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Author Topic:   Evolution would've given us infrared eyesight
Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 17 of 265 (494984)
01-20-2009 11:47 AM
Reply to: Message 15 by RickCHodgin
01-20-2009 11:34 AM


Belief
I am just stating what I believe - and trying to do so in a matter-of-fact way.
This may be part of the problem.
When you accept an idea based on the evidence, you often have little problem modifying that idea as the evidence changes and improves.
When you believe something it is often difficult to modify that belief as it is not necessarily based on evidence. Or, as Heinlein noted:
quote:
Belief gets in the way of learning.
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 15 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-20-2009 11:34 AM RickCHodgin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 25 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-20-2009 12:29 PM Coyote has replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 31 of 265 (495007)
01-20-2009 1:18 PM
Reply to: Message 25 by RickCHodgin
01-20-2009 12:29 PM


Re: Belief
In response to Coyote:
When you accept an idea based on the evidence, you often have little problem modifying that idea as the evidence changes and improves.
What I believe is derived from evidence and reason. They are still my beliefs, however - just derived from those sources.
I would venture to guess that your "evidence and reason" will never stray very far from strict creationism.
Your posts read more like religious apologetics than actual science, coming up with reasons that your beliefs must be true.
Science, when properly applied according to the scientific method, works strictly from data to theory with no overriding goals or requirements to conform to a particular belief.
Sorry, but I don't tend to see that in your posts.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 25 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-20-2009 12:29 PM RickCHodgin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 35 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-20-2009 1:31 PM Coyote has replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 42 of 265 (495032)
01-20-2009 2:10 PM
Reply to: Message 35 by RickCHodgin
01-20-2009 1:31 PM


Re: Belief
You are welcome to your beliefs, and I have no problems with that at all.
Where I have a problem is when folks confuse religious beliefs with scientific knowledge (hey, that might make a good tagline!).

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 35 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-20-2009 1:31 PM RickCHodgin has not replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 96 of 265 (495285)
01-21-2009 11:35 PM
Reply to: Message 94 by RickCHodgin
01-21-2009 11:19 PM


Apologetics
You are offering us religious apologetics, not scientifically-backed evidence.
But this is the Science Forum. Perhaps you should be on a thread in another section of the website?
And please note tagline below:

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 94 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-21-2009 11:19 PM RickCHodgin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 99 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-21-2009 11:41 PM Coyote has not replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 112 of 265 (495308)
01-22-2009 12:22 AM
Reply to: Message 111 by RickCHodgin
01-22-2009 12:16 AM


Re: What about the other guys?
My mother personally experienced one when my brother went to Russia in the 1990s. There was a train wreck when he was there, very mild and no one was hurt, but the train was damaged. She knew something was wrong and was freaking out for a long time before she finally heard from him.
What makes you thing that has anything to do with deities in general and your favorite deity in particular?
What is the evidence?
I don't want to hear about belief; what is the evidence?
Or, as Heinlein put it:
What are the facts? Again and again and again - what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what 'the stars foretell,' avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable 'verdict of history' -- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your only clue. Get the facts!
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 111 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-22-2009 12:16 AM RickCHodgin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 116 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-22-2009 12:31 AM Coyote has replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 117 of 265 (495313)
01-22-2009 12:33 AM
Reply to: Message 116 by RickCHodgin
01-22-2009 12:31 AM


Re: What about the other guys?
If you are dealing with faith, you're on the wrong thread.
You need to provide scientific evidence. Witnessing just doesn't do that.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-22-2009 12:31 AM RickCHodgin has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 120 by RickCHodgin, posted 01-22-2009 12:47 AM Coyote has not replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 172 of 265 (500407)
02-26-2009 1:07 AM
Reply to: Message 168 by Buzsaw
02-24-2009 6:45 PM


Re: Implication Of Intelligent Design
There would have had to be millions if not billions of positive random steps for life to have progressed to the extent of design which we observe today. There's just no random model to support this.
Really? Not even natural selection?
Here are two ways of looking at this:
The task is to roll 25 dice and get all sixes
1) The typical mathematician or creationist would be there for decades, rolling all 25 dice each time, never getting more than a few sixes. They would then tell you its impossible, the odds are just too high.
2) A biologist or evolutionist would probably roll the 25 dice, and then reroll only those that weren't sixes! With several repetitions the whole thing would take just a few minutes.
Lest you say that this doesn't apply to evolution, think again. You don't have to get all 25 dice right on the first try--neither did evolution. Natural selection builds on successes, while failures are discarded. You yourself are the product of millions of successes, coming one at a time and building upon the ones that came before. You are the product of millions of ancestors who each got it right and left descendants! But each came one at a time, building on the successes of the previous generation.
There's a whole new way to look at "random" for you. Of course I expect you won't accept a word of this for religious reasons.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 168 by Buzsaw, posted 02-24-2009 6:45 PM Buzsaw has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 173 by cavediver, posted 02-26-2009 3:43 PM Coyote has not replied
 Message 174 by Buzsaw, posted 02-28-2009 11:52 PM Coyote has not replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 180 of 265 (500693)
03-01-2009 4:14 PM
Reply to: Message 176 by Buzsaw
03-01-2009 10:26 AM


Re: Implication Of Intelligent Design
That's not the way the odds game works. It's all or nothing. Coyote, to whom I was responding was talking the odds game, relative to the event in question, with the 25 die. Right? The die had to be thrown until all 25 matched. Right?
Its not all or nothing!
I know that IDers are big on the "irreducible complexity" dodge, but that has been discredited in every example that Behe has proposed. If IC were accurate, then you would have to get it right with a single throw of the dice. But its not accurate.
Rather, evolution builds on successes. Each success allows the population to build on that success.
That's why the analogy of rolling 25 dice and keeping the sixes, then rolling the remaining dice is an accurate one. That is a better analogy for how evolution works, and the mathematicians who model evolution the other way are not producing an accurate model--just one that creationists like to taut.
Creation "science" as usual, eh?

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 176 by Buzsaw, posted 03-01-2009 10:26 AM Buzsaw has not replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 194 of 265 (501022)
03-03-2009 7:03 PM
Reply to: Message 191 by Buzsaw
03-03-2009 6:43 PM


Re: Implication Of Intelligent Design
Theodoric writes:
NO. Not at all.
The analogy works quite well as an analogy. I was pointing out that your logic is quite faulty. Or it may just be your refusal to try to understand what the Theory of Evolution actually means.
How does a totally designed and planned intelligent design analogy model a random and undesigned event?
Selection pressure is what gives you the changes for the next roll of the dice.
Look at it as those organisms that succeeded (the sixes) didn't get eaten (the other numbers).
An analogy or a model is a simplification of a system; it does not purport to duplicate that system. It often isolates particular variables that they may be more readily studied. To nitpick the exact correspondence of the model to the system, as you seem to do when you disagree with the results of the model, is not very productive. Nor does it necessarily argue against the model.
The whole point of the dice model I presented was to illustrate two different ways of looking at odds in biology. It seems you are unable or unwilling to see how this applies to mathematicians modeling evolution.
"Belief gets in the way of learning."
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love, 1973

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 191 by Buzsaw, posted 03-03-2009 6:43 PM Buzsaw has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 196 by Buzsaw, posted 03-03-2009 8:08 PM Coyote has not replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 209 of 265 (501188)
03-04-2009 11:46 PM
Reply to: Message 208 by Buzsaw
03-04-2009 11:42 PM


Re: Pertaining Pesky Post Abiogenesis Primitives
With the dice analogy the person shaking the dice saves the sixes/kind for the next throw/generation. With the first organisms they're on their own random lonely selfy and must replicate before they die. LOL!
Or not! That's they key!

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 208 by Buzsaw, posted 03-04-2009 11:42 PM Buzsaw has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 211 by Buzsaw, posted 03-04-2009 11:53 PM Coyote has replied

Coyote
Member (Idle past 2133 days)
Posts: 6117
Joined: 01-12-2008


Message 212 of 265 (501191)
03-04-2009 11:58 PM
Reply to: Message 211 by Buzsaw
03-04-2009 11:53 PM


Re: Pertaining Pesky Post Abiogenesis Primitives
Coyote writes:
Or not! That's they key!
What? You mean they may not die? Please explain.
Those that die or fail to reproduce are weeded out. Those that survive pass on their characteristics.
Go back and read the post I was responding to and it will all become clear.

Religious belief does not constitute scientific evidence, nor does it convey scientific knowledge.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 211 by Buzsaw, posted 03-04-2009 11:53 PM Buzsaw has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 213 by Buzsaw, posted 03-05-2009 12:36 AM Coyote has not replied

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