Evolution: hacking back the tree of life (can anyone say DEVOLUTION?)

New Scientist ^ | June 13, 2007 | Laura Spinney

[valkyry1]

I’m still not sure what a troll even is.

It was her sideways use of an ad hominem attack against you, meaning that she has no genuine argument.

This is just one aspect among many, that I picked up on right away a long time ago with these fellows, and that was their 'dynamics'.. And I would not like it if it were flower potting we were arguing, or trying to have a dialog about.

[machman]

ARE WE NOT MEN?

D-E-V-0

[burzum]

Science, over the past couple of hundred years, has been pretty good at showing how things once thought to be supernatural are actually natural occurrences.

Oh really? But I thought science had nothing to do with the supernatural. The supernatural is outside the scope of what science can discover. Science has enough to do without wasting it's time on hocus-pocus like that. What's it doing investigating it then?

You know exactly what was meant. Don't be a troll.

[burzum]

The best possible fit with data is not always right. As a matter of fact, science has not only corrected itself many times, but is still in the process of correcting itself as new data comes in. That means that what was previously believed to be true/accurate/thebestfit/whatever - was wrong.

I still have yet to figure out how you can use something that's wrong, or not even sure is right, or not even sure is close to being right, to prove that something else is wrong.

Your problem is basically David Hume's Problem of Induction. You are arguing that there is no reason whatsoever to trust inductive reasoning. Therefore the only reasoning that is valid is deductive reasoning. And where do you get your axioms to start? A literal interpretation of the Bible of course!

This is basically an Aristotelian thought process. You start with something general determined by a priori reasoning and you then use it to draw a conclusion about individual events. Science does the opposite. Science takes individual observations and makes a general theory through a posteriori reasoning.

If you reject induction then you reject science outright. Since science needs observations to draw conclusions and since you can't perform an infinite number of observations, a scientific proof only means that there is a very high probability that something is correct.

In contrast, people who argue that deductive reasoning is the best way to see the world have traditionally said that experiments are useless since they can never really 'prove' anything with certainty. Aristotle's arguments against performing experiments were especially harmful in the development of science because he was so well regarded. I highly suggest you read Aristotle's Problems Connected with the Drinking of Wine and Drunkenness. His attempt to use the general idea of vital heat to discuss how people are affected by wine is both funny and informative. It is an excellent example of why people shouldn't try to use only deductive reasoning to explain the world. While deductive reasoning itself is infallible, you have to pick the correct axioms to start it off. And because you have thrown out experimental evidence, you will never know you if your axiom is right or wrong.

[ReignOfError]

The point of the chart was not to communicate specific data points, but to communicate a concept.

It failed at both.

But if you are asking me, the Y axis begins with Creation between six and seven thousand years ago. The X axis is meant to communicate genetic degeneration ever since the fall.

I was asking you, because you presented the graph, but what I was looking for was the explanation from the person who created the graph. What is it supposed to illustrate?

The X-axis, I assumed, illustrates time. I cannot know in what units. The Y-axis illustrates ... something undefined. "Genetic degradation" -- in what units? Number of species, of alleles, of phenotypes? Or does it reflect height, SAT scores, or white cell count? Penis length? The bare graph says nothing. It exists only to comfort eople who can nod sagely at a line pointing downward and say, "See? We're declining."

But speaking of not labeling axes, it seems Darwin himself was in the habit of making graphs and charts without data points to communicate the CONCEPT of evolution. Is the following chart from Darwin's "Origin of Species" also "out of line"?

The axes are labeled. A-L on the X axis, and I-XIV on the Y. If they appeared without a key, then they're pretty pictures with no meaning. If, as I strongly suspect, you omitted the key, then you're intentionally omitting information to claim that it isn't there.

[Misterioso]

Right. Science is crap. Beautiful.

[raygun]

Here's a thought: instead of bashing your brains in trying to teach the unwashed masses higher intellectual concepts that they're utterly incapable of learning, why don't you re-enter the 5th grade?

I've done some research, and apparently you have a special problem that you're struggling with: dyslexia.

This is a conclusive assessment based on investigation when certain words should have been learned to the students, and apparently you never were learned the word "discovery".

click, use the "Edit/find" tools in the menubar and look for "discover". What grade is that word expected to be mastered by?

I just wonder why it is that you've not mastered 5th grade spelling, and yet...

[MEGoody]

So much time passing, in fact, that evolution almost knowingly decelerates itself to be more efficient and productive.

Almost knowingly? Uh. . .what?

[betty boop]

I will await your response with what can only be described as baited breath.

Oh dear, don't hold your breath while waiting, GGG. We can't spare you. :^)

[Elsie]

Hack THIS!!

http://www.1funny.com:80/prehistoricfish.shtml

[Elsie]

You do have to have a very fertile imagination to be an evolutionist. And also be most credulous.

Calvinasaurus LIVES!!

[metmom]

I’ve contended that scientists are wrong for ignoring an aspect of reality and I’ve been informed about how science does not deal with the supernatural, it’s out of the realm of science, it can’t deal with it, it only deals with the natural physical world that can be seen and measured, yada, yada, yada....

Now there’s bragging about how science has exposed the *truth* about what’s behind the supernatural and how great science is for doing it?

Here is a post addressing the issue:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1897820/posts?page=10#10

So which is it? Does it explore the supernatural or not?
How is it trolling pointing out inconsistencies in one’s statements?

[metmom]

This is basically an Aristotelian thought process. You start with something general determined by a priori reasoning and you then use it to draw a conclusion about individual events. Science does the opposite. Science takes individual observations and makes a general theory through a posteriori reasoning.

This is exactly what happens in science with the naturalistic world view it holds.

[metmom]

In contrast, people who argue that deductive reasoning is the best way to see the world have traditionally said that experiments are useless since they can never really 'prove' anything with certainty.

And cm has also stated that science is not about proof, but the best fit for the data. What's left for science then? Wouldn't that be deductive reasoning?

[<1/1,000,000th%]

This is a conclusive assessment based on investigation when certain words should have been learned to the students, and apparently you never were learned the word "discovery".

When were you learned to do what kind of research?

[allmendream]

He meant that there was no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection, and that we know of a long series of gradiations in the complexity of the eye, each one good for its possessor. Nowhere does he imply that all evolution is an increase in complexity.

[metmom]

So what's going on in this article is not science, then, but apologetics. Right?

From the article:

While nobody disagrees that there has been a general trend towards complexity - humans are indisputably more complicated than amoebas - recent findings suggest that some of our very early ancestors were far more sophisticated than we have given them credit for. If so, then much of that precocious complexity has been lost by subsequent generations as they evolved into new species. "The whole concept of a gradualist tree, with one thing branching off after another and the last to branch off, the vertebrates, being the most complex, is wrong," says Detlev Arendt, an evolutionary and developmental biologist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany.

The idea of loss in evolution is not new. We know that snakes lost their legs, as did whales, and that our own ancestors lost body hair. However, the latest evidence suggests that the extent of loss might have been seriously underestimated. Some evolutionary biologists now suggest that loss - at every level, from genes and types of cells to whole anatomical features and life stages - is the key to understanding evolution and the relatedness of living things. Proponents of this idea argue that classical phylogeny has been built on rotten foundations, and tinkering with it will not put it right. Instead, they say, we need to rethink the process of evolution itself.

[burzum]

This is exactly what happens in science with the naturalistic world view it holds.

I must say that this is a valid criticism from a philosophical perspective. But I also have to note that it still doesn't give support to people like Aristotle and Descartes who tried to use a priori knowledge to explain everything in the world.

I suppose one simple example of why your criticism is valid is to perform a thought experiment where the world is actually a simulation (like in the movie The Matrix). Experiments could be used, but assuming a naturalistic explanation within that world would be false. And in that simulated world no experiment that you could perform would ever give a simulated being knowledge about the real world. Their only recourse would be to madly make up axioms and follow them to their logical conclusions.

I suppose my argument would be that if we assume that everything can be explained by the natural world then experimental evidence is the best way to go about it. And if we don't then every option is absurd (in the philosophical sense) and it is impossible to draw a conclusion about the world whatsoever. Of course, as I pointed out, there is no way to know which axiom is the correct one--which by default makes all options absurd (though experimental knowledge would be slightly less absurd that purely axiomatic knowledge).

[RobRoy]

I’ve been saying since day one that we are de-evolving. Adam and Eve were physically PURE. We are less so.

[RobRoy]

“Instead, they say, we need to rethink the process of evolution itself. “

Yep. Which is what Ptolemy and those that followed his teaching FOR OVER A THOUSAND YEARS kept doing - until the whole theory finally collapsed under a mountain of irrefutable evidence.

Likewise, the evidence against evolution being exposed almost daily is causing constant “rethinking” on the part of evolutionists. ;)