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Author Topic:   Coffee House Musings on Creationist Topic Proposals
Tanypteryx
Member
Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
Member Rating: 5.9


(1)
Message 241 of 1429 (895371)
06-23-2022 11:26 PM
Reply to: Message 238 by Dredge
06-23-2022 10:48 PM


Re: Dredge Doesn't Think
Please be advised that a theory is not knowledge.
And you really still don't get it.
Every legitimate scientist and every science nerd knows that wild assed guesses like you're talking about and scientific theories are completely different things. The word theory has two different meanings.

Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python

One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie

If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy

The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq


This message is a reply to:
 Message 238 by Dredge, posted 06-23-2022 10:48 PM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 242 of 1429 (895372)
06-24-2022 12:03 AM
Reply to: Message 238 by Dredge
06-23-2022 10:48 PM


Re: Dredge Doesn't Think
We KNOW how an internal combustion engine works ... hence there is no Theory of Internal Combustion Engines.
We KNOW how to build a house ... hence there is no Theory of House-building.
YOU STUPID IDIOT!!
There are most definitely Theory of Internal Combustion Engines and Theory of House-building and theories explaining every single aspect of technology and science!
You know-nothing bottom-feeder idiot! You have no fucking clue what you are talking about nor how anything works! And to make your idiocy so much worse, we have repeatedly explained it to you, but you refuse to ever learn anything! You are a prime example of willful stupidity as you stubbornly cling to your stupidity.
On active duty I was a technician, an electronic computer systems repairman. We had a bookshelf filled with our tech manuals which had several sections. One very important section for every piece of equipment was its Theory of Operation. The other sections listed parts, test procedures, alignment procedures, schematics, etc. But none of that was of much help without the Theory of Operation which explained to us how that equipment worked.
That is what a theory does: explain how something works.
So we do indeed have multiple theories of internal combustion engines, since there are so many different kinds of those engines. And far more multiple theories of house construction, including many theories of architecture and structural engineering.
You are not only too stupid to know what a theory is, but you are also far too stupid to ever learn what a theory is.
Sound clip from a progressive radio show, usually played for the more outlandish idiots like you (picture it being sung -- sorry, cannot find it on YouTube):
quote
You are an idiot! Ha-ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!
You should take advantage of these excursions of yours out of the silt and slime on the bottom in order to learn something. Instead, you only try to spread the slime that you wallow in. It would be best for you to simply slither back to the bottom and stay there.
ABE:
Found the song:

Edited by dwise1, : ABE: Found the song


This message is a reply to:
 Message 238 by Dredge, posted 06-23-2022 10:48 PM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 313 by Dredge, posted 07-19-2022 12:14 PM dwise1 has not replied
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ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


(1)
Message 243 of 1429 (895376)
06-24-2022 11:50 AM
Reply to: Message 230 by Dredge
06-23-2022 3:34 PM


Re: Dredge Doesn't Think
Dredge writes:
In fact, I don't accept any scientific explanation for the fossil record, because it's impossible to know what process was responsible ...
You're condemning yourself to eternal ignorance.
Why would you demand an absolute explanation and ignore the plausible explanation - i.e. an explanation that explains the evidence? Geologists use plausible explanations to find valuable minerals. They don't need to have been there to see the deposits form. They don't need an absolute explanation.
Dredge writes:
... hence my contention that anyone who claims to know how evolution works is talking nonsense.
And hence everybody else's contention that YOU are talking nonsense.

"I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!"
-- Lucky Ned Pepper

This message is a reply to:
 Message 230 by Dredge, posted 06-23-2022 3:34 PM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 316 by Dredge, posted 07-19-2022 1:05 PM ringo has replied

  
ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


(4)
Message 244 of 1429 (895377)
06-24-2022 11:57 AM
Reply to: Message 235 by Dredge
06-23-2022 4:26 PM


Dredge writes:
The late science historian and atheist, Dr. William Provine, said,
"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented".​
According to you he was talking complete crap.
Yup.
He was wrong.
It's no disgrace to be wrong. Everybody is wrong once in a while. It's possible that Provine contributed something to society despite being so dreadfully wrong about one thing.
The greatest engine of atheism ever invented is thinking. Anybody who thinks is likely to be an atheist.
​

"I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!"
-- Lucky Ned Pepper

This message is a reply to:
 Message 235 by Dredge, posted 06-23-2022 4:26 PM Dredge has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 248 by dwise1, posted 06-24-2022 7:17 PM ringo has seen this message but not replied

  
ringo
Member (Idle past 412 days)
Posts: 20940
From: frozen wasteland
Joined: 03-23-2005


(1)
Message 245 of 1429 (895379)
06-24-2022 12:01 PM
Reply to: Message 239 by Dredge
06-23-2022 11:11 PM


Re: Dredge Doesn't Think
Dredge writes:
... you have so much knowledge about evolution that you can't describe how even one evolutionary transition evident in the fossil record happened.
Why don't you stop repeating the same lie and respond to Message 120?

"I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!"
-- Lucky Ned Pepper

This message is a reply to:
 Message 239 by Dredge, posted 06-23-2022 11:11 PM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 321 by Dredge, posted 07-19-2022 1:25 PM ringo has replied

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


(2)
Message 246 of 1429 (895382)
06-24-2022 3:50 PM
Reply to: Message 239 by Dredge
06-23-2022 11:11 PM


Dredge Doesn't Know How To Think
Yep, you have so much knowledge about evolution that you can't describe how even one evolutionary transition evident in the fossil record happened.
We have the evolutionary history of literally millions of organism. You have been presented some evidence multiple times but you just knee-jerk react with denial. So answer ringo's Message 120. Follow it through. What do you think is missing in the progression he cited? Be specific.
We can fill in the details as we come to them. Maybe in a few dozen or so posts you can get the high school education on how all this magic happens that you missed the first few times when your face was in your satanic catholic bible instead of in reality.
But you can't do that. You are not here to discuss or learn or teach ... you're only here to piss in the wind ... and it sure makes you look and smell very bad.
I don't think you appreciate how hollow, intellectually deficient ...
(There are just no other words of it.)
I don't think you appreciate how fucking stupid you make yourself look in this forum.

Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

This message is a reply to:
 Message 239 by Dredge, posted 06-23-2022 11:11 PM Dredge has not replied

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


Message 247 of 1429 (895384)
06-24-2022 5:07 PM
Reply to: Message 238 by Dredge
06-23-2022 10:48 PM


Re: Dredge Doesn't Think
Dredge writes:
Please be advised that a theory is not knowledge.
That would be intellectual nihilism. You would rather destroy all knowledge then accept the knowledge you don't like.
For your psychological well-being, you and your fellow atheists need to delude yourselves that ToE is a fact and is therefore "knowledge" ... which is actually oxymoronic ... if it were a fact it wouldn't be a theory.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. 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 238 by Dredge, posted 06-23-2022 10:48 PM Dredge has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 319 by Dredge, posted 07-19-2022 1:18 PM Taq has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 248 of 1429 (895385)
06-24-2022 7:17 PM
Reply to: Message 244 by ringo
06-24-2022 11:57 AM


Dredge writes:
The late science historian and atheist, Dr. William Provine, said,
"Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented".​
According to you he was talking complete crap.
Yup.
He was wrong.
Provine was an atheist and was a very active opponent of creationism, Phillip Johnson's ID in particular. All atheists have their own particular reasons and thoughts about atheism, there being no such thing as an "atheist dogma" (unlike Catholicism), so we would do well to listen to his own reasons and thoughts on the matter.
Unfortunately, what Dredge gave us is an obvious quote-mining, a single statement pulled out of context freed of any surrounding text that could provide further illumination (the only citation I can find is reference to an address posted (or cited from) on a "Darwin Day website" from the mid-1990's, so good luck there!).
Of course the quote-miner will proclaim, "But those are the words he said!" To that I would point out that the Bible says, "There is no God." Of course, we need to read further to discover what the Bible is actually saying, but those are the words it says!
Similarly, even when creationists cite actual scientific studies, they typically only quote from the abstract and even then only from the very beginning of the abstract, the statement of the problem, that problem being the one that the paper solves as is normally stated later in the abstract. IOW, they quote-mine that abstract in order to lie about that paper.
The article from the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) tells us more about Dr. Provine (abbreviated here):
quote
William B. Provine dies
The historian of science William B. Provine died on September 1, 2015, at the age of 73, according to a Facebook post from his wife. A specialist in the history of population genetics, his books included The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics (1971), Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology (1986), and a collection of Sewall Wright's papers (1986) with his explanatory introductions. In a memoir published in Isis in 1999, he explained that in his view, a student working on the history of biology "should be as familiar with the science as any doctoral student"; for his own part, he added, "I am very happy to move between history and science."
Provine was a vocal and persistent opponent of creationism. He wrote thoughtfully on evolution and creationism, e.g. in his essay on "Evolution, Religion, and Science" in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science (2006), but he was perhaps most famous for his views on the connection between evolution and atheism. He once asserted, "As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people" — a consequence that he welcomed. His views were formed in graduate school, where, he related in his memoir, "[a]fter reading [Theodosius] Dobzhansky several times and listening to [Lynn] Throckmorton, my belief in purposive nature disappeared for good." He was eager to share his views. Starting in 1986, he taught a class at Cornell University where students were exposed to creationism along with evolution, and he was often willing to debate creationists, including his regular opponent the "intelligent design" proponent Phillip Johnson. As a result of his prominence, he was often cited by creationists eager to portray his views on the connection between evolution and atheism, or a caricature thereof, as representative of scientists in general. He was among the scholars interviewed, under false pretenses, for the creationist propaganda film Expelled (2008).
So my interpretation of Provine's atheism with regards to evolution was that science, including evolution, provided natural explanations that eliminated the need for postulating supernaturalistic explanations. IOW, we no longer need to create and invoke gods and spirits to explain natural phenomena -- we no longer need the likes of Zeus or Thor to explain lightning and thunder.
IOW, goodbye God of the Gaps. And if the only purpose of their god is to serve as a God of the Gaps, then they're better off without the intellectual laziness engendered by that god.
So if Provine's atheism was born out of rejecting the God of the Gaps, then that would be part of his views on atheism. For many of us atheists, it was reading the Bible that led to our atheism, so that would part of our views. For those who were raised on creationism and then learned the truth, rejection of creationism would be part of their views.
But until Dredge can provide us with a proper citation that will get us to the original source of that Provine quote-mining, there is no reason for us to take him seriously.
 

 
  • Conrad Hyers, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science, John Knox Press, Atlanta, Georgia, 1984, page 26:
    quote
    It may be true that scientism and evolutionism (not science and evolution) are among the causes of atheism and materialism. It is at least equally true that biblical literalism, from its earlier flat-earth and geocentric forms to its recent young-earth and flood-geology forms, is one of the major causes of atheism and materialism. Many scientists and intellectuals have simply taken the literalists at their word and rejected biblical materials as being superseded or contradicted by modern science. Without having in hand a clear and persuasive alternative, they have concluded that it is nobler to be damned by the literalists than to dismiss the best testimony of research and reason. Intellectual honesty and integrity demand it.
     
  • JP Hunt, fifth-grade student in Ray Baird's 1980 "balanced treatment" class at Emma C. Smith Elementary School, Livermore, CA, in "Creation vs Evolution: Battle in the Classroom", KPBS-TV, aired 7 July 1982:
    quote
    Someone that I know has become an atheist because of this class, because the creationist theory was so stupid, he thought. Well, if religion requires me to believe this, then I don't want to have any part of it.
     

    Edited by dwise1, : Added link to page on the creationism class in Livermore


  • This message is a reply to:
     Message 244 by ringo, posted 06-24-2022 11:57 AM ringo has seen this message but not replied

      
    Capt Stormfield
    Member (Idle past 456 days)
    Posts: 428
    From: Vancouver Island
    Joined: 01-17-2009


    (3)
    Message 249 of 1429 (895389)
    06-25-2022 1:25 PM
    Reply to: Message 232 by kjsimons
    06-23-2022 3:43 PM


    Re: Dredge Doesn't Think
    ...you also don't think much about cosmetology...
    I don't know about that. Looking at his avatar, I have to suspect he might be deeply into the world of mudpacks.

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 232 by kjsimons, posted 06-23-2022 3:43 PM kjsimons has replied

    Replies to this message:
     Message 250 by kjsimons, posted 06-25-2022 1:47 PM Capt Stormfield has replied

      
    kjsimons
    Member
    Posts: 821
    From: Orlando,FL
    Joined: 06-17-2003
    Member Rating: 6.7


    Message 250 of 1429 (895391)
    06-25-2022 1:47 PM
    Reply to: Message 249 by Capt Stormfield
    06-25-2022 1:25 PM


    Re: Dredge Doesn't Think
    LOL! Yeah I messed that up a bit! Meant cosmology but that I reckon it won't make any difference to him.

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 249 by Capt Stormfield, posted 06-25-2022 1:25 PM Capt Stormfield has replied

    Replies to this message:
     Message 251 by Capt Stormfield, posted 06-25-2022 2:31 PM kjsimons has not replied
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    Capt Stormfield
    Member (Idle past 456 days)
    Posts: 428
    From: Vancouver Island
    Joined: 01-17-2009


    (1)
    Message 251 of 1429 (895394)
    06-25-2022 2:31 PM
    Reply to: Message 250 by kjsimons
    06-25-2022 1:47 PM


    Re: Dredge Doesn't Think
    Some opportunities just can't be passed up.

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 250 by kjsimons, posted 06-25-2022 1:47 PM kjsimons has not replied

      
    Percy
    Member
    Posts: 22394
    From: New Hampshire
    Joined: 12-23-2000
    Member Rating: 5.2


    (2)
    Message 252 of 1429 (895396)
    06-25-2022 3:42 PM
    Reply to: Message 227 by Dredge
    06-23-2022 2:35 PM


    Re: Dredge thinks not knowing everything is not knowing anything
    There were already a couple replies to this post, but the corrections to what you said deserve emphasis.
    Dredge writes:
    Dredge writes:
    Do you understand the difference between a THEORY and KNOWLEDGE?
    Tanypteryx writes:
    Funny, the only people who have this fantasy are creationists, because all you have is faith in fictional stories.
    You can't prove that they're "fictional stories", so your claim is based on faith.
    The degree to which one judges something true should be dependent upon the facts, evidence, data, information, reasoning and analysis. If you make a claim but can't offer much in the way of these things to support it then the rational conclusion is that it's likely not true.
    The Theory of Evolution has something far more powerful than faith...it has supporting evidence in libraries and museums around the world.
    But Darwinists (esp the atheist variety) believe that ToE is more than a theory - they believe it is a fact. Believing that a theory is also a fact requires an act of FAITH.
    You're misremembering. The claim isn't that the ToE is both a theory and a fact. The claim is that evolution is both a fact and a theory. The evidence shows that it's a fact that evolution occurs and has occurred. The theory of evolution makes sense of those facts by placing them in an interpretative framework.
    It's impossible to know how any of the evolutionary transitions evident in the fossil record occurred, so atheists like you put your FAITH in ToE to provide an explanation ... going so far as to make the laughable FAITH claim that you "know" how that those transitions happened.
    Why this reasoning is wrong has been explained to you many times, but you just ignore it and repeat this claim again. Repeating the explanation yet again would be pointless. Perhaps there will come a time when you're ready to discuss this, but you're clearly not there yet.
    Come to think of it, to claim to "know" something that can't possibly be known actually goes beyond faith ... it's flat-out DELUSION.
    Tanypteryx said nothing like this. He spoke of evidence - you quoted him saying it.
    We gather evidence to build knowledge. About some of the things we know, like evolution, you're saying it's impossible to know them, despite that we have evidence.
    I have faith in Jesus Christ and I believe my faith is the truth, but unlike Darwinist fanatics, I don't claim to "know" that my faith is the truth. That is the difference between religious faith and Darwinist delusion.
    One would hope that your faith in Jesus Christ would make you the kind of person who doesn't make up untrue and derogatory things about other people.
    Science doesn't really deal in truth. It deals in answering questions about the real world by gathering evidence and building hypotheses and theories around it. The more evidence the greater our confidence becomes in what we think we know, but science would never call it truth.
    --Percy

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 227 by Dredge, posted 06-23-2022 2:35 PM Dredge has replied

    Replies to this message:
     Message 328 by Dredge, posted 07-19-2022 6:48 PM Percy has replied

      
    Parasomnium
    Member
    Posts: 2224
    Joined: 07-15-2003


    (2)
    Message 253 of 1429 (895397)
    06-25-2022 4:47 PM
    Reply to: Message 227 by Dredge
    06-23-2022 2:35 PM


    Re: Dredge thinks not knowing everything is not knowing anything
    Dredge writes:
    But Darwinists (esp the atheist variety) believe that ToE is more than a theory - they believe it is a fact.
    No, they don't. They do not conflate the body of knowledge about how life on earth changed over time (a.k.a. the Theory of Evolution) with the fact that it obviously did (as the fossil record shows). Dredge, you must have seen it explained many times that the term 'theory' in this context is used to mean "the body of knowledge concerning the mechanisms behind evolution", but you choose to ignore it and keep insisting Darwinists are actually using the term to mean "hypothesis" in its quotidian sense. This is disingenuous conduct.

    "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 227 by Dredge, posted 06-23-2022 2:35 PM Dredge has replied

    Replies to this message:
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    Percy
    Member
    Posts: 22394
    From: New Hampshire
    Joined: 12-23-2000
    Member Rating: 5.2


    (3)
    Message 254 of 1429 (895400)
    06-25-2022 9:17 PM
    Reply to: Message 228 by Dredge
    06-23-2022 2:50 PM


    Re: Dredge thinks not knowing everything is not knowing anything
    This is your third of three replies to my Message 127. Let me first address something you said in your first reply, Message 157:
    Dredge in Message 157 writes:
    Do we know the details of how the whale's blowhole migrated to the top of its head in terms of mutations, matings and morphological changes? No, of course not. But we still know how evolution works.
    Guest Speaker: "I can't describe the process involved in splitting an atom. But I still know how to split an atom."
    To be an accurate analog to what I said about evolution, what you should have said was:
    Guest Speaker: "I can describe how one splits an atom, but I can't know the specific way any particular atom was split."
    Here's another analog to what I said: "I can describe how cells divide, but I can't know the specific way in which any particular cell divided."
    So to restate what I originally said about evolution: "I can describe the process of evolution, but I can't know any of the specific events of evolutionary history."
    The reason we can't know any of these things is a lack of evidence. Paraphrasing Wittgenstein, "Whereof one knows not, thereof one must be silent."
    Moving on to your second reply, Message 217:
    Percy writes:
    You believe life on earth evolved because you know what evolution looks like in the fossil record, and you know what evolution looks like because you know how it works.
    What a poor argument. I can see that computers have evolved over the years, yet I know nothing at all about how computers work and how to improve them.
    That wasn't an argument. You said that you "can accept that life on earth evolved without knowing (or anyone knowing) the first thing about how evolution works," and I responded by explaining why you accept that life on earth evolved, that it's because you do know how evolution works. You know that it's natural selection whittling away on descent with modification.
    The late, great French zoologist, Paul-Pierre Grasse, concluded from the fossil record that evolution had occurred, but believed that it is impossible to know how it happened.
    You mean Pierre-Paul Grassé, but anyway, are you endorsing Lamarckism as a possibility now? He believed that mutations play no role in evolution. Lysenko in Russia was a supporter of Lamarkism, too. Lysenkoism was a disaster for Russia. Millions died.
    Evolution works by selection and mutation resulting in descent with modification. Do we know the details of how the whale's blowhole migrated to the top of its head in terms of mutations, matings and morphological changes? No, of course not. But we still know how evolution works.
    You don't KNOW how the macro-evolutionary transitions evident in the fossil record happened bcoz they're unobservable and unrepeatable, therefore you can't claim to KNOW how evolution works.
    Why would the fact that the details of most evolutionary change are lost to history prevent us from understanding how evolution works, since we understand it by studying it actually happening? We know that evolutionary change is due to mutations and selection because that's what we see taking place. Do you somehow imagine that if we could observe all the steps in the evolution of the blowhole that we'd find something other than mutations and selection? If so then why would you think that, since it would mean that past life was fundamentally different from life today?
    All you can do is formulate a theory.
    Science isn't just that. Before we construct theories we uncover, understand and explain facts. And here are the facts: DNA is the blueprint of life; changes in DNA cause changes in life; changes in DNA over time are responsible for changes in life over time; differential reproductive success governs which DNA changes continue on into future generations. And the theory of evolution places these facts in an interpretive framework for understanding the history of life.
    Do you understand the difference between a THEORY and KNOWLEDGE?
    I think you should be asking yourself questions about the relationship between evidence and theory.
    Science doesn't work by proving things.
    If you can't PROVE how the macro-evolutionary transitions evident in the fossil record happened, you can't claim to KNOW how they happened.
    A couple problems here. First, science doesn't prove things. It gathers and interprets evidence to increase our confidence in what we know about the nature of the world. Proofs are the reserve of mathematics. And you're using the word "know" as a synonym for "prove."
    So second, that means you've expressed a meaningless tautology: If you can't prove it then you can't prove it.
    It would help if you better understood the nature of science. There's no certainty in science, just confidence proportional to the strength of the evidence and reasoning. Continually repeating that (paraphrasing) "if you can't prove it then you can't know it" just shows how poorly you understand the nature of science.
    What science does do is gather or produce evidence in support of various hypotheses, and if one hypothesis reaches the point where it is widely accepted within the relevant scientific community then it becomes a theory.
    You forgot to mention the next step that you and your fellow Darwinists take in the name of science - the theory (of evolution) then becomes a fact
    No one here has ever said that the theory of evolution has become a fact. It's that evolution happened and continues to happen that is a fact. We can observe natural selection operating on modified descendants and producing change today, and we can see the record of past change in the fossil record.
    This answer has been provided to you many times now. It's not going to change because that *is* the answer. If you disagree then argue it, but please don't just keep repeating your same mistaken notions over and over.
    ... based on faith ... hence your claim that you "know" how the evolutionary transitions evident in the fossil record happened.
    You put quotes around "know," so I'm not certain what you're trying to say. If you're using "know" as a synonym for "proven" again then that would be incorrect. Nothing is proven within science. But the evidence strongly suggests that evolution explains the history of life we find in the fossil record.
    You understand how houses are built, right? Men measuring and sawing boards, pounding nails, installing windows, adding insulation and shingles, and so forth? But can you provide the exact details of how any particular house was built? Could even an experienced builder reconstruct the precise construction details of any house, even one he built himself a number of years ago? No. Does that mean we don't understand how houses are built?
    A very poor analogy. How houses are built is readily observable and repeatable ... unlike the macro-evolutionary transitions evident in the fossil record.
    It's actually a very good analogy, for the very reasons you give. House construction is "readily observable and repeatable," to use your words, and so is evolution. And just as nothing prevents a house from being added to indefinitely, nothing prevents evolution from continuing indefinitely, i.e., macroevolution.
    And finally moving on to your third reply:
    Percy writes:
    But which of these two possibilities is what really happened? We don't know. When did it happen? We don't know. Was the change gradual or sudden? We don't know. What caused the chromosomes to combine or to split? We don't know.
    It's impossible to know how even ONE evolutionary transition evident in the fossil record happened ... yet you claim to know how evolution works!
    You're overstating the case. We actually observe or detect lots of actual evolutionary change. We've followed the evolution of the SARS-Cov-2 virus from it's original form all the way to BA.4 and BA.5 and other variations, and we can count on mutations producing more variations upon which selection will operate. The reason the original SARS-Cov-2 virus doesn't appear anymore is because the later variations out-competed it, i.e., were selected for. It was an example of differential reproductive success in real time. For another example of observing evolution in action, students of microbiology detect mutations in the lab all the time during coursework. For another example, look at the wall lizards of Pod Mrcaru.
    We know how evolutionary change happens: it happens via natural selection of modified descendants. What we don't know are the specific details of past evolutionary change, because mutations and selection do not leave evidence behind.
    Getting back to the chromosome difference between chimps and humans, we have no information about the specific sequence of mutations and reproductive acts and environmental pressures that led to the chromosomes combining head-to-head on the line of descent that led to humans. We know that natural selection working on descent with modification produces this sort of change, but what specific mutations and which specific individuals bred with each other and precisely what the specific environmental pressures were, we don't know. Given that we can literally watch evolution in action, why do you think not having specific evidence of past evolutionary events is a problem to understanding how evolution works?
    --Percy

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 228 by Dredge, posted 06-23-2022 2:50 PM Dredge has replied

    Replies to this message:
     Message 332 by Dredge, posted 07-20-2022 10:25 AM Percy has replied

      
    Dredge
    Member
    Posts: 2850
    From: Australia
    Joined: 09-06-2016


    Message 255 of 1429 (895418)
    06-26-2022 4:24 PM
    Reply to: Message 253 by Parasomnium
    06-25-2022 4:47 PM


    Re: Dredge thinks not knowing everything is not knowing anything
    Dredge writes:
    But Darwinists (esp the atheist variety) believe that ToE is more than a theory - they believe it is a fact.
    Parasomnium writes:
    No, they don't.
    I think it's fair to say atheist Darwinists believe that the history of life on earth proceeded according to ToE ... ie, they believe ToE is a fact.
    They do not conflate the body of knowledge about how life on earth changed over time (a.k.a. the Theory of Evolution) with the fact that it obviously did (as the fossil record shows).
    Anyone who claims to know how ToE produced the history of life on earth is, in effect, claiming ToE is a fact.
    Dredge, you must have seen it explained many times that the term 'theory' in this context is used to mean "the body of knowledge concerning the mechanisms behind evolution", but you choose to ignore it and keep insisting Darwinists are actually using the term to mean "hypothesis" in its quotidian sense. This is disingenuous conduct.
    Please describe how the "mechanisms behind evolution" produced an amphibian's double-circulation heart from the single-circulation heart of a fish.
    Please describe how the "mechanisms behind evolution" produced a whale's blowhole and tail from the morphology of a land mammal.
    Please describe how the "mechanisms behind evolution" produced any evolutionary transition evident in the fossil record.

    This message is a reply to:
     Message 253 by Parasomnium, posted 06-25-2022 4:47 PM Parasomnium has not replied

    Replies to this message:
     Message 256 by AZPaul3, posted 06-26-2022 5:22 PM Dredge has replied
     Message 257 by Tanypteryx, posted 06-26-2022 5:27 PM Dredge has replied
     Message 258 by Percy, posted 06-26-2022 5:54 PM Dredge has replied
     Message 262 by Tangle, posted 06-27-2022 3:24 AM Dredge has replied

      
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