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Author | Topic: The phrase "Evolution is a fact" | |||||||||||||||||||||||
Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Stephen Jay Gould said it much better.
Evolution as Fact and Theory Stephen Jay Gould writes: In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"”part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus creationists can (and do) argue: evolution is "only" a theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is less than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science”that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was." Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered. You base theories on facts. That's why it is called the theory OF evolution. We can't develop a theory until we have a factual phenomenon we are seeking to explain. A ball falls from my hand to the ground. We call the force that pulls it down "gravity." But what is gravity? How does it work? Ah, those are questions to be answered by theory. We'll never be able to prove the theory because that isn't how science works. But there is no way to contradict the fact: When I drop a ball, it falls to the ground. Similarly for evolution. When we observe populations over time, they change. We call that change "evolution." But what is evolution? How does it work? Those are questions to be answered by theory. We'll never be able to prove the theory because that isn't how science works. But there is no way to contradict the fact: When we observe organisms over time, they change. Now, it turns out that we actually have a mechanism for evolution: Natural selection (among others). We can directly manipulate it and cause evolutionary change to happen. None of this do we have for gravity. We still don't rightly know what it is, how it works, or how to manipulate it. And yet, nobody seems to think gravity is in doubt even though it is less solidly grounded than evolution. So why are you picking on evolution when it's gravity that's the real problem? Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Beretta writes:
quote: Because the fossil record clearly shows that happening. Others have talked about the time scale and indeed, humans have only been actively looking at the phylogenetics of organisms directly for the past 100 years or so. To go beyond that, we need to look at the results of the experiment that has been going over the entire course of life's history: The fossil record. The fossil record is quite literally overflowing with transitional fossils. We can watch the species shift right in front of our eyes (and sometimes even higher up the taxonomic tree), but to go to the really big changes, all we have to do is look at the fossils. We can literally watch the bones of the reptilian jaw move and repurpose to become the bones of the mammalian ear. We can see Hyracotherium change over time to become modern Equus. We can see the changes in the whales as they adapt from land-dwelling ungulates to sea-dwelling cetaceans. You seem to be on the verge of demanding a full geneology of every single organism, complete with videotape of every single act of reproduction, before you would accept what evolution says. Well, we're never going to have that. But for you to then insist that evolution is unjustified because of that lack, then you're going to have to throw out the entire field of forensics. Until you accept that the very same process that we use to determine "whodunnit" even though we weren't there to directly see it happen is what we use to determine the evolutionary history of life, there will never be any evidence that you accept. You want ostriches from alligator eggs. Evolution doesn't allow for that. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Fosdick writes:
quote: No, not really. Not literally "ate the late comers," but one of the observed actions of evolution is that only one organism can occupy a niche with any stability. Competition between species is no different from competition within a species. Take a look at Darwin's finches. They all descended from a single ancestor but they couldn't all occupy the same niche so they diversified. Why one? Because the only stable solution is one. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Beretta responds to me:
quote:quote: Yes, it does. Again, the fossil record is literally overflowing with transitional fossils.
quote: I don't have to be. The fossil was there and it will tell us. See, this is what I was saying. You seem to be about half a step away from demanding videotape of every single birth from the very first life on this planet up to the present day and until you can be shown that complete parent-child geneology, then you won't accept anything. By this logic, we should open up the prisons and let everyone out. Most crimes take place without witnesses and yet somehow we manage to determine who did it and how and when. You don't get to have it both ways. You don't get to say its valid when you like the results but invalid if you don't.
quote: Yes. How does the genome know that it isn't allowed to mutate any more? We've seen pretty much every mutation imaginable down to complete duplication of the entire chromosomal record. We have seen point mutations, insertions, deletions, duplications, transpositions, frame shifts, you name it. What would stop it? You're the one claiming that there's a barrier. You're the one that needs to provide the evidence.
quote: Because we can see it happen right in front of our eyes. Why would you have us deny it? You seem to be saying that while you agree that 1 exists, 2 exists, addition works, and equality is real, none of that is sufficient to conclude that 1 + 1 = 2. We have presented the evidence to you over and over again here. The fact that you deny it doesn't change the fact that it exists.
quote:quote: Yes. Hie thee to a natural history museum and look at them for yourself. See, you can't do science just sitting behind a computer. You have to go out and get your hands dirty.
quote: Incorrect. What Darwin knew was that we didn't have very many fossils. What he said was that his theory would be upheld or fall upon the finding of new fossils. And sure enough, we found the fossils that Darwin predicted. That's what made his work scientific: It made a prediction that could be tested. You seem to be complaining that everything Darwin said would be needed to show his theory to be accurate was actually found.
quote: Nice misquote. Gould was actually quite pissed off that people would misquote him so. What you are trying to do is claim that Gould and Eldredge were arguing against evolution when what they were doing was arguing for punctuated equlibrium. From Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes:
We proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium largely to provide a different explanation for pervasive trends in the fossil record. Trends, we argued, cannot be attributed to gradual transformation within lineages, but must arise from the differential success of certain kinds of species. A trend, we argued, is more like climbing a flight of stairs (punctuations and stasis) than rolling up an inclined plane. Since we proposed punctuated equlibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists-whether through design or stupidity, I do not know-as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger troups. Yet a pamphlet entitled "Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax" states: "The facts of punctuated equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge ... are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the picture that Gryan insisted on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible." Continuing the distortion, several creationists have equated the theory of punctuated equilibrium with a caricature of the beliefs of Richard Goldschmidt, a great early geneticist. Goldschmidt argued, in a famous book published in 1940, that new groups can arise all at once through major mutations. He referred to these suddenly transformed creatures as "hopeful monsters." (I am attracted to some aspects of the non-caricatured version, but Goldschmidt's theory still has nothing to do with punctuated equilibrium-see essays in section 3 and my explicit essay on Godlschmidt in The Panda's Thumb.) Creations Luther Sunderland talks of the "punctuated equilibrium hopeful monster theory" and tells his hopeful readers that "it amounts to tacit admission that anti-evolutionists are correct in asserting there is no fossil evidence supporting the theory that all life is connected to a common ancestor." Duane Gish writes, "According to Goldschmidt, and now apparently accoridng to Gould, a reptile laid an edd from which the first bird, feather and all, was produced." Any evolutionist who believed such nonsense would rightly be laughed off the intellectual stage; yet the only theory that ecould ever envision such a scenario for the origin of birds is creationism-with God acting in the egg. It is quite clear that you haven't actually read Gould's work but instead stole a quote from a creationist quote mining site. He directly contradicts your conclusions.
quote: Incorrect. We see all the changes we expect to see: I can show you genetic changes happening in the lab and the fossil record shows you the big changes. 1 + 1 = 2 no matter how much you say they don't.
quote: "Handful"? How does one interpret "abundant" to mean "handful"? I repeat my claim: You haven't actually read Gould. Instead, you stole a quote from a creationist quote mining site.
quote:quote: You mean the fossils don't exist? The jaws that I have handled with my own hands were just frauds? Again from Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes:
The third argument is more direct: transitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common-and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution (see next section)-but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. The lower jaw of reptiles contains several bones, that of mammals only one. The non-mammalian jawbones are reduced, step by step, in mammalian ancestors until they become tiny nubbins located at the back of the jaw. The "hammer" and "anvil" bones of the mammalian ear are descendents of these nubbins. How could such a transition be accomplished? the creationists ask. Surely a bone is either entirely in the jaw or in the ear. Yet paleontologists have discovered two transitional lineages of therapsids (the so-called mammal-like repitles) with a double jaw joint-one composed of the old quadrate and articular bones (soon to become the hammer and anvil), the other of the squamosal and dentary bones (as in modern mammals). For that matter, what better transitional form could we expect to find than the oldest human, Australopithecus afarensis, with its apelike palate, its human upright stand, and a cranial capacity larger than any ape's of the same body size but a full 1,000 cubic centimeters below ours? If God made each of the half-dozen human species discovered in ancient rocks, why did he create in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features-increasing cranial capacity, reduced face and teeth, larger body size? Did he create to mimic evolution and test our faith thereby? Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rehtorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am-for I have become a major target of these practices. You haven't actually read anything about the subject, have you?
quote: Incorrect. Most mutations are never noticed. The most common type of mutation, responsible for over 90% of all mutations, is the point mutation. You'll never see such mutations affect the morphology of the organism. And of those mutations that do cause deleterious effects, they are selected against, so they do not spread. Thus, all you wind up with over the generations are neutral and beneficial mutations. But that said, how do you know a mutation is beneficial until it is put into the environment and tested? You seem to have forgotten about selection. Is a short, squat body that retains body fat easily "beneficial" or is a long, thin body that sheds body fat "beneficial"? Until you define what the environment is, you'll never know.
quote:quote: You mean the fossils don't really exist? They're really scattered across the strata rather than being in chronological order?
quote: As if the only difference between Hyracotherium and Equus were size.
quote: As if the only reason we put Hyracotherium first is because the morphology puts it there (which is sufficient enough, but it's always good when you can justify it on multiple levels...it provides independent corroboration.)
quote: Why is that not sufficient? Why don't you tell us what you demand and then when we show it to you, we can watch you shift the goalposts again. First, you claimed it can't be done and then when shown that it does happen, you claim it wasn't a "big" change and hope to high heaven that nobody notices that your original claim was that it couldn't happen at all. Duplication followed by mutation. Is that or is that no "information building"? Very simple question. How many times am I going to have to ask it of you before you answer it? Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Beretta writes:
quote: Why? What is the barrier? You're the one making the claim, therefore you're the one who needs to provide the evidence. That you don't understand how it could have happened is not sufficient. You need to provide the specifics as to what blocks the genome from mutating. We can achieve reproductive isolation in only 13 generations. What is the barrier and how does it function?
quote: Huh? The Cambrian explosion was not "short." It took hundreds of millions of years. What makes it fascinating is the number of body plans that we see happening during it. But even that is mostly due to the development of hard body parts that are more easily fossilized. We have transitional fossils that run from the Pre-Cambrian and through the Cambrian. And notice how the creationists are always harping on the Cambrian when the Permian was even bigger. This is what happens when you only grab your information from web sites rather than doing your own homework.
quote: Huh? That sentence makes no sense. If there were gaps, then there would be no transitionals. The fact that there are transitionals means there aren't gaps. Unless you're going for the typical creationist claim that by putting in the transitional, you create two more gaps on either side. As predicted, you will seemingly only accept a videotape of the complete parent-child geneology of every single organism that has ever lived.
quote: Why? What would be the barrier? You're the one making the claim, therefore you need to provide the evidence. Since we have seen it happen right in front of our eyes, why should we accept your insistence that it cannot happen?
quote: Standard Creationist Rebuttal CB102:
Claim CB102: Mutations are random noise; they do not add information. Evolution cannot cause an increase in information.
Now, seeing that we have observed the increase in information of the genome, one has to wonder why you are demanding that we lie about it? Duplication followed by mutation is "increase in information," yes or no? How many times must I ask it before you answer?
quote: Standard Creationist Rebuttal CB101:
Claim CB101: Most mutations are harmful, so the overall effect of mutations is harmful.
So since we see that most mutations are neutral and the only ones that survive are the neutral and beneficial ones, why would you have us lie and say that most mutations are harmful? Duplication followed by mutation is "increase in information," yes or no? How many times must I ask it before you answer? Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Peepul responds to boysherpa:
quote:quote: Incorrect to both of you. "Macroevolution" isn't really that big of a term in biology but when it is used, it refers to evolutionary processes that happen above the species level. Since we can see speciation happen, we can observe macroevolution directly. Reproductive isolation, for example, is "macroevolution" since it is involved in speciation. We have observed reproductive isolation occur in as few as 13 generations. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
Peepul responds to me:
quote: Since we don't let creationists define what "evolution" is (they seem to think it has something to do with the creation of the universe and the origin of life), why would we ever let them get away with defining what "macroevolution" is? In general, when a creationist says "macroevolution," what they mean is, "A bigger evolutionary change than I am willing to admit is possible." This entire concept came up because it was become more and more ridiculous for creationists to claim that there was no evolutionary change at all. We could see the mutations happening. You can run the experiments is less than a week and see the allele frequencies change, watch the mutations arise, observe how they become dominant. So, they switched tactics. Rather than insisting that evolution was impossible, they started to claim that it was only "microevolution." That is, it's the canard of, "Yeah, but they're still fruit flies!" as if the result of the experiment was to have an ostrich hatch from an alligator's egg. Science does understand the concept of big changes compared to little changes, but it also understands that the difference is one of quantity, not quality. "Macroevolution" is really nothing more than a bunch of "microevolution." After all, if 1 + 1 = 2, why can't 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 10? How on earth does the genome know that it isn't allowed to change anymore? It is nothing more than the "kind" limitation dressed up in fancy language, just as "intelligent design" is nothing more than creationism without the g-word. They insist that no life can "reproduce outside its 'kind'" without ever defining what a "kind" is. And they don't define it because they know they'll get burned the minute we can show that it does happen. Which, of course, we have. We have directly seen speciation ("Oh, so it's at the Genus level), new genera ("Oh, it's at the Family level), new families, etc. At this point, they give up with trying to remain in scientific terms and make up their own: "Baramin." This, of course, is no better than "kind," but it sounds fancy. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
crawler30 responds to me:
quote: No, it's evolution through artificial selection. Breeding programs don't create specific mutations. They take advantage of mutations that come up and work to propagate them through a species.
quote: By not actually doing anything to the organisms as they go through their reproductive cycles. Instead, we just observe them.
quote: Incorrect. The exact opposite is true. When we leave things to their own devices, we have ALWAYS noted significant changes in a population over time. Surel you've heard of the peppered moths in the UK, yes? Most of types of a certain moth in the 1800s were white. This made it very easy for them to be camouflaged on the white lichens of the trees in the area in which they lived. But then the Industrial Revolution happened and the lichens became covered in soot. Being white was no longer good camouflage. However, there was an allele in the population that had the moths be black, not white. This variation was good for being camouflaged on soot-blackened trees and it became the dominant allele. But then, environmental regulations were put in place and the soot was no longer being pumped into the air. The lichens returned, white as they ever were, and those black moths were no longer camouflaged. The white variation returned to the dominant position. That's just a simplistic view. If you get into more deep field and lab work, you find speciation, even new genera and families.
quote: Incorrect. We have observed reproductive isolation in as few as 13 generations. No human interaction involved. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
crawler30 writes:
quote: Incorrect. Evolution is decidedly NOT an "accident." Evolution is not random because selection is not random. Mutations are a random component (though not completely so), but selection is not random.
quote: Because there was nothing stopping it. The mutation that led to the ability to digest nylon oligimers was a single frameshift mutation, a random event. But it turns out that the environment selected for this mutation to be beneficial and provide a reproductive advantage: These bacteria could process a new food source that other bacteria could not. Thus, they were not subject to competition for this food source from the other bacteria and thus they could survive in ways the other bacteria could not.
quote: Indeed. So? Why is this a problem? Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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Rrhain Member Posts: 6351 From: San Diego, CA, USA Joined: |
crawler30 writes:
quote: Because we sequenced the genome and was able to determine exactly how it happened. It is the result of a single frameshift mutation.
quote: Wrong. A scientific observation would include morphological and genetic data...which is exactly what was done. That's why we know that this is a new type of bacteria based upon a single frameshift mutation. Rrhain Thank you for your submission to Science. Your paper was reviewed by a jury of seventh graders so that they could look for balance and to allow them to make up their own minds. We are sorry to say that they found your paper "bogus," specifically describing the section on the laboratory work "boring." We regret that we will be unable to publish your work at this time.
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