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Author | Topic: "Best" evidence for evolution. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
dwise1 Member Posts: 6076 Joined: Member Rating: 7.0 |
There are times when shows' writers find themselves painted into a corner, so they come up with some vacuous idea which takes on a life of its own.
For example, why the transporter, such a vitally iconic part of Star Trek? Well, back in the day where visual effects would require the use of models, everything time that the USS Enterprise would have to land on each alien planet, then the production costs of such a landing made that unviable, so they came up with the transporter as an excuse. That idea of the transporter and what could go wrong with it would go on to spawned so many episodes based on transporter accidents as to themselves spawn comic strips depicting the "Transporter Accident of the Week". Before that, the BBC producers of "Doctor Who" were faced with a huge problem. The actor portraying the original Doctor, William Hartnell, was suffering from arteriosclerosis and so was both in declining health and declining functionality that he needed to be replaced. The show itself was still going strong, so it wanted to continue despite the loss of its principle player, so how to replace him? Some writer came up with a bright idea that, since the Doctor was an alien, then just give him an ad hoc "alien" property of simply regenerating into a new body. Ever since then, the Doctor's ability to regenerate has become a major theme and a major part of Doctor Who lore, basically taking on a life (or lives) of its own. Another example is the "zat gun" of Stargate SG-1 (an alien "pistol" that kind of looked like a cobra). One hit stunned you, a second killed you, a third disintegrated you. Why that third hit? The story is that they had to reshoot a scene following a battle which resulted in a lot of dead aliens, but they couldn't afford to rehire that many extras to lie there playing dead just for that one scene. So the writers came up with the idea that the zat gun's third hit had disintegrated them all. That extra property of the zat gun then became a major thing that took on a life of its own. To give us some kind of perspective, consider engineering in general. When a hardware (ie, EE) design turns out to not work as it should then the EEs have various workarounds to avoid respinning a new circuit board which can be expensive (eg, cutting traces and adding wires). One such trend is to take the attitude of "it's just a matter of software", meaning that the EEs depend on the software engineers to compensate for and correct the mistakes that EEs have made; a lot of software kludges originate from having to correct EEs' mistakes (eg, a major FPGA mistake made by a EE in a most fundamental part of our product resulted in my having to correct command parsing in such an illogical way that I made sure to completely document it in the source code comments lest some programmer who would come after me would "correct" it and completely break everything). Basically, I tend to equivocate the "corrections" that writers have to make to such situations. OK, Noah's Ark is a problem if we were to take it literally. For example, River Tam's assessment of the Bible ("It's broken. Doesn't make sense.") and her attempts to fix it: So what was the creationist response to that glaring logistical problem? Only what armies of fiction writers had done before them. They created a kludge to explain it away. That was the "argument" about "basic created kinds" which was created for the sole purpose of greatly reducing the number of pairs of animals that needed to have been on Noah's Ark while still ignoring so many other glaring problems (eg, the specialized food sources of so many of the animals like eucalyptus trees for koalas that also had to be preserved on the Ark, how all those animals and plants had to have traveled miraculously from Mt Ararat to throughout the world, how such ludicrously rapid evolution from those "basic kinds" had to have happened in such a ridiculously short amount of time (almost instantaneously according to Cuvier's anti-evolution arguments)). The reason why no creationist can come up with a workable definition for a "kind" is because the entire idea is nothing but an ad hoc kludge that they had dreamed up to solve one problem but having given no thought to the multitude of problems that "solution" would generate should one try to take their kludge seriously.
ABE:Here's an additional point which reveals their entire talk of "kinds" to be nothing but ad hoc excuses and attempts to cover up the other problems with their claims (eg, "Oh, calling is a 'phylum' includes to many different higher taxa? OK, I'll just randomly call it something else.") What about their "basic created worm kind? I have seen professional creationists refer to that one. Well if the chordate phylum was too big, their "worm kind" consists of several entire phyla! But since they don't know anything, they just assume that worms are worms are worms so they can lump them all together. Wrong! So they quite literally do not know what they are talking about. They are just using big words that they don't understand and hope that nobody else understands those words either. Edited by dwise1, : ABE
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anglagard Member (Idle past 1087 days) Posts: 2339 From: Socorro, New Mexico USA Joined: |
I said it several years ago, now Salon makes it a bit more official.
Science quietly wins one of the right’s longstanding culture wars Game over. Evolution wins. Now back to a bunch of informed old men trying to correct the less informed about science, religion, politics, and economics. And some jokes.The problem with knowing everything is learning nothing. If you don't know what you're doing, find someone who does, and do what they do. Republican = death
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nwr Member Posts: 6484 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 8.6 |
Game over. Evolution wins.
Yes, times are hard for creationists. But I won't be shedding any tears for them. Apparently, Ken Ham is arguing that the evolution of COVID-19 does not count as evidence for evolution.Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity
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herebedragons Member (Idle past 1108 days) Posts: 1517 From: Michigan Joined:
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Ken Ham is arguing that the evolution of COVID-19 does not count as evidence for evolution LOL. He says it is not "evolution" but only "mutation." But remember that there are no beneficial mutations... Here's how AiG address that:
AiG:
Are There Beneficial Mutations?
| Answers in Genesis
(bolded for emphasis) In other news... objects aren't really colored, it's only the light that is reflected back to our eyes that makes them appear to be colored. It seems pretty obvious that if a mutation has a beneficial outcome then it is a beneficial mutation. And it's also common knowledge that the fitness of a trait is always environmentally dependent - Evolution 101!!! Is there no end to creationist semantics... HBDWhoever calls me ignorant shares my own opinion. Sorrowfully and tacitly I recognize my ignorance, when I consider how much I lack of what my mind in its craving for knowledge is sighing for... I console myself with the consideration that this belongs to our common nature. - Francesco Petrarca "Nothing is easier than to persuade people who want to be persuaded and already believe." - another Petrarca gem. Ignorance is a most formidable opponent rivaled only by arrogance; but when the two join forces, one is all but invincible.
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herebedragons Member (Idle past 1108 days) Posts: 1517 From: Michigan Joined: |
A biblical "kind" may refer to a phylum. I am not sure how you could make a claim like this with a straight face... I assume you may not have meant "phylum" but your post continues with the claim, so maybe you are not clear on what a phylum is... Anyway... as Dwise1 explains, the concept of "kinds" was invented because it became obvious that 2 individuals of every modern species would not fit on the ark, so the thought was there must have been a reduced number of species that later diversified. But there is no real reason to believe this. The Bible doesn't make the claim that organisms diversified after the flood. There is no objective definition of "kind" - it is merely "intuitive". The whole concept of "kind" is arbitrary and speculative. A worse problem is that according to the Biblical record, a "kind" can only give birth to its own "kind". So lets assume that a kind is roughly equivalent to family (as many creationists propose - I think you are the only one I have heard propose phylum). We will use Felidae (the cat kind) as an example. Lets say the creature that left the ark was the species Felidae beta. But according to the Bible, Felidae beta could only give birth to Felidae beta babies, but there are now over 40 extant species of Felidae plus numerous extinct species. How did that occur? At what point did Felidae beta give birth to a Panthera tigris or a Lynx rufus or a Felis catus. What is the mechanism of change between these types of cats? At some point, Felidae beta must have given birth to all these other species. Even if they are all the same "kind," it seems as if this violates your premise that kinds don't give birth to different kinds. Do you expect a panther to give birth to a puma, or to a lion, or a cat? So, what is the mechanism of change within a "kind"? HBDWhoever calls me ignorant shares my own opinion. Sorrowfully and tacitly I recognize my ignorance, when I consider how much I lack of what my mind in its craving for knowledge is sighing for... I console myself with the consideration that this belongs to our common nature. - Francesco Petrarca "Nothing is easier than to persuade people who want to be persuaded and already believe." - another Petrarca gem. Ignorance is a most formidable opponent rivaled only by arrogance; but when the two join forces, one is all but invincible.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9580 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 6.6
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….. what are we to make of this?
Two lifeforms merge in once-in-a-billion-years evolutionary eventJe suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. Olen Suomi Soy Barcelona. I am Ukraine. "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
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Tanypteryx Member Posts: 4597 From: Oregon, USA Joined: Member Rating: 9.5
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The article indicates the authors think this happened only about 100 million years ago, which is very recent compared to when mitochondria and chloroplasts became symbionts a billion+ years ago.
Another big difference here is that the chloroplast symbiosis occurred early in plant evolution and those symbionts became the common ancestors of all living plants. And mitochondria symbiosis was early enough to become the common ancestors of most living eukaryotes, such as plants, animals, and fungi. These recent nitrogen fixing symbionts occurred too late to become established as a feature of a major branch of life, like plants or animals. Considering that most species alive today have not yet been described and studied by scientists, there are sure to be many more interesting living biological organisms to be discovered.Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned! What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python One important characteristic of a theory is that it 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 Why should anyone debate someone who doesn't know the subject? -- AZPaul3 If you are going to argue that evolution is false because it resembles your own beliefs then perhaps you should rethink your argument. - - Taq
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Taq Member Posts: 10296 Joined: Member Rating: 7.1
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Tangle writes: ….. what are we to make of this? It's biology doing biological things. For what it's worth, humans have many known obligate intracellular parasites. These are bacteria, protists, and fungi that can only replicate inside of host cells. Intracellular parasite - Wikipedia Chlamydia is probably one everyone has heard of. There are several species in this group, and most infections are asymptomatic. It just so happens that these parasites have nothing to offer the host in exchange. Nonetheless, many independent lineages have adopted a lifestyle that requires a host cell so opportunities are certainly there for developing symbiotic relationships.
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