[Kalamata]

>>Danny Denier post #346: "You just confirmed one my previous points that evolution is NOT falsifiable because EVERYTHING IS EVOLUTION! LOL! This is hilarious! The term "devolution" implies the breaking or loss of genes, Joey. That will never be evolution, no matter how loudly and passionately the evolutionism apologist whines."
>>Scientifically-Challenged Joey wrote, "Sorry, but your sense of humor, like so much else, is a bit... off." Joey quotes Wikipedia . . .

You gotta quit quoting Wikipedia, Joey, if you want to be taken seriously? {sigh}

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>>Scientifically-Challenged Joey said, "Evolution by definition is any change, period.

Now everyone can plainly see what I have been saying. Evolution, to the anti-God types, "proves" everything! Evolution is their god!

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>>Scientifically-Challenged Joey wrote, "Complexification, devolution, or something as simple as a moth changing colors -- sideways evolution. It's all evolution/adaptation, regardless of how much you hate it and wish it to go away.

You do not understand evolution, Joey. There is no such thing as "sideways evolution." Evolution, by definition, requires an increase in genetic information; otherwise, common descent is impossible. Without common descent, evolution fits the special creation narrative, whereby created organism multiply after their respective families, or "kinds."

It is okay for you to hijack special creation, Joey; but please don't call it evolution.

******************

>>Danny Denier: "Can we assume Professor Behe left you speechless by revealing that the Polar Bear didn't evolve its unique traits?"

LOL! No. However, I am speechless about the extent to which you have been brainwashed. You really should read Professor Behe's books, Joey.

******************

>>Scientifically-Challenged Joey wrote, "By definition, evolution is change, period, regardless of how much you hate it, lie about it and wish it would go away. It is what it is.

Then, as I have been saying all along, evolution is not science. The great journalist Melanie Phillips explained it in more scholarly terms:

"But by seeking to colonize another sphere of thinking altogether, the Darwinists have overreached themselves with disastrous results. Trying to use science to prove that religion is irrational, they have instead made science irrational by making grandiose claims for evolution that are not backed up by evidence. Their accusation that their opponents deny the facts of evolution is not true. It is more accurate to say that these critics oppose the totalizing creed of Darwinism, which makes claims for evolution that it cannot sustain." [Melanie Phillips, "The World Turned Upside Down: the global battle over god, truth, and power." Encounter Books, 2010]

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>>Danny Denier: "That is what I previously explained, Joey, that evolution cannot be falsified, no matter what happens, because evolution is always true, that is, in the mind of the evolutionism cultist."
>>Scientifically-Challenged Joey wrote, "Nonsense, evolution theory could easily be falsified by confirming evidence which contradicts it. Elephants living with dinosaurs or big whales & plesiosaurs frolicking together, come to mind. Alley Oop flying pterosaurs... that would do it.

That is a red herring: more of "the absence of evidence is evidence" pseudoscience. Animals tend to segregate, even today. Besides, fossilization only proves that plants and animals were quickly buried by sediment, which is deposited during flooding. During global flooding, hydrologically sorting of plants, animals and sediment would occur.

How about a Coelacanth, Joey? Fossils of those large fish are found below and within the dinosaur layers, but not in the layers above. According to your logic, the Coelacanth should be extinct! But it is alive and well in the Indian Ocean, 65 million years after supposedly becoming extinct!

How do you explain blood, soft tissue, and possibly even DNA being found in dinosaur bones, Joey? How do you explain the many dinosaur bones that have been tested and found to contain significant amounts of Carbon 14?

Your religion of evolution claims that all creatures are products of common descent. Show us evidence of common descent.

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>>Scientifically-Challenged Joey wrote, "What else? How about an obvious copyright written into our DNA codes by the Intelligence Who designed it? Here is a long discussion on the subject of evolution's falsifiability.

More left-wing Wikipedia, Joey? Is that all you have?

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>>Scientifically-Challenged Joey wrote, "But let's cut to the chase, shall we? You wish desperately to redefine the word "evolution" such that every new fossil or DNA discovery "falsifies" it, as if the theory was carved-in-stone gospel to be broken by any new fact. And it frustrates you to tears that every new fact, instead of falsifying is said to confirm evolution's predictions. Sorry about that.

No, Joey. I simply want to see evidence for common descent. There is none, Joey. It is a fairy tale.

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>>Danny Denier said: "Evolution is such a "great theory" to the evolutionist that it can explain everything. That is not science, but a faith-based religion, with evolution as god."
>>Scientifically-Challenged Joey wrote, "Total lies & rubbish."

LOL! In this very post you prove what I wrote, Joey. You said:

[Joey] "Evolution by definition is any change, period."
[Joey] "By definition, evolution is change, period"
[Joey] "Complexification, devolution, or something as simple as a moth changing colors -- sideways evolution. It's all evolution/adaptation"

Like I said: "To the evolutionist, everything is evolution." But there is still no evidence of common descent, after 160 years of desperate searching and digging.

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>>Danny Denier quoting Popper: "Adaptation or fitness is defined by modern evolutionists as survival value, and can be measured by actual success in survival: there is hardly any possibility of testing a theory as feeble as this."
>>Scientifically-Challenged Joey wrote, "Feeble? More nonsense, such ideas are "tested" everywhere environments change and life-forms are required to adapt or die. Often they die out but sometimes they adapt, occasionally even in the very short term."

The evidence produced by real scientific inquiry backs up Popper, and others who have made similar determinations. This is the great paleontologist Colin Patterson on Popper's deducement, along with Patterson's own observations:

"The difference between a scientist and a pseudo-scientist is, in Popper's view, that the first will look for the most severe tests of his theories, and will not take evasive action if they fail those tests, while the pseudoscientist will look for evidence confirming his ideas and, if he feels his theory is threatened, may avoid refutation by erecting subsidiary, defensive theories around it... If we accept Popper's distinction between science and non-science, we must ask first whether the theory of evolution by natural selection is scientific or pseudoscientific (metaphysical).... Taking the first part of the theory, that evolution has occurred, it says that the history of life is a single process of species-splitting and progression. This process must be unique and unrepeatable, like the history of England. This part of the theory is therefore a historical theory about unique events, and unique events are, by definition, not part of science, for they are unrepeatable and so not subject to test. Historians cannot predict the future (or are deluded when they try to), and they cannot explain the past, but only interpret it. And there is no decisive way of testing their alternative interpretations. For the same reasons, evolutionary biologists can make no predictions about the future evolution of any particular species, and they cannot explain past evolution, but only produce interpretations, or stories, about it." [Colin Patterson, "Evolution." Comstock Publishing Associates, 1999, Chap 12, pp. 145-146]

One other point, Joey: adaptation is not evolution.

Mr. Kalamata

[BroJoeK]

Kalamata post #448: "You gotta quit quoting Wikipedia, Joey, if you want to be taken seriously?
{sigh}"

Seriously, Wikipedia mostly just repeats what I first learned in school or studied since.
It is usually just our "conventional wisdom" based on standard sources.
I use it to illustrate that my opinions are not just personal, but are based on what "everybody knows", when that is indeed the case.

A lot of what I quote from Wikipedia can also be found, with vastly more time-consuming effort, on other sites.
But unlike those other sites, Wikipedia loads quickly, is free of clutter, free of popups and other advertisements, and never crashes my old computer.
Finally, it is generally well referenced to standard sources.

Of course, none of that makes Wikipedia necessarily the last word on any subject, but it is often a good place to begin.

Kalamata on the definition of evolution: "Now everyone can plainly see what I have been saying.
Evolution, to the anti-God types, "proves" everything!
Evolution is their god!"

Complete nonsense.
Seriously, FRiend, what are you smoking or drinking?
Your response here is not even remotely rational.

Kalamata: "You do not understand evolution, Joey.
There is no such thing as "sideways evolution."
Evolution, by definition, requires an increase in genetic information; otherwise, common descent is impossible."

And now you're just babbling incoherent nonsense, childishly inventing word definitions which never existed.
Here are some actual definitions of the word "evolution":

1. Webster: "descent with modification from preexisting species :
   cumulative inherited change in a population of organisms through time leading to the appearance of new forms :
   the process by which new species or populations of living things develop from preexisting forms through successive generations..."

2. Webster: "the scientific theory explaining the appearance of new species and varieties through the action of various biological mechanisms (such as natural selection, genetic mutation or drift, and hybridization) "

3. Dictionary.com: "Biology -- change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift."

4. Wikipedia: "Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations.[1][2]"

5. Collins: "Evolution is a process of gradual change that takes place over many generations, during which species of animals, plants, or insects slowly change some of their physical characteristics. ...the evolution of plants and animals."

6. Biology on line:
   • "(1) The change in genetic composition of a population over successive generations, which may be caused by natural selection, inbreeding, hybridization, or mutation.
   • (2) The sequence of events depicting the development of a species or of a group of related organisms; phylogeny."
   
   
7. Wikipedia: "Many biologists used to believe that evolution was progressive (orthogenesis) and had a direction that led towards so-called "higher organisms," despite a lack of evidence for this viewpoint.[5]
   This idea of "progression" and "higher organisms" in evolution is now regarded as misleading, with natural selection having no intrinsic direction and organisms selected for either increased or decreased complexity in response to local environmental conditions.[6]
   Although there has been an increase in the maximum level of complexity over the history of life, there has always been a large majority of small and simple organisms and the most common level of complexity appears to have remained relatively constant."

In other words, by definitions: evolution is any change, whether it includes complexification or not.

Kalamata: "Without common descent, evolution fits the special creation narrative, whereby created organism multiply after their respective families, or "kinds."
It is okay for you to hijack special creation, Joey; but please don't call it evolution."

"Special creation" is a nonsense non-scientific term created by anti-scientists to confuse the unwary.

So let's review a summary of taxonomic categories:
The complete listing, including sub-groups for, say, human beings is 26 taxonomic categories, of which 20 come before "family" and five after:

1. Domain: Eukaryotes -- 1st evidence 2.1 billion years ago
2. Kingdom: Animals -- 1st fossils 590 million years ago.
3. Phylum: Chordates -- 1st fossils 530 million years ago = "Cambrian Explosion"
   Today there are about 36 animal phyla.

4. Sub-phylum: Vertebrates -- 1st fossils 505 mya.
5. Super-class: Tetrapods -- (animals with four limbs) from 395 mya.
6. Clade: Amniotes -- (fully terrestrial tetrapods whose eggs are "equipped with an amnios"), 1st fossils 340 mya.
7. Clade: Synapsida -- Proto-Mammals 308 mya.
8. Class: Mammals -- 220 mya.
   Today there are about 100 animal classes.

9. Sub-class: Theria -- mammals born live, 160 mya.
10. Infra-class: Eutheria -- Placental mammals 125 mya.
11. Magna-order: Boreoeutheria -- Supraprimates, (most) hoofed mammals, (most) carnivorous mammals, whales, and bats, from 112 mya.
12. Super-order: Euarchontoglires -- Supraprimates: primates, colugos, tree shrews, rodents, and rabbits from 100 mya.
13. Grand-order: Euarchonta -- Primates, colugos, and tree shrews from 90 mya.
14. Mir-order: Primatomorpha -- Primates and colugos from 80 mya.
15. Order: Primates -- from 75 mya.
    Today there are about 450 animal orders, 28 of them mammals.

16. Sub-order: Haplorrhini -- "Dry-nosed" (literally, "simple-nosed") primates: apes, monkeys, and tarsiers from 63 mya.
17. Infra-order Simiiformes -- "Higher" primates (Simians): apes and monkeys from 40 mya.
18. Parv-order: Catarrhini -- "Downward-nosed" primates: apes and old-world monkeys, from 40 mya.
19. Super-family: Hominoidea Apes -- great apes and lesser apes (gibbons) from 28 mya.
20. FAMILY: Hominidae Great apes -- humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans—the hominids, from 18 mya.
    Today there are thought to be 5,000 animal families worldwide, 156 of them mammals.

So let's pause here: from 2.1 billion years ago to 18 million we find fossils in 20 descending taxonomic categories before reaching what Linnaeus called "family" and which Kalamata tells us is the Biblical "kind".
Do we claim that each new sub-category was "Intelligently Designed" independently, without reference to preceding categories?
Or do we notice that each new category was somewhat more complex, from our perspective more advanced that what came before?

Now, from 18 mya to today, we find five more sub-categories:

1. Sub-family: Homininae -- Humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas (the African apes)[1] 14 mya
2. Tribe: Hominini -- Includes both Homo, Pan (chimpanzees), but not Gorilla 9 mya.
3. Sub-tribe: Hominina -- Genus Homo and close human relatives and ancestors after splitting from Pan—the hominins 6 mya.
4. Genus: Homo -- humans 2.5 mya.
   There are said to be 75,000 animal genera worldwide, 1,250 of them mammals.

5. Species: Homo Sapiens -- biologically modern humans 500,000 years ago.
   Today there are about 450,000 animal species, 6,000 of them mammals.

My point in this exercise is to illustrate that your selection of 5,000 taxonomic "families" to equal Biblical "kinds" is not just arbitrary, but also it leaves a lot of room for alleged "micro-evolution" to produce hundreds of thousands of new species, genera, tribes, etc.

Enough for post #448 for right now.

[BroJoeK]

Kalamata post #448 cont. 2: "You really should read Professor Behe's books, Joey."

I have been reading my copyright 1989, 1993 (sixth printing 2005) 2nd edition "Of Pandas and People".
Contributors include Davis, Kenyon, Thaxton, Hartwig and Meyer.
Behe is not mentioned in the Book, that I can find, but iirc he was prominent at the trial.

So this may be as good a place as any to list some general comments on it:

1. The book is roughly 30 years out of date, meaning some of its questions have been answered, others have "moved on" to other grounds of contention based on new discoveries, for example: "junk DNA".

2. The book notices that "some people" disagree with Old Earth timelines, but makes no attempts to review or adjudicate the question.
   Generally it seems to have no problems with Old Earth geology.

3. There is no mention I could find of Noah's flood.

   

4. Unlike Kalamata, the book is reasonably respectful of science and scientists -- there is no mocking derision, no insults or name-calling, no redefining science as "religion" (though hints in that direction), no harping on alleged "frauds", no blaming of Darwin for the Holocaust, etc.

5. The arguments seem to me all standard Creationism under the rubric of "Intelligent Design" and boil down to a few short phrases:
   • "Science doesn't know everything."
   • "Science can get it wrong."
   • "No transitional forms."
   • "No common descent".
   • "No complexification."
   • "Irreducible complexity."
   Therefore, they say, "Intelligent Design".

There may be more, so will save that for later.

Kalamata: "Then, as I have been saying all along, evolution is not science.
The great journalist Melanie Phillips [from 2010] explained it in more scholarly terms:

"But by seeking to colonize another sphere of thinking altogether, the Darwinists have overreached themselves with disastrous results.
Trying to use science to prove that religion is irrational, they have instead made science irrational by making grandiose claims for evolution that are not backed up by evidence..."

Complete rubbish!
In fact, evolution theory is the only entirely natural explanation, making it the only one which is truly scientific.
Every other suggestion (i.e., "Intelligent Design") requires supernatural interventions and those by definition are not natural-science.

Kalamata: "That is a red herring: more of "the absence of evidence is evidence" pseudoscience.
Animals tend to segregate, even today.
Besides, fossilization only proves that plants and animals were quickly buried by sediment, which is deposited during flooding.
During global flooding, hydrologically sorting of plants, animals and sediment would occur."

And so you explain the "sorting" of dinosaurs from elephants, whales from plesiosaurs and Alley Oop from Pterosaurs how, exactly?

Kalamata: "How about a Coelacanth, Joey?
Fossils of those large fish are found below and within the dinosaur layers, but not in the layers above.
According to your logic, the Coelacanth should be extinct!
But it is alive and well in the Indian Ocean, 65 million years after supposedly becoming extinct!"

So let's see if I understand your logic here?
You say 65 million years of lack of fossil evidence for Coelacanths is evidence they should be considered non-extinct, even if no "living fossils" were ever found?

"Another important discovery made from the genome sequencing is that the coelacanths are still evolving today (but at a relatively slow rate).
While they were initially thought to be a prehistoric species that remained unchanged over millions of years, the discovery that they are still evolving, albeit slowly, causes some to question whether "living fossil" is an appropriate descriptor.[41] "

Kalamata: "How do you explain blood, soft tissue, and possibly even DNA being found in dinosaur bones, Joey?
How do you explain the many dinosaur bones that have been tested and found to contain significant amounts of Carbon 14?"

No dino-DNA has yet been identified in fossils, but some "soft tissue" (i.e., collagen) can survive long periods if specially preserved.

Life can be hardy, for example, in some salt mines dated as hundreds of millions of years old they found dead bacteria in the salt which, when water was added, came back to life, swimming & reproducing happily, possibly the oldest living things on Earth.

As for alleged carbon-14, unless proven otherwise, I'd suppose that was some form of contamination.

Kalamata: "Your religion of evolution claims that all creatures are products of common descent.
Show us evidence of common descent."

Well... first, here are some definitions of "religion":

1. Oxford: "the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods."

• Webster: "(1) the service and worship of God or the supernatural
  (2) commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance "

• Dictionary.com: "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the "

• Wikipedia: "Religion is a social-cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that relates humanity to supernatural, transcendental, or spiritual elements. "

ID/Creationism is, by definition, religion, natural science is not.

As for evidence of common descent: the entire collected fossil record, including innumerable "transitional forms", plus the entire DNA data base of global species, including innumerable shared & similar alleles, are evidences suggesting common descent.

Here is a short but useful video on this very question.

Kalamata: "More left-wing Wikipedia, Joey?
Is that all you have?"

Handwaving & mockery, is that all you have Danny boy?

Kalamata: "No, Joey.
I simply want to see evidence for common descent.
There is none, Joey.
It is a fairy tale."

Right, in exactly the same sense that a Holocaust denier can find "no evidence" of the Holocaust, even in a Holocaust museum!
I know just how you people work, it's denial on the grandest of scales, to look evidence straight on and still claim it's not there.

Kalamata: "LOL! In this very post you prove what I wrote, Joey. You said:

[Joey] "Evolution by definition is any change, period."

Which is also how any dictionary defines evolution -- see my post #585 above.
Your problem is that you hate it so badly, like any Lefitst, you busy-beaver yourself redefining terms and changing rules until your "reality" more suits your own desires for it.

Kalamata quoting Patterson 1999: "Taking the first part of the theory, that evolution has occurred, it says that the history of life is a single process of species-splitting and progression.
This process must be unique and unrepeatable, like the history of England.
This part of the theory is therefore a historical theory about unique events, and unique events are, by definition, not part of science, for they are unrepeatable and so not subject to test. "

That's a total lie which, if true, would prevent Crime Scene Investigation from presenting evidence in court to convict perpetrators "beyond reasonable doubt".
Defense lawyers would only have to claim: "it's not science, can't prove it".

Kalamata: "One other point, Joey: adaptation is not evolution."

Only in your own fantasy world of lies & make-believe.
In the real world evolution begins at the point of descent with modifications and natural (or directed) selection.

End of post #448.