For Inquisitor, et al: What is Evolution?

Mainly for Inquisitor, but anyone else with a definition to provide may do so. I don't plan to be the first.Keep in mind that langauge is descriptive, not perscriptive: Words describe and refer to meaning, they do not contain it. Therefore, any attempt to supply definitions cannot be intended as a final word about what evolution is or is not, but can only be used to ensure we're all talking about the same thing when we say "evolution".This may not be good enough for Inquisitor, but we shall see. Who'd like to start?

This is not so much a definition of evolution specifically as it is a definition of science. Science, by definition, precludes the supernatural as an explanation. Which isn't, nessicarily, to ay it doesn't exist - it just can't ever be a scientific explanation. If it were, it would cease to be "supernatural". This is also incorrect. Evolution as a modern theory and model is the result of the efforts of hundreds of scientists. Strictly speaking, evolution as a theory predates Darwin, even. Darwin may have planted the seed for the modern theory but it is by no means his alone.

Or, say, turning water into wine? Raising the dead? Parting the Red Sea? That does sound hard to defend. Best of luck with that.This was a topic for Mike the Wiz and others to pose honest questions about the modern theory of evolution and what it claims, not for wiseguys to shoot their mouths off.You don't have to believe the theory to post in this topic; just be genuinely interested in what the theory actually claims.[This message has been edited by crashfrog, 05-11-2003]

Value judgement on your part; not part of the theory. The big bang has nothing to do with the theory of evolution. What you've described is a philosophy of materialism. ToE isn't philosophy.So, to answer your question, that's a terrible definition of the Theory of Evolution. It might be a great definition of a certain philosophy but it's pretty clear you don't know what constitutes scientific theory.

Sure, but the people doing the most work in evolutionary biology aren't cosmologists, they're biologists. Why would that be unless cosmology was irrelavent to evolution?Evolution isn't a theory to explain the history of reality. It's an explanation relevant only to the diversity of life on earth. Evolution begins with a replicating organism on planet earth, not before.Clearly what you are against is a philisophy of materialism; this is larger than just evolution. Hrm, interesting - what would evidence for the supernatural look like? How would we tell the difference between what we can't yet explain and what we'll never be able to explain? Interesting - in what way? How does the clearly preserved sorting of the fossil record, combined with relative inferred age, support sudden universal creation? It doesn't seem to, to me. Wheras, an astronomically larger number of scientists would agree with my criticisms of your definition. So what's your point? I have way more scientists on my side.

Now I don't understand. You think sea fossils in uplifted mountains (plate tectonics - heard of it?) and the industrial revolution are supernatural? That still doesn't address the fossil sorting aspect. Fossils are even sorted by criteria that wouldn't affect flood survivability, such as complexity of shell suture. Why would more complex sutures appear higher in the record than less complex one? I don't see how a flood would cause that. Where do you suppose indoctrination is more likely to occur? Honestly: a science classroom or a church? Creationism's church connections make it a much more likely place for "indoctrination" to occr. That's why churches call it "doctrine". I don't think anyone questions that you could explain the data with supernatural explanations. The question is, is it good for science to accept those explanations over naturalistic ones? I don't think so; naturalistic models have served us very will throughout the history of science. But it's a methodology issue.Personally, I don't think any lack of evidence is sufficient to prompt science to seek supernatural explanations - and evidence for the supernatural would make it natural. I think that's a view shared by the majority of scientific philosophers.

You hang out with some pretty negative people. I guess I'm a little more hopeful as is everyone I know. If anything destroys us it'll be a natural disease... I think Zephyr just covered this? Because in a 4 billion year-old earth, erosion happens. If the flood only happened 4000 years ago, why isn't the column more universally complete? That still doesn't explain sorting for reasons that have nothing to do with behavior, intelligence, or motive power. And it doesn't begin to explain why the fossil order is almost totally bulletproof - I mean, surely one or two humans - even a city's worth of them - were so dumb that some of them drowned right away? Or had died the previous day and were already buried in "precambrian" sediment? It simply doesn't explain why no humans whatsoever are found with dinosaurs.Why couldn't flying dinosaurs survive as well as modern large birds? Sloths can't run; why don't we find them down with the idiot dinosaurs? It's just a stupid argument. I can't believe anybody takes it seriously. heh - some prophecy. I could write a book, put in the same prophecy (and a few more for good measure - "Unrest in the Middle East!") - would you believe it? Because it would certainly be true - some people would not believe my book. I suspect if you examined the beliefs of the French philosophers that our modern democracy is based on, you'd find a whole lot of atheists. Perhaps you could point out where "democracy" is found in the bible? Heck, if our founding fathers were alive today you'd find their beliefs very, very different from your own. Consider for a moment why the numbers we use are called "arabic". Could that be because modern mathematics was invented in a Muslim culture? They also invented astronomy and medical science way before anything in your christian world. The wheel was invented in Iraq. (Atheists are not communists, anyway. I'm not, for instance.) The Chinese invented the printing press, gunpowder/fireworks/rocketry, paper money, noodles. I could go on. Honestly a little less ethnocentricity would make you look less credulous. Well, I'm clearly not as old as you - but in my experience, older people are looking more for comfort in the face of impending mortality rather than objective (and scary!) scientific reality. It's not outlawed in schools - I took a bible to class all the time in school. (I did go to public school, yes.) Heck, I'd even teach from it, if I were a teacher - but I'd teach from it in the context of social examination of religious mythology, like I would examine any other religion. I wouldn't use it in place of science.Sure, schools tend to decend on anything even remotely christian - but it's a backlash to christians who insist on their worldview being promulgated as science.

This part I don't understand. Your use of n twice confuses me. Do you mean that if I have 2 darts, I have a 1/2 chance of hitting the target? 3 darts, 1/3 chance? By this logic if I only have one dart (1/1 chance of hitting) it hits every time.You should be more careful picking your variable names if the above isn't what you meant.

What I don't understand is - are these hypothetical darts whose accuracy decreases as the number of them increases, or do you believe this to be fundamental property of real-life darts?I realize this is nit-picking, but I'm curious.Given n darts, each with a constant chance of hitting the target, the chances of all of them not hitting the target decreases as n increases. Is that what you're after?

Looks like Inquisitor is gone. Perhaps the topic should close? I think there's already other topics for some of the disputes we've spawned here.No one who has an actual question about the theory has posted. I guess it's done, then?

Come to think of it, weren't we closing this thread?Inquisitor has stopped inquisiting. All we have now is Buzsaw coming up with value-laden misstatements of the ToE. Maybe we could give this a day or two for the probability aspect to be resolved but I'd say we're about done after that...