Is Evolution Science Or Religion?

[Ryndanangnysen]

Buffy , I have read those link. So what? There is NO EVIDENCE there UNLESS one already believe this non sense.

 

 

And what about Vedic Math? Please be so smart to put your comments there, dumb Lady!

 

 

 

 

 

Gee, who is this transvestite?

[Buffy]

There's plenty of evidence unless one is insisting it's not, against, well, all evidence.

 

You aren't using scientific processes, you're harassing people and you've broken a half-dozen other of our rules.

 

We'll leave your embarrassing posts up here for posterity and for the benefit of other forums who may be desecrated by your presence.

 

And yes, I do like wearing straight cut Levi's and button down shirts sometimes. Sorry that you think that's deviant.

 

 

Being uneducated is no guarantee against being obnoxious, :phones:

Buffy

[pgrmdave]

There's plenty of evidence unless one is insisting it's not, against, well, all evidence.

 

You aren't using scientific processes, you're harassing people and you've broken a half-dozen other of our rules.

 

We'll leave your embarrassing posts up here for posterity and for the benefit of other forums who may be desecrated by your presence.

 

And yes, I do like wearing straight cut Levi's and button down shirts sometimes. Sorry that you think that's deviant.

 

 

Being uneducated is no guarantee against being obnoxious, :phones:

Buffy

:applause:

[A-wal]

Say what???????????????????????????????????????????????????????

 

Of course you have to prove it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

 

BUT you can't, so now you have to rely on your 'common sense'

 

 

Don't have to prove it??? Your laughable!!!

 

No I don't have to prove that there's no dividing line between different species, because it's obvious. I'll make this as simple as I can. I've given you the mechanism for evolution:

Step 1 - Mutation

Random mutation can lead to new traits that are either an advantage or a disadvantage to the carrier.

 

Step 2 - Natural Selection

Those that carry a mutation that is a disadvantage are less likely to reproduce than those without that mutation, while those that carry a mutation that is an advantage are more likely to reproduce than those without that mutation.

 

Step 3 - Survival Of The Fittest

Advantageous mutations tend to thrive while those that are a disadvantage tend to get eliminated from the gene pool leading to a gradual improvement of species, in that they become more adapted to their environments over time, which in the short term causes refinements to individual species and in the long term causes multiple species to evolve from a common ancestor.

 

The more time that passes, the more separate branches diverge from each other. There's no clear line to determine when a new species is created because it's a gradual process.

 

If you want to claim that this process is incapable of evolving a species to the point of classifying it as a separate species then you need to first define what constitutes a brand new species, what dividing line are you using to distinguish one species from another?

 

And secondly you need to provide a mechanism that prevents this line from being crossed. What could possibly restrict random mutation in such a way as to create a limit for the amount of change that can occur over an indefinite period of time?

 

If you can't do that then you're simply not making sense.

Edited July 22, 2015 by A-wal

[Pyrotex]

I've often found it useful in the never-ending fight against trolls to demand that they define key terms they are using.

In this case, Ryndan said that we provided no "evidence".

I would have asked him, what do you mean by evidence?

Or, if I were to give you evidence, what would it look like?

What would I have to tell you in order for you to agree that it was evidence?

 

Hoist them on the definition of their own petard.

[HydrogenBond]

If you ever bred animals or plants, the breeders can decide which traits they would like to pass forward in the offspring. Anyone can witness this for themselves. There will also be oddities that appear. This is how evolution works, except nature and circumstances do this instead of humans. This is called natural selection instead of breeder selection. 

 

Even if you believe life appear 6000 years ago, from that time, until now, both natural and breeder selection has occurred from that original life data set. Humans domesticated dogs to get certain traits. Some dogs escape back to the wild and become part of the natural stock that breeds and whose prodigy change with nature and circumstances. Some remain ferrel or half way between the two stages. 

 

Where I differ, is the mechanism not the overall schema of selection. I also think in terms of chemical selection, caused by the continuous phase or solvent of life; water. Water is the breeder, nature and circumstances. Existing evolution starts at the macro-level in comparison and therefore misses nano-scale considerations that underly this. The result is half baked. 

Edited August 25, 2015 by HydrogenBond

[Pyrotex]

Excellent point.  In fact, recently, I made a point of reading Darwin's first book, Origin of Species.  Half the book is taken up with his interviews of horse breeders, dog breeders and pigeon fanciers (breeders) to find out how humans are able to alter a species in such a variety of ways.

 

Their technique was amazingly simple.  They controlled which animals got to procreate.  Those with the desired (by humans) attributes had more offspring, and those attributes got carried over and even intensified in later generations.  Darwin called this, Artificial Selection.

 

Nature also selects attributes (controls procreation).  He called this Natural Selection.

[HydrogenBond]

The story of Noah Ark tells about a selection process. In this case, two of each kind of animal; male and female, are selected to become the stock from which the future of animals will be selected. Whether one believes in the story of Noah's Ark of not, the idea of selection is quite old. 

 

In the case of Noah and the Ark, this was a ferrel type selection process, which is a composite of natural and artificial. God=Nature sets the environmental parameters; flood, while Noah=Man picks his favorite traits. Modern evolution is often a blend of both human and natural selection, since both alter the environment and both select favorites, together; city park. 

[HydrogenBond]

Even Adam and Eve was also a type of God=nature selection process. In this case, Adam and Eve were deselected from one environment and forced to migrate to another where they become selected. They were not longer fit for paradise, but were banished to the earth to begin a new race.

 

The young male lions, instinctively leave the pride, being deselected by the alpha male. The young males, often as teams, must  wander until they find their alpha place.

 

Even today human immigration to other countries, is often because of lack of opportunity in their places of originate; they can't be selected. They migrate to seek another place, where selection might be possible. It is very possible, out of Africa to populate the earth, was based on this schema of selection. 

[venus666]

In the past, people's minds are controlled by religion. The church teach people and spread knowledge. But with the development of science and the change of status of religion, the theory of evolution was admitted. I do believe that it belongs to evolution science but religion always generate some science. 

[HydrogenBond]

In the past, people's minds are controlled by religion. The church teach people and spread knowledge. But with the development of science and the change of status of religion, the theory of evolution was admitted. I do believe that it belongs to evolution science but religion always generate some science. 

 

Evolution does the same thing in that it ignore other logical ways life can progress or evolve. In my last quote I indirectly mentioned how the mind and consciousness allows animals and humans to migrate so it can find a place where it can be selected. This is taboo in the current evolution religion.

 

The current religion of evolution assume the entire world looks like Galapagos Island therefore all has to be stuck in random competition somewhere. It can't be a conscious choice to migrate to Europe or America to maximize the potential for selection. 

Edited September 8, 2015 by HydrogenBond

[Buffy]

Evolution does the same thing in that it ignore other logical ways life can progress or evolve. In my last quote I indirectly mentioned how the mind and consciousness allows animals and humans to migrate so it can find a place where it can be selected. This is taboo in the current evolution religion.

 

No, it's not.

 

In fact even IN the Galapagos, Darwin noted the differences that developed within species that migrated to other islands.

 

The current religion of evolution assume the entire world looks like Galapagos Island therefore all has to be stuck in random competition somewhere. It can't be a conscious choice to migrate to Europe or America to maximize the potential for selection. 

 

There's absolutely nothing in Evolutionary theory--either in Darwin's original formulation or "modern"--that precludes individuals from "choosing" to migrate to other locations, in fact it *depends* on it. Geographic dispersion is precisely how most differentiation occurs. It's called Allopatric speciation, and the fact that you don't "know" about it is a perfect example of the desperate grasping at straws that occurs in the pursuit of finding Evolution to be a "belief."

 

Ignoring facts seems to be the only way to accomplish it. Thank you for providing such an excellent example Hydro!

 

 

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light, :phones:

Buffy

[HydrogenBond]

Maybe the problem I have, is I have made this same point many times on several forums. The reaction I normally get makes it seem like this is new to them, and considered unproven science that I am making up. It seemed like common sense to me when I developed the idea. I glad someone is aware Darwin also thought along these lines. 

 

One important common sense place where evolution falls short of being full blown science, is connected to it not addressing water, properly. This is based on experiments which showed that if you take away the water, nothing in the cell will work. If you replace the water with any other solvent, there is no life, with nothing working properly down to enzymes. Common sense says water is intimately connected to life, because these experiments demonstrated that water was globally needed in a very unique way. This is because life evolved in water, with water part of the selection process, selecting things that only work in water.  

 

If you don't use the water assumption, fully, then you end up with a randomness mythology, which what many people sense. Someone posted a link to an article that discussed how many science studies can't be duplicated. The most likely cause of this is not conspiracy, but too much use of the random mythology in science. If things were indeed random, each lab should get a different result. It is like throwing dice trying to duplicate studies. One should be surprised if you get the same results in a random universe. 

 

The scientific method, by requiring data be reproducible, implies science needs a logical theory to create a path that will lead all who walk that path, to the same result. If you could not use random mythology in evolution, but had to stick to full conformity to the scientific method, would the lack of fudge impact evolution? Water is the bridge that will bring evolution away from random mythology, back to science. 

 

 

[Buffy]

Maybe the problem I have, is I have made this same point many times on several forums. The reaction I normally get makes it seem like this is new to them, and considered unproven science that I am making up. It seemed like common sense to me when I developed the idea. I glad someone is aware Darwin also thought along these lines. 

 

Well, then they are probably not science forums, so....

 

 

One important common sense place where evolution falls short of being full blown science, is connected to it not addressing water, properly. This is based on experiments which showed that if you take away the water, nothing in the cell will work. If you replace the water with any other solvent, there is no life, with nothing working properly down to enzymes. Common sense says water is intimately connected to life, because these experiments demonstrated that water was globally needed in a very unique way. This is because life evolved in water, with water part of the selection process, selecting things that only work in water.  

 

Um. If you remove water from an organism that has evolved to require water, then no. It won't work. Try taking the water out of a water-cooled internal combustion engine and it's not likely to work either.

 

I'm not at all sure why this is either novel or surprising.

 

Heck, ‎Tom and Ray Magliozzi have covered this issue hundreds of times on Car Talk.

 

And if you replace the water in the engine with hydrochloric acid, it similarly is not going to last very long.

 

So biologic systems that have evolved to REQUIRE water don't work without it and you can't use other stuff in water's place.

 

This is surprising?

 

If you don't use the water assumption, fully, then you end up with a randomness mythology, which what many people sense. Someone posted a link to an article that discussed how many science studies can't be duplicated. The most likely cause of this is not conspiracy, but too much use of the random mythology in science. If things were indeed random, each lab should get a different result. It is like throwing dice trying to duplicate studies. One should be surprised if you get the same results in a random universe. 

 

"Randomness mythology?" 

 

Now religion exists precisely to ensure that nothing is "random"--there's always some deity involved who did it on purpose although we can't always divine the reasoning. "God works in mysterious ways, right? But no way is it *random*!" If things are random, religion breaks down pretty quickly because it delegitimizes the deities.

 

So screaming "RANDOM!" is one of the ways that religion seeks to claim that science is illegitimate. Unfortunately that's an appeal to ignorance.

 

Why is there anything wrong with randomness? We see it all over the place. It works great!

 

Where this all goes off the rails--as Hydro demonstrates in one sentence here--is an insistence that if any process is random in ANY aspect, then NO PREDICTIONS can be made about outcome.

 

If you believe that then you will not pass Statistics 101. You don't understand about Poisson vs. Bell Curve distributions, you don't understand about prior probabilities and you definitely probably can't even spell Bayesian.

 

"If evolution is random, well, then, why don't birds have monkeys as offspring? It's RANDOM you know!" 

 

Of course saying something like this might influence someone who has no mathematical training, but it's really kind of egregious coming from people who are actual scientists with PhDs.

 

The scientific method, by requiring data be reproducible, implies science needs a logical theory to create a path that will lead all who walk that path, to the same result. If you could not use random mythology in evolution, but had to stick to full conformity to the scientific method, would the lack of fudge impact evolution? Water is the bridge that will bring evolution away from random mythology, back to science. 

 

Randomness is part of virtually every process in the known universe. Ever since the development of quantum mechanics we've even had to modify physics to accommodate probabilities that the movement of physical objects will obey predictions.

 

If you keep using "random" as some boogieman that is "proof" that science is all fake, then you're doing it wrong.

 

Again Hydro, we know you know this stuff, that you still keep saying it is what's dumbfounding.

 

 

Everything we care about lies somewhere in the middle, where pattern and randomness interlace, :phones:

Buffy

[pgrmdave]

If things were indeed random, each lab should get a different result. It is like throwing dice trying to duplicate studies. One should be surprised if you get the same results in a random universe. 

 

The scientific method, by requiring data be reproducible, implies science needs a logical theory to create a path that will lead all who walk that path, to the same result.

Throwing dice is a great example.  Take two, basic, 6 sided dice. Roll them twice.  Both times you're likely to get different results.  If that were the extent of an experiment, every lab would get different results, and it wouldn't be easily reproducible.  Now roll them 100,000 times and plot the results.  You'll find that you get about six times as many 7's as 2's.  And now if we do it at many labs, the differences will be small.  We could verify that yes - the results of rolling two dice are random, but they are random within given bounds and they will tend to follow certain probabilities.

 

Not sure how you get from "probability exists" to "science must not work unless the probabilities are 1 or 0".

[Chloehxl]

For me, it's Science because it's kind of a modern improvement.