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Author Topic:   Nature belongs to ID
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 83 of 146 (662012)
05-11-2012 3:21 PM
Reply to: Message 80 by Taz
05-11-2012 3:04 PM


Taz writes:
The cambrian explosion was no mystery. Over a span of several hundred million years...
The span of time refers to the length of the Cambrian explosion? Wasn't sure if you were referring to that or not, but if you were then I think it was only 30 or 40 million years.
--Percy

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 Message 80 by Taz, posted 05-11-2012 3:04 PM Taz has replied

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 87 of 146 (662079)
05-12-2012 7:08 AM
Reply to: Message 86 by Vanessa
05-12-2012 3:08 AM


Vanessa writes:
The cambrian explosion was no mystery. Over a span of tens of millions of years, life filled up all the new niches on Earth. What came after were a series of mass extinctions (bubble burst).
See how easy to understand that is?
You seem to know more than paleontologists who are still figuring it out.
While there is a great deal that we do not yet know, what we do already know fills, literally, books. See the Wikipedia article on the Cambrian explosion for an overview of what we know. Here's the opening paragraph:
Wikipedia writes:
The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the relatively rapid appearance (over a period of many millions of years), around 530 million years ago, of most major animal phyla, as demonstrated in the fossil record, accompanied by major diversification of organisms including animals, phytoplankton, and calcimicrobes. Before about 580 million years ago, most organisms were simple, composed of individual cells occasionally organized into colonies. Over the following 70 or 80 million years the rate of evolution accelerated by an order of magnitude (as defined in terms of the extinction and origination rate of species) and the diversity of life began to resemble that of today.
Taz was attempting to make a side point that Creationists and IDists make claims to knowledge that they do not have. You attempted an, "Oh yeah? Well, you're doing the same thing!" Except he's not. Our knowledge of the Cambrian explosion seems to include a great deal of which you're unaware.
Nice job with the quotes, by the way.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 86 by Vanessa, posted 05-12-2012 3:08 AM Vanessa has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 88 of 146 (662080)
05-12-2012 7:21 AM
Reply to: Message 82 by jar
05-11-2012 3:20 PM


jar writes:
And that what we thought were body types that appeared in the Early Cambrian were really there long before the Cambrian.
I was under the impression that there is still a diversity of opinion on this point, and that there is as yet no consensus.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 82 by jar, posted 05-11-2012 3:20 PM jar has replied

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Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 102 of 146 (662186)
05-13-2012 8:46 AM
Reply to: Message 91 by Vanessa
05-12-2012 1:49 PM


Vanessa writes:
How little you know about me. How few of my posts you have read.
I think probably everyone participating in this thread has read all your posts - there's only 15 of them and they're not very long. You may be underestimating how much your posts say about you, and the impression we give to others often differs from the one we have of ourselves.
What I am advocating is to put aside prejudice (rife in this forum) and with fresh eyes look to Nature to understand evolution.
If by "Nature" you mean the universe in which we live, I'm pretty sure everything we know in science comes from studying nature.
Nature develops life through identifiable systems and processes but we choose to explain the evolution of life as the result of arbitrary cosmic events and chromosomal abnormalities.
Actually, we describe evolution as a process of random mutation and natural selection.
But this is not how Nature works - look at how a plant grows, how a baby gestates, how a butterfly forms - in each case the development of life is part of a system with transformative stages - just like our fossil record. Does this not make you curious?
Evolution *is* part of how nature works, but it does not describe all of nature. Plant growth and fetal development have nothing to do with evolution. They don't have anything to do with the fossil record, either, and since you ask about curiosity, yes, it does make me curious how you managed to add the fossil record into the rest of this hash.
You dismiss my argument as religiously driven and I am baffled.
You may be experiencing this encounter with true science as bafflement, but from where we sit it looks like hornswogglement at the hands of creationism. Whether you consider yourself a creationist or not, your arguments are the same creationist arguments this website has witnessed time and time again. Surely you don't believe you're the first one who has ever come here making these kinds of arguments.
You seem to prefer an explanation that has little to do with Nature,...
Why do you keep capitalizing "nature". Again, everything we know in science has come from the study of nature.
... cannot make predictions...
Now you're just spouting preprogrammed claptrap from your conference. Of course evolution makes verifiable predictions. For example, because evolution requires that new species evolve from existing species, one prediction of evolution is that any newly discovered life, fossil or current, will fit into a nested hierarchical classification system. This prediction has come true time and time again.
... and views life as a 'one-off', a lucky fluke.
Now you're confusing evolution with the origin of life.
Wouldn't it be preferable to view our evolution as a system, like the growth of a flower, in which we could identify where we are in the growth cycle?
Wouldn't it be preferable if you learned something about evolution so that you could draw analogies that make sense? Evolution is not a "growth cycle". There's no analogy between plant growth and species change from fish to amphibians to reptiles to mammals. Evolution is, at heart, whatever works, not growth cycles.
Isn't that the goal of scientific enquiry to identify patterns and regularities and thereby uncover a process that enables us to make predictions? This is certainly how we approach the study of biological processes in medicine, why not in evolution?
How about we ask, "Why not get your facts straight?" Way back in 1944 George Gaylord Simpson wrote Tempo and Mode in Evolution. It studied the patterns revealed in the fossil record. Research in this area has been ongoing both before and since.
Vanessa, you've been hoodwinked. If you learn what science says about evolution you'll see a very different picture.
--Percy
Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 91 by Vanessa, posted 05-12-2012 1:49 PM Vanessa has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(1)
Message 112 of 146 (662269)
05-14-2012 8:41 AM
Reply to: Message 109 by Vanessa
05-14-2012 3:40 AM


Hi Vanessa,
Well, now you're just making things up. If you type "auto-naturalism" into Google you'll get back a single page of links, and one of them is to you. How many searches have you ever done in Google that returned a single page?
Evolution has a definition. If you're going to discuss evolution I suggest you use the same definition everyone else is using. Same with the word "nature" - stop making up your own definitions. Also, stop telling us what we believe. We'll tell you what we believe, and one of the things we definitely don't believe is a made up term like "auto-naturalism."
Everything we know in science has come from studying nature. If there's anything in science that disagrees with nature then it's wrong. If you think there's something in evolution that says that nature is one way when it is actually another then you tell us what that is. But don't make up something like that nature is processes and evolution is not. Tell us something that is actually true.
Auto-naturalism no longer makes sense.
I'd go one step further - auto-naturalism as a scientific philosophy never existed.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 109 by Vanessa, posted 05-14-2012 3:40 AM Vanessa has replied

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 Message 113 by Taz, posted 05-14-2012 1:28 PM Percy has seen this message but not replied
 Message 117 by Vanessa, posted 05-22-2012 11:57 AM Percy has replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(2)
Message 143 of 146 (663316)
05-23-2012 8:47 AM
Reply to: Message 117 by Vanessa
05-22-2012 11:57 AM


Vanessa writes:
I'm surprised there was any reference on Google, because I made it up for this forum to better clarify my argument.
Can I suggest that making things up isn't an effective approach?
The definition of evolution on this site is narrowed down to a single interpretation - a theory of development through mutation. I will not accept, nor use that definition of evolution - it is an insult to Nature.
Two points.
First, you are wrong that the definition of evolution as "a theory of development through mutation" is used by evolutionists, either here or anywhere. Mutation is definitely a key part of evolution, but it has an equally important partner. Evolution, expressed simply, is change over time through a process of mutation (which is random) and natural selection (which is highly specific).
Second, if you want to prove evolution wrong then you have to prove it wrong as actually defined. It will only waste your time to disprove a theory of evolution that you invented yourself.
Nowhere in Nature does life develop through mutation. It is wrong to assume (and call it Naturalism) that all life on Earth developed this way.
If you only mean that mutation by itself is insufficient then I think we all agree with you. But if you're instead arguing that mutation doesn't occur then, well, I don't know what to say. That would make you the kind of person who couldn't be persuaded the sky was blue.
... auto-naturalism as a scientific philosophy never existed.
It is the primary scientific philosophy of evolution, it is time to name accurately.
Good luck with that.
I see there were a lot of posts since yesterday morning when you posted this - no need to reply to this one if the discussion has moved on.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 117 by Vanessa, posted 05-22-2012 11:57 AM Vanessa has not replied

  
Percy
Member
Posts: 22391
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


(5)
Message 144 of 146 (663318)
05-23-2012 8:55 AM
Reply to: Message 126 by Vanessa
05-22-2012 5:47 PM


Re: work in progress
Hi Vanessa,
Just wanted to reply to this one thing:
Vanessa writes:
If the truth of life were found out and it did not agree with current evolutionary theory could you put aside your beliefs?
I think I speak for the most of evolutionists here when I say that I don't believe in evolution. I accept evolution as a theory because I have been persuaded by the evidence.
What I believe in is following the evidence wherever it leads.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 126 by Vanessa, posted 05-22-2012 5:47 PM Vanessa has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 145 by Vanessa, posted 05-23-2012 9:35 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
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