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sketchyy
Trad climber
Vagrant
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:23am PT
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Visit a museum of the civil war. The uniforms wouldnt fit the average 7th grader today.
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Blight
Social climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:24am PT
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Are you serious? You really think that callouses, bow legs and tanned skin evolve?
Wow.
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Blight
Social climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:26am PT
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"Visit a museum of the civil war. The uniforms wouldnt fit the average 7th grader today."
Again, that's not evidence of evolution. The genes which determine our height are already present, no new genetic material has emerged.
It might concievably be construed, at a stretch, to be indicative of natural selection, but that's a completely different process.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:30am PT
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Darwin's knowledge.
He does not know about the soul. So the existence of soul, to understand this is the first education.
One who does not know this, he remains animal.
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cjain
Mountain climber
Lake Forest, CA
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:31am PT
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Regarding audio books, Librivox.org is a volunteer-run organization that records public domain books into audio. They have collection of free audio books or their web site for download.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:36am PT
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Guess I'm feeling a little testy because I haven't been able to solve a programming problem that's been on my plate since yesterday.
Werner, respectfully, I absolutely believe that it's this kind of "magical thinking" that is the most dangerous thing facing our species and planet today. You have your own magical thinking, the fundamentalist Christians have theirs, the Muslims have theirs... all incompatible, of course. None of it can be proven or even considered rationale. You might as well believe in Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
Blight, I don't even know where to start....
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:39am PT
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All the proof is there.
The onus, burden of proof is on you ........
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Blight
Social climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:46am PT
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Blight, I don't even know where to start....
Of course you don't. You've just seen a good number of beliefs you held without questioning them shot down and exposed as lies. That's difficult to accept.
Nevertheless, the challenge is right there: Show me empirical evidence of any species acquiring, without any deliberate manipulation, a new organ or limb, and I'll be happy.
It's what the theory of evolution you subscribe to says happens. So why not just demonstrate it? Or will you go with the age-old "time scales are too short" lie as your excuse?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:49am PT
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ok Blight, who ever you are (you are an avatar)...
Show me empirical evidence of any species acquiring, without any deliberate manipulation, a new organ or limb, and I'll be happy.
Now come on, that's what the theory of evolution says happened. So why would it be difficult to provide some simple evidence?
Have you read Origin of the Species? it's goal is to provide a theory of the biological diversity of species, why are species, what is the definition and how do they come to be. First Darwin explains many emperical facts regarding species, their types, their relationships, the observation that species that existed in the past are now extinct, the variations due to "breeding," etc.
He then goes on to develop what we know today to be the Theory of Evolution, where these changes take place over a long time period, and are driven by a selection process responsive to environmental challenges.
The theory in its original statement does explain all of the observed biological facts, and provides a powerful scheme for understanding all living things.
Not bad.
In further development, the theory has become an even better explanation of observations, more nuanced as the complications of the biological world have been discovered.
The Theory of Evolution does everything you would want any theory to do, it provides predictions which are testable, it unifies a divergent set of emperical observations, it provides a foundation on which to build a scientific explanation of life.
What you are asking for is irrelevant, the theory more than meets the test of explaining the observations.
If you have evidence that the theory has predicted something which has not happened then I'd be interested in hearing about it... if you have another theory which can explain the emperical body of observation that would be interesting to hear also.
But if you are here to make a naive poke using the same old arguements, then you are wasting both your time and ours.
"No one alive today was alive when (Adam, Moses, Jesus, Mohamed, Buddha, Confuscious, Lao Tze, etc.) were, therefore, there is no direct evidence that they ever existed, it is all conjecture."
That sounds silly to me... just as silly as when you substitute anything else in the parenthesis that occured in the past.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:54am PT
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Unfortunately it remains just that --
Theory
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:57am PT
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Werner, there is nothing wrong with "theory"... theory provides a means to understand a thing, where the thing is imperfectly understood or described.
All our knowledge is provisional, as we do not have a perfect view of reality. It is the most amazing aspect of modern science that we have worked out a way of providing a quantitative method for explaining an incomplete set of information in such a manner as to provide understanding.
No reason to deprecate theory, no reason to worship it either...
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Blight
Social climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 11:58am PT
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What you are asking for is irrelevant, the theory more than meets the test of explaining the observations.
What observations? Darwin's work I don't dispute. The mechanism of evolution as currently described, though? You'd have to be insane to accept it.
I fail to see how asking for evidence to support your assertions is irrelevant. That's how science works.
If you have evidence that the theory has predicted something which has not happened then I'd be interested in hearing about it
It's impossible to prove that something hasn't happened using science. More to the point, the onus is not on me to provide evidence that you're wrong. You're the one touting the wacko theory, you're supposed to prove that it's right.
... if you have another theory which can explain the emperical body of observation that would be interesting to hear also.
You haven't provided any of the evidence I asked for.
Be clear about this: the general outline of evolution as per Darwin, I think, is pretty solid and hard to argue with. I'm disputing the mechanism as currently understood.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 12:03pm PT
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"....theory provides a means to understand a thing, where the thing is imperfectly understood or described."
So it is a defective proccess.
A sane person needs the absoult truth, summum bonum.
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phoolish
Boulder climber
Athens, Ga.
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Oct 20, 2006 - 12:15pm PT
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Blight:
Evolutionary science is observational, like astronomy.
Get a basic understanding of the way the sciences work, and then you can talk about problems with theories.
For now, you're just blowing smoke that only fundamentalists who don't understand scientific processes will believe.
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Blight
Social climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 12:18pm PT
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Evolutionary science is observational, like astronomy.
Then show us your observations.
If you want us to believe that multicellular life forms grew from unicellular ones, show us it happening. If you want us to believe that species can develop new limbs and organs, show us it happening.
Refusing to provide evidence to back up your a*#ertions isn't science. And slinging accusations that I don't understand science when you're clearly unable to demonstrate just exactly where my ideas are wrong isn't either.
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 12:23pm PT
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Yes Blight, do not back down.
Vijnana or science is established truth.
You cannot make any change by experimental knowledge. It is already settled.
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eeyonkee
Trad climber
Golden, CO
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Oct 20, 2006 - 12:28pm PT
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As always Ed, your prose is lucid, to the point, and well thought out.
pc. I don't know if that was a troll or not (and I'm still not convinced that Blight is not just playing devil's advocate), but what you describe is most certainly not how evolution works. That sort of thinking, espoused most vocally by a Frenchman, Lamarck, was prevalent during Darwin's time and eventually became discredited in scientific circles.
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pc
climber
East of Seattle
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Oct 20, 2006 - 12:28pm PT
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Blight ranted, "Are you serious? You really think that callouses, bow legs and tanned skin evolve? "
Call it what you like, adaptation, evolution, whatever. Werner stated that the body doesn't evolve and I gave him some examples of it doing just that.
Definition: Evolve, to develop by a process of evolution to a different adaptive state or condition.
Edit,
Eyonkee, I was not talking about evolution, I was talking about a micro scenario of adaptation. I'm not an expert, just trying to poke at Werner a little. I'll retract it completely if it's already been discredited as a starting point for evolution. Thanks. Back to music for me ;)
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WBraun
climber
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Oct 20, 2006 - 12:38pm PT
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Pc
Hahaha you can't poke at me, there's nothing to poke at.
You will fail ............
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Oct 20, 2006 - 12:50pm PT
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I am proof of evolution.
I was once cold and slimy in the Hudson River.
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