ID Sockra Tease (Also Known As Watcher's personal project)
Offline The usual tactic I encounter is to just be labelled a "creationist" and then dismissed. Fine. Go for it. Anyone reading this thread can see you are simply running away.
That you would argue that I have never said that natural selection is an important part of Evolution Theory is just ridiculous. I have several times stated that natural selection is an important part of Evolution Theory. I have even used it to provide an "Evolution" explanation for the DNA homology between chimp and man. Of course it is important.
Why is chimp abiogenesis more ridiculous than SCA abiogenesis? Do you have a rational ground to make the distinction? We seem to just disagree as to which species went "poof!". You really don't see the irrationality of your position: that chimp descended from a common ancestor species for which we have absolutely no evidence that it existed? This is rational to you? This is Science for you? Wasn't the reason God was thrown out of science because there was no evidence for that being to exist? Why does this common ancestor get a free pass from you? This is a rational question I ask of you; it is a question about standards of evidence.
No offense intended about cartoons. In their milieu they are great and some reach a level of high Art. But why do they appear in the place of scientific evidence? Is that the role of cartoon work? To show us what a mythical common ancestor would look like while we wait for real evidence?
You can call it ridiculous, but claiming a fossil is an intermediary requires scientific testing. Agreed? How do you scientifically test "intermediariness"? I contend you don't and you can't. You can only assert that a fossil is intermediary. Evolution makes the facts fit the Theory; it should be the other way round. Would you allow me to bring God back into science by merely asserting he does exist? What if I argued, only God could create this universe, so therefore he MUST exist, and if he must exist, it logically follows that he DOES exist; and so, we can scientificially PROVE that God exists. Would you accept that argument? No? Well I hope not. I certainly wouldn't accept it as an argument in science. It is ridiculous, of course. You can't argue that something exists merely because you assert it MUST exist. Now.... have a look at Evolution: these common ancestors, for which there is no scientific evidence, are asserted to exist - they simply MUST exist or the Theory falls down. We can't have the Theory fall down so these ancestors simply MUST exist, therefore they DO exist. There you go! Neat and tidy. A scientific proof that Evolution Theory is right and solid. Again, why do these common ancestors, without evidence, get a free pass from being subjected to the plain rules and tests of science? The "experts", when really put up against the wall on this point finally concede, "well we are very sure that one day the evidence will arise." Well... can't a Christian argue that even though scientific evidence for God doesn't exist, one day, we shall find out and there will be evidence? Why are Evolutionists allowed to put the evidence-discovery into the future, and thereby klet the hypothesis stand, and yet others are not?
And this is what you want to call Science now?
I do not demand an unreasonable anmount of evidence from Evolution Theory. I demand SCIENTIFIC evidence. If you took your Evolution blinders off and looked at Evolution Theory from scratch, you just might begin to see the problems I see.
As for "DNA soil", well really. I put quote marks around that phrase because it should be seen as a metaphor. I don't know where Life comes from. No one does. In place of evidence we use metaphors. Unlike Evolution Theory though, I don't pretend my metaphors are scientific facts. Solve abiogenesis first, and then see if we can bring back Evolution as a viable scientific hypothesis.
Medical advnces have nothing to do with Evolution Theory. They come from the biological sciences. Biological sciences do not come from Evolution Theory. Biology studies the details and facts of Life. Biology studies DNA - something which would have been discovered with or without Darwin, and something that can be studied no matter what religion the scientist adheres to. Come on now, wouldn't you laugh at me if I said that a biological scientist who dioscovered Vaccine X - and a scientist who went to church every Sunday - was a scientist who, through God, discovered the vaccine? Did God help him discover the vaccine? No of course not. The scientist used the truths of biological science to make the vaccine. Whether that scientist believes the myth that chimp and man share a common ancestor has nothing to do with it. These repeated attempts to legitimize the Evolution religion by pretending it is responsible for biology is ludicrous. Issac Newton was a Christian. Theology was not responsible for the Law of Gravity. Christian scientists use science to do their work, not God. Biologists use biology to do their science not Evolution myth.
An engineer building a Boeing 747 can build a plane even if he believes that Elvis is still alive and selling hamburgers in Boise Idaho. His Elvis myth doesn't impact on his work. A biologist can still do gene study even if he believes that certain gene was descended from a mythical Flying Spaghetti Monster from 3 billion years ago, or if it was poofed into life by god, or poofed into life by Elvis. The work of real science will carry on no matter what religion you adhere to. That goes for Evolution too. No vaccine was ever discovered by initially positing mythical common ancestors.
"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" -Christian Theodosius Dobzhansky
More evidence of the religious stature of Evolution: Biology makes no sense without Evolution, just as, for some, the Universe makes no sense without God. Good grief.
If you really truly have a distate for religion, look at this quote again, and then look at Evolution again.
I'm not a Creationist trying to bring God back. I am a rationalist inquiring as to how a rational person today can possibly believe that Evolution Theory has met the minimal standards of proper Scientific Inquiry. Evolution Theory really is "just a theory", nothing more. A theory waiting for evidence to arrive.
The Emperor has no clothes.
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
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Please access the following link for origins: http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/32003
piece of evidence according to Sockra is the one that's missing - the human chimp last common ancestor. There were no fossil chimps discovered until 2005, when some were found in Kenya.
Folks might find this piece on Ardi illuminating. It appears the CHLCA may be something other than what we expected.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/091001-oldest-human-skeleton-ardi-missing-link-chimps-ardipithecus-ramidus.html
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
I was actually planning on devoting some serious time to this during my work days (because I have a lot of free time at work and nothing better to do) but after seeing the progression of the original thread and the discussion, back and forth, between Sockra and Atheistextremist...well I don't really see the point. Really. Sockra's "points" about disbelieving evolution is not going to convince anyone that is sitting on the fence. At most he may provide a little ammo to people who were already against the theory of evolution before arriving here.
He's not going to win any converts.
It's just so ridonkulous I'm aghast, half laughing, half dumfounded.
Totally absurd.
AE, you rock. I'm totally down with getting drunk with you and discussing evolution. P.S. My mom thinks I'm going to burn in hell too. And she loves me. I'm her favorite child. How fucked up is that?
"I am an atheist, thank God." -Oriana Fallaci
I can't get my head around the fact my ma's conceptual best friend is to be my eternal torturer and she loves 'him' still. It's tough to come to terms with. There's an exclusion to being the only atheist in a large christian family. I'm close to my mum as well but she fucking shits me. Last night she was silly enough to say the family hoped I would come around to jesus 'before it was too late'. Unsurprisingly, the latent threat contained in this phrase set me off like a roman candelabra.
In any case, Sockra is a curious study. I don't mind a bit of skepticism, personally. But if that skepticism insists on abiogenesis events for every species ever, despite the uniformly strange nature of the main cell groups, or insists life can't have come single cells when every creature included Sockra started out as a single cell, or states that missing transitionals are the same as the missing evidence for jesus' existence and reincarnation, when billions of fossils are estimated to have been discovered encompassing 500,000 species, most extinct, then it's hard to countenance.
Conversely, no supernatural being has ever been defined, let alone discovered - not a single, solitary one. But for Sock this absence is the same as the missing CHLCA. Sock discounts the 6000 individual hominid fossils so far discovered as not contributing to 'real' science. But it's the nature of Sockra's collection of ideas that seems curious to me. I think Sock sets special conditions for evolution. Only the very completest expression of speciation will do. Every fossil, every mutation teased apart. I do agree with Sock that Evolutionary Theory contains generalisations but to discount all the evidence on account of the need to generalise in places is erroneous to me. I think Sock's decision to be a deist, which is fair enough, informs Sock's current thinking about origins.
Yet weirdly, Sock seems to accept the possibility of 9 million possible abiogenesis events, one for each species. Abiogenesis is easier than speciation, Sock believes, when the opposite is certainly the case. And Sock implies many of these 9 million abiogenesis events have continued into Eons that feature entirely modern atmospheric conditions not considered to be conducive to the development of life. In such modern conditions, on a planet crawling with hungry microorganisms, any stray protein that forms is going to end up in some bug's tummy, not cheerily developing from protein spiral to spotted quoll then blithely outcompeting the incumbent occupant of its ecological niche before the fresh beast had adequately developed the weapons to exploit the space.
I can't wait till some bright spark works out the processes of abiogenesis and speciation. Being forced to gloss over these areas is a pain in the arse.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Well, I certainly don't expect to win any "converts" as you say. People who want to believe things when there are no facts to support, will not be 'converted' by rational argument. People believe what they want to believe. I can see where Evolution Theory provides comfort for people who have been raised for years on theist Creation stories, and when that theism is set aside, another narrative is required.
It would seem that your synopsis of my argument shows me that I didn't communicate it well enough. Fair enough.
First, I do not claim as truth that life cannot come from singlecells, only that the speciation mechanism that supports that thesis has not been evidenced in Nature. I realize that mechanism is required for the Theory to work, therefore it must exist. I simply say, we cannot - with scientific integrity - pretend something exists in Nature just because the Theory demands it exists. That is an argument for the existence of God too: some people's theories demand that a god is the reason behind Life, so if God is needed for that theory to stand, then God must exist. We simply cannot pretend something is evidenced in Nature, when it is not, just so our Theory will hold.
Second, I don't deny millions of fossils exist, and these fossils evidence a wealth of life, present and past. I simply point out that nothing in the DNA study and analysis of a fossil establishes "speciation" and therefore linear descent. You cannot test a fossil for speciation. But, one can arbitrarily call one fossil the "descendent" of another fossil. That is easy to do, and doesn't require any scientific tests either.
"Conversely, no supernatural being has ever been defined, let alone discovered - not a single, solitary one. But for Sock this absence is the same as the missing CHLCA."
That is the nature of real science: if no evidence in Nature, then it doesn't exist for science. Yes, no evidence for a supernatural being exists, so no god. As well, no evidence of a CHLCA exists, so we can't pretend it does exist. Thousands of fossils of homo X and thousands of fossils of chimp do not prove a third separate species exists.
"Yet weirdly, Sock seems to accept the possibility of 9 million possible abiogenesis events, one for each species. Abiogenesis is easier than speciation..."
Again, I must not have communicated well. Of course "abiogenesis is easier than speciation". That is just so obvious. Abiogenesis says that Life was created, or life exists. When we look around and examine nature, well, it is obviously so. Speciation says that life adapts to the point where completely new genetic information is added, by mere procreation?, to develop into one or more separate species. Now.... we again look around nature... well? where do we see this happening? We don't. Instead, we present all the fossils of the world and say "it did happen". When I ask, "where in the fossil does this actual speciation mechanism show itself?"...well.... silence.
Abiogenesis as an ongoing repeated activity may seem odd, but that is just the nature of a proposition that both I and Evolution Theory use: that Life just poofs into existence.
Considering Darwin's seminal work, Origin of the Species does in fact present voluminous evidence of speciation how can you say that with a straight face?
If you try to say you really meant observing speciation, google chiclids for descriptions of the observation of speciation.
That is silly creationist talk. Speciation exists. That is a fact of evolution. The theory of natural selection explains the observed fact of evolution. Like a creationist you can and probably will repeatedly misrepresent the facts and the relation of the theory to the facts.
And he we get into your silly christian/jewish stuff. You use upper case G and singular. You working premise does not get you to your particular solitary god. At most it gets you to gods and goddesses. So you cannot sneak your religious superstitions in under this pretense. That is another thing believers are always trying to do with their not clever by half arguments, skip all the theology and drop in their religion of choice. It does not work that way.
You have not presented any argument. There are different species in the fossil record. The physical mechanism is secondary to the fact. DNA was not identified until nearly a century after Darwin published. It has nothing to do with the theory. This is a silly and down right ignorant approach to the subject. And you evidence no interest at all in learning the subject from scientists. Rather you appear satisfied to listen to the BS of non-scientists trying to drive a single god theology into the discussion.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
However you continue post despite correction in a manner that constantly confuses the fact of evolution from the theory of evolution. And, surprise surprise, confuses them in a manner which appears to support your position.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
Excuse this. I was attributing some egg-scramble of my comments in the last thread to you, wrongly.
Sure - but fossils are not arbitrarily called the descendants of other fossils. The nature of these creatures is the subject of paleobiologists who dedicate considerable efforts to recreating all aspects of an organism's morphology and even diet, comparing characteristics and mixes of characteristics, and fossils of their past environment. In some cases they are able to extract DNA and have discovered that the Neanderthal is the ancestor of Tony Abbott. Well - perhaps not only Tony. Neanderthal DNA that's 250,000 years old is shared by modern Europeans up to about 4 per cent of the total.
I think we would agree there is some explanation for slowly changing fossils appearing at different times in given sheets of sedimentary rock, never at the same time, never found together, the most modern in the shallowest deposits and the oldest most Abbott-like either in the deepest or most heavily eroded deposits.
The oldest hominids walk more like Tony Abbott, their morphology strangely resembling that of apes, with long arms, heavy brows, conservative views and banana hammocks. The younger fossils have lighter builds and pelvis' built for full bipedalism. Their young are often found with perfectly preserved copies of Look and Learn under their tiny arms. Mirth aside, the points I raise here are true and there must be an explanation for them.
But what then, is the real science that explains the way we find fossils - oldest, simplest, deepest - reflecting the constancy of the law of gravity? Why are the youngest fossils the most like Bob Brown? What explains their liberality of form? There must be a reason for it and we can hardly pay these factors no attention.
I think in this case you answer your own question. I made the initial point because it's frustrating that you find it easier to accept abiogenesis than speciation. We look around and there's life so we agree abiogenesis happened at least once. But we also look around and see species. How did these species happen?
Occy demands the simplest explanation be the rational choice and if it can't be one abiogenesis event per species, then there must be some sort of speciation that, rather than occuring in real time in front of our wondering eyes, happens over long periods of time - as Anon rightly points out in relation to Darwin's finches, which were isolated on islands and evolved away from one another.
You could say the same thing about cats. Tigers are just gigantic tabby cats right down to proportion. Cat species can't generally mate but some seem to be able to. And while they are different species, their common ancestry is declared by morphology, as well as genetic similarity. In fact, morphology is a highly accurate test of genetic similarity.
Then there are fruitflies and bacteria. With their rapid lifecycles we should see them evolving hard in real-ish time. And low and behold, we do...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Studies as detailed as this can be discounted as 'mythological' assertions that are the same as religion and devoid of 'real' scientific rigour. These findings are based on researchers having looked at more than 1000 of the least-changed regions in the genomes of turtles and their closest relatives. I would need similarly detailed rebuttals to discount these findings, which dig deep into multiple instances of speciation in the search for ancestral connections.
Turtles More Closely Related to Birds Than Lizards and Snakes, Genetic Evidence Shows
ScienceDaily (May 23, 2012) — The evolutionary origin of turtles is one of the last unanswered questions in vertebrate evolution. Paleontological and morphological studies place turtles as either evolving from the ancestor of all reptiles or as evolving from the ancestor of snakes, lizards, and tuataras. Conflictingly, genetic studies place turtles as evolving from the ancestor of crocodilians and birds.
The study is the first genomic-scale analysis addressing the phylogenetic position of turtles, using over 1000 loci from representatives of all major reptile lineages including tuatara (lizard-like reptiles found only in New Zealand). Earlier studies of morphological traits positioned turtles at the base of the reptile tree with lizards, snakes and tuatara (lepidosaurs), whereas molecular analyses typically allied turtles with crocodiles and birds (archosaurs).
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120523200301.htm
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck