Problems with evolution? Submit your questions.

Hi, Shadow. Well, it's not really the board: it's the topic. There are forums on this board where we talk about pure philosophy with nobody's feet even approximating contact with the ground.But, when we talk about the origin or evolution of life, most of us are of the opinion that having our feet on the ground is important. And, it's difficult for science-minded folks to transition from our normal mode of doggedly searching for a way to solve a tantalizingly unsolvable problem to a mode of giving up the search and filling in the gaps with philosophy. That's the easy way out.-----After this far into the conversation, it may be of interest to you to know that Jar and I are both practicing Christians. I can't vouch for Jar, but I am very open to the idea of intelligent design, but I tend to be very hard on it because of its history of association with shoddy science and unscrupulous political tactics.I am perfectly willing to accept that the origin of eukaryotes may very well require the work of an intelligent designer, but, in the absence of any substantive evidence for this designer's existence, and given how primitive our collective understanding of how the chemistry of life functions, it's rather premature to fall back on a supernatural explanation at this time.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

How do you determine if there is no natural mechanism? We would have to have complete knowledge of nature to determine this, wouldn't we? Last I checked, we do not have this level of knowledge yet. Our resistance is to bad philosophy, such as the God-of-the-Gaps philosophy that you are pushing. You seem to think that the best place to find God is in our ignorance. That doesn't seem very inspiring to me.As to "other ways to solve a problem", when has a supernatural explanation ever turned out to be right? It would seem to me that science has found non-supernatural explanations for thousands of things that used to be credited to the supernatural. Why shouldn't we expect this trend to continue?

We know that science has found millions of answers that once alluded us (or were once credited to supernatural magic). It is science's track record that convinces us that it is worth using. Compare that to the abject failure of the thousands of years of supernaturalism in explaining nature prior to the advent of the modern scientific method.

Hi, ICdesign.This is in response to Message 249.

1. Everybody dies eventually.
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2. The important part of my statement was "dies without contributing to the gene pool," as in, they can't reproduce.
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3. He did turn around and say exactly that. Look:
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   quote:

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   Later we will argue that most harmful single-gene mutations will at least come to the birth... In addition to not being able to reproduce, these individuals will make it more difficult for the remaining population to survive.

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   5th paragraph under "Population Genetics Background"

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   quote:

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   It is reasonable to assume that individuals with such defects not only cannot survive themselves, but also result in other individuals not being able to reproduce.

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   6th paragraph under "Population Genetics Background"

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Despite your misgivings, I did manage to get through enough schooling to learn how to read.Furthermore, the idiot goes on to incorporate this assumption into the math. Here:

quote:

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Then it follows that the chance of a gamete being free from a new, harmful mutation is 1/(2.718), or about 37 percent. This means that at equilibrium, only 1/(2.718) of the zygotes can become reproducing adults.

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7th paragraph under "Population Genetics Background"

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He made the categories "people without harmful mutations" and "people that can reproduce" into synonyms.His math is based on (at least) two contradictory assumptions:

1. People with harmful mutations will not reproduce.
2. The human population has inherited 4 million harmful mutations from our ancestors anyway.

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-Bluejay (a.k.a. Mantis, Thylacosmilus)Darwin loves you.

"Feeling the Future: Experimential evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect."
Daryl J. Bem
Journal of Personality and Social PsychologyIs this one of science's great explanations for things that used to be credited to the supernatural?"The editor of the journal, Charles Judd, a psychologist at the University of Colorado, said the paper went through the journal's regular review process. Four reviewers made comments on the manuscript, he said, and these are very trusted people.All four decided that the paper met the journal's editorial standards, Dr. Judd added, even though 'THERE WAS NO MECHANISM BY WHICH WE COULD UNDERSTAND THE RESULTS.'I'll stand on my conclusion that God created the universe and all we know is a scientific conclusion.I thought I was just told by many on this board that if I cannot show evidence of creation it was not acceptalble to the scientific world?Edited by shadow71, : sorry cite does not come up, but google asp paperEdited by Admin, : Fix link.

From RationalWiki:

A response by E.J. Wagenmakers et al. highlights some of the major issues that call into question the validity of the analysis by Bem.[2]

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• Bem has published his own research methodology and encourages the formulation of hypotheses after data analysis. This form of post-hoc analysis makes it very difficult to determine accurate statistical significance. It also explains why Bem offers specific hypotheses that seem odd a priori, such as erotic images having a greater precognitive effect. Constructing hypotheses from the same data range used to test those hypotheses is a classic example of the Texas sharpshooter fallacy
  
• The paper uses the fallacy of the transposed conditional to make the case for psi powers. Essentially mixing up the difference between the probability of data given a hypothesis versus the probability of a hypothesis given data.
  
• Wagenmakers' analysis of the data using a Bayesian t-test removes the significant effects claimed by Bem.

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Any new result in any field of science requires extensive independent replication before it can be accepted as valid. This is no different for psychic powers, drug studies, or theories of physics. At least one replication of one of the tasks Bem used has failed to show significance[1], and hopefully others will attempt additional replications. Researcher Richard Wiseman is attempting to create a registry of replication attempts to control for publication bias.

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In the end the paper offers some promising methods but should not be taken as evidence for precognition without extensive independent replication of the results, particularly since there are significant questions about the introduction of bias into the analysis of the data.

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Source

Edited by Coyote, : Speeling

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Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

Yes, quite so. Why do you mention it?

I'm getting a "page not found" error on that link.A google search did turn up http://dbem.ws/FeelingFuture.pdf which I presume is the same paper (perhaps an early draft).Count me as skeptical. I've seen these kinds of reports before, but attempts to replicate them usually fail.

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Jesus was a liberal hippie

Hi Shadow,I fixed your link because it contained a typo. Don't try to type links from scratch, cut-n-paste them instead.But your link isn't to the paper you cite, it's to the page for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. I could not find the paper at this journal. There are five papers co-authored by Daryl J. Bem, and not one of them has this title.It appears that your information comes from an article in the January 5, 2011, edition of the New York Times, Journal’s Paper on ESP Expected to Prompt Outrage. The reason the paper cannot be found at the journal is because it hasn't been published yet.Here's a link to an advance copy of the paper: Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and AffectHere's a link to a rebuttal: Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of PsiHere's a relevant excerpt from the rebuttal: --Percy

I read about Dr. Bem's paper "Feeling the Future: Expermential evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on congnition and affect" to be published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a copy of said paper can be read by going to Dr. Bem's web site at Cornell.What concerns me are several quotes about the paper.This from the NY times on 1-6-2011 In response to the publisher stating we decided to publish the paper "...even though there was no mechanism by which we could understand the results.""But many experts say that is precisely the problem. Claims that defy almost every law of science are by definition extrardinalry and thus require extrordinary evidence."My question is why isn't the hypothesis that God created the universe and all that is in it, a scientific hypothesis according to the test above?I can produce many people who will testify that the Lord has helped them and some swear to miracles beyond scientific proof. The bible has many such exhibits in the Gospels.Thus even though this hypothesis may require extraordinary evidence, it should according to the tests for the above article be allowed to be studied by science and not rejected out of hand.Edited by shadow71, : No reason given.Edited by shadow71, : No reason given.

Hi Percy, thanks for fixing the link.I just posted about the paper in my reply to Dr. Adequate.

The news accounts are full of people who insist they've been abducted by aliens. While responding to your previous post I was wondering what it had to do with the topic, and I guess I should have asked that question instead. I don't imagine that anyone here would object to the scientific investigation of the hypothesis that God exists, but what has that got to do with the topic?If you're thinking that this means it should be valid for you to propose God as the means by which some event in natural history took place then you're wrong. Except when speculating, science only proposes answers based on known mechanisms, and God is not a known mechanism until it becomes scientifically demonstrated through replicated observations and experiments and through successful predictions.--Percy

Of course God can be tested as soon as some evidence is presented that shows there is a God and a model that suggests how that God intervenes. Until then there is nothing worth testing.

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Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

Perhaps that would be a better topic for a new thread?

The difference here is that the authors were able to make predictions of experimental results based on their hypothesis, even if they are lacking a specific mechanism. IOW, they were able to test their hypothesis which is an important step in the scientific method.There is no testing of hypotheses in creationism. Creationism is a belief that is not challenged. Creationism is a dogmatic religious belief, not a scientifically testable hypothesis.If the authors of the aforementioned paper were to copy the creationist method then they would cite the lack of a known mechanism as evidence that Leprechauns travel back in time and then whisper the secrets of the future in the subject's ear. Dogmatic religious beliefs are not scientific conclusions.