Where is the evidence for evolution?

The numbers of deleted messages are not reused, even if it's the last message that's deleted. No message numbers are missing in this thread, and message number twiddling isn't a capability available even to administrators.Nonetheless, I'm sure something unusual must have happened if you're certain the message was posted. Please let us know if this or something similar happens again.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

In many ways, a discussion is a search for common ground. I think Scott is saying that it is difficult to tell if any progress toward a shared understanding is being made if you don't provide any indication that you understand and/or accept the explanations. In other words, do you feel that you and Scott have walked down at least a little of the same road together? It wasn't possible to tell.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

Hi Sonnikke, It might help to reread my message. It wasn't about questions. In general, inquiry is good and therefore questions are good.What my message was about was communication, in this case through some indication as to whether you understand what was said, and if so, do you agree or disagree. I had the somewhat the same reaction Scott did. Your questions seemed somewhat in the Socratic mode as if to point out problems or difficulties. There's nothing wrong with that approach, of course, but since the questions didn't seem informed by the responses they addressed it could be misinterpreted as indicating your not interested in explanations, and that's how discussion breaks down.I'm not taking sides in the discussion. You're perfectly free to agree or disagree with Scott as you like. I would simply like the discussion to move forward with a clear focus, but this is difficult at this point because Scott has no idea whether you understood his explanation, and if you did, whether you agree or disagree. Without this information he has no idea whether he should explain again from scratch perhaps using other words or examples, of if he simply needs to clarify a little, or if he should move on to the next point, or whether your questions were intended as some form of rebuttal.

Hi SonnikkeNo need to quote so much, my message was immediately previous. It was excessive quoting that drove the decision to remove the "reply quote" button. That's good to hear, because we couldn't tell. The last time Scott and I exchanged email I think he said something like, "You @#$%&*@%, how dare you suspend me, I'm never visiting your two-bit board again." (Sorry, Scott, couldn't resist )No, Scott and I are not communicating, I'm just reading what he wrote for everyone to see, including you, in Message 203: "Did you understand what I did write?" That's why I said Scott has no idea whether you understood his explanation, because he said so openly, not because we're secretly plotting against you. As Admin I'm neutral on the issues, but highly biased against obfuscated discussion. Only in that sense am I taking sides. Okay, but then you're going to have to ask better questions. As I said earlier, your questions gave no indication whether you understood what was said, in fact they were phrased skeptically as if nothing was accepted, so without knowing how much, if any, of his explanations you accepted how can Scott know where to begin? I'm repeating myself somewhat now, but Scott was explaining general principles. Since he doesn't yet know if you understood the explanation of general principles, how can he embark on an explanation of exceptions?Beyond that, I think you've misunderstood Scott's use of the word "exception." I don't believe he was talking about cases where the rules don't apply, but rather situations where there are complicating circumstances.A good analogy would be explaining what constitutes a completed pass in American football. The general principle is that a pass is completed when a receiver catches it inbounds without the ball having first touched the ground. Some complicating factors:

• What if he catches it after having jumped into the air inbounds but comes down out of bounds?
• What if he catches it after having jumped into the air inbounds and would have come down inbounds but was pushed out of bounds by an opposing player.
• What if he runs out of bounds then comes back in bounds before catching it.
• What it he gets both feet in bounds but was juggling the ball while going out of bounds.
• What if the ball hits another player before it is caught?
• What if the receiver belongs to the other team?
• What if the ball hits the crossbar?

Get the idea? And none of these complicating factors should raise any doubts about the basic principle of what constitutes a completed pass.Whew!Could you please take another stab at responding to Scott's post so that both he and those trying to follow along know what you actually thought of his post? Thanks!------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

Hi Sonnikke,I saw Scott's reply to this message, and your reply to his reply. Scott's post *was* a rant, but it was also accurate. Look at your reply again: As Scott has already explained, these conclusions and questions don't follow from Scott not knowing something, and when inserted into the middle of what was becoming a serious and productive discussion it just looks like you're looking for the faintest excuse to declare evolution faith-based and be done with it.Look at it this way. Ask yourself if you know everything about your religion. You don't, do you. Maybe there's an area of your religion that you're an expert in, but you're not an expert in all of it, are you. You rely on other experts in other areas, don't you. You rightly believe that the religious questions you don't have answers for *do* have answers, and that the experts in those other areas could provide those answers were they available to ask. And the fact that you personally do not know everything about your religion does not mean your beliefs are founded upon nothing but faith with no evidence or reason, does it. And you'd think it pretty rude if someone inserted such a conclusion into the middle of a serious discussion, wouldn't you.I hope you two can resume the discussion.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

This is starting to come into better focus, and I think I understand better now the issue you, and many other Creationists, have with this sort of reply. I'll take a stab at this, and you can let me know whether I've gotten any closer.I think the issue isn't so much that Scott doesn't know the answer, but more that he just assumes the answer must fit within an evolutionary framework. You're amazed that he can just assume that a branch of biology with whose deep details he's unfamiliar fits into the same evolutionary framework as those parts of biology with which he's better acquainted.There are so many ways to address this that I don't know where to begin or which ones to use. I suppose I could start out by saying that when practicing science you assume that all phenomena have natural, as opposed to supernatural, explanations. If this assumption leads the investigation into a corner of contradictions then I suppose one could begin considering the supernatural, but then you encounter the problem of determining how one tells the difference between a really thorny problem and a miracle.So far, the history of science is of one thorny problem after another giving way to naturalistic explanations. If you look at the thorny problems at the beginning of the 20th century, such as the indetectable ether that just *had* to exist, and said, "Here be God," then in 1906 when Einstein came out with his special theory of relativity you would have had to say, "Whoops, guess not." Or if you go back further in time to the 16th century and examine the thorny problem of what mechanism keeps the planets in their orbits and said, "Here be God," then when Newton came along you would have had to once again say, "Whoops, guess not."This is why ID always focuses on the frontiers of scientific advancement, because that's where the thorniest questions are, and that's where it's easiest to say, "Aha, this problem is so thorny and complex (irreducibly complex in Behe's case) that not only can no one figure it out, it will *never* be figured out, and therefore 'Here be God.'" And in most cases within 20 years or so you'll again be wrong.Those unfamiliar with the history of scientific advances, a couple examples of which I've just provided, can easily believe that science doesn't really advance, that it's really just a collection of facts and theories that scientists like to play with, and that in the case of evolution what they're really doing is playing with blasphemy and the denial of God's word. But not acknowledging that science studies the world and universe as it really is and as science actually finds it, and that this knowledge can grow and increase and build on itself, would be to deny reality. Science has made dramatic contributions to the changes and advances of the past few centuries. It is easy for anyone to look back over the last hundred years and see the marks of scientific progress by talking to parents and grandparents. My own mother grew up on the Alberta prairie in a house with no electricity or plumbing (rural electrification took longer in Canada than in the US). One of the dramatic advancements she remembers is when the pump was installed next to the kitchen sink from having been out in the yard, but now she uses a computer, watches a TiVo and cooks in a microwave. She hits a button and her car starts so it can be warm by the time she goes out.Scientific advances have also come in biology, many of them with medical consequences. If scientists were just making it up then they couldn't look at a baby's DNA and determine whether it had a certain genetic defect. DNA identification wouldn't be admissible in court. We wouldn't even know what DNA looks like. We wouldn't have CAT scanners and MRIs, or even electroencephalographs and fetal monitors.And at no point during all this scientific development has an area that we couldn't eventually penetrate been found. Maybe some of the current thorny problems represent the first cases of such problems, but I wouldn't bet on it because it would run counter to the example of 500 years of scientific advances.Where I think the problem comes in for you is that you *know* evolution is wrong, but even more pertinent, you seem to believe that scientists are covering up some deep secret of missing evidence, and so you grasp at every hint of the unknown as the smoking gun.But there is so much that is unknown. You should have no problem finding things we don't know because there are simply so many of them. There are more scientists alive today then at any time in world history - if there were not a lot that we didn't know then there would be little for them to do and they'd move into other professions. So get used to the idea that there are lots of things we don't know.And, of course, as Scott has pointed out, science today is so big and so complex that to make progress almost everyone has to sub-specialize and sub-sub-specialize into narrow disciplines. I don't even attempt to explain my area of sub-sub-specialization to anyone outside my field. When my father was still alive and we got together one question he would invariably ask would be, "So, tell me, what is it you do again?" And I could never explain it to the point where he could understand, and this man was an organic chemist. By the way, please don't think I'm bragging. I'm not claiming to be brilliant, just very, very specialized, as are most scientists today. But the important point is that all this specialization means that many scientists know little outside their specialty beyond the general principles of their own branch of science.There's another aspect to all this, and it's a very important one. There is a significant and extremely important difference between these two things:

• Evidence of evolution, for instance, fossils in the geologic column, or classification systems for living organisms, or genetic relationship trees, etc.
• Projection of an evolutionary framework onto a biological question. This means asking how evolution might have produced something, say an eye or a hand. It is *not* evidence. The proposed scenario might be bolstered by evidence, or it might be completely speculative.

I'm no biologist and have no idea whatsoever whether there's a good answer today for the question you asked about the evidence for how various genetic control mechanisms might have evolved. But, the evidence we have so far indicates that all living things have arrived at their current forms through the process of evolution, ie, mutation and selection, because these are the only naturalistic processes we know that produce new species, and to this point in time no one has ever come across a scientific problem that indicates non-natural means must be considered. So, if one is doing science then one has no choice but to project what we know onto the question. Hence, when you ask your question, the only scientific answer possible is that the evolution of genetic control mechanisms took place through the same process as all other evolution, ie, mutation and selection.So now I think it's time to throw the question back to you. In light of all I've just explained, when Scott says he doesn't know how genetic control mechanisms might have evolved, but that it probably had something to do with mutation and selection, does it still make sense to you to assume that, even if science has no good answers, that this represents a thorny problem calling into question not only all of biology, whose modern form is based upon evolution, but even all of science, which is based upon the assumption of naturalistic causes?Hope this gets closer to your question. If not I promise to be briefer next time.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

Please, Scott, I know I'm responsible for prodding you to be more patient and forthcoming and that subsequent developments have tended to reinforce your viewpoint and not mine, but if I could indulge upon your patience a little longer it would be appreciated.By the way, about my tongue-in-cheek portrayal of your email, yes, Moose mentioned to me the email you sent him, but I actually had in mind a parody of the email you sent me last year after your first suspension. It wasn't intended to be accurate or anything, hence the smiley, I apologize if I stepped over a line. I was just trying to point out to Sonnikke that during your time here we've been more at loggerheads than anything else, and that charging us with complicity made no sense.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

This thread has become focused on genetic evidence for evolution. Discussion of the creation of the world should be moved to a thread in either the Cosmology and the Big Bang forum, or the Geology and the Great Flood forum.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

I've already stepped much too far outside the bounds of moderator. One thing you said is helpful, though. If you do not accept science's definition of science, in your case the requirement that only evidence in some way available to the five senses be considered, then it explains why you accept so little that is explained. You might find it helpful to explore the issue of what constitutes acceptable scientific evidence over in the Is It Science? forum.My interest here is to keep discussion on-topic and moving forward. I'd like to request that you and Scott diminish the number of content-free exchanges.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

Let me explain again.You ask many questions and seem completely uninterested in the answers. You seem engaged more in a search for the rotten core of evolution than in understanding it. It's like you're going through a barrel picking up one after another ripened apple and saying, "No, that one's not rotten," then tossing it aside without savoring it or even giving it any consideration. In other words, you seem uninterested in good information, you're only looking for the bad stuff. For instance, you jumped on Scott's not knowing something like it was the fatal weakness of evolution when science couldn't make any progress if there weren't tons that we didn't know, both as individuals and as a community. You seem hyper-skeptical about everything without any reason or justification, for instance, gene duplication. Scott, an evolutionist, gave you loads of information and you didn't accept any of it. Peter Borger, a creationist, also told you it happens. Why don't you ask Peter Borger the same questions you were asking Scott?If you're really interested in the details that you keep asking about then try to make it appear that you're interested in and understand the answers. And if you're not interested then stop wasting people's time. There are many evolutionists here who are glad to explain evolution to those seeking to understand it, but that doesn't seem your goal.If that's not actually the case then perhaps you could try to make it seem less like you're on a witch hunt. There's nothing wrong with not accepting evolution, or with being very skeptical about evolution, but at least be honest when you ask the question about why you're asking it. It always seems that way because of the nature of the Creationist position. Creationism is divided into a multiplicity of viewpoints, while there is only one theory of evolution. Since all evolutionists share essentially the same view, they can all argue the same point. Creationists, on the other hand, can rarely provide support for each other because they all have different views. TC does not agree with TB does not agree with PB does not agree with WMScott does not agree with LRP and so forth.Added by edit: By the way, it would equally objectionable for someone to ask detailed religious questions as if interested in getting into the nitty-gritty, but to give those answers very short shrift after someone put in a lot of effort, make what appears to be little to no effort to comprehend what has been explained, and in fact to treat them dismissively. If you're in learning mode, then stick with learning mode. If you're in challenging mode, then stick with challenging mode. Don't ask what look to be sincerely interested questions only to ignore most of the answer and attack what you think are weaknesses. It's a kind of bait and switch tactic that most people don't appreciate.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator[This message has been edited by Admin, 03-06-2003]

Evidence that this process takes place has been presented to you, so in order to state that the scenario is hypothetical you first have to address how the evidence is invalid or misinterpreted.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

Hi Sonnikke,My post wasn't intended as criticism, but to help you understand why you're attracting the attention of administrators, which is what you asked. I'm sorry you didn't find the clarification helpful.It isn't your point of view that is being challenged but your style of discussion. Though I think you managed to misconstrue most of my post, I'm not sure further attempts at clarification would prove any more successful than previous attempts. My goal as Admin is to keep discussion moving forward, not to engage in debates with members. To the extent that you prove an obstacle to that goal you will continue to attract the attention of administrators.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

I think this is a pretty good example of the problem. After all I've written in messages to you, far far more than to any other single member, and probably for the same reason Adminnemooseus gave, that you seem a likable guy who only needs a nudge in the right direction, there is still no hint of any understanding. You ask the questions so nicely and with such a strong undercurrent of "I'm just trying to understand this" that everyone has been very accomodative, but it is all for naught - you either dispute the answer or just ask more questions. This isn't a discussion, it's an "exhaust the opposition with endless questions whose lengthy and detailed answers I'll ignore or misunderstand" strategy.Now, I know the above must seem inaccurate and unfair to you, but I'm afraid that's the way I see it. I try to run the site for all the members, that's why we have both evolutionist and Creationist representation on the administrative staff. I've taken administrative action in the form of 24-hour suspensions against both evolutionists and Creationists, so as far as board administration goes I don't feel particularly vulnerable to the charge of bias. Perhaps it would help if you sent email to Adminaquility or AdminTC, asking them to look in and see if they have any helpful observations or advice, for either you or for me.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

Perhaps you could take just one of Schraf's references and point out how it is untrue.------------------
--EvC Forum Administrator

I have two advisements to issue:

1. Discussion of the definition of evidence must be moved to a thread in the Is It Science? forum. Someone please open the thread and post a link to it here. Board policy is to never delete messages, but given the history of recent past discussions on the topic, I will be making an exception in this thread. Messages discussing the definition of evidence here will be deleted, even if it's just one sentence of a lengthy tome.
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   Added by edit: That goes for messages in any other thread other than the thread designated for discussion of the definition of evidence.
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2. Zephan's quotes from the Margulis/Sagan book have been given short shrift. The book needs to be addressed in a forthright way.

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--EvC Forum Administrator[This message has been edited by Admin, 03-13-2003]