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Author Topic:   A Logical account of creation
Taq
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Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 148 of 173 (548289)
02-26-2010 4:38 PM
Reply to: Message 144 by traste
02-26-2010 2:17 AM


Re: Scientific laws
My main point here is the logical consequences of there arguments, like for example if somebody would say a is b and in the second sentences, would say, well I'm not really sure if a is b, and yet insist that a is b because he or she believe it, that is doubtful. Take note also that in the court of law your statements can be use againts you, that is the method being use to determine that somebody is lying.
Let's use an example. This is a well known Darwin quote mine that has been used by creationists for years:
"To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree." (Darwin 1872)
This would seem to indicate that Darwin believed the eye could not have evolved, and this is exactly the trap the creationists have led you into. However, reality is quite the opposite. Darwin went on to say:
"Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound. . . .
In the Articulata we can commence a series with an optic nerve merely coated with pigment, and without any other mechanism; and from this low stage, numerous gradations of structure, branching off in two fundamentally different lines, can be shown to exist, until we reach a moderately high stage of perfection. In certain crustaceans, for instance, there is a double cornea, the inner one divided into facets, within each of which there is a lens shaped swelling. In other crustaceans the transparent cones which are coated by pigment, and which properly act only by excluding lateral pencils of light, are convex at their upper ends and must act by convergence; and at their lower ends there seems to be an imperfect vitreous substance. With these facts, here far too briefly and imperfectly given, which show that there is much graduated diversity in the eyes of living crustaceans, and bearing in mind how small the number of living animals is in proportion to those which have become extinct, I can see no very great difficulty (not more than in the case of many other structures) in believing that natural selection has converted the simple apparatus of an optic nerve merely coated with pigment and invested by transparent membrane, into an optical instrument as perfect as is possessed by any member of the great Articulate class."
As you can see, the first part of the quote was rhetorical. Darwin was setting up a problem, and then demonstrated how that problem is solved. Creationists have dishonestly pulled quotes out of context in order to make someone say the opposite of what they meant. This is why you should not pull quotes from creationist sites, or at least find the original source and see for yourself if the quote is in context.
Edited by Taq, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 144 by traste, posted 02-26-2010 2:17 AM traste has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 149 by traste, posted 02-27-2010 2:32 AM Taq has replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 167 of 173 (548901)
03-02-2010 10:46 AM
Reply to: Message 149 by traste
02-27-2010 2:32 AM


Re: Scientific laws
As you see Darwin observed the difficulties of the evolution of the eye, what we need is a document to show that the eye undergone gradual changes( by means of Darwinian mechanism) but as we see no such document exist, if it really exist then we can observed a partially formed eye. Like for example an eye with out a retina, an eye eye with out a cortex.
Darwin did recognize the problem, AND THEN HE SOLVED IT. Using Articulata as an example he demonstrated that there are transitional stages by which a photosensitive patch can slowly progress to a functional eye.
Here is the problem of this reasoning. "The monophyly of the Articulata (= Annelida + Panarthropoda), proposed by Wgele et al. (1999), is contradicted by all molecular data that support either Ecdysozoa (including Panarthropoda), or Lophotrochozoa (including Annelida), or usually both."
The reasoning is that there exists multiple KNOWN transitional stages through which an eye can evolve.

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 Message 149 by traste, posted 02-27-2010 2:32 AM traste has not replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 168 of 173 (548902)
03-02-2010 10:55 AM
Reply to: Message 160 by traste
02-27-2010 10:27 PM


Re: Scientific laws
[Evolution] is [a belief system]. In fact one of Darwin's great protagonist Thomas Huxley( also known as Darwin's bulldog) once said that he accepted evolution because of his philosophical faith.
Why do creationists continue with this canard? Projection?
Evolution is an APPLIED science. Biologists accept the theory because it is useful in their research and the theory makes accurate predictions. You might as well claim gravity is a belief system held by astronomers in order to deny the actions of gravity fairies.
Im pretty sure that scientist like Behe and Kenyon are not among of your" refutable source."
Since they have not presented original research in the peer reviewed literature which tests their ideas no, they are not a reputable source.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 160 by traste, posted 02-27-2010 10:27 PM traste has not replied

  
Taq
Member
Posts: 9973
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.7


Message 169 of 173 (548904)
03-02-2010 11:02 AM
Reply to: Message 162 by traste
02-27-2010 11:23 PM


Re: Scientific laws
The fact that there is wide disagreement among elite scientific figures, can be considered that they dont have yet the satisfactory explanation of how life began.
As an analogy, do we need to know where the first germ came from in order to know that germs cause infectious disease? For the same reason, we don't need to know where the first life came from in order to know how life changes over time.
Are there still debate, question , argue, that gravity cause objects to fall downward?
There are still huge debates as to the cause of gravity, the actual theory of gravity. Both quantum mechanics and relativity give us different pictures of what gravity is. However, arguments over the THEORY of gravity does not mean that scientists are arguing over the FACT of gravity. As Stephen Jay Gould put it, "Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome". The fact that life has changed over time and that life shares common ancestry, the fact of evolution, is not disputed by scientists. What is disputed are the finer points of how that change came about, the theory of evolution. Quoting Gould again, "And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered".
Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory"

This message is a reply to:
 Message 162 by traste, posted 02-27-2010 11:23 PM traste has not replied

  
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