Are You Too Dumb to Understand Evolution?

CreationEvolutionHeadlines ^ | September 10, 2008

[GourmetDan]

"Also the definition of random includes probabilistic, as in “7 card stud is a random game”."

I know that you will continue to use the word 'random' even though you understand that probabilistic is the proper term you should use to describe genetic mutation.

[GourmetDan]

"Did these differences between humans chimps and gorillas arise by mutation or were they designed differently from the beginning?"

Oh, the fallacy of the false dilemma.

"Only if humans, chimps and gorillas had a common ancestor can one assume that these differences were due to mutations from the sequence that was present in the common ancestor."

Followed quickly by the fallacy of affirming the consequent.

[allmendream]

It is in no way a false dilemma.

The paper that you sourced but did not understand compared the gene for p53 in eleven different species and discussed the differences.

Are those differences due to mutation?

CAN YOU ANSWER THE QUESTION?
WHY NOT????

[Fichori]

“You claimed that if the Sun orbited the Earth then the 2.1 degree difference would be correct and that the only reason you didn’t do it before was because of lack of time. Since you obviously have the time now, show it : )”

According to you...

“There is no difference between the Earth spinning in place or the sun orbiting the earth, the suns apparent position vs actual position is the same.”--LeGrande

With that in mind, this little animation should work fine:




The other day you bragged about making money, so I'll make you an offer.

You give $500 to the FReepathon, and I'll do up a nice digram or animation showing Light-time correction.
(The phenomena that would cause a 2.1° lag if the Sun was orbiting a stationary Earth)

So, we have a deal?

[LeGrande]

You give $500 to the FReepathon, and I'll do up a nice digram or animation showing Light-time correction. (The phenomena that would cause a 2.1° lag if the Sun was orbiting a stationary Earth)

Do you actually think that is worth $500 to me? LOL I want you to do it so that you can figure out what is happening. You should be paying me for the tutoring.

No one ever got rich throwing good money to lost causes.

[Fichori]

“Do you actually think that is worth $500 to me? LOL I want you to do it so that you can figure out what is happening. You should be paying me for the tutoring.

No one ever got rich throwing good money to lost causes.”

I've actually already studied up on it and done a crude simulation.
(I have a pretty good idea how Light-time correction works)

If FR is a lost cause, quit wasting Jim's bandwidth.

[LeGrande]

If FR is a lost cause, quit wasting Jim's bandwidth.

What ever gave you that impression? Do I really need to spell it out? You are the lost cause.

I would have accepted a wager, but you don't even have enough money to go to the library and I don't like taking food out of someones mouth.

I will give you some free job advice though. Idaho is offering a 100% tax rebate on all alternative energy installations. Basically solar panels are free to any taxpaying homeowner. Anyone who can't make a couple of grand a day installing solar systems deserves to stay unemployed and broke.

Of course installers would need to know that the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West. That may be a hard concept for you to understand : )

[Fichori]

“I will give you some free job advice though. Idaho is offering a 100% tax rebate on all alternative energy installations. Basically solar panels are free to any taxpaying homeowner. Anyone who can't make a couple of grand a day installing solar systems deserves to stay unemployed and broke.”

Thanks.

I'm not in Idaho, and I don't have any means of transportation.

Ok, so I'm actually in the process of mounting a large 2-stroke motor on my bicycle.

But thats aways down the road.

[LeGrande]

I'm not in Idaho, and I don't have any means of transportation.

Call up a manufacturer and get an advance.

Ok, so I'm actually in the process of mounting a large 2-stroke motor on my bicycle.

Why not make an electric bike? It will be cheaper to operate, but I suppose that isn't important to you.

[mrjesse]

I can't imagine what would possibly fill the bill to your satisfaction. I remember someone once pointed you to a vast library of articles on evolution, and you complained that there were too many.

First of all, I may be no genius but some things are obvious: People tend defend what they believe in and pretend it's scientific and state it as true when they don't know for a fact that it is true.

Remember, my question is "How can I know without having to practice undue faith.."
93,000 articles written by people who believe in evolution as their world view is not proof in and of itself. Now maybe some of them report on actual findings that I can go verify and would find do indeed prove ASBE -- but most of the articles don't provide any such evidence -- and nobody will show me which one does provide the evidence. I looked over several of them but I don't have time to go read 93,000 articles because some of them might contain the evidence. It's your side of the argument you're trying to support, why don't you show me which one contains some good evidence! I'm working already too solid/real to prove your point. You're supposed to prove your point!

Remember: It's religious folk who just take as gospel what their leaders or priests or teachers say. As scientists, that's not how we do things -- I need to be able to know that something is true because I can verify it for myself, if I am going to say that I know it and if it is to be scientific. It doesn't matter whether there is evidence or not that all species came by evolution -- if I believe it without knowing it, I am merely practicing a faith! Maybe the faith would be correct, maybe it wouldn't -- but it's not science, it's faith and belief! You see, if you don't know, then at best you can believe. If you know, then you don't need to believe.

So try to put yourself in the shoes of an objective young scientist who has a clear distinction between the concept of knowing and believing, and explain to me how he would come to know that ASBE is true (all species by evolution) -- without it just being a faith! Remember, how sincere a faith is does not have anything to do whether it is a faith or not.

So let me turn the question around: what kind of evidence that you can see and know, that wouldn't require you to have confidence in the work of people you've never met, would you accept? Do you really expect to be able to watch a dog give birth to a goat? Or what?

Do your best and we'll discuss it. On the farm we had an animal that barked give birth to a goat. ha ha ha. But seriously, why would it matter what I need to see in order to believe? Is the evidence a product of the belief? No! That's the neat thing about science - we can discuss the evidence even before we know what it all means!

This is my main point: Just what does it take for me to know? Do I have to study evolutionary biology for 4 years in just the right school to know? Do I have to do some rite of initiation? or is the only way to "know" to believe in people I've never met about things I've never seen?

Perhaps I'm handicapped, having grown up learning about the solid/real sciences - electronics, computer programming, mechanics, even a touch of chemistry and math -- I'm used to science being well demonstrable. If I say "A transistor behaves in such and such a way" and you doubt me, all I've got to do is say "well here watch I'll show you -- or you can do the experiment yourself."

You see, I'm used to being able to understand things and observe them. Nobody expected me to take electronics or mechanics by faith - and I don't see why any other science should be different.

Now I realize that some sciences are very complicated and may require years of study to understand them well enough to be able to know them. But so far nobody's told me that such is the case with ASBE. So what am I missing? Is ASBE an exercise in faith? or does it just take years of training in the right schools before I too can know it?

What exactly is the roadmap to me knowing that ASBE is true?

Given enough time and bribed with enough dried apricots, I could lay out a "roadmap" of things to read and experiments to try that would teach you how a transistor worked or how any of the other gazillions of science work. By the end of the "course" you would not only know that transistors or whatever worked the way they did, you could demonstrate it to anybody who doubted you! Who can lay out such a roadmap for me so I too can know that ASBE is true?

Thanks,

-Jesse

[Fichori]

“Why not make an electric bike? It will be cheaper to operate, but I suppose that isn't important to you.”

I already have a motor at my disposal.(if I can use it before its owner finds a use for it)

Electric would be very expensive.

[mrjesse]

Said LeGrande: Where you are probably confused is in my assertion that in a two body model it makes no difference which body is circling the other or if one body is simply spinning.

The problem is, LeGrande, that you made that assertion regarding the sun, the earth, and light -- and light is a third body! (which you admitted when I told you that a ring laser gyro buried ten feet deep on the earth will be able to tell the difference between the earth rotating and the sun orbiting.) So we're talking about a 3 body model - and you're making an argument based on a 2 body model? What's with that?

The sun's light, once emitted, barring matter or force which changes its course, continues to travel in a straight path, regardless of whether the sun is still where it was at the time or not. So if the sun moved 2.1 degrees, then the light will appear 2.1 degrees lagged by the time it reaches earth. On the other hand, if the sun did not move degrees in 8.3 minutes, then the light will still be coming from the same direction of where the sun is.

So clearly, the sun's light qualifies for the third body in this case!

-Jesse

[LeGrande]

I already have a motor at my disposal.(if I can use it before its owner finds a use for it)

Good luck : ) I did that when I was about 10 years old and it worked pretty well, until I wrecked it. A Go Cart worked better though.

[LeGrande]

The problem is, LeGrande, that you made that assertion regarding the sun, the earth, and light -- and light is a third body!

Just make light a vector and do the math : )

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

Do your best and we'll discuss it....But seriously, why would it matter what I need to see in order to believe? Is the evidence a product of the belief? No!

The reason I asked is that I wonder if you've set the bar impossibly high. I don't know what you mean by "see and know." Much of the evidence for evolution is found at the level of molecules and genes, which are kind of hard to see. If you're not willing to take the word of people who have looked at them about what they've seen, then you won't accept that evidence, no matter how good it is.

is the only way to "know" to believe in people I've never met about things I've never seen?

If you mean that literally, then yes, it is.

So what am I missing? Is ASBE an exercise in faith?

I'm not sure I'd call it faith. But I think you'd have to accept that the thousands of scientists studying fossils, and the thousands of other scientists studying molecular biology, and the thousands of other scientists studying genetics, know what they're doing and are, for the most part, telling the truth about what they found and drawing their best inference about what it means. And--here's an important part--drawing their best inference in light of what all those other scientists are doing.

One of the other recent threads on this subject touched on the term "consilience," which means "the agreement of two or more inductions drawn from different sets of data." That's the power of the theory of evolution: it ties together the inductions from morphology, fossils, genetics, molecular biology--not to mention those from nonbiological sciences like geology. They all line up to present a consistent picture, while competing explanations require each of those other inductions to be wrong in a specific way that doesn't have anything to do with the way any others of them are wrong.

So that's my answer. It's not just that there are thousands of little pieces of evidence, it's that the ToE enables all of them to hang together consistently. I guess if that's not enough, you'll have to wait for that dog to give birth to a goat.

[mrjesse]

The point you seem to be missing is the direction of the aberration. With the Stars it goes back and forth, with the Sun it is constant.

What has the direction got to do with it? The reason the Stellar Aberration for stars outside our orbit reverses direction is because we reverse direction relative to them. The fact that we're not reversing direction related to all stars doesn't mean that Stellar Aberration does not apply to the sun! So what do call the apparent angular displacement of the sun caused by the earth's relative transverse velocity of 67KMPH? or are you saying that the earth doesn't have a transverse velocity of 67Kmph compared to the sun? Or are you saying that the sun isn't apparently ~20 arecseconds ahead of where it really is?

At least you admit that you were ignorant of a specific aberration ...

Jumpin' Whale Gills yes! I'm a scientist, (unpaid forwhich as I may be) -- that means I don't know everything (Nobody knows everything!) but that I'm eager to learn! When I learn something new, I say "Oh, I didn't know. Thanks! I learned something today!" In what way could a man do better then that?

How about you? Theoretically speaking, if it was demonstrated to you that you were wrong on a point that you had argued, would you admit it? Can you cite a single instance of that happening here on FR?

... and you are no longer claiming that the Sun is where it appears to be ...

You were claiming that the sun was apparently LAGGED 2.1 degrees. But Stellar Aberration has it apparently ADVANCED 20 arcseconds! So not only am I claiming that your claim was wrong, it is vastly the wrong size and it is even in the wrong direction!

which was my point in the beginning.

Wasn't your point something about fields taking time to equalize or settle or something, thereby causing the sun to appear behind where it actually is? but that's just the opposite of reality! Your original point must have been wrong too! How about that! not only was your reasoning and statements wrong, your original point was wrong as well! And to make things even worse, your reason (being that the earth was 8.3 light minutes from the sun and that the earth rotated 2.1 degrees in 8.3 minutes) has absolutely nothing to do with the cause of the 20 arcsecond aberration!

You are the one who seems to be fixated on the 2.1 degrees without even understanding the basic concepts, but at least we have made some progress from the Merry Go Round days.

The reason I'm so interested in the 2.1 degrees is because you said it and I'm pretty sure you're outright wrong. And if you knowingly refuse to admit it when you've said something wrong even when you've been caught, how much more unlikely will you refrain from telling me a lie about something I can't disprove -- like ASBE?

As to the merry go around, I think you were wrong on those too -- but haven't got around to performing the experiment. Maybe I will yet. But I guess I figured that since you won't apply the same math to Pluto or a 12-light-hour-planet that you did to the sun, I had even better things to argue with.

First off I am the one that told you about Stellar Aberration as another example of aberration, which happens to be different than the aberration caused by the Earths orbital velocity around the Sun. They are two different aberrations. And both are different than the aberration caused by the rotation of the Earth.

Well what do you call the name of your alleged 2.1 degree aberration? And what do you call the apparent angular displacement of 20 arcseconds of the sun due to the earth's transverse velocity of 67kmph, if it's not stellar aberration?

When I try to use analogies try and not confuse them with the actual example.

Try to not use analogies to describe orbital mechanics. They don't prove a thing and only give you the false sense of feeling that you know what you're talking about.

Then why are you arguing with me then? My initial statement was that the apparent position of the Sun and the actual position of the Sun are different.

No, your initial statement was this:

Let me give you something else to think about : ) When you create a field it propagates at the speed of light to infinity. Once the field has been stabilized how fast are the changes in the field? In other words when you look at the Sun, you are seeing it about 7 minutes behind where it actually is, but if you had a sensitive gravity sensor where would it point? At the sun you see or 7 minutes ahead of the sun you see?

You are clearly claiming that the sun is apparently lagged behind one AU's worth or degrees. You're pretending as if the sun was moving and it took time for the new position of the sun to show up for observers on the earth. And you're not talking about a rate of movement - remember you talked about the use of a sensitive gravity meter which would point to the actual current position as compared to the apparent position. And we all know that the sun moves 2.1 degrees across the sky in the 8.3 minutes it takes for the light to reach the earth from the sun. You were clearly talking about a constant difference between actual and apparent position of the sun at any instant in time for an observer on the earth.

Apparently you now agree with that statement. Granted it is for a different reason, but the basic truth remains.

I do not agree with any statement that the sun is lagged or displaced 2.1 degrees.

I have told you from the beginning that I am not going to make an appeal to authority.

Yeah, any authority except your own..!

Seriously, there's a difference between merely appealing to authority and showing me that at least one other scientist has came to the same conclusion that you have..

Science isn't based on proof. Science is based on falsification.

You forgot about evidence! what about evidence? there needs to be evidence, too! You make it sound as if any absurd idea is to be considered scientific and true even though it totally lacks evidence -- until it gets falsified.

You're making claims (about the 2.1 degrees and others) that there is simply no evidence for! When I ask for evidence, you say that you won't appeal to authority or whatever. But I'm not asking for an appeal to authority, I'm asking for evidence! Even if somebody else documented it.

I am simply pointing out your errors in thinking.

Problem is you haven't provided any evidence for the errors in my thinking.

If you want me to answer your Pluto question you will simply have to be much more specific as to when and which frame of reference you are using.

Now go re-read your very original statement (the one I quoted inset above) and notice that you did not need me to specify any frame of reference or anything. You came up with it all. Just do the same thing for Pluto while it's so far away that the earth rotates 102 degrees in the 6.8 hours it takes light to reach the earth from Pluto. And the same goes for the planet that is 12 light hours away.

Answer those just like you did for the earth! In other words, let me ask your own question but for pluto. If it was good enough for me it's good enough for you:

Let me give you something else to think about : ) When you create a field it propagates at the speed of light to infinity. Once the field has been stabilized how fast are the changes in the field? In other words when you look at the Pluto, you are seeing it about 6.8 hours behind where it actually is, but if you had a sensitive gravity sensor where would it point? At the Pluto you see or 6.8 hours ahead of the Pluto you see?

So how about it? It was easy enough for you then. Go ahead and answer it for Pluto! You didn't need me to specify any frame of reference or anything before. You don't need it now, either!

I know that you feel that the Bible has all the physics that you need, but you might be surprised at some of the insights that can be gained from a college level physics text book, that you can't get from the Bible.

This is hilarious! I'm the Christian, I'm trying to talk simple physics, and you're the Atheist, and which one of us do you think keeps bringing up religion and the Bible?! The atheist of us?! Amazing!

So seriously, how come I didn't need to specify any frame of reference when you made your original statement about the sun and yet all the sudden it's different for Pluto or an imaginary planet 12 light hours away?

-Jesse

[mrjesse]

The reason I asked is that I wonder if you've set the bar impossibly high.

Well, my bar isn't impossibly high for the other sciences. Works just fine for those. But maybe this science requires a higher level of hope in things not yet seen, or more faith in umm other people?

I don't know what you mean by "see and know."

Simple. A stone falls to the ground. I can see and know that. A resistor gets hot if you put too much power into it. It might even go up in a puff of smoke. I've done that. I've seen that. I know that. No belief required. I have seen animals give birth to offspring that was not an identical clone. I know that such a thing happens and has happened. I've seen it. I can show you. But then someone comes along and tells me that the goat and the dog are related. At best, I can only believe them. I cannot see that as a fact for myself, nor can I know it to be true, except by believing somebody I've never met about a thing in the past that I've never seen. (and which they didn't actually see either.) Does that help explain what I mean by seeing and knowing versus believing?

Much of the evidence for evolution is found at the level of molecules and genes, which are kind of hard to see.

Are you talking about the kind of evolution I have seen (some call it micro) or the kind I haven't seen? I have noticed that a lot of evidence of "micro" evolution is used as proof for ASBE (All Species By Evolution.) If we're talking about the evolution I've seen, then we have no disagreement. The problem is, the evolution I've seen does not prove ASBE.

If you're not willing to take the word of people who have looked at them about what they've seen, then you won't accept that evidence, no matter how good it is.

Well what would this look like? The problem is there are people who do not believe ASBE is true. Maybe not as many as those that do. For example I have a book here titled "In 6 days: Why 50 [phd] scientists choose to believe in creation." Now I'm not saying that because 50 pHd scientists say it that it means it is so - but it proves my point that not all scientists agree. So is it just an opinion poll? This doesn't sound very scientific.

Said MrJesse: is the only way to "know" to believe in people I've never met about things I've never seen?

Replied HaHa: If you mean that literally, then yes, it is.



Yes, I mean literally. You see, this is how ASBE evolutionary science differs from the solid sciences -- with ASBE much more faith or belief is required.

I'm not sure I'd call it faith. But I think you'd have to accept that the thousands of scientists studying fossils, and the thousands of other scientists studying molecular biology, and the thousands of other scientists studying genetics, know what they're doing and are, for the most part, telling the truth about what they found and drawing their best inference about what it means. And--here's an important part--drawing their best inference in light of what all those other scientists are doing.

Ignoring for the moment that it sounds like a sort of popularity contest or opinion poll to find out whats true (since not all scientists agree that ASBE is true) it sounds like I do have to have faith in your word that there are thousands of scientists who have all studied these things and are telling the truth. But I haven't met much less gotten to know any of these scientists! How many of the thousands have you gotten to know? or even met? It sounds to me like I have to have faith in the dozens of people I talk to, who are each having faith with the dozens of people they talk to, who have the faith in the dozens of people they talk to -- and who actually has gotten to know these thousands of scientists?

I already have figured out that people will readily propagate an untruth if they think they can get away with it, and they will do it in large numbers too.

One of the other recent threads on this subject touched on the term "consilience," which means "the agreement of two or more inductions drawn from different sets of data." That's the power of the theory of evolution: it ties together the inductions from morphology, fossils, genetics, molecular biology--not to mention those from nonbiological sciences like geology. They all line up to present a consistent picture, while competing explanations require each of those other inductions to be wrong in a specific way that doesn't have anything to do with the way any others of them are wrong.

I know just enough about statistics to know that by correctly selecting the data to be charted, one can draw all sorts of incorrect conclusions. For example, see this image below. I drew two sets of unrelated dots, with some randomness. Of course this only uses two dimensions. But then by selecting just certain dots which happened to line up, and disregarding all the others, I can make it look like the dots were placed along a line, and therefore must all be related!



If I gave you a bucket full of marbles of random sizes, colors, and shades, you could choose any subset of marbles you liked and could show a correlation that showed that the bigger ones were brighter, or whatever, even though no such thing was true.

So that's my answer. It's not just that there are thousands of little pieces of evidence, it's that the ToE enables all of them to hang together consistently. I guess if that's not enough, you'll have to wait for that dog to give birth to a goat.

Okay, so my analysis is at least partly correct -- ASBE is different then other sciences. It does contain much more faith or unproven belief for the average guy like me then do most other sciences.

Another thing is that these "thousands of little pieces of evidence" don't actually prove anything about ASBE but rather about the kind of evolution that I have seen.

Furthermore, some of the things that have made it into textbooks are of such non-evidence in nature that it causes me to doubt the existence of real evidence. For example, the peppered moth: It is cited as evidence for evolution. But both species existed before! This just shows what we already know - that if you breed black dogs you tend to get black puppies, and if you breed white dogs you tend to get white puppies! But here's how WP concludes the topic:

While it is true that this example shows natural selection causing microevolution within a species, it demonstrates rapid and obvious adaptiveness with such change,[10] and despite the claims of creationists, there are no barriers preventing such changes from accumulating to form new species.

First of all, since both varieties existed beforehand, I'm not even sure that "evolution" is the correct term. (Unless you want to define it as "the change in frequency of alleles in the gene pools of two different varieties/subspecies/whatever.") The fact is, it could have been white moths and black butterflies, completely non interbreedable, and one species went near extinction while the other flourished, then went back to previous population ratios when the trees lightened up. (But certainly being able to interbreed is the only thing that kept the white varieties from going totally extinct).

But then look - they go on to say that there's no barriers preventing such changes from accumulating to form new species - such what changes? Both the light and dark varieties existed before and they both existed afterwards!

The only thing that changed was the ratio of the two pre-existing varieties! You can't get a new species by changing the ratio between two existing varieties! -- and how they look at the peppered moth and conclude that nothing bars a new species from developing is beyond me.

so don't you think they are stretching things a little, there?

There is no doubt in my mind that there is an agenda to push a worldview.

ASBE is a world view with a moral outcome, it is taken by faith and there is a reason that nobody can show me the best proof that ASBE is true - no great proof or evidence exists!

There is definitely a problem for the common amateur scientist who wants to pursue ASBE as a science without relying heavily on a lot of faith. There is just no way that most people can get to know these tens of thousands of scientists in order to know that ASBE is true. For most people, ASBE and "All from Nothing" will never be able to amount to anything more then a faith and a belief which allows them the freedom from the concept of right and wrong, and the freedom to do what they want, with whom they want -- as long as they think they won't get caught.

For most people, if not all, ASBE and all from nothing will never amount to anything more then a faith or a belief! That means that for most people, ASBE and "All From NOthing" will be their religion! Remember - whether or not a belief is true is irrelevant -- if it is taken on faith and believed without knowing for one's self, and yet it is used as a guiding core ethics for their life, it's a religion or a sincerely held world view!

Thanks,

-Jesse

[Ha Ha Thats Very Logical]

Are you talking about the kind of evolution I have seen (some call it micro) or the kind I haven't seen?

I'm talking about the kind you haven't seen. There is genetic evidence for humans, chimps, and gorillas being related, and for humans being more closely related to chimps than gorillas. This evidence points toward a common ancestor for the three species. That's TSBE, at least.

So is it just an opinion poll? This doesn't sound very scientific.

You can find 50 people to disagree with anything. Using that fact to dismiss the opinion of the vast majority of experts is...stubborn.

You see, this is how ASBE evolutionary science differs from the solid sciences -- with ASBE much more faith or belief is required.

Oh, I don't know. I bet you believe in neutron stars and quarks, and that the earth's core is made of iron, and that viruses cause disease by taking over cells. Have you seen any of those things for yourself? Or are you just taking the word of people you've never met?

For your graph example to apply, you'd have to accept a vast conspiracy among thousands of scientists in different fields to only talk about the dots that fall along the line. All those scientists who found the dots at the top and bottom would have to be silenced, even though their discoveries might make them famous for overturning the accepted line. Do you really believe that's what's going on?

Besides, drawing a line through a bunch of dots is not necessarily misleading:

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

Galileo was never jailed.

He was put under house arrest after staying with the Tuscan ambassador, and then at the residence of the archbishop of Siena for a few months.

The Pope you’re thinking of is Urban VIII.

[MrB]

And from what I’ve learned of the whole Galileo vs The Church deal,

if he’d not been so obnoxious about his theories and presented them in a more humble manner, there would have been no problem.

As it was, he was directly challenging the authority of the Catholic Church, not just presenting his new model.