On Jun 15, 8:08 pm, ZilentNoise <ZilentNo...@malinator.com> wrote:

Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:

.

Only solid matter is they proved speciation

Which isn't even required to establish evolution as valid. However,
the
fact is, they did establish it leads to speciation.

Not really. speciation has it limits and genre lines are ever crossed.
beside, there are 5 distinct definition of species and they are
contradictory.

Care to support that? You seem long on comments and very short - in
fact, non-existent - on supporting your claims.

What are the five definitions of species?

Where are they to be found?

Who made them?

How are they contradictory?

What is your alternative to the Theory of Evolution, and what science
do you have which supports this alternative?

Budikka

On Jun 15, 8:08 pm, ZilentNoise <ZilentNo...@malinator.com> wrote:

Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:

.

Only solid matter is they proved speciation

Which isn't even required to establish evolution as valid. However, the
fact is, they did establish it leads to speciation.

Not really. speciation has it limits and genre lines are ever crossed.
beside, there are 5 distinct definition of species and they are
contradictory.

Care to support that? You seem long on comments and very short - in
fact, non-existent - on supporting your claims.

What are the five definitions of species?

Where are they to be found?

Who made them?

How are they contradictory?

Kelsey Bjarnason wrote:

.

Only solid matter is they proved speciation

Which isn't even required to establish evolution as valid. However, the
fact is, they did establish it leads to speciation.

Not really. speciation has it limits

[snips]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:26:46 +0200, ~saba gracile~ wrote:

No, we don't. We know evolution is an established fact. The theory of
evolution - theories, actually - are, well, theories. Theories which
attempt to explain the fact.

All we know is that evolution is an established scientific establishement, and that
their theories are there to try to prove they're right.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but what it appears to mean
is you have a poor grasp of science. Theories are not used to prove a
claim, they're used to explain it.

Example: you drop a hammer, it falls to the ground. Oddly, the same
happens with most things - a glass, a TV set, a shoe. A general
observation arises from this, something along the lines of "Barring the
intervention of other forces or processes, objects will fall to the ground."

It's an observationally demonstrated reality; you can demonstrate that it
works to your heart's content. No theory is required, to prove it or to
state it; if you think it's wrong, go see for yourself.

Once it is established to be valid, however, we can proceed to make
theories about it. One such was that the mass of the object defined how
fast it fell; this was shown to be wrong, despite the fact the objects
continued to fall - the theory being proved wrong didn't have a shred of
impact on the fact that objects fall. An attempt to _explain_ the falling
- its manner, its speed, its applicability, what causes it and so forth -
has absolutely no bearing at all on whether objects do or do not actually
fall. The theory is *irrelevant* to the reality of the actual fact.

In fact, your comment is almost completely the reverse of the actual
situation, as the theories come out after something is already known to
be; we don't need them to establish the thing, they *depend* on it already
being established.

The earliest noteworthy case in regards to evolution was probably Darwin's
Finches. The fact is they showed a lot of similarity, as if they were
very closely related, perhaps even of the same stock, yet they also had
slight variations, ones which let each distinct subgroup succeed at a
slightly different behavior.

That was the fact; the theory attempted to explain how such a situation
would come about. The simplest explanation is that they _were_ from the
same stock, but differences in diet and so forth meant that each group had
a slightly different selection pressure upon them. This led to the theory
of evolution by natural selection - a theory which attempts to explain the
diversity despite fundamental similarity.

Today we have much better exemplars of the underlying fact. We have
observable and observed cases of evolution, even to speciation and beyond;
this is the fact, which the various theories of evolution attempt to
explain.

Again, a given theory might be wrong. Darwin said "Natura non facit
saltus", yet we know, based on observation, that nature *does* make jumps;
it just doesn't _always_ do so. Thus one of Darwin's theories, about the
mode and speed of evolution, is shown to be wrong, yet this doesn't even
impact his core theory, let alone modern theory - and none of this has any
impact at all on whether the facts of the matter are in fact true; every
single theory about evolution could be completely, flat-out, totally wrong
yet the process remains, despite that. The theories don't even _attempt_
to prove the facts of the case; the facts are self-demonstrating. The
theories attempt to _explain_ the facts, a different matter entirely.

Would an investigation of the evidence for evolution leave one on the
same solid ground?

On very solid ground.

Only solid matter is they proved speciation

Which isn't even required to establish evolution as valid. However, the
fact is, they did establish it leads to speciation.

Now one is forced into two possible situations: either showing there _is_
some limit to evolution which cannot extend it past the limit of species,
or accepting that without such a limit, there is nothing stopping it from
explaining the entire developmental history of life. Thing is, no such
limit has been found or even hypothesized, so there's nothing to hold it
back.

What we have is an observed and demonstrated mechanism for the production
and retention of small changes, one which can, over time, accumulate
larger numbers of such small changes, until we've reached a certain point
- speciation. We know this works, we know it happens.

Try this as a mental comparison: take a large bag of coins, pulling them
out at random one by one. If you get a penny, keep it, it counts "one"
towards the total. If you get a nickel, discard it; it's a "bad" coin.
If you get a dime, keep it, but it scores nothing - it's "neutral". If
you keep doing this, can you total ten cents?

Obviously, as long as you have enough coins, you can. Can you *also* make
a dollar?

There's the rub; it's obvious that once the mechanism is known and
demonstrated to be effective, you can make a dime or a dollar or a million
dollars, as long as your supply of coins doesn't run out, yet for some
reason we're supposed to think that when it comes to evolution, there is
some sort of magic stop sign that says "This far and no farther" - despite
no evidence for such in genetics, in evolution, in anything short of
absolute physical limits, such as not expecting the process to produce a
form that can live in the heart of a sun.

You seem to have an issue with this. Well, fine; I'll ask you - what is
the limiting factor? What is the magic stop sign? Without having such a
thing, the established mechanism is quite evidently capable of producing
virtually any scope of result; it must be, as the process is all about
change, so lacking any limiting mechanism, any stop sign, there can be no
conceptual limit to its capabilities, other than, as noted, some basic
physical restraints.

As it should be. Note they are debating how evolution occurs, why it
occurs, how fast it occurs, under what conditions it occurs and so
forth - but not _whether_ it occurs.

oh no, they don't want to doubt their own belief system,

What belief system? Evolutionary biology is done by atheists and
Christians and Jews and Muslims and people of all sorts of different
beliefs; the only commonality they have in this regard is they each
understand how science works and apply it.

that would be
blasphemic to their established community. Very simple.. they're human
beings too, and they are fallable.

Of course they are; this is why science uses methods to limit and even
eliminate human fallibility. This is why science demands evidence and
tests, rather than just hearsay and assertion.

This is something I'll never understand about theists. On the one hand,
they tend to assert their gods created the world, the entire universe,
complete with all its laws and mechanisms. Science is nothing - NOTHING -
more than an attempt to understand the universe, by examining it as it is,
on its own terms, with no attempt to force any view onto it.

Science doesn't work by saying "We must prove Allah is right and God is
wrong, so let's define the orbits of the electrons in terms of our faith";
it simply ignores the question entirely of whether God or Alla or Odin is
involved. It doesn't deny faith, it doesn't adopt faith, faith is simply
irrelevant to science.

What that means, though, is that when science determines that the universe
works in a particular way - evolution, quantum theory, whatever - it is
explaining how the universe is put together, how it functions, what it
means to us. If I were a theist, I would have to see this as
demonstrating *how* my god worked his miracles, *how* my god created the
universe, *how* my god decided things to be. I would have to see it as it
is - revealing the universe *as it is*, rather than as someone wants it to
be... and, if I were a theist, this would mean it was being revealed as my
god designed it, as he intended it to be revealed.

To deny science, to deny an examination of the universe on its own terms,
to deny htat what the universe itself tells us of how it operates, would
be, were I a theist, to deny my own gods; to take the position that I, not
they, get to say how things are supposed to work.

This doesn't strike me as terribly humble, let alone worshipful; if
anything, it suggests I'm adopting a position where I am better than my
gods, where I am smarter and I am better suited to tell them how things
work than they are to tell me. Hey, if I'm so great, why do I need gods
in the first place, since they're obviously wrong?

No, science doesn't include gods, nor does it exclude them; it simply
deals with the universe as it presents itself to us. If you want to treat
the findings as revealing the workings of your gods, so be it; science
doesn't care. When science does reveal those workings, though, to deny
them outright because the findings don't fit with your views of your
religion is to say, in effect, that your beliefs are better and more
important than your gods' works are, which to me doesn't sound like you
really have much faith in your gods. A man of faith, in my opinion, would
let the workings of his gods reveal themselves no matter if they conflict
with his religious views; if his gods' work contradicts his religion, then
it would be the religion that was wrong, not the gods.

'Course, that's just me. I don't actually expect theists in general to
ever accept that their gods matter more than their religions do, or that
they aren't in a position to dictate what their gods are and aren't
allowed to do. I fully expect them to do as they've always done; dictate
terms to their gods - "You can do things this way and no other, because I
said so" - regardless of the hubris involved in so doing.

Fortunately, as an atheist, I don't have to face the inherent hypocrisy of
believing in all-powerful entities yet telling them what they are and
aren't allowed to do. If there are such beings, if we do get judged in
the end, at least I can face such judgment square in the face, saying "I
didn't believe, but it was an honest lack of belief", rather than trying
to explain why my faith was such a sham I rejected my gods' own creations.

Just my two cents' worth.

--
Stewie: Ohhh! She has the voice of an angel...not to mention a balcony
you could do Shakespeare from!

[snips]

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 17:26:46 +0200, ~saba gracile~ wrote:

No, we don't. We know evolution is an established fact. The theory of
evolution - theories, actually - are, well, theories. Theories which
attempt to explain the fact.

All we know is that evolution is an established scientific establishement, and that
their theories are there to try to prove they're right.

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but what it appears to mean
is you have a poor grasp of science. Theories are not used to prove a
claim, they're used to explain it.

Example: you drop a hammer, it falls to the ground. Oddly, the same
happens with most things - a glass, a TV set, a shoe. A general
observation arises from this, something along the lines of "Barring the
intervention of other forces or processes, objects will fall to the ground."

It's an observationally demonstrated reality; you can demonstrate that it
works to your heart's content. No theory is required, to prove it or to
state it; if you think it's wrong, go see for yourself.

Once it is established to be valid, however, we can proceed to make
theories about it. One such was that the mass of the object defined how
fast it fell; this was shown to be wrong, despite the fact the objects
continued to fall - the theory being proved wrong didn't have a shred of
impact on the fact that objects fall. An attempt to _explain_ the falling
- its manner, its speed, its applicability, what causes it and so forth -
has absolutely no bearing at all on whether objects do or do not actually
fall. The theory is *irrelevant* to the reality of the actual fact.

In fact, your comment is almost completely the reverse of the actual
situation, as the theories come out after something is already known to
be; we don't need them to establish the thing, they *depend* on it already
being established.

The earliest noteworthy case in regards to evolution was probably Darwin's
Finches. The fact is they showed a lot of similarity, as if they were
very closely related, perhaps even of the same stock, yet they also had
slight variations, ones which let each distinct subgroup succeed at a
slightly different behavior.

That was the fact; the theory attempted to explain how such a situation
would come about. The simplest explanation is that they _were_ from the
same stock, but differences in diet and so forth meant that each group had
a slightly different selection pressure upon them. This led to the theory
of evolution by natural selection - a theory which attempts to explain the
diversity despite fundamental similarity.

Today we have much better exemplars of the underlying fact. We have
observable and observed cases of evolution, even to speciation and beyond;
this is the fact, which the various theories of evolution attempt to
explain.

Again, a given theory might be wrong. Darwin said "Natura non facit
saltus", yet we know, based on observation, that nature *does* make jumps;
it just doesn't _always_ do so. Thus one of Darwin's theories, about the
mode and speed of evolution, is shown to be wrong, yet this doesn't even
impact his core theory, let alone modern theory - and none of this has any
impact at all on whether the facts of the matter are in fact true; every
single theory about evolution could be completely, flat-out, totally wrong
yet the process remains, despite that. The theories don't even _attempt_
to prove the facts of the case; the facts are self-demonstrating. The
theories attempt to _explain_ the facts, a different matter entirely.

Would an investigation of the evidence for evolution leave one on the
same solid ground?

On very solid ground.

Only solid matter is they proved speciation

Which isn't even required to establish evolution as valid. However, the
fact is, they did establish it leads to speciation.

Now one is forced into two possible situations: either showing there _is_
some limit to evolution which cannot extend it past the limit of species,
or accepting that without such a limit, there is nothing stopping it from
explaining the entire developmental history of life. Thing is, no such
limit has been found or even hypothesized, so there's nothing to hold it
back.

What we have is an observed and demonstrated mechanism for the production
and retention of small changes, one which can, over time, accumulate
larger numbers of such small changes, until we've reached a certain point
- speciation. We know this works, we know it happens.

Try this as a mental comparison: take a large bag of coins, pulling them
out at random one by one. If you get a penny, keep it, it counts "one"
towards the total. If you get a nickel, discard it; it's a "bad" coin.
If you get a dime, keep it, but it scores nothing - it's "neutral". If
you keep doing this, can you total ten cents?

Obviously, as long as you have enough coins, you can. Can you *also* make
a dollar?

There's the rub; it's obvious that once the mechanism is known and
demonstrated to be effective, you can make a dime or a dollar or a million
dollars, as long as your supply of coins doesn't run out, yet for some
reason we're supposed to think that when it comes to evolution, there is
some sort of magic stop sign that says "This far and no farther" - despite
no evidence for such in genetics, in evolution, in anything short of
absolute physical limits, such as not expecting the process to produce a
form that can live in the heart of a sun.

You seem to have an issue with this. Well, fine; I'll ask you - what is
the limiting factor? What is the magic stop sign? Without having such a
thing, the established mechanism is quite evidently capable of producing
virtually any scope of result; it must be, as the process is all about
change, so lacking any limiting mechanism, any stop sign, there can be no
conceptual limit to its capabilities, other than, as noted, some basic
physical restraints.

As it should be. Note they are debating how evolution occurs, why it
occurs, how fast it occurs, under what conditions it occurs and so
forth - but not _whether_ it occurs.

oh no, they don't want to doubt their own belief system,

What belief system? Evolutionary biology is done by atheists and
Christians and Jews and Muslims and people of all sorts of different
beliefs; the only commonality they have in this regard is they each
understand how science works and apply it.

that would be
blasphemic to their established community. Very simple.. they're human
beings too, and they are fallable.

Of course they are; this is why science uses methods to limit and even
eliminate human fallibility. This is why science demands evidence and
tests, rather than just hearsay and assertion.

This is something I'll never understand about theists. On the one hand,
they tend to assert their gods created the world, the entire universe,
complete with all its laws and mechanisms. Science is nothing - NOTHING -
more than an attempt to understand the universe, by examining it as it is,
on its own terms, with no attempt to force any view onto it.

Science doesn't work by saying "We must prove Allah is right and God is
wrong, so let's define the orbits of the electrons in terms of our faith";
it simply ignores the question entirely of whether God or Alla or Odin is
involved. It doesn't deny faith, it doesn't adopt faith, faith is simply
irrelevant to science.

What that means, though, is that when science determines that the universe
works in a particular way - evolution, quantum theory, whatever - it is
explaining how the universe is put together, how it functions, what it
means to us. If I were a theist, I would have to see this as
demonstrating *how* my god worked his miracles, *how* my god created the
universe, *how* my god decided things to be. I would have to see it as it
is - revealing the universe *as it is*, rather than as someone wants it to
be... and, if I were a theist, this would mean it was being revealed as my
god designed it, as he intended it to be revealed.

To deny science, to deny an examination of the universe on its own terms,
to deny htat what the universe itself tells us of how it operates, would
be, were I a theist, to deny my own gods; to take the position that I, not
they, get to say how things are supposed to work.

This doesn't strike me as terribly humble, let alone worshipful; if
anything, it suggests I'm adopting a position where I am better than my
gods, where I am smarter and I am better suited to tell them how things
work than they are to tell me. Hey, if I'm so great, why do I need gods
in the first place, since they're obviously wrong?

No, science doesn't include gods, nor does it exclude them; it simply
deals with the universe as it presents itself to us. If you want to treat
the findings as revealing the workings of your gods, so be it; science
doesn't care. When science does reveal those workings, though, to deny
them outright because the findings don't fit with your views of your
religion is to say, in effect, that your beliefs are better and more
important than your gods' works are, which to me doesn't sound like you
really have much faith in your gods. A man of faith, in my opinion, would
let the workings of his gods reveal themselves no matter if they conflict
with his religious views; if his gods' work contradicts his religion, then
it would be the religion that was wrong, not the gods.

'Course, that's just me. I don't actually expect theists in general to
ever accept that their gods matter more than their religions do, or that
they aren't in a position to dictate what their gods are and aren't
allowed to do. I fully expect them to do as they've always done; dictate
terms to their gods - "You can do things this way and no other, because I
said so" - regardless of the hubris involved in so doing.

Fortunately, as an atheist, I don't have to face the inherent hypocrisy of
believing in all-powerful entities yet telling them what they are and
aren't allowed to do. If there are such beings, if we do get judged in
the end, at least I can face such judgment square in the face, saying "I
didn't believe, but it was an honest lack of belief", rather than trying
to explain why my faith was such a sham I rejected my gods' own creations.

Just my two cents' worth.

--
Stewie: Ohhh! She has the voice of an angel...not to mention a balcony
you could do Shakespeare from!

"ZilentNoise" <ZilentNoise@malinator.com> wrote in message
news:yDSbi.4296$O15.3712@trnddc03...

When a special centennial edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species was to
be published,

-- i.e. in *1959*. Nearly half a century ago. Jeeeezus, you people really
like *antiques*, don't you...?!? *LOL*!!!

do you want fries with that?

When a special centennial edition of Darwin's Origin of Species was
to be published, W. R. Thompson, then director of the Commonwealth
Institute of Biological Control, in Ottawa, Canada, was invited to write
its introduction. In it he said: "As we know, there is a great
divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the causes of
evolution but even about the actual process. This divergence exists
because the evidence is unsatisfactory and does not permit any certain
conclusion. It is therefore right and proper to draw the attention of
the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution.

When a special centennial edition of Darwin's Origin of Species was
to be published, W. R. Thompson, then director of the Commonwealth
Institute of Biological Control, in Ottawa, Canada, was invited to write
its introduction. In it he said: "As we know, there is a great
divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the causes of
evolution but even about the actual process. This divergence exists
because the evidence is unsatisfactory and does not permit any certain
conclusion. It is therefore right and proper to draw the attention of
the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution.

When a special centennial edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species was
to be published, W. R. Thompson, then director of the Commonwealth
Institute of Biological Control, in Ottawa, Canada, was invited to write
its introduction. In it he said: “As we know, there is a great
divergence of opinion among biologists, not only about the causes of
evolution but even about the actual process. This divergence exists
because the evidence is unsatisfactory and does not permit any certain
conclusion. It is therefore right and proper to draw the attention of
the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution.