Dredge writes:
Percy writes:
More accurately, it is assumed that life in the past followed the same processes as life today. We know how evolution works because we can observe it in real time today.
This comment represents a degree of progress and thus, a glimmer of hope.
You've at least admitted that ToE is based, not on a fact, but on an assumption. Well done.
It's difficult to explain things to people working hard to make sure they don't understand them. Seeking alternative but wrong interpretations of what people say accomplishes your goal of not understanding what was said, but it makes discussion difficult by forcing people to compose long careful replies.
In other words, I was saying something contrary to what you're saying. My first sentence was only calling attention to the common scientific assumption that the laws of the universe are the same everywhere throughout all time. Calling it an assumption, while maybe not the best word, allows room for the concept of tentativity (in other words, it makes clear that nothing is proven), but the assumption is not without mountains of evidence since when we, for example, dig in the ground or look out into space all the evidence we find says that the processes we see having taken place everywhere in the past are the same ones we see taking place here on Earth today.
I'm not sure why, when combined with the second sentence, that you concluded I was saying the ToE is based on an assumption. Every reproductive event, such as the coming together of a sperm and egg, is an example of part of evolution in action, the descent with modification part. We observe it firsthand. If evidence gathered from experimentation and observation can be deemed facts, then the "descent with modification" part of the ToE is based upon fact.
The other part of evolution is natural selection which governs which organisms pass their genes on to the next generation, and our knowledge of it is also based upon experimentation and observation, i.e., facts.
If you do not accept that processes in the past operated the same as today then you must believe that babies in the past were not conceived in the same way as babies today. And you must believe that life living in competition with other life that determined which passed its genes on to the next generation happened differently than it does today. But what we find of past life reveals no evidence that processes were any different in the past than they are today.
There *is* a common creationist argument that life in the past was different from life today ... There is no evidence from the past, neither recent nor distant, that the processes of life were any different from today. If you think these processes were different in the past and at some point changed to the processes we observe today, what evidence are you looking at that tells you this, and when did the change happen?
I can't recall arguing that life in the past was different from life today.
Our position is that evolution operated the same in the past as it does today, but you're arguing that we can't know how evolution operated in the past, which is the same as arguing that it must have operated differently then than it does today.
We know exactly how evolution works because we observe it happening in the here and now.
I'm afraid not. You can't prove that known evolutionary mechanisms were responsible for producing the fossil record, therefore you can't claim to know how evolution works.
There's that word "prove" again. Science has never proven anything and never will. But all the evidence we have suggests that the universe operated the same in the past as it does today.
And we do know how evolution works. We observe it happening in real time in the here and now.
In the sense that you're using the word "know," no, of course not. Everything in science is tentative. What we would actually say is that the theory of evolution provides a robust explanatory framework for the history of life as revealed by the fossil record.
Can you see how confused you are?
I would describe it differently. I would say that you're working very hard that at not understanding what is said.
You say "We know exactly how evolution works" and in the very next sentence in your post you admit that you don't "know" that life on earth evolved according to ToE.
I said that we don't "know" in the sense that you're using the word, because you're using the word in an absolute sense, and that ignores the key concept of tentativity. Nothing in science is known in the absolute sense that you're using the word "know."
I'd prefer to use the word "know" in a more casual sense, but it is probably better to just shift to an alternate and more precise vocabulary. We have a great deal of evidence for how evolution works in the here and now, and we have a great deal of evidence that the universe, including life, operated the same in the past as it does now, strongly suggesting that evolution long ago worked just as evolution does today.
Anyone constructively participating in an exchange of information would ask clarifying questions when a point fails to connect. You instead seem to be working hard at not understanding anything while confounding efforts to communicate using strategies such as making absurd comments about your IQ.
I don't recall "making absurd comments about [my] IQ."
Really? This is from
Message 372:
Since I have an IQ of 9, I reside squarely in "idiot" territory.
Moving on:
There is an almost-unanimous opinion on this thread that I am an idiot. I agree with that opinion, which, after all, is formed by individuals of exceptionally high intelligence.
This is just more of the same type of absurdity. The consensus here seems to be that you're a troll, not an idiot.
Science doesn't prove things. As with everything in the universe, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the way we see things happening today is the way they must have happened in the past.
No one has ever observed known evolutionary mechanisms ever producing even a new genera, so what we see happening today is a very poor explanation for what happened in the fossil record, where entire new phyla appear.
Given that all the evidence suggests that the universe, including life, operated the same in the past as it does today, and given that evolution is the mechanism behind changes in life over time, there's no need to actually observe something that happened millions of years ago over a period of millions of years and probably in an unknown place that, given subduction, may not even exist anymore. I continue to avoid the word "know" and say that all the evidence suggests that evolution was the mechanism of change.
Do you have any evidence that life in the past didn't reproduce via the replication of genetic material and that the organisms that passed their genes on to the next generation passed through a selection process governed by the natural environment? In the absence of such evidence, the theory of evolution is the best we have for explaining the available evidence.
I agree that that theory of evolution is the best
scientific explanation for the fossil record ... which however, doesn't permit anyone to claim to
know how evolution works.
Well, again, I'm avoiding the word "know" because you're using it in an absolutist sense. We do understand how evolution works because we can observe it taking place in the here and now.
In the same way, no matter what the current state of an organism's genome, no matter how much prior change there's been, what could prevent more mutations from occurring? Nothing could prevent this, right? There's nothing that could lock down a genome and prevent further change. If the organism reproduces there will be change, right?
You can't prove, for example, that the genome of a fish eventually gave rise to the gemone of a mammal.
There's that word "prove" again. And again, science has never proven anything, but there are mountains of evidence suggesting that fish and mammals share a common ancestor, so much so that the vast majority of the relevant scientific community (biologists) accepts the Theory of Evolution as the explanation for the diversity of life on Earth, both now and in the past.
--Percy
™ Version 4.2
(1)