Punctuated equilibrium vs spontaneous generation

Flies, I've seen cladograms and understand them. I am not sure if you realize they are created by man's imagination, based on some evidence, that is true, but also based on assumptions.But cladograms would be a new topic so maybe your request which is a barely disguised insult would be better suited to a new thread.

randman, PAH! Is that it? All the other points go ignored? How TYPICAL!The fossil record does indeed contradict the bible. Prokarotic bacteria came first, then eukaryotic algae, then bryophytes, then seedless vasculars, then gymnosperms, THEN grasses & FRUIT bearing plants. But inbetween eukaryotic algae & bryophytes animals appeared in the record. Sorry randman, but the bible is w-r-o-n-g. Animals weren't the last-but-man thing to appear. Bullshit. Please provide the paper that shows energy is non-quantised. I won't hold my breath. Oh, It turns out your favourites are postmodernist metaphysicists after all!But your tiny concession that the correlation between cladistics & stratigraphy was evidence of evolution was long overdue. Long overdue. Given that it also contradicts the bible, what now?Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Mark, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. No, once I realize an evo doesn't read or respond to my points, I generally don't read all of his.But your reversion to attacking the Bible is an indication that you have moved away from debating the science on this issue. So I will accept that as your concession of defeat.On the physics, I don't know where you get the idea anyone said energy is not quantized, and if you want to bash scientists, some who are giants in the field of physics, by all means go ahead, but you could at least bother to learn what they teach and beleive and the actual science behind what they claim, but then again, I don't expect you will.

Well, you did just use Wheeler's work - actually, only his reputation - to assert that the laws of physics change at different points in space and time, so you might apply that criticism to yourself.You name-drop a lot but you've never actually posted anything that suggests you're familiar with anything about those figures beyond their names and reputations. Any time that you have attempted to address arguments from physics you've only betrayed your enormously erroneous understanding of current theory.

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But your reversion to attacking the Bible is an indication that you have moved away from debating the science on this issue. So I will accept that as your concession of defeat.

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Of course anyone who looks back at the actual post can see that it did raise scientific points and only included one short comment on the Bible.It's pretty clear that you are using that one short sentence as an excuse to evade the scientific issues and falsely claim victory.

I am not evading, but want to point out the basic state of mind of the person that thinks attacking the Bible is a good point.If he did not want to derail the discussion, he should not resort to that. Once it is clear the type of mentality we are dealing with, it seems proper to me to focus on that, and try to resolve that issue, either by having the poster recognize his error in creating a false dichotomy of the Bible versus his beliefs, or realizing fruitful discussion with such a person is not feasible because their logic is so anti-religiously oriented they have a hard time taking what you say at face value.Plus, I believe the resort to attacking the Bible is evidence he has a losing argument. I didn't see any valid points in his post worth discussing. He claims sound arguments are ad hoc, at least from my perspective, and thus refuses to address the substance of any of what I posted, and then tops it off attacking the Bible, as if he believes that makes his argument stronger.No, I think Mark's post indicates he hasn't clue as to what science and logic actually are, or once his beliefs are threatened, he resorts to a irrational mentality that thus loses the ability to understand basic things like attacking the Bible does not advance his theory.This message has been edited by randman, 11-18-2005 02:39 AM

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I am not evading, but want to point out the basic state of mind of the person that thinks attacking the Bible is a good point.

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In other words you are using ad hominems to avoid answering the scientific points raised in the post. That IS evasion.

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If he did not want to derail the discussion, he should not resort to that. Once it is clear the type of mentality we aredealing with, it seems proper to me to focus on that, and try to resolve that issue, either by having the poster recognize his error in creating a false dichotomy of the Bible versus his beliefs, or realizing fruitful discussion with such a person is not feasible because their logic is so anti-religiously oriented they have a hard time taking what you say at face value.

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Of course the fact is that that was just one short comment apart from the main thrust of the post. If you did not want to divert the discussion you certainly had the option of ignroing it. Instead you chose to ignore the scientific points to which you really have no good answer. Indeed the sentence you take offence at is a question - and one you did not even answer.
As for the religious side of things you're the one making a big deal of it. So I would say that you're in no position to make the sort of attacks we see above.

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Plus, I believe the resort to attacking the Bible is evidence hehas a losing argument. I didn't see any valid points in his post worth discussing. He claims sound arguments are ad hoc, at least from my perspective, and thus refuses to address the substance of any of what I posted, and then tops it off attacking the Bible, as if he believes that makes his argument stronger.

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Well he didn't attack the Bible as such - all he did was point out that your ideas seemed to disagree with the Biblical account. If the Bible isn't important to you you coulkd simply have disagreed and moved on. So presumably it is important to you - and you can't answer the point. Unless it is just an excuse to ignore the main part of the post.As to the question of whose arguments are weak I only need to point out that one person is choosing to make one marginal issue the centre of the discussion - and is using it as the basis for an ad hominem argument for dismissing the other points. I would say that that person is the one who concedes that his arguments are weak.

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No, I think Mark's post indicates he hasn't clue as to what science and logic actually are, or once his beliefs arethreatened, he resorts to a irrational mentality that thus loses the ability to understand basic things like attacking the Bible does not advance his theory.

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Of course you haven't even shown that Nark actually thought that his comment DID advance his theory. He might, for instance, have thought that it is somethinh you would consider a weakness in your own. And by your reaction it appears that he was right - and that it threatened your beleifs and so we see you reduced to evasions and ad hominems as if they advanced your theory.

Post removed as it was a reply to myself in error. Reposted as message 41.This message has been edited by mark24, 11-18-2005 05:17 PM

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

randman, An Ad hoc argument is an argument that uses an unsubstantiated claim in order to counter criticism of your point, as per the link you failed to read.Given that you failed to support your claim that data has been left out, that "lining up" is unreliable, that the conclusion is affected by what the reigning paradigm is, that it is a false idea, & that John Wheeler and Anton Zellinger's "lab experiments" support your claim, or that god/ID did anything whatsoever. Then all three of your arguments are ad hoc by definition. That you think they are "sound" arguments is ludicrous, & exposes your ignorance of logic. When you are as ignorant of logic & science as you are, a good offensive is the best defence, right? : I think the person that has to reiterate the point-of-order that you have committed logical fallacies can be safely said to know more about logic than you, randman. Also the fact that I never attacked the bible probably needs pointing out (again) too.The point of showing that your only remaining logically valid point contradicted the bible was to put you in the position where you had to say bye-bye to one position or the other, you can't have it both ways. It would be hypocritical to hold to progressive ID & Biblical Creation when they are mutually exclusive. Which position do you hold to?MarkThis message has been edited by mark24, 11-18-2005 05:33 PMThis message has been edited by mark24, 11-18-2005 05:34 PM

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

In Message 16 Randman claimed:

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..the fossil record is grossly inconsistent with current evo models.

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And that there are only a

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... paltry few potential "transitionals between major taxon"

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So when he claim that he has "sound arguments" to deal with the fact that there are many transitionals that appear geologically where they should if evolution were true we should expect something more than ad hoc excuses.SO what arguments does he offer ?

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The answer could be the "lining up" is unreliable as scientists have
been persuaded, as is endemic in ToE in the past, to essentially interpret data according to the existing paradigm and leave out data that does not fit, creating a self-fulfilling illusions. Personally, I think there is a good bit of this going on, and I base that on other
areas where evos clung to false ideas for decades despite criticism and then finally lamented here and there.

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This is a speculative answer, and does not appeal to the actual evidence at all - not even the specific example of the mammalian jaw raised earlier in this thread.The suppposed basis of this argument can be just as easily dismissed as the product of Randman's own prejudice.This is not a sound argument.

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The other possibility is that some sort of progressive creation or ID-type of evolution is taking place so you see something causing species to appear, either via evolution or via creation, in a manner that leaves no fossil record of the transitions developing.

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This is another purely speculative answer, essentially amounting to the idea that "God (Or the Intelligent Designer) just did it that way". Which is a non-scientific answer not least because it could be claimed no matter what the fossil record showed. And that in itself makes evolution a better explanation - because it IS more constrained.

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Actually, a third possibility is somewhat metaphysical and without getting into too much detail could entail the past, present and future being influenced by the questions we ask of it, and that things, even the past, are not set in stone as we think. John Wheeler, a noted physicist, has suggested that the universe is "participatory" based on his work as a physicist and quantum physics, and thus suggests what we observe in the universe is partly the result of "the questions we ask of it" and thus our state of mind.

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What Randman carefully leaves out is any explanation of how he gets from the scientific ideas of Wheeler to an actual explanation of the data in this case. Without that this is not any sort of argument at all. Indeed it looks very like pseudoscientific "New Age" abuses of QM.In conclusion all of these are ad hoc excuses. None of them is supported by any appeal to the actual evidence. Two of the thre "answers" accept that the evidence actually IS consistent with evolution in this important respect and seek to explain it away - without actually offering a good explanation in either case.Wrose it seems that Rnadman's "rational" approach involves making claims about the evidence without actually bothering to find out what the evidnece actually is. Indeed Randman even denied that much of the evidence he tries to explain away actually existed. That is not a rational approach.T

randman, I did respond to all of your points, you made three points, I responded to three. Three ad hocs with an own goal thrown in to boot.#1 Your first point is an ad hoc. It fails to support it's own claims.#2 The second contradicts the bible, & you admit it is evidence of the ToE. I never said pointing out that your own scenario contradicts the bible supported my posistion in & of itself, but your own scenario contradicts your own beliefs as indicated. What a bizarre position to take!Given that god-did-it can be spouted out for any scenario whatsoever without evidence, it is also an ad hoc argument.#3 Your third point lacks any references to facts, & is just unsupported hand wavy hope-over-expectation. If you want to elevate it beyond that, then you have to show how the physicists in question have performed "lab experiments" that support you. Given that you haven't, point three is ad hoc, too.See post 39 also. I didn't concede defeat, nor did I attack the bible. I would expect someone who whines about being misrepresented so much would be a little more sensitive to doing it to others. I pointed out that your progressive evolution scenario as per the fossil record directly contradicts the bible, which it does. Nor did I say my comment supported my position like you think it did.I did note, however that you accept that the correlation is evidence for the ToE. You said that we see the universe as quantized (ie. energy) because information is quantized. I merely pointed out that if the evidence suggested the universe isn't quantized, then that's what we would accept, regardless of whether information is quantized, or not. It has bugger all to do with information being quantized biasing our conclusions. I also pointed out that the evidence supports the ToE & not biblical creation regardless of what the reigning paradigm was.As for the challenge, your claim, it is therefore incumbent on you to support it. I already asked for a paper showing that we see quantization as a result of informational quantization. It is conspicuously absent. I'm sure they are fine physicists, I just want you to show that they support your claim scientifically. You think I'm going to take your word for it? You are the one making the logically fallacious ad hoc arguments, & arguments that contradict your own belief system, so I find the comments above a little rich, don't you? Secondly (again), I never attacked the bible, I pointed out that your own scenario contradicted the bible. So which is it, the bible or progressive ID? You would love to play the poor set upon Christian, though, wouldn't you?But since you started out with a "what's good for the goose" comment, & at the risk of Tu quoque-ing. There is no evidence for a god, therefore this is a gap in your argument, therefore not only is it false, it is evidence against progressive ID. This is exactly the logic you apply with your fossil gap argument. But as you say, what's "good for the goose". Or are you going to commit a Special Pleading logical fallacy, too?MarkThis message has been edited by mark24, 11-18-2005 05:38 PM

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

I appealed to the history of the use and misuse of data withing the evo community. If you feel differently about that history, please know that others feel there is a tendency to make false claims as if they are facts before those facts are known. The initial depiction of Pakicetus with webbed feet is a good example. There was no reason at all to think Pakicetus had webbed feet. Nothing had been found to suggest that, but it sure made a more convincing argument if evos depicted Pakicetus with webbed feet, and so that's what we got.For the casual observer, this practice is so prevalent that it is difficult to rely, imo, on evo claims. That was my point, and I gave my evidence, and if you need more specific examples, I can give them as well, such as Haeckel's drawings, claiming human gill slits, Neanderthals as excessively ape-like, etc,... No, you are wrong on several points. First, your stance means theistic evolution cannot be true. Secondly, if the fossil record showed the transitions, then these hypotheses would be discredited. So you make a false claim to say they could be true no matter what the fossil record shows. In fact, people that think God exists and that accept evolutionary models and interpretation of the data, don't say ID or progressive creation is the answer but claim theistic evolution.It is the fossil record that points to no transitionals which begs the question of how did this occur. In other words, my stance is based on looking at the evidence, and the evo stance is based on ignoring the fossil evidence, imo. Maybe you haven't paid attention to the threads where I elaborate on this, and also the fact I was near banned for elaborating on this topic and since then only allude to aspects of it.

randman,Point #1 Even if true, this is another logical fallacy, the fallacy of composition. Just because an unrelated interpretation was wrong, does not mean all interpretations are wrong.Your first point is still an ad hoc, it fails to support it's own claims.Point #2. No, it does not. No one made any such stipulation. You are misrepresenting again. Irrelevant. The criticism is that your ID argument is ad hoc. This does not tackle that point. Irrelevant. The criticism is that your ID argument is ad hoc. This does not tackle that point. Again, this is still guilty of speculation, there is no evidence that god-did-it. This is why it is an ad hoc fallacy.Point #3 Exactly right. But you are making the argument here, not elsewhere. It is therefore incumbent on you to support your argument here, or at least provide a link to where you do. Remember, you have claimed that the past is influenced by the questions we ask of it. Support please.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

Except we are not talking of whether an interpretation is wrong in this context, but whether data can be trusted, and so the use of data in other areas of interpretation is valid when considering if data can fully trusted when put forth to make evo claims.Keep in mind I did not say it could not be trustedm but raise the issue since, imo, it is a valid concern. You asked for potential explanations concerning cladistics analysis, and I answered you.As to the rest of your post, you make no substantive points, but repeat bare assertions except one point, and unfortunately, is is where you demand I take the thread off-topic.

randman, Same difference, because other interpretations were not to be trusted, doesn't mean all interpretations were not to be trusted. This is still a fallacy of composition. You still need to show why cladistics/stratigraphy can't be trusted in & of itself. Wherever you paste the attributes of one part of a group on to all parts of a group = a compositional fallacy.That's like saying no atomic theory can be trusted because previous interpretations proved untrustworthy. Or that the germ theory of disease can't be trusted because previous interpretations were untrustworthy. Or that you are untrustworthy because some religious people are untrustworthy. Taking your points in reverse order, I am not demanding that you take the thread off topic, I have already said it was a side comment & can be ignored, it is you who are using it as an excuse to cut & run. But for the record, you have said I have brought the bible into a scientific discussion, when you haven't provided any science either! Doh!The rest of post 43 was not bare assertion, but showed that your points are irrelevent at tackling the criticisms levelled at it based on cited definitions of fallacious logic.I still rightly point out that you haven't supported your metaphysical (& you berate me for bringing non-science into a scientific discussion? ) claim that the past is informed by the question we ask of it. You also misrepresented both myself & PaulK by stating that our position requires that theistic evolution cannot be true (& who brought up theistic evolution in a scientific discussion? Good grief, randman, have you no shame?). I don't think pointing out your very real errors can be described as, "you make no substantive points", or, "repeat bare assertions", do you?All three points are ad hoc.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't