DARWIN'S MACROEVOLUTION: Why Unscientific?

It's adorable that you have to invent responses for me rather than addressing what I actually write. Maybe I should just step to the side and let you argue with yourself. Anyway, no amount of childish goading will get me to answer your questions because you don't want to, or can't, comprehend the answers. I've said this many times. I'm being honest with you. Maybe you could be honest with me. Just say so if you don't want to answer the question. That's fine. Just say so and show that you can be honest when having a discussion.

 

ALTER2EGO -to- BURZMALI:
I'm not inventing answers for you. I quoted what you told me at Post #95, copied below.

ALTER2EGO -to- BURZMALI:
Oh, sure. Durandal is making it clear that he has no evidence to prove anything he's saying. He came right out and admitted that there will likely never be proof for anything he and various scientists are speculating. You do know what the word "speculate" means; don't you? Below is part of what Durandal said at Post #91. Keep your eyes on the words in red.

 

Your OP's are horribly and irrecoverably false.

Do you want to know the difference between a theory and a fact in science.

A fact is an observable and re-creatable circumstance, event, or conclusion.

A theory seeks to observe a number of facts and determine causation.

Therefore a fact is a piece of information. A theory accumulates facts and attempts to sort out the WHY of the equation.

Mincing words will get you no where, specifically when its appears to be semantics in an attempt to hide the truth.

Moreover...if you believe micro-evolution is possible...then macro-evolution must also be possible.

If one aspect can evolve, change over time, its only a matter of time until the organism has been so changed that it has indeed become a new species.

 

ALTER2EGO -to- OSIRIS FACTION:
That's your opinion. Let's see you prove it.

ALTER2EGO -to- OSIRIS FACTION:
I gave the definition of both on Page 1 of this thread, Post #2. I can't imagine how anyone could miss seeing it, being that it's the second post on the very first page of the thread.

 

Yes, however your definitions are a bit misconstrued when taken into practical context.

A fact in science is one piece of observable and re-creatable data.

A theory takes related facts and seeks to answer "WHY" these facts are occurring.

Also, you ignored the rest of my post. If you believe that micro-evolution is taking place, then given long enough, the original species will have adapted and changed to a degree that it has become and new species.

 

You didn't quote me. You took phrases out of context, put them together in a single sentence, and added a few extra words for who knows what reason. If you don't think that's inventing a response, then maybe I should just push together some of your own words and make it sound like you wholly accept evolution. Or I could toss in an extra word or two to make it look like you have no idea what you're talking about. Sound fair?

That post was about abiogenesis. I don't see why you keep bringing that stuff up in a thread about evolution.

 

ALTER2EGO -to- OSIRIS FACTION:
According to you, my definitions at Post #2--which I quoted from independent sources--are "misconstrued." Why doesn't that surprise me? After all, the definitions I presented don't line up with your thinking.

ALTER2EGO -to- OSIRIS FACTION:
A theory does not have all the facts. You neglected to mention that in your definition. For that reason, "scientific theory" is defined as "a group of hypotheses (educated guesses) that can be disproven." Theories are frequently being corrected/disputed. They are simply attempts at explaining why something occurred. There would be no need for educated guesses if scientific theory had all the facts. You do understand the meaning of the word "guess"; don't you?


Below is the definition of scientific theory from Post #2 of this thread. Underneath it is another definition from the Encyclopedia Britannica, which confirms the first definition.

DEFINITION #1 -- "SCIENTIFIC THEORY":
"A scientific theory summarizes a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing. A theory is valid as long as there is no evidence to dispute it. Therefore, theories can be disproven. Basically, if evidence accumulates to support a hypothesis, then the hypothesis can become accepted as a good explanation of a phenomenon. One definition of a theory is to say it's an accepted hypothesis."
http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistry101/a/lawtheory.htm


DEFINITION #2 -- "SCIENTIFIC THEORY":
"Empirical laws and scientific theories differ in several ways. In a law, reasonably clear observational rules are available for determining the meaning of each of its terms; thus, a law can be tested by carefully observing the things and properties referred to by these terms. Indeed, they are initially formulated by generalizing or schematizing from observed relationships. In the case of scientific theories, however, some of the terms commonly refer to things that are not observed. Thus, it is evident that theories are imaginative constructions of the human mind—the results of philosophical and aesthetic judgments as well as of observation—for they are only suggested by observational information rather than inductively generalized from it. Moreover, theories cannot ordinarily be tested and accepted on the same grounds as laws. Thus, whereas an empirical law expresses a unifying relationship among a small selection of observables, scientific theories have much greater scope, explaining a variety of such laws and predicting others as yet undiscovered.
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/528971/scientific-theory

 

Noun 1. scientific fact - an observation that has been confirmed repeatedly and is accepted as true (although its truth is never final)
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/scientific+fact

any observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and accepted as true; any scientific observation that has not been refuted
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/scientific+fact

A scientific fact is a piece of data that is observable and can be re-created.

http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistry101/a/lawtheory.htm

Now I hope the difference between a fact and Law are clear.

I never claimed that it did, I fully believe there are some missing facts.

That they are. That however does not disprove evolution.

They are attempts based on the well of verifiable information we have currently.

Let's make something apparently here, evolution is not a guess, it is the accumulation of the information we have been able to gather thus far.

There is not another more complete theory out there today.

 

ALTER2EGO -to- BURZMALI:
You're right. I didn't quote you. I summarized what you had already told me and what factually occurred, as follows:

1. Three months ago (on 5/13/2012) I asked you four questions at Post #26, which you have been dodging. Below is the weblink to Page 3 where you will find Post #26.
http://www.politicalforum.com/religion/246629-darwins-macroevolution-why-unscientific-3.html


2. You stated at Post #95 that you saw no need to respond to my three-month old questions because Durandal jumped in and was doing a good job of answering the questions you refused to answer.

That equates to: what I summarized at Post #99:

 

ALTER2EGO -to- OSIRIS FACTION:
At no time did I tell you scientific fact and "law" are the same. I gave the definition of "laws in nature" months ago in another thread I created entitled: "Precision in Nature: Evidence of God or Accidents?" Below is the weblink. You will see the definition in my opening post.
http://www.politicalforum.com/religion/245941-precision-nature-evidence-god-accidents.html


The Encyclopedia Britannica's definition of "scientific theory" presented the difference between "scientific law" and "scientific theory," while the definition I gave in my opening post to this thread presented the different between "scientific fact" and "scientific theory." Both definitions gave a degraded view of scientific theory. They both confirm what I have been saying: that scientific theory does not contain all of the facts and therefore it is not reliable and can be disputed. That's the point I was making when I gave you the two definitions of "scientific theory" at Post #107.

What you are not able to overcome is the issue that scientific theories are nothing more than educated guesses. Your initial argument was that scientific theory is based upon scientific facts--a half truth, because in reality, scientific theory does not have access to all of the facts and therefore scientific theories can be disputed. That's where we are at.

ALTER2EGO -to- OSIRIS FACTION:
What verifiable information? There is none, and you certainly haven't presented any. Evolution THEORY is just that: a theory. And all theories, by definition, are a group of hypotheses (educated guesses) that can be disproven. The theory of macroevolution has been disproven by the fossils evidence. The fossils contain no evidence that any animal evolved from a completely different species.

 

I appreciate that you can admit to lying in a previous post. Would you like to continue on that path of honesty and address the conflict between god's infallibility and the poor design of the human body? Or at least state that you won't address it and why?

 

ALTER2EGO -to- BURZMALI:
What lies are you referring to? Are you saying I lied when you've repeatedly hopped, skipped, and jumped from my direct questions for the past three months, after which you passed the buck to Durandal?

Below are examples of you repeatedly dodging my questions with objections about the topic of the thread, claiming you'd already answered the questions in other threads with other people, claiming abiogenesis is not part of evolution (as if that is an excuse for not answering the questions), etc. You presented one excuse after the other for why you would not answer my questions that are in Post 24.

EVASIVE RESPONSE #1 – Page 3, Post 27, on 5/13/2012
http://www.politicalforum.com/religion/246629-darwins-macroevolution-why-unscientific-3.html

EVASIVE RESPONSE #2 – Page 7, Post 68, on 5/30/2012
http://www.politicalforum.com/religion/246629-darwins-macroevolution-why-unscientific-7.html

EVASIVE RESPONSE #3 – Page 7, Post 70, on 5/30/2012
http://www.politicalforum.com/religion/246629-darwins-macroevolution-why-unscientific-7.html

EVASIVE RESPONSE #4 – Page 9, Post 81, on 8/12/2012
http://www.politicalforum.com/religion/246629-darwins-macroevolution-why-unscientific-9.html

EVASIVE RESPONSE #5 – Page 9, Post 85, on 8/12/2012
http://www.politicalforum.com/religion/246629-darwins-macroevolution-why-unscientific-9.html

EVASIVE RESPONSE #6 & PASSING THE BUCK TO DURANDAL – Page 9, Post 87, on 8/12/2012
http://www.politicalforum.com/religion/246629-darwins-macroevolution-why-unscientific-9.html

STILL PASSING THE BUCK TO DURANDAL -- Page 10, Post 95, on 8/12/2012
http://www.politicalforum.com/religion/246629-darwins-macroevolution-why-unscientific-10.html

After the above demonstration of intellectual dishonesty on your part, you are now calling me a liar because I said I quoted you, as follows.

I corrected that to "I summarized what you did and said."

FYI: A summary of what someone said is as accurate as a direct quote if the facts in the summary line up with what the person actually said. You are hardly in a position to refer to anyone as a liar, considering your above repeated examples of intellectual dishonesty.

I believe this is where my conversations with you end, as this has been your pattern of behavior since I joined this forum about three months ago. Your latest snide remark in Post 111 just about did it. Don't bother posting anything else to me as I will not read it.

 

You lied when you said you quoted me. Then you admitted that you didn't actually quote me. Don't try to walk that back now.

I don't know why you think a flat statement of "I won't be answering your questions" is a dodge. It's a pretty direct statement. And I really don't understand why you keep highlighting the times that I've said it. I'm not trying to deny it. At least I'm honest enough to tell you that I won't answer, rather than deflecting. You've simply ignored most of the questions that have been posed to you. Why not at least acknowledge them?

 

You have thus far ignored my answers to your 8 questions.

http://www.politicalforum.com/religion/246629-darwins-macroevolution-why-unscientific-8.html

Your suppositions that "precision and complexity" can only arise through deliberate design and that "everything in the natural world shows precision and complexity" are logial fallacies because they are based on rhetorical devices such as non-sequitors and false cause and effect relationships.

While there have been numerous threads where the OP demands that those who believe in evolution "prove it" no one has ever been able to disprove it. Being that evolution is already a theory, a more useful excercise would be a refutation of the TOE by those who oppose it. Not one single piece of empirical evidence that contradicts the TOE has ever been cited by those who do not accept evolution. If you do not think that evolution is a credible theory you should have no trouble providing scientific discourse containing empirical evidence that explicitly refutes the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory.

 

ALTER2EGO -to- EVERYONE:

Below is a comment from another paleontologist having to admit there's no evidence of macro-evolution to be found in the fossils.

"Instead of finding the gradual unfolding of life, what geologists of Darwin's time, and geologists of the present day actually find is a highly uneven or jerky record; that is, species appear in the sequence very suddenly, show little or no change during their existence in the record, then abruptly go out of the record. And it is not always clear, in fact it's rarely clear, that the descendants were actually better adapted than their predecessors. In other words, biological improvement is hard to find." (Raup, David M., "Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, vol. 50, 1979, p. 23.)

 

http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/IVB1bInthelab.shtml

 

That isn't what that quote says. The quote says that improvement is hard to find, not that it hasn't been found. Way to go on your reading comprehension.

 

Sorry, where does he say that "there's no evidence of macro-evolution to be found in the fossils?" He says it's hard to find evidence of biological improvement. Which means it can be found, just that it isn't obvious or it is uncommon. Every single person I have ever seen argue against evolution has done it by twisting information and presenting it as evidence for their argument. You're no different from the rest. I have to ask, are you being dishonest, or do you really think your summation of the quote is accurate?

 

How is it possible that this farce of a thread has been going for 3 months?

 

while science, it's self, is not religion, it is often taught as religion when teachers attempt to say something as fact. science could not say that the genesis creation account isn't accurate as the exact manor in which it was supposed to be read was lost the moment it was written. words were not as perfectly defined as they are now, you could even attest that even the leading scholars at the time were illiterate do to the lack of consensus as to what every word in every permutation of a sentence all "meant." to be quite plain about it you could very well turn the genesis account to represent the original theory of evolution “they came to be according to their kind.” science when done properly is not done with the attempt to falsify religion. it should only be done to contradict other scientific data and conclusions by doing an experiment with a greater degree of controls. for instance there is a new theory that supports that the world may very well be flat and it's quite viable. 4th spatial dimension theory where the 4th spatial dimension represents a bending of the other three dimensions. and it goes a long way to explaining the force of gravity as well as time, space, matter, light and all forms of radiation.

 

ALTER2EGO -to- EVERYONE:

There is no such thing as microevolution. The terminology is a trick-phrase used by pro-evolution scientists to describe variations or adaptation of the exact same species or type of animal. Almighty God YHWH/Jehovah/Yahweh created living things on earth with the ability to adapt to their environment—up to a certain point. Once the living creature reaches it's adaptation limit, it stops adapting. This is the reason why we see variations of the same creature (eg. domestic house cats and domestic dogs) because it is a result of the animals' ability to adapt and produce variation within the pre-set limit granted it by God. This point is confirmed by the source below. Keep your eyes on the words printed in red within the quotations:

 

The stuff in red doesn't come from the JCI article. So I assume it's from the Harun Yahya source. Near as I can tell, that's either a self-published article or a youtube video, or both. So why should we listen to a random person (religious leader?) who can only get his crackpot ideas out there in self-published works, rather than actual biologists whose research is published in peer-reviewed journals?

 

When I read this, I was excited. "Even though this guys opinions are almost always different from mine", I thought, "He's providing citations for stuff, and WOW, HERES SOMETHING I NEVER KNEW ABOUT EVOLUTION!"

I was stoked. I wanted to learn more. I thought, "I'll have to write a post thanking Alter2Ego for introducing me to a facet of evolution I wasn't aware of until now." I honestly thought there was something new to be learned here, I thought maybe "organic evolution" was a sub-set of evolution that I just hadn't heard of yet.

So I hit up google. It quickly revealed that "LIFE--how did it get here" is a publication by WatchTower, with a very obvious agenda to push. Never mind, his next reference is Britannica, cant argue with that! What more does it say on the topic then?

"Encyclopedia Britannia page 1018" I searched for. Imagine my surprise when every single result on the first page of results was a link to a post by Alter2Ego, making this same argument on a multitude of other web sites, in an unseemly, spammy manner. I'll need to be less specific, I thought, so I searched again, without the quotes. The first result that wasnt a link to one of Alter2Ego's posts, was a google books page telling me that their edition of the encyclopedia was exactly 1018 pages long... the next result referred to the 1968 edition, where on page 1018 it talks about Jesus, not evolution, an odd coincidence.

More than fifteen minutes later, I still can't confirm his reference is correct. I don't even know what edition of the encyclopedia it supposedly comes from. So I google for both "organic evolution" and "biological evolution". The results are overwhelming: both terms refer simply to evolution of already living things, and do not even attempt to theorise about how or even whether living organisms came from nonliving matter.

I am genuinely disappointed. Not disappointed at Alter2Ego being wrong - disappointed that I thought I would learn something interesting, but it turned out to be complete bunk. If you could post a larger quote, in context, from that page in your edition of the encyclopedia, Alter2Ego, perhaps I could discern why you think the Encyclopedia is defining something in a manner that has a substantial difference to the way virtually everyone in the world uses the phrase.

This on the other hand looks genuine. I don't doubt that Darwin thought that life appeared from unliving material. I don't doubt that we all think that. But, as important as it is to evolution, that's not the same thing as evolution. "Darwinism" is very similar to "evolution" but it's not exactly the same thing. Darwin has been proven wrong about several things: the theory of evolution is changing as we learn more about how it really works. I am under no illusions, current evolutionary theory will be wrong about a great many things still to be found; and the theory itself will change to better reflect the reality; that's how science works. But at the moment the current theory is consistent with all the facts known.

Proof? Of course not, science does not deal in absolutes. Evidence, on the other hand? Yes.

There are fossils of 300 million year old insects, amphibians and plants, but not 300 million year old mammals. It is obvious then that mammals came into existence, where they had not existed before. This is just one small example of evidence that is consistent with evolution. Many other pieces of evidence are consistent with it, and as far as I know (although I am not a biologist) there is no evidence that contradicts it. That's about as close to 'proof' as you get in science.

Given the astronomically small percentage of living organisms that we have collected as fossils, would any sensible person expect such evidence to manifest? Plainly not.

 

Are you saying that any attempt to say something is fact is wrong?

Do you believe that evolution is an attempt to falsify religion? It is not. It is mearly trying to explain how the world works.

Also, I think I would rather trust a theory that has over a hundred years of study, experimentation and observation than a book which by your own admission "that even the leading scholars at the time were illiterate do to the lack of consensus as to what every word in every permutation of a sentence all 'meant.'"

I am very interested in this new theory that the world may be flat. Can you please post some links to this theory? Also could you post some links to this 4th spatial dimensional theory?

 

ALTER2EGO -to- PROF SARCASTIC:
First of all, I am not a he. I am 100% female. And all that buildup your giving here, including "Wow" and the rest of it in all caps says one thing about you: "Drama King or Queen!"

ALTER2EGO -to- PROF SARCASTIC:
Yeah, right. Imagine, I would have missed out on all this comedy if I hadn't decided to check in here today.

ALTER2EGO -to- PROF SARCASTIC:
You should take up acting. I guarantee you would win an Academy Award. Nobody who genuinely wants to learn anything would carry on like you're doing here. The truth is that you were looking for reasons to not accept the info I posted. This performance you're putting on here is for your five minutes of fame.