TOE and the Reasons for Doubt

Essentially you have it right. That is his opinion. This is why the quote as-is from your favourite creationist quote mine should not be used - it means exactly the opposite of what you thought it meant. That isn't the issue I have with what you are doing. The issue is, and I'm going to point it out:You (a creationist) want to use a quote from an evolutionist* a quote that has been changed by creationists to mean something it does not
deliberate deception or cheating
* that makes it appear an evolutionist supports a view he does not
deliberate deception or cheating
* to bolster the position you hold in an argument about doubting the proof of the ToE
intended to gain an advantage
* when the author of the quote himself has no doubt whatsoever
unfairlyPeg, there's a huge thread from another of your fellow creationists about how those awful evilutionists have benefitted by using fraudulent means to push the theory of evolution.sadly, for all his bluster, archangel has yet to display a single case of fraud.You, in using a misquote from Sagan (and quite possibly others) are doing something that fits perfectly with the dictionary definition of the word.Now, are you sure you want to keep using quote mines?

yes it's snipped, no it doesn't change the context or the intent. proof please.
I'm glad to see you admit that there is evidence of something in a fossil record... because some life forms don't change significantly and are around for a looonnng time. I thought you knew more about the ToE than that. they're similar because they're related. duh.I thought you knew what the words "evolution" "descent with modification" and "mutation" meant, not to mention "species", "taxa", "genus", even "kind" for goodness' sake.

this is a drive-by commenting, but puh-lease. darwin gave significant ammunition to the creationist side of the evolution debate?Do you know how retarded that sounds?Haldane's Dilemma is far from being proven (he himself was of the opinion that it needed "more work").Eldredge and Gould talk about punctuated equilibrium...and that's a problem why?Kimura i don't know much about, but I sincerely doubt his work means what you think it means.

There was a large thread that I started, that had probably been done before, specifically about quote mines by creationists.quote mines, If you don't know, are the quotes you are using that make it appear as if a scientist does not support the views one would normally expect of a scientist (namely, evolution and the scientific method).I think a gross distortion of Darwin's view, for starters, would be his doubting of the very same theory of evolution he is so famous for.If a quote is used to further that view, it is a distortion.

first, read the following: Now, If you understand that I was pointing out in rather plain English, that your distortion of Kimura's work was unfounded, and that you therefore did not understand the work - then it becomes quite obvious that my statement was not retarded at all.so yes, I understand how retarded it sounded - and the answer is "not at all".

Oh noes! It's all lies! Surely there is no way out of this for evolutionists?Wait..wait...what is this? He says more? Wow, if that doesn't totally change the tone of the quote mine.surely you can do better, if you're just going to throw quote mines?You could have tried this one:

quote:

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"I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science."

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or

quote:

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To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. - Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 1st Ed., p. 186.

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How damning these quote mines appear. How blasted must my opinions be!And yet you do not understand why they are not.

Hi Kaichos, I'm glad you've read my posts enough to at least stop quote-mining (although others still haven't learnt and are happily posting mangled quotes from text hundreds of pages apart).I'm assuming, of course, that you had the honesty to read them and think about them.I'd like a good answer though about the argument from incredulity that creationists try to present about the mutations - so what if the number is 1667?Either it's true, or it's not. If it's true, then I'm assuming there's proof. If there's not, it's not necessarily true.If it's true, the fact that you find it too amazing to BE true is personal opinion. If it's not true, your personal opinion is proving nothing either.Well done!The fact you're still quoting haldane's dilemma is laughable - you don't seem to get it that a neutral mutation within a stable environment won't necessarily go very far. That's the point.In a stable environment, neutral mutations provide no good and no bad effects.Similarly, slightly good or slightly bad mutations also don't affect the population much.When the going gets tough, that's when negative mutations mean a higher chance of death and positive mutations a higher chance of survival (circumstantially negative and positive, I hasten to add, although I'm not convinced you know the difference).This is borne out by the ToE - not all animals mutate or change excessively - because there's no evolutionary pressure.The pressure is called "natural selection" - sometimes it does a lot of selecting, sometimes it doesn't.That you don't get this just means you're a creationist, not that haldane's dilemma is real and there's an issue.I repeat - Haldane himself wasn't sure if his overly-simplified idea was valid, and later work proves quite nicely that it isn't.

You cracked it so quickly? My word - how many Ph.D's was it again? He didn't "establish" anything. He posited a problem which he was pretty clear in saying might not be a problem as not only did he not fully understand the problem or the mechanics of the problem, but was not sure if there wasn't a perfectly natural explanation that could deal with the issue should it turn out to be substantiated.I fear you're the same as the creationists who can't decipher the toy weasel program written over twenty years ago for a now-defunct computer.I re-re-re-repeat:Haldane himself wasn't sure there was a dilemma
Haldane himself was sure there were problems with his workand many others have since come forwards in the intervening 20-30 years or so to point out he's wrong. Seriously, it's a non-issue. Get over it. It's as false a dilemma as the Darwin quote in your sig and the Feduccia quotes other creationists have slung around.You're going to have to do a lot better than the "internet tough guy" spiel - like actually show some working.and (to weigh in on later messages) - dinosaurs are dragons? REALLY?and, like, you don't think it impossible that dinosaur bones could have been dug up before to display fantastically huge creatures, from whence legends of ancient magical creatures could have sprung?Take, for example, the massive underground mole monsters in China/Siberia/Russia - huge great beasties they were, could bore through solid rock! They only had one weakness, and that was sunlight.Every so often, one of these huge beasts would accidentally bore out into the cold hard light of day, and instantly die, to be turned to stone.From this, they gave them the name "mamont"You might know them as "mammoths".

What's genetic entropy? If it's a made-up creationist term without any kind of real work put behind it then it's worthless as a reason.I may as well yes: yes it will, here's why: genetic efervescenceuseful? No.Don't do that.Now, for the rest of what you said, you do realise the scale of what you're actually talking about, yes?3000 generations of fruit flies is miniscule in human terms, it's even less of a mini-miniscule in evolutionary terms, which operates over thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands and even millions, tens of millions and hundreds of millions of years.Multiply those 3000 generations by 10^6 and you'd be getting somewhere.Already you can see changes - mutant antennae that turn BACK into legs.And you tell us that evolution can't happen?I don't get it.I mean of course, you'll pull out the old canard "no new information" as if it meant something (it's as empty as "genetic entropy"), you'll talk about innate capabilities as if the fact that a mutation turning off the legs-into-antenna gene (displaying that, in the past, the antennae WERE legs, and have therefore EVOLVED) were a mere coincidence, or somehow "god's plan".I just don't get it.Feel free to say "and you never will".

Why am I not surprised?It's as worthless as "no new information", "kinds", "baraminology" and everything else like it.

quite, but the difference is between those who do the research and produce supporting evidence and theories, and those who don't.Respected, the university researcher may have been, but from what I can tell he wrote a book where he mentioned it rather than a paper about it. Big difference. No, you creationists are very hard to please. You see 3000 generations and opine that your fruitfly hasn't turned into the housefly.Not only is that not the way it works, but the timescale for that sort of natural mutation way off and the methods you're using (forced mutation) will very likely not give you anything of the sort you falsely expect. No, I'm suggesting that a random mutation knocked out the gene turning the antennae into antenna, at which point they grew instead into the legs that they evolved from.cause, effect. effect, cause.legs evolved over time into antenna through the actions of other regulating genes.regulating genes get turned off, older regulating genes are still on, antenna become legs.The fact that they're in the wrong place to be useful as legs is besides the point.Get the picture?Edited by greyseal, : No reason given.

I'm torn between thinking you've never gone here:http://www.gate.net/~rwms/haldane1.htmland thinking that you read it but failed to understand and/or finish it, or just skipped straight through the wikipedia entry that links to it to the pro-creationist rebuttal innocently posted as "external links". At least now I know where you got the cute quote from.One part of this whole sordid affair I can tell you I do understand fully is the simple, toy computer program used by creationist and evolutionist alike - and ReMine doesn't understand what it is, what it does, how it does it or why it gets the result it does.

so not a big difference from what I wrote, really ye-es...as you say, when the first six whole pages in google are devoted to how wonderfully accurate it is...by apologetics and anti-evolutionists alone...then I'm skeptical enough to think there may just be something very wrong with it.You know what I like about Dawkin's weasel program?It's simple. It's a toy. You know exactly what it's doing and how, and the result is obviously not fixed.

when he forgoes peer review, and his book is referring to that topic which has therefore not gone through peer review, previous qualifications don't count for much. yes, precisely - a very surprising and intriguing result, but nontheless true.perhaps you would like to further another hypothesis how mutation could "evolve" a leg from an antenna in almost a single jump...without it being evolution? without it being a result of what evolutionists suspect may occur (namely, that antenna are modified from legs, and that messing with the regulating genes will cause atavism)?

as both percy and the good doctor pointed out to you, you've totally misunderstood what the weasel program is and what it is showing.the point is to demonstrate that to get from one arbitrary random source to a defined arbitrary result through random mutation and selection is not only possible but ridiculously easy, when you do away with foolish ideas about total randomness.The idea is to prove - through a TOY PROGRAM (i.e. it is not intended to prove anything other than the simplest of mathematical premises) - that you can get to here from there.If you want to get from one random meaningless string to another random meaningless string with this toy program, go ahead, nothing is stopping you.The point isn't that you can't read the start text and can read the end text, the point is that large changes are not only possible but easy, as opposed to the viewpoint that you couldn't get to "METHINKS IT IS A WEASEL" within the age of the universe by blind random chance alone.Unlike the "definitive proof that evolution is a lie" program from the desks of the antievolution lobby (mendels accountant), it doesn't claim to prove anything other than what it displays. If you think it proves nothing, you're welcome to your opinion. I have a different one and I am prepared to say why I think that.