completely new and different. This isn't just a matter of creative definition, but a real and very important implication of the idea that all life is descended in nested categories: the pattern we find universally throughout life on earth.
"To suggest that all creatures today came to be as a result of simple creatures who were modified a little at a time and got more complex in the process is.... ridiculous."
I don't really understand why anyone could think so. It seems not only perfectly plausible, but given the evidence, the inevitable and unavoidable conclusion.
"Furthermore, punctuated equilibrium was proposed because a philosophical naturalist named Gould concluded that "philetic gradualism" "was never seen in the rocks" so he proposed that even kookier theory."
Again, I don't understand how someone who says things like this can really be claimed to be well versed in what they are criticizing. Be honest: do you even REALLY know, off the top of your head, what phyletic gradualism is or why Gould thought it was wrong? And how can Gould's explanation be kooky? His basic idea is no more kooky than the idea that the pace of morphological evolutionary change is not constant. This idea, by the way is not only not original to Gould, but was stated by Darwin many times, long before we even had a picture of the fossil record.
"We're not going to agree. I believe that you're smart, educated, and absolutely convinced that your worldview is correct. "
Again, while I understand the sentiment to want to agree to disagree, I ALSO fundamentally disagree on your framing of the differences. I'm not pushing a worldview outside of the idea of looking at what the evidence shows. I have next to no confidence that you are really confronting or understanding the nature of the evidence in regards to evolution.
"It has little to do with Darwin except show he is wrong to a degree."
Were you under the impression that anyone, including Darwin himself thought he was right about everything having to do with biology? For goodness sakes, he got the basic mechanism of heredity wrong (though by the time he figured this out, he didn't have time to track down the accurate picture, sadly despite the answer sitting on his bookshelf unread in the form of Mendel's paper on genetics). Darwin was a pretty quiet dude who spent most of his life dissecting barnacles and wondering about stuff, not a saint.
"I'm talking about the new religion that is darwinism or something simular who claim we came from monkeys and vice versa. "
If you don't even understand what evolution says, how can you possibly credibly criticize it as being dogmatic, let alone wrong? Evolution isn't a religion and "Darwinism" as such exists only in the mind of paranoids. The evidence for common descent and evolutionary change as the driving force is overwhelming and clear.
From the way you post though, I seriously suspect that you are not a creationist, but are, in fact, a troll posing as one.
You post basically explains the reason why having "equal time for creationism" or ID stickers or whatever is a bad idea for everyone. It would put the teacher in EXACTLY that position. First they have to teach creationism, and then they turn to all the evidence against it? That's exactly what we don't want.
When science classes stick to teaching science, there is no real need to get into religious arguments. You learn the science, no one makes any grand metaphysical claims, you go home and believe whatever you want.
"So while you see certainty as not possible regarding God (presumably because of the lack of observation) someone with a biblical view regards certainty as coming from the revelation (the bible) and any contrary observable evidence is seen as a temporary condition which will eventually change to conform to the revelation."
The problem is larger than that. Relevation does not solve it, because any being sufficiently more powerful than man but whom cannot be understood by man could have any motive or purpose at all in giving out particular revelations to folks. There still is no degree of certainty there, and the more one claims that God is unknowable, revelation or no, the more unreasonable it is to say anything about God with any degree of certainty at all.
"We don't see these birds in transition to something radically different, merely to variants of the original kind - a specific kind of bird."
This is a really important misconception. Evolution does not describe the transition of one thing into something "radically different" in a very real sense. Evolution describes descent with modification within nested categories.
Look at humans. In terms of the significant morphological features that distinguish us from other life at each different taxonomic stage, we are STILL in virtually every respect, a part of every level of taxonomy our ancestors belonged to. What I mean by that is that our ancestors were apes, and we are still apes. Every feature you can pick out that distinguishes an ape from a non-ape within the group primate is a feature that we human beings STILL have. In the same way, we are still apes, still primates, still mammals, still tetrapods, still vertebrates, still eukaryotes, and still all the other levels in between that I skipped. What that means is that along our line of ancestry, we changed somewhat, but stayed fairly close to form in terms of all the different possible radical changes.
We find this same pattern everywhere we look. Even the seeming exceptions only prove the rule on closer inspection. For instance, tetrapods are a group of 4-legged creatures. However, snakes and dolphins are both "still" tetrapods even though they lack, at least in an obvious sense, these features. But look a little closer and you find on both things like developmental embryonic leg buds, or atavisms that reveal legs (just like some humans are born with tails: not dolphin tales or dog tails, but distinctively primate tails: for some reason (ahem, common descent) atavisms reflect only our ancestry rather than any random old trait from anywhere in the animal kingdom), and in fact you find that their whole body structure is distinctively the halmark of a modified _tetrapod_ form, rather than of just any old vertebrate form.
Dogs do not evolve into cats. A common ancestor carnivore evolved into both. In doing so, it's descendants did not "radically" change: instead its descendants were gradually modified in several different directions, none particularly radical, but leading steadily away from each other in their development. The result might involve many differences between the various lines, but all are distinguishable and group together with each other against all other life.
The implication of this is important. You often hear creationists asserting that however much we breed X, we never get not-X. Well, in fact, they are correct! That is exactly what evolution suggests: they just don't understand how it works. Their statement is identical to the claim that however much we breed mammals, the result is always mammals. And it has been! Likewise for eukaryotes: all we seem to get is different types of eukaryotes (some that operate alone, some that colonize all together: a relatively minor, non-radical, difference in behavior). The same is true for fruit flies. No matter how much the descendants of fruit flies change, they will all always group together as fruit flies against all other sorts of flies.