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Author Topic:   The Truth About Evolution and Religion
Huntard
Member (Idle past 2294 days)
Posts: 2870
From: Limburg, The Netherlands
Joined: 09-02-2008


Message 196 of 419 (561165)
05-19-2010 5:32 AM
Reply to: Message 194 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 5:28 AM


Re: In conclusion, what's your point?
dkroemer writes:
How do we know we have free will? People who say we don't live their lives as if they had free will.
What the hell are you on about? Would you mind answering the questions I asked you? Specifically the ones for evidence of your assertions.
They fell guilty when they do something wrong, they apologize, and they promise not to do it again.
That's called conscience, or morality, not free will.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 194 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 5:28 AM dkroemer has not replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 197 of 419 (561166)
05-19-2010 5:33 AM
Reply to: Message 191 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 5:22 AM


Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
What I am saying is that there is no disagreement about evolutionary biology between Kenneth Miller (pro-Darwin) and Michael Behe (anti-Darwin). The way to determine if this is true is by comparing their written statements.
That is the same comparison you made further up thread here, and as then I am struck by how singularly your quotes fail to show Miller agreeing with Behe in the slightest. The main body of the quote is him describing what Behe says, and he then goes on to question how Behe knows where to draw such a line. Absolutely nowhere does Miller say he accepts Behe's argument or suggest that he agrees that such a line exists, except perhaps in terms of the nature of the soul.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 191 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 5:22 AM dkroemer has not replied

  
dkroemer
Member (Idle past 5053 days)
Posts: 125
From: Brooklyn, New York
Joined: 05-15-2010


Message 198 of 419 (561167)
05-19-2010 5:38 AM
Reply to: Message 195 by Huntard
05-19-2010 5:29 AM


Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
I'm not saying life is too complex to have evolved. I'm saying life is too complex to have evolved from facilitated variation, natural selection, random mutations, genetic drift, etc.
1) The probability of getting a 300-amino-acid protein by random chance is 1 in 20300.
2) This probability is increased by considering natural selection and facilitated variation, but the odds are still very small.
3) The primary structure of a protein does not begin to describe the complexity of life.
4) There is no peer reviewed work or text book that says natural selection explains the complexity of life.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 195 by Huntard, posted 05-19-2010 5:29 AM Huntard has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 199 by Huntard, posted 05-19-2010 5:46 AM dkroemer has not replied
 Message 201 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-19-2010 6:25 AM dkroemer has not replied
 Message 210 by Taq, posted 05-19-2010 12:09 PM dkroemer has not replied

  
Huntard
Member (Idle past 2294 days)
Posts: 2870
From: Limburg, The Netherlands
Joined: 09-02-2008


Message 199 of 419 (561169)
05-19-2010 5:46 AM
Reply to: Message 198 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 5:38 AM


Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
dkroemer writes:
I'm not saying life is too complex to have evolved. I'm saying life is too complex to have evolved from facilitated variation, natural selection, random mutations, genetic drift, etc.
Look, either it evolved, or it didn't. If you say it did evolve, then why attack evolution?
1) The probability of getting a 300-amino-acid protein by random chance is 1 in 20300
So?
2) This probability is increased by considering natural selection and facilitated variation, but the odds are still very small.
And what if you add in billions of tries at the same time?
3) The primary structure of a protein does not begin to describe the complexity of life.
So?
4) There is no peer reviewed work or text book that says natural selection explains the complexity of life.
No, for it is evolution that explains complexity. That's why no scientific paper limits itself to just natural selection. There's also random mutation, genetic drift etc.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 198 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 5:38 AM dkroemer has not replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 200 of 419 (561171)
05-19-2010 6:21 AM
Reply to: Message 191 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 5:22 AM


Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
What I am saying is that there is no disagreement about evolutionary biology between Kenneth Miller (pro-Darwin) and Michael Behe (anti-Darwin).
I wonder if there's anyone in the entire would who would be fooled by such a flagrant lie.
Certainly no-one on these forums will be.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 191 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 5:22 AM dkroemer has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 204 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 9:47 AM Dr Adequate has replied

  
Dr Adequate
Member (Idle past 284 days)
Posts: 16113
Joined: 07-20-2006


Message 201 of 419 (561172)
05-19-2010 6:25 AM
Reply to: Message 198 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 5:38 AM


Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
I'm not saying life is too complex to have evolved. I'm saying life is too complex to have evolved from facilitated variation, natural selection, random mutations, genetic drift, etc.
Yes, we know what you're saying.
1) The probability of getting a 300-amino-acid protein by random chance is 1 in 20300.
If this was true and meaningful, which it isn't, it would still be irrelevant.
2) This probability is increased by considering natural selection and facilitated variation, but the odds are still very small.
Show your working ... oh, wait, you haven't done any, have you?
3) The primary structure of a protein does not begin to describe the complexity of life.
Now there's a bizarre non sequitur.
4) There is no peer reviewed work or text book that says natural selection explains the complexity of life.
Thiis is because the people who write peer-reviewed works and textbooks know that the theory of evolution explains the complexity of life. 'Cos of them not being idiots.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 198 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 5:38 AM dkroemer has not replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 202 of 419 (561173)
05-19-2010 6:31 AM
Reply to: Message 193 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 5:25 AM


But we do know of other factors
My point is that we don't know what the other factors are.
And my point is that you are wrong. We may not know what every single factor is. No one is claiming that we already have a clear and detailed naturalistic explanation for the evolution of every single complex biological system in the world. But in every instance where we have studied such systems they have been amenable to explanation through such naturalistic approaches, they might involve adaptive Darwinian evolution, they may involve genetic drift, they may involve horizontal gene transfer, they may involve endosymbiosis, the point is that whatever systems we study there are always natural explanations.
The idea that anyone insists that 'Darwinism' is the only mechanism contributing to life's complexity is a strawman.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 193 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 5:25 AM dkroemer has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 205 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 9:54 AM Wounded King has replied

  
Modulous
Member
Posts: 7801
From: Manchester, UK
Joined: 05-01-2005


(1)
Message 203 of 419 (561174)
05-19-2010 6:57 AM
Reply to: Message 189 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 5:07 AM


Hello Dr Roemer,
You ignored most of what I said. I take that as a concession that you are an incompetent communicator, a dishonest quote miner, a bad faith debater and like a certain court once observed about you - stubborn.
Well, since you think repeating yourself is advancing the discussion allow me to reply in kind.

quote:
Free will is under 'Fundamental Theology' because it is not an observation.
That strikes me as odd. I thought it was an observation. How are you defining observation here?
quote:
We know we have free will because we can make ourselves the subject of our own knowledge.
This seems to me to be highly controversial. You seem to be suggesting that because we think we have free will we do, even if we don't know what free will is.
I will point out that it is an observation that human beings report a sensation of being able to 'freely decide' between alternatives. I will also point out that subjective reports on internal states are evidence, but there is no reason to inherently trust them.
Plenty of experiments in psychology have shown that what a person says they are experiencing when it comes to making a decision is quite different than what is going on. If you are hooked up correctly, a neuroscientist can predict when you are going to press a button before you yourself have had a conscious experience of 'willing' your finger to press the button.
So I think relying on self-reports on this issue is doomed to catastrophic failure.
I think taking a Heterophenomenological point of view is better in this arena:
wiki writes:
{Heterophenomenology} consists of applying the scientific method with an anthropological bend, combining the subject's self-reports with all other available evidence to determine their mental state. The goal is to discover how the subject sees the world him- or herself, without taking the accuracy of the subject's view for granted.
It is contrasted with the Cartesian phenomenology which takes a subjects reports as being authoritative. Using Heterophenomenology, we take those reports as being authoritative only in so far as understanding what it 'seems to be like' as far as the subject is concerned.
wiki writes:
n other words, heterophenomenology requires us to listen to the subject and take what they say seriously, but to also look at everything else available to us, including the subject's bodily responses and environment, and be ready to conclude that the subject is wrong even about their own mind. For example, we could determine that the subject is hungry even though they don't recognize it.
You go on to discuss NOMA and suggest that evolution is only concerned with the change in phenotypes and not souls. I agree with this.
Then you provide a quote from Hawking the context of which I do not know. In it he says, to paraphrase "as far as we are concerned we should disregard ideas of 'before the big bang' as not being addressable to science". And you conclude from that that this means there is no scientific explanation for what 'started' the big bang.
This is clearly premature. Hawking was talking to a lay audience and seems to be saying that for the purposes of his discussion, we can simply ignore before the big bang. Hawking's most famous model is one where there is no abrupt start of time, but a gradual emergence of time - which if true, would render it potentially meaningless to talk about origins in that context.
There are many physicists out there who would be perfectly content to tell you about scientific hypotheses for a pre-big bang universe. Laurence Krauss, in the previously embedded video, gives one such model. And others have yet more.
Then you go on some strange discussion about finite beings and infinite beings but you don't really give us the argument, just the conclusions.
quote:
After billions of years, stars formed
That doesn't seem to be the consensus scientific opinion, which suggests 30-200 million years. It's not really vital to the argument, just thought I'd throw that out there for you.
Then you take a quote that says there is nothing certain about evolution of pre-bacterial life and concluded that Kirshner/Gerhart were saying that there is 'no scientific explanation for the origin of life'. That isn't what they were saying in that quote which wasn't actually about the origin of life. You do tend to go a bit mad interpreting little snippets of quotes, have you noticed that?
Then you start making some more spurious timing claims. Chimpanzees appeared 8 million years ago? Are you not getting confused with the purported time that the human and chimpanzee common ancestor lived?
quote:
The least complex organisms are bacteria and the most complex are homo sapiens
I assume you've done the maths for this. Please show me, I'd like to see this very much!
quote:
1)The birth of more individuals than the environment can support leads to a struggle for survival.
2) Individuals whose inherited characteristics fit them best to the environment are likely to leave more offspring than less fit individuals.
3) This unequal ability of individuals to survive and reproduce will lead to a gradual change in a population, with favorable characteristics accumulating over the generations.
You say this is from Campbell and Reece. Which edition? The edition I am looking at says things a bit more precisely:
Campbell and Reece writes:
Observation #1: Members of a population often vary
greatly in their traits
Observation #2: Traits are inherited from parents to
offspring.
Observation #3: All species are capable of producing
more offspring than their environment can support
Observation #4: Owing to lack of food or other resources,
many of these offspring do not survive.
Inference #1: Individuals whose inherited traits give
them a higher probability of surviving and reproducing
in a given environment tend to leave more offspring than
other individuals.
Inference #2: This unequal ability of individuals to survive
and reproduce will lead to the accumulation of favorable
traits in the population over generations.
And that's the 8th edition. And it stresses that this is the Darwinian view. It also gives a brief summary of Natural selection:
Campbell and Reece writes:
Natural selection is a process in which individuals that have
certain heritable characteristics survive and reproduce at a
higher rate than other individuals.
Which you seem to disagree with.
Then you quote Reece's probability discussion. Here is what the 8th edition says:
Campbell and Reece writes:
Each of the four identical polypeptide
chains that together make up trymsthyretin is composed of 127 amino
adds. Shown here is one of these chains unraveled for a closer look at
its primary structure. Each of the 127 positions along the chain is occupied by one of the 20 amino acids, indicated here by its three-letter
abbreviation. The primary structure is like the order of letters in a very
long word. If left to chance, there would be 20127 different ways of
making a polypeptide chain 127 amino acids long, However, the precise
primary structure of a protein is determined not by the random
linking of amino acids, but by inherited genetic information
For some reason, you neglected to include that bit at the end. I wonder why?
Your conclusion is essentially you repeating three of the many assertions you made during the video.
1. Evolution does not apply to souls: Agreed.
2. Darwinian evolution (or as Darwin called it - "Descent with Modification") only explains adaptation, not common descent. - Disagreed.
3. There is no scientific explanation for the origin of life or the big bang: Half disagreed - there is no explanation which has received sufficient evidential support to be regarded as being true beyond reasonable doubt for those things, but there are plenty of explanations which are scientific...

Your video lacks any coherent structure, with no real point being made. Just a sequence of points dotted around the place. This seems consistent with the information on your website regarding the termination of your teaching position. If the video is remotely indicative of your alleged teaching style, I'm not surprised they terminated you for incompetence. I realize that was a cheapshot - I read through some of the documents and realize it's more complex than that. That said, with a small edit here and there, one comment in that stood out:
quote:
It lacked a plan and a focus and a clear sense of direction. Posters questions were not answered. Posters left the thread still not sure of what your point was.
That's basically my conclusion here, if I do not receive a response that is all I can leave this thread thinking. I'm bewildered as to your point. You start talking about Free Will, Theology, and infinite beings as if your position was obviously true and provide no background or argument about it. But before telling us why you mentioned all of that, you talk about cosmology and take a quote of Hawking's and go a little nuts with it. But without really explaining your point there you give us a brief history of the universe (with a few errors), make an assertion about relative complexity without backing it up, quote something about Darwinian evolution - say that someone wasn't trying to explain complexity before launching into a discussion about thermodynamics and some quote mining from Reece.
But top marks for getting a professional voice artist to do the video - much more tolerable than listening to someone with a crappy mic breathing for ten minutes.


quote:
Since we have free will and conscious knowledge, we are unified with respect to ourselves and different from other beings. Hence, we are finite beings. But a finite being needs a cause. If all beings in the universe needed a cause the universe would not be intelligible. Hence, and infinite being exists.
Allow me to agree that an uncaused cause exists, though I see no reason to conclude it is necessarily infinite.
quote:
QED
You didn't demonstrate anything, just repeated it. Repeating does not lead to clarification. I'm sure you are growing used to bewildered looks on people's faces - could you try to learn from that?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 189 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 5:07 AM dkroemer has not replied

  
dkroemer
Member (Idle past 5053 days)
Posts: 125
From: Brooklyn, New York
Joined: 05-15-2010


Message 204 of 419 (561181)
05-19-2010 9:47 AM
Reply to: Message 200 by Dr Adequate
05-19-2010 6:21 AM


Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
Perhaps you think intelligent design is part of biology? I do not. It is just bad metaphysics. This is where Miller and Behe disagree.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 200 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-19-2010 6:21 AM Dr Adequate has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 232 by Dr Adequate, posted 05-19-2010 6:10 PM dkroemer has replied

  
dkroemer
Member (Idle past 5053 days)
Posts: 125
From: Brooklyn, New York
Joined: 05-15-2010


Message 205 of 419 (561182)
05-19-2010 9:54 AM
Reply to: Message 202 by Wounded King
05-19-2010 6:31 AM


Re: But we do know of other factors
I think you are overstating how much we know. I consider common descent a mystery, like the big bang and the origin of life. I might be overstating it to call it only an explanation for adaptation. Behe doesn't even say that. According to Behe Darwinism is just destructive, as in the production of sickle-cell anemia. Maybe Darwinism explains how fish became reptiles. It is the job of professional biologists to make an attempt at explaining the limitations of Darwinism. (I don't say natural selection to avoid a lecture about evolution and the accusation that I don't understand anything about evolution.)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 202 by Wounded King, posted 05-19-2010 6:31 AM Wounded King has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 206 by Huntard, posted 05-19-2010 10:22 AM dkroemer has replied
 Message 208 by Wounded King, posted 05-19-2010 11:18 AM dkroemer has replied
 Message 211 by Taq, posted 05-19-2010 12:12 PM dkroemer has not replied

  
Huntard
Member (Idle past 2294 days)
Posts: 2870
From: Limburg, The Netherlands
Joined: 09-02-2008


Message 206 of 419 (561189)
05-19-2010 10:22 AM
Reply to: Message 205 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 9:54 AM


Re: But we do know of other factors
dkroemer writes:
I think you are overstating how much we know.
Seeing as Wounded King is an actual scientist researching in the field (I believe he does something with molecular biology) I think he's pretty aware of what those scientists know or don't know.
I consider common descent a mystery, like the big bang and the origin of life.
Yes, and we've been telling you that it's not to the scientists studying it. Neither is the origin of life a "mystery". We don't have the definitive answer yet, that's true, but there are several possible scenarios that scientists are looking into. I think the same goes for the big bang, but you'd have to ask a physicist about that.
Behe doesn't even say that. According to Behe Darwinism is just destructive, as in the production of sickle-cell anemia.
But Behe isn't a proponent of Darwinism, he's a proponent of ID.
Maybe Darwinism explains how fish became reptiles.
Why do you keep going back to this "Darwinism"? There isn;t a scientist in biology today who limits hmself to descent with modification acted upon by natural selection. They include the other known processes as well, as Wounded King has been talking about.
It is the job of professional biologists to make an attempt at explaining the limitations of Darwinism.
But why would they do that. Those are not the only things involved.
Why do you limit yourself to Darwinian evolution? There has been progress in the field of biology since 150 years agoi, you know.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 205 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 9:54 AM dkroemer has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 213 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 3:11 PM Huntard has replied

  
New Cat's Eye
Inactive Member


Message 207 of 419 (561193)
05-19-2010 10:49 AM
Reply to: Message 170 by dkroemer
05-18-2010 7:38 PM


Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
Science understands the chemical forces that cause crystals to form. There are no known forces that caused proteins and life to form.
So?
That makes it no longer violate the 2Lot?
When we do figure out how proteins and life formed, will they no longer violate it either?
Really though, our understanding of it doesn't actually affect the violation... its there regardless.
Try again?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 170 by dkroemer, posted 05-18-2010 7:38 PM dkroemer has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 215 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 3:15 PM New Cat's Eye has replied

  
Wounded King
Member
Posts: 4149
From: Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Joined: 04-09-2003


Message 208 of 419 (561197)
05-19-2010 11:18 AM
Reply to: Message 205 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 9:54 AM


Re: But we do know of other factors
I consider common descent a mystery
I really don't know what you mean by this, is it that you doubt the existence of a universal common ancestor? Do you doubt the common ancestry of humans and chimpanzees? The common ancestry of all members of the Felidae?
Nothing could be less mysterious, there is a wealth of genetic information indicative of a common ancestral source for life.
According to Behe Darwinism is just destructive, as in the production of sickle-cell anemia.
Its a bit sad to see Behe, who may at one time have had some grasp of what he was on about, reduced to making the sort of facile arguments that creationists wedded to a literal interpretation of the bible and an obsession with genetic degradation as a consequence of 'The Fall' favour.
TTFN,
WK

This message is a reply to:
 Message 205 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 9:54 AM dkroemer has replied

Replies to this message:
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Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


Message 209 of 419 (561206)
05-19-2010 12:05 PM
Reply to: Message 186 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 4:58 AM


Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
It goes on to discuss the problem of explaining complexity from natural selection. At no point does it say Darwinism totally explains the complexity of life. The paper seeks to justify Darwinism.
Really? In the conclusion section I find these quotes:
"Our results demonstrate a clear natural selection for complexity in a driven, biased fashion."
"Thus it can be seen that, at the scale of individuals comprising a species, evolution always guides trends in complexity."
"Our current simulations reinforce this notion of natural selection driving the evolution of complexity at small scales, but driving it in all directionsup, down, and stable."

This message is a reply to:
 Message 186 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 4:58 AM dkroemer has replied

Replies to this message:
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Taq
Member
Posts: 9970
Joined: 03-06-2009
Member Rating: 5.6


Message 210 of 419 (561208)
05-19-2010 12:09 PM
Reply to: Message 198 by dkroemer
05-19-2010 5:38 AM


Re: and yet, curiously, it is still explained by evolution ...
I'm not saying life is too complex to have evolved. I'm saying life is too complex to have evolved from facilitated variation, natural selection, random mutations, genetic drift, etc.
Based on what evidence?
) The probability of getting a 300-amino-acid protein by random chance is 1 in 20300.
Evolution is not random chance. Even more, how many functional 300 aa proteins are possible?
2) This probability is increased by considering natural selection and facilitated variation, but the odds are still very small.
Based on what calculations?
4) There is no peer reviewed work or text book that says natural selection explains the complexity of life.
But they do say that there is tons of evidence that demonstrate evolution is the cause.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 198 by dkroemer, posted 05-19-2010 5:38 AM dkroemer has not replied

  
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