The Central Flaw of Evolution

You know his statement is easily disproved by this simple fact.

We have that multiple state participating lottery called Megamillions and I think it was up over $450 Million the last time I checked and a person has a better chance of getting struck by lightning TWICE while wearing a rubber suit while being completely insulated while being in a submarine under 900 feet of ocean water on a CLEAR DAY with absolutely no clouds or storms in the sky above.......yet people still do win.

Why?

Because of the sheer NUMBER of people playing the lottery.

It is the same as far as the sheer number of existing atoms and molecules and conditions favorable for the generation of life from inanimate matter over time.

AA

 

How can we explain something when we don't even know who said this?

 

It is best, perhaps, simply to allow Gould to defend himself, as he did in his article"Evolution as Fact and Theory", originally published in 1981:

[T]ransitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common -- and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. [He then discusses two examples: therapsid intermediaries between reptiles and mammals, and the half-dozen human species - found as of 1981 - that appear in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features.]

Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am -- for I have become a major target of these practices.

I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record -- geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological microsecond .
. .
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.

- Gould, Stephen Jay 1983. "Evolution as Fact and Theory" in Hens Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., p. 258-260.

Gould, in this article and many more over the next twenty years, consistently and extensively explained his position and the evidence for evolution, including transitional forms found in the fossil record. The constant abuse of the body of Gould's life's work in the face of this is not merely dishonest, it is despicable.
- John (catshark) Pieret
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part3.html

 

Please stop with your word games.
1. No matter WHO I cited, you would denounce him as a "creationist."
2. Your denials are rank Fallacies of the Ad Hominem Argument. It really doesn't matter WHO said something. Address the subject and content, not the individual who said it.
3. If you believe that the universe is capable of creating 10^12 bits of information, instead of the 500 bits calculated by specialists in the field of information theory, then by all means, explain yourself. You don't need anyone else's name. Show your stuff.

You won't, because you can't. You just throw up stuff against the wall. You play word games, and that's it.

 

He has to protect the source of his strawman.

 

Look up the Wistar Symposium, and read. Just because you know nothing about it does not give you the right to pretend that Charles Darwin's tautology explains anything, and you know more than anybody else.

 

Who's really playing games?
In post #1017 I asked you a question;I'll ask it again..
You claim,"Evidence AGAINST Darwinism continues to mount"
What prevents you from presenting this... "evidence" ?

 

Evolution has its problems, and its not a theory, but really a model. Evolution as a theory would be more like the theory of natural selection or theory of macroevolution. There is no hard evidence that macroevolution ever occured, but scientists still believe in it. We will never truly know how we got here by observation since the historical science requires assumptions. So, evolution was assumed to be true and still is without proof, because, it can't be proven. Whoever says evolution is a fact, is absolutely wrong without question. Historical models can't be proven, just assumed. Two of the most popular historical models are evolution and creationism(religiously motivated), and both are just assumed.

 

A few words need to be said about the "theory of evolution," which most people take to mean the proposition that organisms have evolved from common ancestors. In everyday speech, "theory" often means a hypothesis or even a mere speculation. But in science, "theory" means "a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed." as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. The theory of evolution is a body of interconnected statements about natural selection and the other processes that are thought to cause evolution, just as the atomic theory of chemistry and the Newtonian theory of mechanics are bodies of statements that describe causes of chemical and physical phenomena.

In contrast, the statement that organisms have descended with modifications from common ancestors--the historical reality of evolution--is not a theory. It is a fact, as fully as the fact of the earth's revolution about the sun. Like the heliocentric solar system, evolution began as a hypothesis, and achieved "facthood" as the evidence in its favor became so strong that no knowledgeable and unbiased person could deny its reality. No biologist today would think of submitting a paper entitled "New evidence for evolution;" it simply has not been an issue for a century.

- Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed., 1986, Sinauer Associates, p. 15

 

That’s not really accurate.

The time interval between flips isn’t going to change the probability of the result but the number of flips might.

According to the central limit theorem given enough independent trials everything will be normally distributed, and in a normal distribution about 68% of values drawn from a normal distribution are within one standard deviation away from the mean; about 95% of the values lie within two standard deviations; and about 99.7% are within three standard deviations.

So given enough flips most of your data (68%) will be near your mean, regardless of the time interval between flips.

 

Evolution is historical science, so its a model. I can examine the fossil record and see if it fits the models predictions. You look at the fossil record and discoveries in biology and fit it into the model. Evolution isn't a fact(I can tell your brainwashed by mainstream science), it was accepted as a fact then they interpreted the evidence to fit into the model. Scientists have accepted evolution as a fact, but it truly isn't. You can't prove what happened in the past. Even if the fossil record looked exactly like what the model predicts, it still wouldn't prove evolution. Evolution is really the only naturalist model, so it is accepted(naturalism is presumed in mainstream science).

 

I'll tell you the same thing I've told other creationists.
Stick with the supernatural if that's what you’re comfortable with, and leave science to those that understand it.

 

If you are going to try to refute something, it helps if you can demonstrate at least some understanding of the subject. Like gravity or any other observed phenomena, evolution is both a fact and a theory.

Evolution, defined as the change in frequencies of alleles in the gene pool of a population, is a fact that has been observed repeatedly since DNA was discovered in 1953.

The Theory of Evolution is the model that says all living organisms descended from a common ancestor through the process of evolution. And it would be called the Hypothesis of Evolution if it wasn't supported by hundreds of years of research and observation.

 

You asked anyone to explain a statement you made, but you will not provide any support for that statement. In debate clubs, that is called an automatic forfeit.

 

Proves part of my point even more, you assume that because I point out that evolution isn't a fact, I therefore must be some creationist. I will tell you what many should be told, stick with naturalism if that is what your comfortable with, but don't deny something just because it holds evidence of a possible Intelligent designer.

 

You do know that Stellar Fusion is a process of Macro Evolution right?

The Macro Level begins at the Atomic Level.

Quantum Evolution exists at the Quantum Level.....but it also is a part of the Macro Level even if the two do not behave the same way.

AA

- - - Updated - - -

Uhh...Evolution is a proven fact.

100% Proven.

It is not up for debate.

Evolution has been definitively proven upon a Molecular/Atomic Level which is tantamount to a Mathematical Proof.

Never before in human history has anything obtained a Mathematical Proof and then later was found to be wrong.

AA

 

Actually, a theory and model can be the same thing, simply explanation of the facts. I honestly don't care about me demonstrating that I have complete understanding of everything about evolution(Its the same stupid move many try to pull off) because that is beside the point. The point I am making is that evolution isn't a fact, but it really all comes down to semantics. You people seem to be defining a fact as something that is confirmed to a degree that it would be perverse to deny it. If your talking about common ancestry, then no, its not a fact. Similarities in features that are not adaptive can be strong argument, but not proof.

 

Maybe I should have specified that I mean biological macroevolution.

Yeah, I guess literal evolution has been proven(since it has been observed), but I am talking about Darwinian evolution theory.
It would agree it isn't up for debate if your just taking the word evolution literally. I would say darwinism is up for debate a little since there are non-creationists that left it, but people will always say these aren't true scientists(which is nonsense).

 

DZero, since you quoted someone on my Ignore List, my eyes started rolling from the dreary reading of Darwinian Word Games, viz. *proven* and *fact* and all that nonsense.

"Molecular/Atomic level"... "tantamount to mathematical proof".... oh please.

Darwinian macroevolution (as opposed to adaptation), in proceeding from the first single-cell organism to humans, had to synthesize many thousands of polypeptides, ranging in size from more than 150 amino acid residues to 2,000+ amino acid residues. If we calculate the space, or number of possible sequences, in a chain 150 links long that number is 20 x 20 x 20 x 20.... 150 times. 20^150th = 10^195. The chances are therefore 1 in 10^195.

Just doubling the number of sequences, from the simplest known organism of 482 proteins to 964 proteins means that 1 chance in 10^195 is taken to the 482nd power, which is 1 chance in 10^93,990. Twenty or thirty thousand orders of magnitude does not change the impossibility of this impossibility.
By comparison, there are ~10^80 electrons, protons, and neutrons in the universe. The chance of picking one special particle in the universe, on your first and only try is 1/10^80. This is 93,910 orders of magnitude easier than Darwinian synthesis, i.e. random mutation followed by *selection*.

The origin of the very first organism is far, far more unlikely, and therefore more difficult to explain away with a wave of A>B>C>D alphabetization, because:
1. The primordial soup had to consist of a mixture of D and L amino acids, right-handed and left-handed forms, respectively. Living organisms consist exclusively of L forms. The chance of selecting an L amino acid is clearly 1/2, and in a short sequence of 150 amino acid residues, 1/2 to the 50th power is 1 chance in 10^45.
2. Polypeptides are so named because they form linkages with all peptide bonds, as opposed to non-peptide bonds. Both bonds form with roughly equal likelihood, so the chance of a series of exclusively peptide bonds is 1/2 to the 150th power, or 1 in 10^45.

1/10^45 x 1/10^45 = 1/10^90. This is multiplied by 1/10^195 which equals 1/10^285 for just the first simple protein, in the first living cell on earth to create itself from purely naturalistic means.

The magic words of *selection* and *fact* and *proof* do not wave away these impossibilities, irrespective of any and all word games played, and claims made, by Darwin's Faithful.

 

Well here is the thing.....after we finished mapping the Human Genome....and we already have mapped the genomes of thousands of species....we discovered that although there are millions upon millions of Viral DNA encodings within the genomes of all species of life that there is only ONE Viral DNA encoding that is one and the same in all species genomes.

Now the ONLY way this could be is if the original single celled life form on Earth was infected by a Virus which encoded that one original Viral DNA encoding into that original life form which then evolved to pass down that Viral DNA encoding into all species of life.

This is 100% Proof Positive that all life on Earth evolved from an original single celled life form.

AA

 

Debunked creationist crap.

 

Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence.

 

The reason I don't use that last sentence is that some creationist can come along and say that's just the way God made living stuff. Or, some ID guy can come along and say sure, but God added his helping had at every little change along the way, helping to defy all odds.

Plus, natural science has only proof of falsity. So while what you and the world of biologists see is confirming of evolution, there really isn't any way to "prove" it - even given the massive history of confirmations without any refutations that leaves evolution as an accepted foundation of all biology.

I love that about natural science, as it matches our human condition that requires a strong emphasis on correction and recognizes our limits in observation while being open to whatever we discover.

Natural science recognizes that we're human and thus don't have absolute answers while the common religious world view has humans scouring the earth for bits of confirmation of the only answers they can possibly accept - a near perfect incubator of fallacy from confirmation bias.

 

This has been the main point of the OP.. that of a false equivalency of 'micro' & 'macro' evolution. Nobody disputes variability, or the ability for species to adapt WITHIN their genetic framework (micro). But the leap to major changes in the genetic structure (macro).. added chromosomes, new traits, added adaptability... these are completely different, & are NOT observed or testable as a scientific mechanism. It is all assumed, with no science behind it.

But there are many, as this thread & others have illustrated, who dogmatically insist they are the same process, just merely accumulated over time. But this is also just asserted, as there is NO EVIDENCE that living things can change in their basic genetic structure in this way. I correlated the process to moving horizontally vs vertically. You can take many cumulative steps, & move horizontally along the surface of the earth, but you can not move vertically, by jumping repeatedly, to reach the moon. Gravity is the force that brings you back to earth, & does not let you make those kinds of changes.

In the same way, the DNA is the 'gravity' that brings each organism 'back to earth'. Organisms can only vary within their genetic parameters. That is repeatable, observable science. To claim otherwise is to deny proven scientific processes that have been used in breeding for millennia. The ONLY pool of variability within a species is within the parent species. There is NO process to 'create' genes, or variability, other than the hopeful monster theory of mutations, which is based on a fantasy.. NOTHING like this has been observed or repeated as a scientific process, yet it is asserted as if it is proven fact. Time & mutation is the only hope of the evolutionist, & it is a shaky foundation to build a scientific theory upon, which is why it has become a religious tenet of faith.. no proof or science is required for that.. you just declare it & mandate that the True Believers accept it.

It does not matter how many times this is pointed out.. the True Believers will plug their ears, & repeat their mantras over & over, ignoring any logic or science. It begins to approach absurdity, the lengths these self declared 'scientific' minded people will go, departing from scientific methodology to embrace a philosophical belief system. IMO, the ONLY REASON they do it is because it has become the foundation for a naturalistic view of the universe. Their BELIEF system requires Macro evolution to work.. they are lost without SOMETHING plausible to explain origins, & since Spontaneous Generation was debunked by Pasteur & others in the 19th century, the ToE has become the only alternative to naturalistic origins. But i submit that this is NOT a scientific basis. It is a religious one. I also submit that this is an unscientific belief system, that attempts to force the facts into a worldview. The facts do not compel the worldview, but the worldview compels the facts, wrt to the ToE.

But they do violence to the Scientific Method with this mandated belief system. They also sell themselves short, by insisting this is the only possible explanation for naturalism. But i believe this is a flawed assumption. Just because the ToE is flawed, & does not provide a naturalistic explanation for the universe, does not mean there isn't SOME natural explanation. It is just not currently known. The 'theory' of spontaneous generation exemplifies that. It was once the status quo of Naturalism, & the 'settled science' for thousands of years. Those who believed it were wrong, but they kept their naturalistic beliefs. I see no difference between that & the ToE, now. Darwinist evolution is just the 'replacement theory' for naturalism, until something better comes along. A truly scientifically minded person could see this, & be patient not knowing all the mysteries of the universe, but keeping their skepticism for supernaturalism intact. But the fact that hordes of naturalists insist on believing the ToE as the basis for their worldview, shows that they have abandoned logical, scientific methodology for a mandated belief.

I have NEVER been in a discussion about evolution that did not become a hysterical debate over religious beliefs. They will NOT stay with science, but always deflect with religious diversions, which shows to me, that this 'debate' is not about science, but religion. It is an argument over worldviews, not scientific facts. Evolutionists attempt to take the 'scientific high ground' by phrasing their view as 'scientific' & the others as 'religious', but that is just semantics. They are both belief systems, with no compelling science to make a definitive conclusion. Origins remain a mystery, in spite of the dogmatic beliefs & assertions of any worldview. That is the ONLY valid, logical, scientific view, but it is not very satisfying to the philosophical nature of man, so it is not widely held.

I also do not get the constant bringing up of gods. Most evolutionists believe in God, so there is obviously no conflict there. You can believe in God & evolution simultaneously. So why is any criticism of evolution linked with a 'god did it!' caricature? The only reason i can see is because they are both competing religious views of origins, and that is why you always see this 'argument' presented. My argument here was not attacking a worldview of naturalism, but only the THEORY of macroevolution, as a scientific process. It just shows that the link between the ToE & naturalism is a necessary connection in the naturalist's mind, & they cannot help but feel their worldview is under attack, if you question the ToE. THAT is the source of the, 'Kill him!! Kill the infidel!!' reaction from the rabid evolutionists. This is not merely a dry discussion about some nerdy scientific processes, but the foundation of a worldview, & any skepticism about that foundation is met with jihadist zeal & a Defense of the Faith.

 

This is all i ever get here.. just repeated assertions, with NO SCIENTIFIC BASIS. The ToE is NOT a 'well supported, unifying principle'... that is absurd! There is no 'overwhelming evidence'..there is only assertions & dogmatism.

'Serious scientific doubt?' Please. There is NO scientific basis for believing this fantasy. It is a belief system, only. It is not science. You have NO EVIDENCE that this can happen, much less DID happen. I have asked for proof multiple times in this thread, & have examined everything presented. There have been NO proofs that these kinds of genetic changes are possible.. the evidence SCREAMS otherwise. Your statement here is just a propaganda meme. It is not science. This is your belief, only. It is not compelled by empirical reality.