Hi Balder-dash, I see that summary time is upon us (threads are often limited to 300 posts, and if you think this is harse, then please review your own posts to see how few addressed your topic).
You have been asked several times to answer these questions to help define your position:
- Could you tell me what you mean by "evolutionary change"?
- Could you tell me what you mean by "complexity" in organisms?
The first one was asked in
Message 5 and has not been answered yet, even though Balder-dash has made 66 posts that are mostly complaints about being misunderstood. Instead we get additional comments that raise more questions than they answer, such as:
However, the test didn't show a slow gradual process of evolution as Darwin claimed, it showed a rapid change to an environmental pressure-the exact opposite.
...
So the tests shows a short time frame, which would CONTRADICT tenets of the theory instead of supporting it,
This shows a typical failure to understand the mechanism of natural selection and the difference between natural selection and evolution.
First off, this raises the question, why is this a contradiction? The same process occurs just in a different time frame from the one you have fixed in your mind as being Darwin's.
Second, Darwin wasn't committed to a slow time frame,
he predicts "punk-eek" after all, can you show where he absolutely requires natural selection of be slow and occur over many generations? See
Darwin Online for all his works in searchable text.
Third, you are talking about natural selection in this specific example, and not evolution, Dawin's theory of Descent with Modification through Natural Selection was that the descent with modification
usually took a long time, but that natural selection was virtually instantaneous when death occurred in an individual organism before it reproduced.
Why should an example where a whole bunch of people died
NOT occur rapidly by comparison to the time it took for the (one of several ways) mutation to occur in the ancestral population (where it had to have been several generations in the past to spread as far as it did) -- why should death be unexpectedly rapid?
A contradiction would mean that it was not natural selection at all but something else, and this is patently false.
By the way, natural selection operated in two different modes in that example: it selected people with the beneficial mutation to survive and breed, and it selected the people with the
behavioral modification (don't eat the dead person) to survive and breed. The second instance of natural selection was more complete and even faster than the mutation selection. Note that for this second selection, no mutation was needed, just natural selection of a different behavior pattern. Behavior patterns can change in a population in a generation, and if you want I can furnish examples where this was observed and documented.
If you see a film at high speed and at slow speed you still see the same frames, the same movements and scenery.
Certainly if something can happen in a short time, then it can also be spread out over a longer time.
Now, I can certainly understand why so many people WANT to believe in NS, because it is the only theory that can protect their believe in atheism.
Please stop insulting my intelligence: I am no atheist, I am a deist, and deism has absolutely no problem with evolution in general and natural selection in particular -- it would be the method that was set up with the creation of the universe for the formation of life as we know it, putting in place the "natural laws" that govern evolution and other aspects of the universe as we know it.
Science is agnostic. It explains how things happen, not why. Why do you think you need to discuss atheism in order to discuss natural selection?
So since I am not really going to get much unbiased thought here, there is not really much more to be gained.
Of course science is biased. Reality is not up for vote, and so it is biased to what the evidence actually shows rather than any -
ANY -
a proiri assumptions.
When you refuse to define what it is you are really looking for, you will reap what you sow eh? It seems you generate more questions for you to answer than you resolve by your failure to answer the previous questions. I started with one, now we have at least four on my book that are not answered (including the first one still unanswered), and several other questions by others.
Summary - unanswered questions (rather than resolutions of issues):
- Could you tell me what you mean by "evolutionary change" so we don't waste another hundred posts on missing a dodging mark?
- Could you tell me what you mean by "complexity" in organisms?
- Can you tell me why natural selection cannot operate in one generation on a breeding population?
- Can you show where Darwin absolutely requires natural selection of be slow and occur over many generations?
- Can you tell me why an example, where a whole bunch of people died, NOT occur rapidly by comparison to the time it took for the (one of several ways) mutation to occur?
- Can you tell me why you think you need to discuss atheism in order to discuss natural selection?
You reach resolution by answering questions, not ignoring them.
From my perception Balder-dash has ignored several corrections to his posts, refused to answer basic questions about explaining his position that would lead to a more informed debate, and behaved in a rather childish manner. In the end he concludes that he is "right" because nobody has been able to change his mind by providing something he has refused to define. Personally I am glad that this farce of a thread is put to bed.
Enjoy.
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