Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Evolution Proof?

Um, ya gotta publish something before it can be reviewed. That's kinda the idea. You know, throw it out there and let people try and pick it apart like has been done with say Origin of Species for example these past 154 years.

No it does not. Science took on the question of whether the earth was flat and answered it. If your analogy was valid, science would welcome the opportunity to disprove a competing incorrect theory, if in fact it is incorrect, rather than trying to marginalize that theory on criteria irrelevant to its truth or falsity (as we have seen throughout this thread). This is, BTW, what caused Berkeley Law Professor Phillip Johnson to remark that one of the first clues he had to the weakness of Neo-Darwinism was the way its proponents defended the theory (the form of their arguments). What were they afraid of? Also, your analogy to the flat earth assumes that the criticisms of neo-Darwinism or nominally competing theories such as ID is as to Darwinism as the theory of a flat earth is relative to the theory that the earth is round. The roundness of the earth is a fact of present day observation. The all-important aspect of the theory of evolution (the creation of new genetic material and thus new survivable phenotypes) is a theory which everyone agrees is not observed in the "here and now" but is assumed based almost entirely (if not entirely) on historical evidence. So your analogy is invalid on that basis also.

Actually, it does.

A group of experts in a chosen field evaluate the data and attempt to repeat the experiment in the exact way as the original. If they find that they (and others) are able to obtain the same results the data will be approved and deemed "Peer Reviewed".

This of course is a very simplified explanation of the process, but if you think for a second that The Origin of Species hasn't been meticulously researched and found to be repeatable you are delusional.

That is exactly what I am trying to do----but Sniper invoked Peer Review to avoid responding to the merits of the argument in the article I linked. You can't have it both ways: you can't argue for the invalidity of a new idea or theory based on lack of peer review and then deny it the opportunity for any kind of hearing. In any event, the lack of peer review tells us nothing about the validity of a new theory. Ask Francis Crick and that Watson fellow----and Charles Darwin.

Where did I ever say or imply that the Origin of Species had not been meticulously researched or reviewed. The salient point is it was not peer reviewed prior to publication. Again, the lack of peer review tells us nothing about whether a scientific theory is correct and many, many "peer reviewed" articles or research are subsequently discarded as erroneous. Peer review unfortunately is often used to exclude competition from new ideas. If you think science is not thoroughly politicized you are naieve. Take a look at global warming or resource scarcity. The entire field is dominated by an a priori political commitment to leftism and as a consequence, real science which does not tow the company line is often excluded from serious consideration, regardless of its merits. Go view the link to the movie Expelled above. The examples of this academic totalitarianism are really quite appalling.

What are they afraid of?

ID is not a "competing theory". Science doesn't and cannot deal with the supernatural. If you were to claim aliens created life on earth, then fine. Present you evidence. Claiming something is so complicated that it could only have been created therefore goddidit is not science. That's religion. I don't know is a perfectly rational response to how complicated things work. Let's see if we can find out and what does the evidence say are even better. The minute you invoke the supernatural, you're no longer looking at the evidence objectively to figure out how things work, you've jumped into the why things work territory.

Well said.

No one. But after its publication, the entire biological science community peer reviewed it, all trying to shoot it down.

The accumulation of small changes over time result in larger changes over longer periods of time, till, eventually, the horse can no longer produce fertile offspring with the donkey, even though earlier in their isolation from one another they had been able to interbreed with no difficulty, and earlier still they were indistinguishable as members of the same species.

You weary me. You are not a serious student of either creation or evolution. According to my Bible Adam had "relations" with his wife and she conceived. The details of the creation story are there. God spoke and it was. Again it the Psalms it says God spoke and it stood. There is no room for all your foolishness of contradictory belief in evolutionism.

The doctors who discovered the DNA molecule did just that. The even coined a word: Panspermia. They realized the molecule is so complex it could never happen without a maker.

This is exactly what I said yesterday. The difference is if you read your own words you would realize they don't turn into a cow or a camel. If they change enough the offspring is dead and extinction follows.

ID is an inference to the best explanation for causation of complex systems based on our common experience in the world. Science infers to intelligent causes all the time in many fields. It is a myth and falsehood promulgated by Neo-Darwinists that ID is religion or that it is outside the realm of "real" science in order to protect Darwinian evolution from competition from an idea that explains complex biological systems
far better than neo-Darwinism. Methodological naturalism is a philosophy, not a deduction from empirical science. Proponents of ID are simply saying lets go wherever the evidence leads. Methodological naturalists fight that tooth and nail because they don't like where the evidence leads. Think about it: in the name of "science", Neo-Darwinists espouse a philosophical position that prohibits empirical explanations that compete with their ideas, claim (falsely) that only their philosophical definition of science is the correct one and then use their arbitrary definition to insulate their ideas from empirical competition. That is not a search for scientific truth; its dogmatic adherence to an a priori metaphysical position.

Sniper:

Did the finch beak variation of which you spoke involve the creation of any new genetic information? How about the Kettlewell Moth example? Did the change in frequency of appearance of light and dark colored moths involve the creation of any new genetic information?

The answer of course is that these paradigmatic examples of 'evolution" in action do not show natural selection creating new genetic information or new species. Rather, what they show is natural selection changing the frequency of the expression of previously existing genetic information in the phenotype.

From these examples of micro-evolution we are asked to infer that the same process can create new massive quantities of= new genetic information and entirely new species. There is no good reason to accept that extrapolation. It has never been observed to happen. Scientists can't even create new species using intelligence to try and manipulate the genome.

And of course, natural selection cannot even begin to work in the absence of organic material. The simplest living cell is believed to have over 250 coordinated proteins with their attendant manufacturing processes. How did that happen? How did life begin? Science literally doesn't have a clue.

Where does the Bible say that Adam's sperm fertilized Eve's eggs, forming zygotes that became Cain, Abel, Seth, etc.? If you believe any sperm, eggs, or zygotes were involved, you are (by your own stated standard) believing in man's opinions vs God's word, since none of that is specified in the account of how Cain, Abel, Seth, etc., came to be conceived and born. Please answer this question straightforwardly.

If the horse and the donkey become sufficiently differentiated species, both the horse and the donkey become extinct?? By what mechanism?? Do you realize how ignorant you sound?

I look at this evolutionary debate as a debate between the Bible thumpers and the Deists. It's interesting.

Funny, when I thought I knew I was stupid. Now that I know, I feel stupid for not having seen it before.

I don't know why you think that. First, evolution properly understood makes belief in God utterly superfluous and illogical. Daniel Dennett has said that if evolution is true, the following propositions follow as a matter of inescapable logic: (1) there is no God; (2) there is no free will; (3) there is no purpose to life and (4) there is no right or wrong. Morality is whatever we want it to be (or not be). So properly understood, the debate is between atheism on the one and. Now with respect to ID, the designer could be a supreme being or an extra-terrestrial. Francis Crick is a non-believer and posits panspermia for the information that the genetic code contains. So, as a matter of logical necessity, ID does not require the existence of a supernatural creator. Therefore, the debate is more properly understood as a debate between a system whose logical necessity is a denial of not merely God, but even the possibility of free will and a system or theory which posits intelligence as the source of the complex genetic information required to create life and differentiate species which intelligence may be super-natural or might not be. Finally, ID does not invoke Genesis, the Bible or any aspect of Young Earth creationism. I don't know why you would tie Biblical fundamentalism to ID when they have nothing to do with one another. It is true opponents of ID try to caricature the theory as creationism. But that is a caricature. In any event, there is literally no basis to associate it with Biblical fundamentalism. Actually, fundamentalists are often hostile to ID because it tends, in their minds, to devalue God and his role in creation.

Jordan

Translation = 'If you believe in evolution, then you're an atheist...and you don't believe in morality.'

What a crock...!