evolution discussion with faith

This thread is not really to discuss the evidence for evolution.The topic is to discuss if Faith believes that the hundreds of thousands of Biologists, geneticists, etc., are so poor at doing science (which is the process of generating explanations for natural phenomena and then testing the consequences) that very nearly all of them over many decades have been making enormous numbers of grave mistakes which somehow all seem to point in the same erronious direction; that the main explanation of the natural phenomena is the Theory of Evolution.You have said that you do not accept that science consists of using various methods, depending upon the field, to generate explanations of natural phenomena and then testing the consequences of those explanations.Well, if you don't accept this, then what process is it that you think science actually is? If you don't agree with my description, what description are you using?

We are still playing pretend, where I assume that your idea is correct. It's good to have friendly discussions this way without being excessively confrontational. If the similarities are caused by common design, that would still indicate a kind of 'evolution' of design plans. Perhaps it all happened at once, so that "evolution" isn't quite the right word. And it could have happened long before the start of genesis. The actual creation of a species could have occurred after it had been designed.I would think this tweaked theory of evolution, where part of the evolving was in God's use of an 'evolving' common design rather than change that occurred on earth, would probably handle a much of the biological evidence.If we could also assume that God inserted these creatures at different times, extending over a very long time period, maybe that would even be consistent with the paleontological and geological evidence.There isn't any likelihood that scientists would adopt this tweaked theory of evolution, because all the tweaking does is add complexity without providing any benefits with respect to explaining the evidence. So this was an exercise to show how we could fit the theory of evolution into your idea about there being barriers that limit the degree of evolution.Given your view of a young earth, I think your biggest problem is with geology. It would be much harder to tweak geology to fit with your views.Thanks for your clear presentation of your views.

A flood could never organize the creatures, and especially the plants, the way that they're organized. So, in fact, the pattern of the fossil record proves that it is not a record of one big flood, but of the development of life over millions of years. Flood explanations are inconsistent with the fossil record as observed. You do understand that an organism's phenotype is a reflection of its genetics, yes? Increasing diversity of phenotype must mean an increasing diversity of genotype. There's absolutely no way that a trend of contracting genetic diversity could be associated with an increase in morphological diversity. Therefore, the trend we see in the fossil record - increasing phenotypic diversity - proves a trend of genetic diversity increasing over time. Incontrovertable.New phenotypes means new genetic diversity, no matter what. To suggest otherwise is to suggest that genes have no meaning, have no influence over the phenotype of the organism, which is not a position supported by any evidence.

I believe this has been answered. I believe scientists in general are quite competent at what they do, hypothesizing and testing and so on, and that this is a completely different level of scientific work from the ToE. I believe they are handicapped by the ToE which they subscribe to, in that their thinking can only go in the directions it prescribes, but that this doesn't interfere with the ordinary work of science.

If it doesn't interfere, then how does it handicapp anybody?Unless you're saying that scientific exploration is unhindered in any field except for biology; but then, wouldn't that be something that we would detect? That every scientific discipline but biology made progress?Isn't the simple fact that biologists get the job done an indication that, in fact, they're handicapped by absolutely nothing?

I'm sorry nwr I am simply not following you at all. Now this I simply disagree with. All the varieties of the creatures developed from the basic genetic package over time. God didn't "insert" anything new after the original creation. He created it all to vary within certain limits. But none of this fits MY idea of anything so I'm still just not following you.

Granted that the seeming ordering of the fossils is a problem for creationism, descent is not a convincing explanation for it either. I find the current explanations far more inconsistent with the fossil record and the geological strata than the flood explanation. Millions of years to explain the deposition of a homogeneous stratum sharply demarcated from the next stratum, and containing a Just-So collection of fossils, just makes no sense. This is not so. The recognition of how natural selection works ought to tell you that what brings new phenotypes to the fore is the elimination of other genetic possibilities in a population. In fact the recognition of how DOMESTIC selection works, as in breeding programs, ought to demonstrate this. Sometimes it's merely a suppression or reduction rather than an elimination of genetic possibilities in a population, but this phenomenon is most sharply illustrated when there is an elimination, such as in a bottleneck or other drastic selection process. Sorry but it is extremely common. See above. See above. It means changed frequencies of alleles all the way out to complete elimination of some allelic possibilities. This is not increased genetic diversity. It may not be reduced in most population splits, or sharply reduced, but the overall trend is in that direction with each population split. Please think it through again.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-11-2006 10:04 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 01-11-2006 07:29 PM

It sets the direction of their expectations. I started to characterize this as an "optimistic" mental set somewhere on this thread. That is, there is an abiding expectation that progressive change is indefinitely possible, which derives from the ToE, so that if this is in fact not the case, but the genetic picture is in fact gradually very slowly deteriorating, then, given the complexities and yet-unknowns involved in genetics, this will not be detected for quite some time. Meanwhile legitimate discoveries are made and tested within these parameters. Biology has made great progress. Nope.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-11-2006 10:14 AM

Still, it strikes me that your problem lies with the theory of common descent, rather than the theory of evolution. Evolution makes no proclamations about genetic limits or indefinite progressive change. It is simply used as an explanation for why a given population has changed over time. The Theory Common descent, derived using the Theory of Evolution says that all life came from a small common set of populations, and the Theory of Evolution can be used to explain how these populations diverged to where we are.No massive scope, just 'if you have a population whose allele frequencies have changed, here is a theory as to how that happened...'. If the theory of common descent is wrong, we can still apply Theory of Evolution to things in its current form.

Faith,You seem to be emphasizing the selection aspect of genetics. And selection for is also selection against and would tend to reduce and sometime eliminate genetic information in a gene pool.I'd like to know how you deal with mutations as a source of new information.The other factor that is inseperable is the change of environments that occurs on various scales. A change in environment will alter the selelection of the gene pool. I'm not a all clear how creationists decided what is macro and what is micro evolution. Do you accept Darwin's work on the finchs of the Galapagos? That an breeding pair of creatures moving into a new enviroment with different enviromental niches would develope a range of new species?Because we have to specialize in studies science gets broken up. But it's important to keep the large picture that life is an ecology. It's the entire universe that supports life on earth. Locally through the sun and even more locally the planet with water, atmosphere, substrates etc. It's all interdependent. The changes that are taking place occur throughout the whole system.lfen

Mutations are apparently the only way new information could enter into the picture, but I don't know how to deal with this yet. The majority of the processes that effect change in populations are the selective/reducing processes like natural selection. Mutation is the ONLY one that increases, but I don't yet understand how it works well enough to see how it all fits together. For one thing I'm not sure it's random -- Pink Sasquatch believes it's not -- but very possibly a predictable or built-in mechanism for shuffling the chemistry of the genes to allow for diversity. Then the selection of such diversity still exerts a reduction in the process of bringing the new allele to phenotypic expression -- by eliminating competing alleles.

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I believe this has been answered. I believe scientists in general are quite competent at what they do, hypothesizing and testing and so on, and that this is a completely different level of scientific work from the ToE.

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But Faith, that's just it.It isn't "different".The THEORY of evolution IS the overarching hypothesis that informs every other more "specific" hypothesis in all branches of Biology.It isn't logically consistent for you to say that you believe Evolutionary scientists to be competent at theorizing and testing theories, but then conclude that the overarching theory/hypothesis that they have come up with, that all of their other theories/hypotheses are informed by, is completely wrong.If they have tested the consequences of this explanation, and if they are competent at testing the consequences of this explanation, then how is it that you can conclude that the explanation is wrong from a scientific basis?

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I believe they are handicapped by the ToE which they subscribe to,

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But you just said that you believe that they are competent at testing the consequences of the explanations they generate?Are you saying that the consequences of the explanation known as the ToE have not been tested at all, or are you now saying that scientists are NOT competent at testing it?

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in that their thinking can only go in the directions it prescribes, but that this doesn't interfere with the ordinary work of science.

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The "ordinary work" of Evolutionary science, just as with all other life sciences, is testing the consequences of explanations.Are you saying that the explanation known as the ToE hasn't been tested, or that those testing it are incompetent at testing it?Also, you may not realize it, but you have just implied that all scientists who work with Evolutionary subjects (and apparently, not any who do not) have a bias that makes them ignore evidence contrary to their preferred result. This is considered a serious charge in the scientific world of poor science at the best and fraud at the worst.Is this what you meant to imply?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 01-11-2006 11:08 AM

Wouldn't that depend on the population? For instance, bacteria are used a lot in genetics research because their genomes are small (being prokaryotic) but also because they have a very short generation time. It's easy with a commerical bioreactor to culture hundreds of generations in a very short period of time. Also, we can simulate the effects of selection and mutation (determined via experimentation) on populations using computers.So, given the power of modern genetics research to test these long-frame changes within populations, I don't see the validity of your assertion that this would all be too long-term to test. If the basic mechanisms of evolution have the effect you say they do, we should be able to detect it, even if it's such a small effect that it would take many many generations to detect. We have the capability to detect even those changes. Why not? How do you do valid scientific work under a critically flawed model?That's how the history of scientific progress works. Eventually progress in a field sort of peters out, new discoveries are made that can't be made sense of under the old models, nobody gets anywhere for a while, and then bam - a new model (a new "paradigm") puts the new data in context, makes it make sense, and it's like the floodgates let go, and all these new discoveries pour out.If there were fundamental flaws in the evolutionary model, how would it be possible to discover anything? Much less maintain the breakneck pace of biological discovery we've been enjoying for the past 50 years?

Faith,A very fair answer. I'll understand then that if at this point you don't wish to say anything further until you worked on mutation more, but I am curious if you've thoughts about the different species of finches occupying different ecological niches that Darwin observed in the Galapagos. It was his conclusion that all these varieties of finchs arose from a single species. Do you concur or do you have another preferred explanation?lfen

I don't know what some creationists may have said, but everything I've said is consistent with there being all kinds of variety within a species, so that of course all the different finches descended from a parent finch, and possibly all finches from a parent bird back farther. Creationists shouldn't have a problem with this. It is what is normally called "micro-evolution" now {abe: by creationists as a result of dealing with evolutionist assumptions}, that used to be called simply variation. It's observable in breeding animals all the time. Nothing could be more common.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-11-2006 05:57 PM