How can Biologists believe in the ToE?

Even the delusional have their limits I guess...I don't think they are going to address it because it simply isn't addressable.-x

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Idiots speak louder than words(yes its supposed to be ironical... twice)

On several other threads Refpunk has made several absurd assertions about what biologists do and do not do. These are two recent examples: Please read the OP on this thread and then defend why you think there is a world wide disinformation conspiracy.If you can.Enjoy.

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Yes, I will join your silly discussion. Why is it not OT for you to come into my thread and ask me to input my view on something I have no clue, no reference, and in fact no idea of. Please do not respond to this unless you like to argue off topic.Biologists believe things they think are facts based on evidence. How can they? Easy, how can anyone believe in God? Experience, evidence, data, hypotheses, theory, assumptions.

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Yes, I will join your silly discussion.

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"Silly" discussion?What was that?You wouldn't be treating others with condecention and contempt and trying to belittle their ideas, would you?Do you like it when people treat your ideas like that? If you object to it, don't you think others do as well?

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Why is it not OT for you to come into my thread and ask me to input my view on something I have no clue, no reference, and in fact no idea of.

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It is perfectly acceptable to invite someone to an appropriate thread to answer an off-topic question or discuss an off-topic issue.In fact, that is what we are supposed to do.As for you having "no idea" of these things, you must, otherwise you wouldn't make the claims that you do.You have repeatedly said that people who accept the Theory of Evolution are mistaken.Such a claim has logical consequences. Like, if it is true, then you must believe that all Biologists, Paleontologists, and Geneticists are so dunderheaded and horrible at doing science that they don't realize how wrong they all are about everything they've discovered. Or, you must believe that there is a worldwide conspiracy among professional scientists to delude the public into thinking that the ToE is true when it is really false.If you don't think either one of these scenarios is correct, then what is your explanation for why these hundreds of thousands of professional scientists have gone so incredibly wrong in their science over the last 150 years or more?

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Biologists believe things they think are facts based on evidence. How can they? Easy, how can anyone believe in God? Experience, evidence, data, hypotheses, theory, assumptions.

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So, are you saying that people who believe in God only have a tentative belief in God which could be rejected if new evidence comes to light?Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

Just think of this as an opportunity to get a clue. But you were not asked to explain why a reasonable person would think that biologists have got biology right --- you were asked to explain why you think that they've got it wrong.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I assumed the topic was based on the title. I guess I was wrong. "How can biologists believe in the ToE? I think that is self explanatory. More appeal to authority. classic. It only takes a few (or one) bad assumptions to corrupt a scientific study. I'm not attacking their research, only some of their assumptions and conclusions. "only" is the key word. Limiting it to your thought, very unimpressive. Why do people incite me to write negatively, as if your purpose is to lure me into these little squabbles. Am I to let these just lie? Your question seems to circulate around the idea that all scientists research the same sciences. If a paleontologist suggests through research that birds and dinosaurs have common ancestry then the biologist will study how this could be possible. Not, as I understand it in most cases, to prove something right but more to line up with a certain theory for ill or good.Why do I think these people are wrong?
1. age of the earth. I don't think anybody can use an assumption like uniformitarianism and postulate theories that could very well be incorrect. Thus leading into ideas that radiometric dating can work. In geology you need this uniform idea, in biology you need drastic environmental changes, it just doesn't stack up.2. irreducible complexity - Micheal Behe. The only argument against this that I have read is that this just can't be true. Behe isn't a real scientist. Damage his character so you don't have to face the facts.3. anomalies in geology. polystrate fossils and objects, out of place artifacts, angular unconformities, dinosaur and man footprints.4. Living dinosaurs.
http://www.livingdinos.com/mokele_mbembe.html5. The lack of any transitional fossils. and this is hilarious:
CC200: Transitional fossils
Might as well say that their isn't any. Only a good imagination can fill the "gaps." And anyways what about the invertebrate transitions?6. Mathematics. The Scientific Evidence for Creation, by Duane Gish
nodnc.com is available at DomainMarket.com. Call 888-694-67357. Order to disorder, thermodynamics. I think this is probably a weak argument however the talk origins apologetic seems lacking.
From: Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution It seems that they are excluding original design and the implications thereof.Lets start here. Edited by Vashgun, : insight to incite

Vashgun please don't embarrass yourself this way. Let's have a look... "Someone from the Internet" named Doreen recently reported this fantastic evidence.... Wow.And look there is also picture.... A picture of plastic dino in the grass.....These people are out to fool the fools. Edited by iceage, : No reason given.

From your own link:

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There are many transitional fossils. The only way that the claim of their absence may be remotely justified, aside from ignoring the evidence completely, is to redefine "transitional" as referring to a fossil that is a direct ancestor of one organism and a direct descendant of another.

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Links work better when you actually follow them, Vash, and read the material presented to you. What you're doing is just ignoring the evidence because you have the crazy idea it's against your religion.

So lets deal with your points.

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1. age of the earth. I don't think anybody can use an assumption like uniformitarianism and postulate theories that could very well be incorrect. Thus leading into ideas that radiometric dating can work. In geology you need this uniform idea, in biology you need drastic environmental changes, it just doesn't stack up.

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So here you feel free to proclaim that an entire field of science - and one which you don't understand - is wrong. Geologists don't use strict uniformitarianism and haven't for some time. The only place you are likely to find it now is in YEC arguments for a young Earth.
Biology doesn't need any "drastic environmental changes" that are rejected by geologists - in fact geology is a major source of evidence for the nature of the environment. ANd there are no plausible major environmental changes that could even theoretically disrupt radiometric dating. The only contradiction is in your imagination.

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2. irreducible complexity - Micheal Behe. The only argument against this that I have read is that this just can't be true. Behe isn't a real scientist. Damage his character so you don't have to face the facts.

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Behe's argument relies on a simplistic model of evolution. Mueller, using a more realistic model predicted that evolution would produce irreducible complexity, decades before Behe wrote his book. There's at least one experiment where a two-part system has evolved in the laboratory and a theoretical studiy using a computer model (AVIDA) has also demonstrated the evolution of irreducible complexity.

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3. anomalies in geology. polystrate fossils and objects, out of place artifacts, angular unconformities, dinosaur and man footprints.

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Polystrate fossils - those that actually exist - are adequately explained by geology.
Every out-of-place artifact I know of has a questionable provenance - there is no reliable record of where they were found. One "the Coso artifact" turned out to be the remains of a spark plug - it was even possible to identify the manufacturer.
Angular unconformities are evidence for an old Earth.
There are no confirmed human footprints found alongside dinosaur footprints.

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4. Living dinosaurs.
http://www.livingdinos.com/mokele_mbembe.html

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If some dinosaurs (other than birds) had managed to survive the KT extinction and live on to modern times it would have no signfiicant effect on evolutionary theory at all.

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5. The lack of any transitional fossils. and this is hilarious:
CC200: Transitional fossils
Might as well say that their isn't any. Only a good imagination can fill the "gaps." And anyways what about the invertebrate transitions?

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There are many transitional fossils and that article is nowhere near exhaustive. And it DOES list several examples of invertebrate transitions. DId you read it at all ?

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6. Mathematics. The Scientific Evidence for Creation, by Duane Gish
nodnc.com is available at DomainMarket.com. Call 888-694-6735

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The first article is a pack of nonsense. I really wish that more creationists would pay attention to Dembski's saner utterances. At least he has some idea of how to frame a probability argument. The probability argument - which I assume is the one you refer to - assumes a single attempt with a single successful outcome, accomplished by pure random combination. As such it is simply a strawman.The second article has the same flaws.

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7. Order to disorder, thermodynamics. I think this is probably a weak argument however the talk origins apologetic seems lacking.
From: Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution

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The talkorigins article is hardly an apologetic. The section you quote points out that order to disorder does occur naturally without an intelligent agent or information "embedded" in nature.

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It seems that they are excluding original design and the implications thereof.

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It seems that they exclude it because they are listing examples where no intelligent agent is involved.

Hi Vashgun,Your first two points dovetail nicely to create a self-rebuttal. First you argue that the earth isn't ancient, then you cite Behe's concept of irreducible complexity. Did you know that Behe accepts an ancient earth and universe and most of evolutionary history? This is from page 5 of Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box: So Behe's right when he argues for irreducible complexity and wrong when he accepts an ancient earth and universe?Behe isn't really a practicing scientist any more. If you visit his webpage at Lehigh University (http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/faculty/behe.html) and look at his list of selected publications you'll see that it is pretty sparse with regard to technical papers in peer-reviewed journals. Here they are: Contrast this with another biologist from Lehigh University that I chose randomly, Barry Bean (he's listed right above Behe on the faculty page, which was how I chose him). Here's his list of recent publications (http://www.lehigh.edu/~inbios/faculty/barry.htm): Quite a list, huh! Behe is nearly a persona non grata at Lehigh and isn't really engaged in much serious research. He primarily involves himself with promoting his views through books, articles and public appearances, and with the Discovery Institute, the primary organizational force behind the ID movement. About transitional fossils, the TalkOrigins page you referenced includes examples of transitionals at the levels of species, genus, family, order, class, phylum and kingdom, and it includes a number of invertebrate transitions. In order to successfully argue for a dearth of transitionals you have to at least choose a couple examples from the list and describe why they aren't really transitionals. If the excerpt you provided was all that was said about thermodynamics then I would agree with you that it is poorly argued. But your excerpt is only the 2nd half of the 2nd paragraph of a three paragraph section that does a pretty good job of describing the thermodynamic issue at a lay level.--Percy

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I assumed the topic was based on the title. I guess I was wrong. "How can biologists believe in the ToE? I think that is self explanatory.

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Well, the topic is based on the opening post, not the title.The opening post explained what was meant by the title (which was a paraphrase of someone who was incredulous that anyone would accept the ToE), and expanded upon the implications of that position for professional scientists.

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More appeal to authority. classic.

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This is not an appeal to authority. It is merely the logical implication of your position.

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It only takes a few (or one) bad assumptions to corrupt a scientific study.

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Sure, but you aren't talking about one study. You are talking about hundreds of thousands of scientists in various fields being completely wrong about the fundamental unifying theory for all of the Life Sciences.It would be similar to saying that Physicists are wrong for accepting the Atomic Theory of Matter.But anyway, who do you think discovers if a scientific study is wrong?

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I'm not attacking their research, only some of their assumptions and conclusions.

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Learning how to test hypotheses is the entirety of the Graduate and Post-Doctoral training of any scientist. This includes how to make valid inferences (conclusions) from the evidence.If you are attacking their conclusions, you are attacking their ability as competent scientists.Since all current work is based upon past work in science, don't you think anybody working in Evolutionary Genetics, say, might notice that the Genetics papers they are basing their own research on are fundamentally flawed? How is it that scientists currently working are able to make successful predictions based upon all of this faulty past research?

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"only" is the key word. Limiting it to your thought, very unimpressive. Why do people incite me to write negatively, as if your purpose is to lure me into these little squabbles. Am I to let these just lie?

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Unresponsive.You claimed that people believe in God and science both based their belief upon;

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Experience, evidence, data, hypotheses, theory, assumptions.

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One of the basic tenets of the scientific method is that of "tentativity", which means that no theory is held to be an unchangeable eternal truth and can be challenged with appropriate evidence at any time. Indeed, overturning old dominant paradigms in the light of new and compelling evidence is how careers are made in science. Correcting errors in work made by past researchers and refining the knowledge those in the past provided us in the present to base our work upon is how all progress is made in science.This is how science operates. New findings that contradict old ones are not rejected outright just because they contradict; they are tested and tested some more to see if they hold up. If they do, then the old theories are modified or rejected in favor of the new.Is this the way people wo believe in God think about their faith?With constant doubt and willingness to set it aside when something better comes along?

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Your question seems to circulate around the idea that all scientists research the same sciences.

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No, not at all.However, the ToE is supported by many diciplines other than just Biology; the findings of Geology, Physics and Genetics are all consistent with, and in fact strengthen, the findings of Biology.

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If a paleontologist suggests through research that birds and dinosaurs have common ancestry then the biologist will study how this could be possible. Not, as I understand it in most cases, to prove something right but more to line up with a certain theory for ill or good.

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Any scientist will note in a paper if their finding contradicts or coincides with the rest of the body of evidence in their field.

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Why do I think these people are wrong?

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The list you provided doesn't really answer the question of the OP, though.Do you really believe that hundreds of thousands of scientists over 150 years have been so very bad at doing science that they haven't noticed what is so incredibly obvious to a few religious non-scientists; that the fundamental theoretical underpinnings of all of the Life Sciences is completely false?That if they would just read those Creationist websites they would realize that everything that any Life Scientist has concluded from their research in the last 100 or more years is completely misguided?

No, but you're still mostly missing the point.How can they be wrong?If your objections were correct, then how is it, for example, that zoologists have never spotted any of these living dinosaurs? (Or anyone with a camera, for that matter.) How is it that paleontologists say there are lots of intermediate forms? How is it that professors of thermodynamics think the argument about the second law of thermodynamics is bibble? If "angular unconformities" are an argument against geology, then why have no geologists noticed this, and why do all the geologists I've met seem to think that angular unconformities are a prediction of geology and a falsification of the flood myth?In short, how come these scientists spend their adult lives studying their sciences and the evidence relating to them, and think one thing; and you, from a position of, let's be fair, almost total ignorance of either, think the opposite?Now, me, I think that's a question which answers itself: they're right because they've studied the evidence, and you're wrong because you haven't.But you need to come up with an alternative explanation which involves you being right without knowledge of the evidence, and them being wrong despite knowledge of the evidence.

If that is really the only argument that you've seen against Behe, then could I suggest that you look for the arguments against him on evolutionist rather than creationist websites.Only ... I hope this doesn't shock you ... but sometimes creationists can be a teensy bit dishonest. And sometimes they can tell little teensy-weensy huge great enormous lies that would make Satan himself blush about what their opponents' arguments actually are.

If someone makes an appeal to authority, they should be prepared to have said authorities credibility examined. When said expert turns out to be an embarrassment and who by his own testimonies appears to not have read anything in his chosen field of study for at least 10 years expect people to question the credibility of his statements. Behe claims a number of times that science can't explain things that it turns out science does a pretty damn good job explaining. Vash has a habit of proclaiming Behe quotes as truth but fails to defend the validity of those statements. I doubt he can, since even Michael Behe can't support his own ideas. Feel free to read if you want, transcripts of his testimony at the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District case starts here.Kitzmiller v. Dover: Day 10, AM: Michael BeheTo the OP, I think that the evidence speaks for itself, but for those looking for supernatural explainations, they will refuse to look at the accumulation of evidence and refuse to interprete it in an honest manner.-x

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Idiots speak louder than words(yes its supposed to be ironical... twice)

I think, 18D, that you intended to reply to Vashgun and not Dr. A.