Register | Sign In


Understanding through Discussion


EvC Forum active members: 65 (9162 total)
1 online now:
Newest Member: popoi
Post Volume: Total: 915,818 Year: 3,075/9,624 Month: 920/1,588 Week: 103/223 Day: 1/13 Hour: 0/1


Thread  Details

Email This Thread
Newer Topic | Older Topic
  
Author Topic:   $50 to anyone who can prove to me Evolution is a lie.
Percy
Member
Posts: 22393
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 39 of 305 (51524)
08-21-2003 12:12 PM
Reply to: Message 36 by joshua221
08-21-2003 11:18 AM


Hi, Proph!
In order for Creationism to be science, you need arguments that don't require religious conversion before they make sense.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 36 by joshua221, posted 08-21-2003 11:18 AM joshua221 has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22393
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 101 of 305 (51797)
08-22-2003 9:47 AM
Reply to: Message 83 by Zealot
08-21-2003 10:22 PM


Re: Premises
Zealot writes:
"@An undergraduate from a Northeast China's military academy has published a thesis in an authoritative Chinese physics magazine, raising doubts on Dr. Stephen Hawking's theory of the black hole. "
Reference
{Shortened display form of URL, to restore page width to normal - Adminnemooseus}
Don't be so credulous. This is from the article:
"Cao found what he believed to be a slip in Hawking's explanation of the black hole while reading his classic work, The Brief History of Time. Cao initially withdrew his suspicions, thinking that a mistake must have been made from his own calculations, but after having recalculated the results many times, Cao still could not produce the same data as Hawking did."
First, this gets the title wrong. It's A Brief History of Time.
Second, Hawking's book is written at the layperson level - there is only one equation that I can recall, it appears in the introduction, and it isn't directly related to black hole evaporation: E=mc2
Third, Hawking's book is qualitative and descriptive, not quantitative. It contains no data to compare to.
The article goes on to say:
"As a result, Cao and his professor jointly wrote a thesis on the discrepancy they found in Hawking's theory and submitted it to the Institute of High Energy Physics, which published their conclusions recently."
If true it is easily verified - I have a meeting in five minutes, perhaps someone can check if Cao and his unnamed professor have published anything. I doubt it. Hawking is so famous that a legitimate challenge to his theory would be plastered all over the media.
--Percy
[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 08-22-2003]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 83 by Zealot, posted 08-21-2003 10:22 PM Zealot has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22393
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 117 of 305 (51855)
08-22-2003 2:12 PM
Reply to: Message 116 by Zealot
08-22-2003 1:43 PM


Re: Premises
However Darwins explantion of instinct in Evolution. How can that be a hypothesis ? How would one prove that wrong ?
What, specifically, are you thinking of that Darwin said about instinct. He dedicates an entire chapter to it in The Origin of Species. We have to know what you're referring to before we can respond.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 116 by Zealot, posted 08-22-2003 1:43 PM Zealot has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 118 by Zealot, posted 08-22-2003 3:46 PM Percy has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22393
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 123 of 305 (51963)
08-23-2003 10:57 AM
Reply to: Message 118 by Zealot
08-22-2003 3:46 PM


Re: Premises
Simple. How would I go about proving that instinct has nothing to do with the ToE. What would I need to do to disprove it ?
Your original question was about Darwin's explanation of extinction and how one would disprove it. But this explanation represents a lengthy chapter within Origin. If you peruse the chapter (I provided a link above) you'll see the many evidences and arguments that Darwin presents. Since you think Darwin's position on evolution's role in instinct isn't falsifiable, find an argument or some evidence in that chapter that you think isn't falsifiable and let's examine it. You have clearly stated your hypothesis, now all you have to do is support it.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 118 by Zealot, posted 08-22-2003 3:46 PM Zealot has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 124 by Zealot, posted 08-23-2003 2:13 PM Percy has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22393
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 126 of 305 (51986)
08-23-2003 4:22 PM
Reply to: Message 124 by Zealot
08-23-2003 2:13 PM


Re: Premises
Zealot writes:
Hi, I've asked before about how one would disprove evolution, what it would take. Now my question is how one would disprove Darwins hypothesis that instict is related to evolution. I just figure you guys clearly seem pretty knowlegable of science, hypethesis, testing ect that you could explain it to me.
I think I've said this before to you, that falsifying any aspect of evolution would require that many observational facts are simply wrong. I can't imagine that happening. In principle it is possible, I suppose, but not on any practical level.
I think what you're asking is how you would falsify it hypothetically. The problem for you is that, in effect, the experiments verifying the hypothesis that instinct is responsive to evolutionary forces has already been performed, and they verified that the hypothesis is correct.
Before Darwin you could have postulated an experiment saying that, for example, for a single species of bird we'll breed shy individuals with other shy individuals, and we'll breed brave individuals with other brave individuals, and the hypothesis is false if we find that we can't create one population of very shy birds and another population of very brave birds, as measured by their tendency to flee from humans.
But the fact of the matter is that this experiment has been performed many times. If you've read widely enough from the writings of naturalists, especially those of the era of exploration, then you'll remember how often they note their surprise at the lack of fear of the local birds in a newly discovered land, that they would fly right up and land on a finger. Later they note that the birds had "learned" to fear man. Of course, they didn't learn at all. Within a few years of man's arrival into a new area, those birds with a tendency to avoid contact would produce more offspring than those that did not, and they would pass this tendency on to their offspring, and it would become stronger in each generation as long as man remained present.
I encourage you to read Darwin's chapter on instinct. He has many more examples that will make clear to you that even 150 years ago there was too much evidence to realistically hope to falsify the hypothesis that instinct is responsive to evolutionary forces. This doesn't mean it isn't falsifiable, only that it has already been tested and not yet falsified, and with the result that there is now a mountain of evidence supporting it.
Look at it another way. Say someone gives you a die and asks you to test the hypothesis that the die is fair. This hypothesis is falsifiable if one number or numbers come up statistically more often than others. So you throw the die one million times and find that statistically the die is fair, that each number comes up, statistically speaking, 1/6 of the time. Now that the experiment is complete, what do you think the odds are that someone could falsify the hypothesis. You'd think they were pretty unlikely, right? A million throws of the die is a lot of throws. It isn't very likely that someone could throw the die another million times and come up with statistically significant different results.
The same is true of evolution. Before there existed very much evidence the possibility of falsification was probably significant. But given the amount of evidence now in our possession this is unlikely in the extreme. At least that's my view. If you want help finding falsifications of evolution then I'm afraid I can't help you.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 124 by Zealot, posted 08-23-2003 2:13 PM Zealot has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 130 by Zealot, posted 08-27-2003 10:29 AM Percy has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22393
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 136 of 305 (52513)
08-27-2003 3:17 PM
Reply to: Message 130 by Zealot
08-27-2003 10:29 AM


Re: Premises
Hi Zealot,
I guess first we have to agree on what an instinct is. To my mind, both the simple instinctive reflex to flee human contact and the complex behaviors of social insects like bees are instincts. They are instincts because they are ingrained in the organism rather than learned.
Because the tendency of many bird species to flee human contact is an ingrained behavior rather than one taught by parents, it is instinctive. Behavior passed on genetically rather than through some educational process is the very definition of instinct. This bird example is one of instinctive behavior changing in reaction to environmental changes (the arrival of man) in order to make the organism more successful.
You mention bees and spiders, and I might add ants to the list. Bees and ants are social insects (that's social in that they form complex social organizations, not that they're friendly and nice to each other). The behavior of bees and ants have been extensively studied, including how their instinctual behavior modifies in the presence of environmental changes. The same is true of the webspinning abilities of spiders. If you'd like references in the literation I'll have to enlist the help of Mammuthus.
I'd like to suggest again that you at least skim Darwin's chapter on instinct so that you have a better idea of the way in which evolution explains instinct as a modifiable quality.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 130 by Zealot, posted 08-27-2003 10:29 AM Zealot has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 138 by Mammuthus, posted 08-28-2003 3:52 AM Percy has replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22393
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 141 of 305 (52764)
08-28-2003 9:41 PM
Reply to: Message 140 by Fred Williams
08-28-2003 7:42 PM


Re: Premises
Hi, Fred. Welcome back!
You mentioned a couple things that I've never heard of before. Could you say a little more about this:
Fred Williams writes:
...the age for MtDNA Eve suddenly shrunk from 300K to 6K years old.
And this:
...the now tenuous claim that MtDNA is only passed down by the mother.
Good to "see" you again! Send me some email, let me know how you're doing.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 140 by Fred Williams, posted 08-28-2003 7:42 PM Fred Williams has not replied

Percy
Member
Posts: 22393
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.2


Message 142 of 305 (52765)
08-28-2003 9:49 PM
Reply to: Message 138 by Mammuthus
08-28-2003 3:52 AM


Re: Premises
Hi Mammuthus!
Thanks for the cites. Actually, I think they were both pretty good. The first reminds me of one of the fears of the killer bees (Or maybe ants? Wasps?) migrating up from Mexico. They were pretty sure that these bees couldn't come too far north, but they were afraid they might mix with native North American bee species and produce a new more aggressive race of bees with a more northern range.
I hope Zealot finds them helpful.
--Percy

This message is a reply to:
 Message 138 by Mammuthus, posted 08-28-2003 3:52 AM Mammuthus has not replied

Newer Topic | Older Topic
Jump to:


Copyright 2001-2023 by EvC Forum, All Rights Reserved

™ Version 4.2
Innovative software from Qwixotic © 2024