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Author | Topic: Dissecting the Evolutionist Approach to Explanation and Persuation | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I answered you. I think I AM defending it by repeating it. Bringing it to general attention again after somebody's attempt to bury it under what they consider to be contrary evidence.
But I will stay out of this now.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
A "prediction" in science is simply a "logical consequence" of the theory. That kind of prediction doesn't have the convincingness of a real prediction. It really shouldn't be called a "prediction."
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Modulous Member Posts: 7801 From: Manchester, UK Joined: |
If you are able to tell the result of something, before it happens using a theory, its called prediction. You predict the way something is going to turn out.
quote: Emile Zuckerkandl and Linus Pauling, 1965 To translate. If ToE is true and if Evolution happened then we should see congruence. The theory predicts this congruence, before the congruence is tested. This is a prediction. It is also a falsification test. If it turned out some other way, ToE would be in serious trouble. I think this line of thinking - what makes a scientific prediction a prediction - would make an intereting topic if you want to discuss it further?I don't agree with the subtitle so much, but the pun came to me and I had to use it. Sorry. This message has been edited by Modulous, Thu, 09-March-2006 03:32 PM
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AdminJar Inactive Member |
I think that is a very important concept and also central to several currently active threads. If you will propose such a topic I'll see that it gets promoted.
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Ooook! Member (Idle past 5844 days) Posts: 340 From: London, UK Joined: |
Hi Robin,
You can't "predict" something that you've already found or that you don't know about. All you can say is, if evolution is true, this would likely be the case. Think about this statement for a minute . When was DNA discovered? When were reliable sequencing techniques developed? Well after the theory of evolution was established. That the molecular phylogenies would match up to those drawn up by analysing fossils was a clear prediction, once the techniques were in place. The experiments were then done to test that prediction. Nothing ad hoc about it - just in the past. As a matter of interest (and to keep on topic) do you see a problem with this reasoning? Or do you feel that it has been badly explained in this and other posts?
Edit: Oh Bum! Mod has just beaten me to it! In a much more effective way. This message has been edited by Ooook!, 09-03-2006 03:38 PM
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
If ToE is true we should see... is a prediction that can never be verified. It's all a matter of interpretation. There may be other explanations of what you predicted to occur and saw. You'll never know because there is no way to test it. So for instance congruence is predicted. But you already see the consistency of the phylogenetic tree. You are working with something that already has a certain logical direction to it. So you confirm that logical direction with a separate test from another angle and think you've supported the ToE. Well in a sense you have, but if the congruence isn't the result of genetic descent you won't have a way of finding that out by this test.
This is not like REAL science of the sort Robin gave an example of where when something is predicted to happen based on a particular theory it actually does or doesn't happen and you can know for sure from the result that the theory was correct or not.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
As a matter of interest (and to keep on topic) do you see a problem with this reasoning? Or do you feel that it has been badly explained in this and other posts? There's no problem with it except that it overstates the case for the convincingness of the evidence. The evidence is very indirect except for fossils. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Ooook! Member (Idle past 5844 days) Posts: 340 From: London, UK Joined: |
The evidence is very indirect except for fossils.
This is quite an interesting statement. I view both types of evidence as extremely direct tests for change over time. Can you explain why you think that fossils - and the predictions borne out by them - are direct but sequences of DNA are indirect? Maybe I've missed it somewhere upthread
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Wounded King Member Posts: 4149 From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Joined: |
This is not like REAL science of the sort Robin gave an example of where when something is predicted to happen based on a particular theory it actually does or doesn't happen and you can know for sure from the result that the theory was correct or not. This doesn't sound like real science, it sounds like the sort of shoddy scientism that is all too prevalent. You can't know for sure whether any scientific theory is correct or not, but you can confirm it and exclude alternative possibilities to such an extent that it is taken as highly reliable and useful. Other than in a simple matter of degree I'm not sure what distinction can be drawn between a prediction of something like the motion of celestial bodies and predictions of patterns of genetic relatedness. TTFN, WK
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Fossil evidence is ALSO indirect. All these preserved dead things, that appear to have been laid down in a particular order. What's direct evidence about that?
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jar Member (Idle past 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Faith writes: If ToE is true we should see... is a prediction that can never be verified. Well, of course you can verify it. But...and this is what you fail to address. More impostantly, it can falsify a theory. If you make a prediction and then what you find does NOT match what was predicted, then there is reason to believe that the prdiction, and the theory, are wrong. This is very, very important. Falsification, finding out what doesn't fit, is how progress is made. Does that make sense to you and do you agree with that? Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
Can you explain why you think that fossils - and the predictions borne out by them - are direct but sequences of DNA are indirect? Maybe I've missed it somewhere upthread Fossils are real snapshots or sculptures of the past. DNA/ morphology is about TODAY'S species (with perhaps the odd exception). So it's indirect.
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jar Member (Idle past 423 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Fossil evidence is ALSO indirect. All these preserved dead things, that appear to have been laid down in a particular order. What's direct evidence about that? What is direct evidence is that all those dead things ARE laid down in a particular order. Aslan is not a Tame Lion
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Wounded King Member Posts: 4149 From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA Joined: |
I'd suggest that if anything molecular evidence is considerably more direct. We can have much greater confidence in the provenance of genetic sequences, indeed it is quite possible for anyone to extract DNA from an organism and analyse it genetically, whereas not everyone can go out and dig up a virtually identical fossil to some specific 'transitional'.
And if you don't need to collect the data yourself then it is even easier since almost all gnetic information used in the published literature is deposited on online databases like Genbank from which anyone can get vast numbers of sequences. Even entire genomes can be downloaded by anyone. There are similarly a large number of freely available tools to allow exactly the same anlayses as are performed in the vast majority of papers to be conducted on a personal computer. So anyone anywhere with access to a computer with an internet connection can perform their own investigations of the genetic evidence for common descent and evolution. TTFN, WK
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1473 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
It's not direct evidence unless you KNOW why they are in that order. It is merely suggestive evidence.
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