How do you define the word Evolution?

An evolution is when multiple sailors turn out to perform a planned task. Without evolutions, the US Navy would be unable to function. Of course, since the reserves' main mission is to train for mobilization, almost all the evolutions I was involved in were training evolutions and there were a lot of those.

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My objective there was to illustrate that that word has multiple meanings, a fact that many creationists try to take advantage of. One creationist ploy I've encountered many times is to try to confuse their victim by asking "which evolution?" at which point they try to conflate together everything that includes the word "evolution" even though they have nothing to do with each other. Yes, it's stupid, but it usually serves to create confusion which is what the creationist was seeking in the first place.In some earlier research, I found that the earliest English use of "evolution" was around 1610, more than two centuries before Darwin published. From the roots, "ex" for "out" and "volv" for "turn", its meaning is "turning out" or "unfolding". Like the unfolding of a flower, "evolution" was used to describe how things grow, change, and develop over time. For talking about the development of any particular type of system or object, you need to add verbiage to do so. That is why we say "paper towel" or "paper napkin" or "tomato ketshup", because the words alone refer to something else (eg, towels and napkins are normally made of cloth, ketshup was originally a Malaysian spicy fish sauce lacking that New World ingredient which is tomatoes).Stellar evolution is about how a star forms, enters the Main Sequence, spends its time there, leaves the Main Sequence, and what eventually becomes of it. Biological evolution is about what happens to a population over many generations. Even though that group of creationists try to create confusion by confusing these two ideas together, they couldn't be more different.In addition to that, there is the creationists' "Two Model Approach" and its "evolution model", which is a confused compost heap of every possible idea about evolution, plus "most of the world's religions, ancient and modern" as Dr. Henry Morris himself explicitly pointed out to me. IOW, you have their "creation model" which is pure YEC (including a young earth and Noah's Flood) and then every other idea that is not pure YEC gets dumped into their "evolution model". Ironically, while Morris and the ICR repeatedly refer to their "evolution model" as being "atheistic", the vastly greatest portion of it is thoroughly theistic.So then truly, whenever we talk about evolution we need to be very explicit and very specific about what we mean by that term.

For a while, I've been kicking around a simple general operational for biological evolution. So I just thought I would toss it out there to see what others thought of it.

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Basically, biological evolution is the total sum of what happens when populations of living organisms do what living organisms naturally do.

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Consume resources to survive long enough to reproduce.
Produce the next generation who are very similar to the previous generation, yet slightly different.
Those who survive long enough to reproduce then generate the next generation who are very similar to them yet slightly different.
Rinse and repeat ad infinitum.No magical mechanisms. No violations of thermodynamics (unless life itself violates the Laws of Thermodynamics, in which case why is anything left alive?). Just life doing what life does.Of course, from that point on, it's a matter of collecting and analyzing all that data to figure out the relative importance of various factors.Yet it still boils down to the basic fact: wherever life exists, it's evolving. PS
Even when you have stasis, the population is evolving.When I've dropped that bombshell before, creationists just went crazy. But it's true.I can use two analogies.In power supply technology, we have the voltage regulator whose purpose is to maintain a constant voltage output from the power supply regardless of the load (ie, how much current is being drawn -- it definitely has an effect on the voltage drops across internal resistances of the power supply). You look at the output and it remains the same! Does that mean that the output is not being regulated? Nonsense! The only way it could remain the same is if it is constantly regulated.A steam engine governor. Basically, a vertical shaft in the steam engine has a contraption with two steel balls atop it and attached to a steam pressure release valve. The faster the steam engine runs, the faster that contraption spins and the farther out centrifugal force drives those steel balls until they are out so far that they open the release valve and reduce the steam pressure, thus reducing the speed the engine is running at. That can be used to regulate the speed of the steam engine. BTW, "balls out!" is the engine running at maximum speed and should be the same as "balls to the walls!"Years before his horse accident (May 1995), Christopher Reeve hosted a documentary about evolution (not in his filmography). At one point, he described how evolution can speed up or slow down depending on how close to the optimal phenome it is. That made no sense to me at the time. But then those two previous analogies showed me the way. If the population is not close to the optimal phenome then the bell-curve scatter of offspring will lead that portion of that curve closer to the optimal to be more successful in producing offspring. The next generation should center closer to that optimal but with those closer to it being more likely to reproduce, etc. Eventually, the median of that population's bell curve will be roughly centered about that optimal. Early in that process, the population's median will be moving rapidly towards that optimial, but as it came closer to that optimal then its movement would slow down and eventually stop.Edited by dwise1, : PS

OK, CRR, so just where the frak have you ever defined the word, "Evolution."?
Do please be as specific as possible.

The most important person to deceive. That one person who absolutely must be deceived at all cost. The same person that every creationist spends all his time working so hard to deceive.Himself.

Sorry, just jumping in here for other purposes.I've been studying "creation science" since 1981 and dealing with creationists since the mid-80's, on-line since the late-80's starting on CompuServe.You've probably already answered these questions, so I apologize in advance.Are you a young-earth creationist? OK, different country, maybe different flavors (excuse me, flavours). Maybe that means something subtly different on your continent. Or not.Do you believe that the earth is about 6,000 years old, but you would compromise to 10,000 (the better to "Hide the Bible" with -- sorry, a minor USA constitutional matter called the First Amendment)?If yes, then why? Obviously because of your theology and what it requires you to believe about the Bible. OK, so we need to use a further question: Do you believe that you have scientific evidence that supports a young earth?If your answer is yes, then would you be amenable to discussing that evidence you claim to have?I should warn you beforehand that I firmly believe that such young-earth claims are all false. After all, that has been my consistent experience since the 1980's. However, I also question many other assumptions. I firmly believe that there is no conflict between creation and evolution, but only so long as you do not mess with their definitions. Do please note that the definitions by which you currently operate have very undoubtedly been severely messed with to the extreme.So would you be amenable to me proposing a topic where we could discuss these things? Admittedly, in two weeks I'm going to disappear for three weeks, which would tend to have a stifling effect on our discussion. Sorry, been in the planning stages for long time. But still, would you be ready and willing to discuss these things?

The primary problem that creationists are faced with is that they hold beliefs derived completely from their fallible interpretations from their fallible Man-made theologies, beliefs that are contrary to fact. And they made their entire belief systems completely dependent on those false beliefs, such that if any one of those false beliefs turns out to be false, then according to their faulty theology that would completely disprove their religion and their gods. Such an event is inevitable, since those beliefs are contrary to fact and to reality.Reality disproves those false beliefs, so they must ignore reality. Since science is one of our best tools for discovering and studying reality, they must ignore it as well. But, they also love their computers and their flush toilets, so they cannot reject science completely.So they cherry-pick science keeping the parts of science that gives them the technology they want while selectively rejecting and ignoring the parts they don't like. Anyone familiar with science knows that you cannot do that, that all of science must hang together. But creationists don't think that way. They think theologically, which means that they feel free to accept some parts and ignore others -- that is exactly what they do with their own religion. And they think that they can change reality simply by redefining a few words, something that does not and cannot actually work, but again something that they do with their religion all the time.Those actions are indeed anti-science.

I don't normally do this, but NonStampCollector has a series of cartoon videos. This one, Special Investigation - Evolution at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBHEsEshhLs, does a good job of demonstrating what it's like to try to discuss anything with a creationist.Comments speculate whether it's based on Richard Dawkins' interview with a creationist, Wendy Wright. Hour-long video of that at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AS6rQtiEh8. First comment there was "Richard Dawkins has literally wasted an hour of his life talking to this woman."If you do not understand the reference in the guy's name, it refers to a common response that a non-theist (or atheist) is like a non-stamp-collector; we just don't do that kind of stuff.Edited by dwise1, : Paragraph about Dawkins video.

{** Major Face-Plant -- sorry, but I haven't accumulated any kind of face-plant graphics library to draw from **}Common sense like if you drop two cannonballs, one twice as heavy as the other, the heavier one should fall faster? That is not what actually happens.Back in the early 1980's, a science magazine published part of a "common sense" physics test someone had administered. In one question, there was a spiral track that a metal ball rolled down before that track ended and the ball continued to move in the air. Four choices were offered for the ball's final trajectory. The majority of response chose the "common sense" choice, that the ball continued to fall in a spiral manner. WRONG! That is not what actually happens.Leading creationists and their minions would constantly appeal to "common sense." Common sense is most often completely wrong. Or as my engineer former brother-in-law would say, "Common sense is anything but common." (ironic, since he was a fundamentalist Christian and most likely a YEC as well). Was that what herbedragons was doing? Not that I can see. Just jumping in with a humorous segment I heard on NPR two to three decades ago (or possibly more). We all know those sayings, "It's not brain surgery!" and "It's not rocket science!" So what do brain surgeons and rocket scientists say? The segment found that brain surgeons would say, "It's not rocket science!" and rocket scientists would say, "It's not brain surgery!", so the two fields would just cross-reference each other.Then there's those lines in that classic 1987 Steve Martin movie, Roxanne, in which two guys, Steve Martin and Rick Rossovich, are both in love with an astronomer, Roxanne, played by Daryl Hannah. Rick is intimidated by a strong woman (quoting from memory):

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Rick: After all, it's not as if she's a rocket scientist.
Steve: Welllll, actually she is.

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Edited by dwise1, : "what", nicht "was"! Verzeihung. I dachte auf Deutsch.

WHAT???Vaccines work because the body has an immune system. The immune system reacts to disease microbes by creating antibodies to fight those disease microbes. Expose the (multicellular!!!) body to disease microbes (thankfully greatly disabled enough to avoid actual infection) and that body's immune system (which implies multiple tissues and hence even more multiple cells) generates the antibodies against that disease. That is basically how vaccines work.Single-cell organisms cannot have any immune system, since by definition a system implies multiple tissues and a tissue implies multiple cells. Basic biology.Therefore, bacterial immunity to certain toxins is something different. Right?

Sorry, but that hit a nerve that's been over-sensitized by fucking stupid creationist rhetorics.I've been following this bullshit since 1981. Not only have I ridden around the park a few times, I have worn very deep ruts in that road.One of the stock bullshit creationist complaints is that "evolution" (which they misrepresent grossly, hence the "scare quotes") is somehow "counter-intuitive" and will somehow "confuse the students". All while they appeal to "common sense" explanations.As I have already just explained to CRR (Message 365), there is nothing common sense to "common sense" explanations, plus, those "common sense explanations" are just as likely to be completely wrong.The point is that "common sense" can be and most often is complete bullshit. And exposing students to that fact should not confuse them, but rather make them think! And question. And test.Creationists want students to sit comfortably in their false pre-conceived ideas, but science requires them to test everything. So much of how the world actually works is very counter-intuitive.Students need to understand that, not be locked into dungeons of ignorance as creationists want.

Two entirely different mechnicims to my knowledge.And you are stating a Lamarckian assumption, not Darwinian. Please do not misrepresent evolution.Edited by dwise1, : Clean-up in aisle three.

No, that is from other factors. The simple counter-intuitive still remains that gravity does not treat objects of different weights any differently! The "common sense" answer that gravity treats objects of different weights differently is wrong!As is the case of that metal ball rolling down a spiral track. Common sense says that when it drops off the end it will continue to move in a spiral trajectory. It doesn't!In every case, including the ones affected by other forces, we need to discover what is actually happening instead of letting "common sense" mislead us to false conclusions as you had just done.

Quibblance equivalent to my stating in another forum that there is no mass lost in a fire because every atom is accounted for in the chemical formulae for a fire. Someone quibbled that there is a minute amount of mass in chemical bonds, so when they're broken that mass is lost. However, that loss is so minute that it is safe to ignore it. Since I only had high school chemistry where we didn't get into that, I assumed that it is covered in more advanced chemistry classes.In astronomy and/or physics class we kind of talked about your quibble, though not really. Gravitational force is:F = GMm/d²where G is the Gravitational Constant, M is the mass of the larger body, m the mass of the smaller, and d is the distance between their centers. If M >> m, then m = 1
(if M is very much greater than m, then m = 1)So the only time that you use m is if M and m are not too significantly different. In the case of two objects being dropped towards the earth's surface, the mass of the earth is significantly greater than the mass of either object, so they're effectively the same mass, 1, and the gravitational force working on both objects would be the same.QEF
(quod erat fudged)

It is a good statement. I shall add it to my quotes collection.

I'll give you two major ones:

1. Young earth
2. Noah's Flood

There are a very great many more examples, but most of them are minor ones related to claims which are used to support the major ones.Here's a John Morris quote which illustrates what I was talking about. At the 1986 International Conference on Creationism, John Morris was half of the ICR's geology department who directly challenged a talk that soon-to-be-ex-YEC and practicing field geologist Glenn R. Morton had just finished delivering. Morton asked Morris how old the earth is. Morris' reply: "If the earth is more than 10,000 years old then Scripture has no meaning."I received my fundamentalist Christian training with the Jesus Freak Movement in 1970, so I have ears to hear. I know the ramifications of that statement for a fundamentalist. And that has been verified to me a number of times over the past few decades by YECs.So then, a YEC is taught and believes that if the young earth and Noah's Flood and a number of other things (see Creation Model for the ICR's main list) are not true, then Scripture has no meaning and God either does not exist or else is such a Liar that He is not worthy of worship so you should just throw your Bible into the dustbin and become a hedonistic atheist running naked through the streets (what a Canadian YEC insisted upon including becoming an atheist, except I embellished the atheist part a bit based on Christian attitudes about atheism that I have observed over and over again).So my question for discussion is: What should a YEC really do when he learns that his theology is wrong on a few points, such as the age of the earth?Based on that and on how extremely important a fundamentalist's religion and faith (not the same things) are to him, I would expect the YEC to do everything he possibly can to avoid facing that fact.However, if we keep in mind that theologies are Man-made and anything that fallible Man makes cannot possibly be infallible (that is one point that my fundamentalism teachers kept stressing over and over again, though they never thought to apply it to their theology as well ... hmm!). So we should expect our Man-made theologies to contain errors. So when we do inevitably find one of those inevitable errors, what should we do? The answer I keep receiving is to trash the entire theology and abandon it -- mind you, this is a consequence of assigning the property of infallibility to a fallible construct, the theology. I would suggest that we note that error and correct our theology accordingly.OBTW, I also maintain that everybody creates his own theology. Yes, he does endeavor to make it an exact copy of his particular church's official theology, but since we cannot have complete and perfect knowledge of a theology, especially when we are in the process of learning it, and also since we can only follow a theology that we have internalized (like just about any other subject matter), all we have to work with is an imperfect copy filled with misunderstandings. That is why I maintain that a believer must constantly question his beliefs in order to weed out the errors that he had made. Plus that keeps you thinking about those things and being mindful of them, which should be a good thing in religion, what?OBTW, I have been an atheist for more than half a century. That does not automatically make me your enemy.