How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

[Purple Knight]

This is not a question of whether or not evolution is crazy, but how crazy it seems at first glance.

That is, when we discard our experiences and look at claims as if through new eyes, what do we find when we look at evolution? I Believe we can find a great deal of common ground with this question, because when I discard my experience as an animal breeder, when I discard my knowledge, and what I've been taught, I might look at evolution with the same skepticism as someone who has either never been taught anything about it, or someone who has been taught to distrust it.

Personally my mind goes to the keratinised spines on the tongues of cats. Yes, cats have fingernails growing out of their tongues! Gross, right? Well, these particular fingernails have evolved into perfect little brushes for the animal's fur. But I think of that first animal with a horrid growth of keratin on its poor tongue. The poor thing didn't die immediately, and this fits perfectly with what I said about two steps back paying for one forward. This detrimental mutation didn't hurt the animal enough for the hapless thing to die of it, but surely it caused some suffering. And persevering thing that he was, he reproduced despite his disability (probably in a time of plenty that allowed that). But did he have the growths anywhere else? It isn't beyond reason to think of them protruding from the corners of his eyes or caking up more and more on the palms of his hands. Perhaps he had them where his eyelashes were, and it hurt him to even blink. As disturbing as my mental picture is of this scenario, this sad creature isn't even as bad off as this boar, whose tusks grew up and curled until they punctured his brain.





This is a perfect example of a detrimental trait being preserved because it doesn't hurt the animal enough to kill it before it mates. So we don't have to jump right from benefit to benefit. The road to a new beneficial trait might be long, going backwards most of the way, and filled with a lot of stabbed brains and eyelids.

Walking backwards most of the time, uphill both ways, and across caltrops almost the entire trip?

I have to admit, thinking about walking along such a path sounds like, at very least, a very depressing way to get from A to B. I would hope there would be a better way.

[The Barbarian]

So you're unable to show that it's been falsified, but you think your unsupported claim that it has not been demonstrated is now a "falsification?" First show us what in the diversity of life can be shown to be impossible for evolutionary processes to produce. As you seem to realize, you can't even do that. So you're now trying to argue that failing to prove something means it's falsified.

Which confirms another stereotype people have about creationists.

And as you know, various independent lines of evidence are very good evidence for common descent:

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.

I say these things not because I'm crazy or because I've "converted" to evolution. I say these things because they are true. I'm motivated this morning by reading yet another clueless, well-meaning person pompously declaring that evolution is a failure. People who say that are either unacquainted with the inner workings of science or unacquainted with the evidence for evolution. (Technically, they could also be deluded or lying, but that seems rather uncharitable to say. Oops.)

Creationist students, listen to me very carefully: There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesn't make it ultimately true, and it doesn't mean that there could not possibly be viable alternatives. It is my own faith choice to reject evolution, because I believe the Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution. I am motivated to understand God's creation from what I believe to be a biblical, creationist perspective. Evolution itself is not flawed or without evidence. Please don't be duped into thinking that somehow evolution itself is a failure. Please don't idolize your own ability to reason.
YE creationist Dr. Todd Wood
https://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2009/09/ ... ution.html

Evidences for Darwin’s second expectation — of stratomorphic intermediate species —include such species as Baragwanathia27 (between rhyniophytes and lycopods), Pikaia28 (between echinoderms and chordates), Purgatorius29 (between the tree shrews and the primates), and Proconsul30 (between the non-hominoid primates and the hominoids). Darwin’s third expectation — of higher-taxon stratomorphic intermediates — has been confirmed by such examples as the mammal-like reptile groups31 between the reptiles and the mammals, and the phenacodontids32 between the horses and their presumed ancestors. Darwin’s fourth expectation — of stratomorphic series — has been confirmed by such examples as the early bird series,33 the tetrapod series,34,35 the whale series,36 the various mammal series of the Cenozoic37 (for example, the horse series, the camel series, the elephant series, the pig series, the titanothere series, etc.), the Cantius and lesiadapus primate series,38 and the hominid series.39 Evidence for not just one but for all three of the species level and above types of stratomorphic intermediates expected by macroevolutionary theory is surely strong evidence formacroevolutionary theory. Creationists therefore need to accept this fact.
YE creationist Dr. Kurt Wise Toward a Creationist Understanding of Transitional Forms

As you see, even honest YE creationists admit that the evidence indicates common descent. So your assumption is demonstrably wrong. Try again?
[/quote]

Firstly - One doesn't falsify a "point" Barbarian,

One can if they are testable assertions. As Darwin's points are. Perhaps you're not familiar with the criteria of testability.

but one can hypotheses and inferences based upon them.

A hypothesis is a testable assertion. Like "more are born than can live." or "Every organism is slightly different than either parent" or...

Secondly you never asked me about falsification

You asserted that evolutionary theory was falsified. Have you changed your mind?

The claim that complex life arose from bacteria

Um, I have an undergraduate degree in bacteriology. They are more complex than you seem to think. However, the evolution of eukaryotes from prokaryotes took a very, very long time. Perhaps longer than any other major event in life on Earth. The issue is the evolution of endosymbiosis, the merging of two or more cellular organisms into an obligatory symbiotic relationship wherein one organism is permanently within the other with mutual benefit thereby. But I'm sure you agree that there is no barrier to such an symbiosis evolving over time.

This poses an existential problem for your belief because you cannot demonstrate adequacy you can only infer it.

No, there is overwhelming evidence for it. Would you like to learn about some of it?

I can claim that if I shake a box of nuts and screws and gears and so on in a box and throw the contents onto the floor, that it is possible an assembled watch will fall out.

But would it be possible to put two single-celled organisms in the same culture and have obligate endosymbiosis occur? Like Paley, you use a human artifact to try to make a point, because if you didn't, it would be absurd.

Anyway, your claim that evolutionary theory is falsified, has failed, since you can't even show us that endosymbiosis of the sort we see in eukaryote cells is impossible to evolve.

[brunumb]

I can claim that if I shake a box of nuts and screws and gears and so on in a box and throw the contents onto the floor, that it is possible an assembled watch will fall out.

I can base that claim on experiments that sometimes when we do this a gear happens to end up with a pin through its center or a screw happens to get into a hole and partially rotated.

But the latter is not evidence for the former, we have no reason whatsoever to expect that the latter is adequate for an assembled watch to fall out.

Berlinski speaks of this too (as do most intelligent people who can see this is a sham "theory").

Please show how this watch model accurately illustrates the mechanism of evolution*. All this straw man argument really demonstrates is an unfortunate lack of understanding of the actual process involved. One would expect that anyone with allegedly years of experience engaging in debates like this would have encountered it before and seen it thoroughly dismantled.

*Not holding my breath

[Miles]

BTW, Johannes Kepler (of Kepler's Laws fame) actually did horoscopes for people. He was one of the few Renaissance scientists who were not independently wealthy, and because he could use extremely accurate information on the position of stars and planets, he made a pretty good living from it.

After I retired from my first career, I became a teacher for a few years. Once, in a science class, several students expressed confidence in Astrology. I suggested a test to see how it worked. Each student gave me their birthday, I made up horoscopes for the class. The next day, I handed them out. Each had a place to rate how accurate it was. All but one student found them to be extremely accurate. After this, I had them hand theirs to another student to see if they agreed as to how accurate it was.

Then they discovered that I had given identical horoscopes to every one of them. I had written about things true of most people, along with a few things all people like to believe about themselves. And then I asked them if they could hypothesize why so many people believe in astrology.

The student who did not find the horoscope accurate was a devout Christian who believed astrology was an affront to God, and possibly demonic.

Fascinating; and the relevance of astrology to this discussion is? ahh of course! the relevance is that it's a handy little strawman, an oft used tool of my opponents when all else fails them.

Your guy Belinski is a believer in astrology as well as creationism. At least he's intellectually consistent.

I refer you to my earlier post about this, you are mistaken in your claim about Berlinski and Astrology, perhaps if I emphasize this it will help you:

The fundamental point that Berlinski wishes to drive home is that astrology, as conceived, altered, fine-tuned, and practiced over millennia by brilliant and intelligent theoreticians and experimentalists, is a failed science.

Is your error now clearer to you? Perhaps if you'd read his book rather than leapt excitedly to conclusions based on its cover you'd have avoided this embarrassment, hmm Barbarian by name, barbarian by nature?

Publishers Weekly review of
The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky: Astrology and the Art of Prediction by David Berlinski

"Spanning the development of astrology from Sumerian origins to Nazi court astrologers, Berlinski's ruminative but shallow history seeks to rescue it from what he sees as the misconceived derision of modern science. The author of A Tour of the Calculus remains coyly agnostic about astrology's validity. He calls it a""finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems"" and cites many successful predictions and a statistical study supposedly verifying the""Mars effect"" on athletic talent, but when faced with the incoherent, metaphorical techniques by which astrologers interpret their charts, he can only shrug that since smart people used to listen to astrologers, there must be something to it. [GOOD GRIEF] If not rational, Berlinski argues that astrology is at least""rationalistic,"" in that""the peculiar nature of astrological thought has returned in all the sciences, in disguised form."" Unfortunately, this provocative point is made through facile comparisons--medieval notions of heavenly""influences"" anticipate Newtonian mechanics, electromagnetism and sociobiology, for example, while 15th-century medical astrological charts are""the forerunner of such diagnostic devices as CAT scans""--that illuminate neither ancient nor modern thought. Physicists will object to Berlinski's contention that they account for""action at a distance"" no better than astrologers do, while philosophers will blanch at his superficial take on the conundrums of causality and determinism. No more edifying are the self-consciously literary vignettes (the dying Copernicus""took his breath in long, slow, wet, ragged gasps, a bubble of pale phlegm forming on his lips"") [Now that's funny] with which Berlinski""humanizes"" this intellectual history. Readers looking for real intellectual meat behind the author's ostentatious erudition and metaphysical pseudo-profundities will go hungry."
source

Sounds like a real keeper, Sherlock.


.

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #742]

I know that's "not how it works" for evolution, only real theories have this capability.

Real theories? You seem to be confused about what a scientific theory is. Here is a dictionary definition from Merriam-Webster:

Definition of theory
1 : a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena.

And another one from Wikipedia:

"A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that has been repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results."

Given that evolution meets these definitions in spades, it is clearly a "real theory." The fact that you don't accept this is clear, but fortunately for science your opinions will likely never be disseminated beyond internet message forums and evolution will remain a valid theory until someone can come along with a better one for how life diversified on this planet. So far you've complained a lot about it, but not offered up any viable alternative. "God did it" isn't in that category until gods of any kind can be demonstrated to actually exist ... they are still in the hypothesis stage and far from achieving the status of theory that evolution unquestionably has.

[The Barbarian]

Bottom line, it's not crazier to suggest that astrology is a "finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems" than it is to suggest that ID is science. As IDer Michael Behe admitted, astrology is science in the same sense that ID is science. So it's not remarkable that Berlinski praises both.

[alexxcJRO]

Another fail of Intelligent Design.
A paper that debunks ID and provides support for Common Ancestry.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs ... /evo.12934

Here a video of Gutsick Gibbon showing the ID Proponents(tied to Discovery Institute) failure of addressing the paper:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4AsKyKaB5k&lis ... A&index=21

[Sherlock Holmes]

Bottom line, it's not crazier to suggest that astrology is a "finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems" than it is to suggest that ID is science. As IDer Michael Behe admitted, astrology is science in the same sense that ID is science. So it's not remarkable that Berlinski praises both.

You seem to be deliberately misrepresenting the thesis of Berlinski's book because ad hominem is all you have.

Even if he did "believe in astrology" which is patently untrue, that would have no bearing on his rejection of evolution the reasons for which are summarized in the video clip, no part of his argument against evolution makes recourse to astrology.

If you continue with this debating strategy you can expect my interest in discussing the science itself with you, to diminish.

[The Barbarian]

Bottom line, it's not crazier to suggest that astrology is a "finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems" than it is to suggest that ID is science. As IDer Michael Behe admitted, astrology is science in the same sense that ID is science. So it's not remarkable that Berlinski praises both.

You seem to be deliberately misrepresenting the thesis of Berlinski's book because ad hominem is all you have.

In fact I quoted him. He says it's been remarkably accurate, then coyly says he's agnostic about it. And it's consistent with his belief in creationism. They are both pseudosciences.

Even if he did "believe in astrology" which is patently untrue, that would have no bearing on his rejection of evolution

He thinks it might be true. And it is entirely consistent with this belief in creationism.

the reasons for which are summarized in the video clip,

As you learned all his objections collapse on inspection. If you think he has a valid one against evolutionary theory, maybe you should show us.

If you continue with this debating strategy you can expect my interest in discussing the science itself with you, to diminish.

As remarked by many here, your interest in supporting your beliefs is close to nonexistent. I'm just observing the fact. Which won't require your response. Your call.

[Sherlock Holmes]

BTW, Johannes Kepler (of Kepler's Laws fame) actually did horoscopes for people. He was one of the few Renaissance scientists who were not independently wealthy, and because he could use extremely accurate information on the position of stars and planets, he made a pretty good living from it.

After I retired from my first career, I became a teacher for a few years. Once, in a science class, several students expressed confidence in Astrology. I suggested a test to see how it worked. Each student gave me their birthday, I made up horoscopes for the class. The next day, I handed them out. Each had a place to rate how accurate it was. All but one student found them to be extremely accurate. After this, I had them hand theirs to another student to see if they agreed as to how accurate it was.

Then they discovered that I had given identical horoscopes to every one of them. I had written about things true of most people, along with a few things all people like to believe about themselves. And then I asked them if they could hypothesize why so many people believe in astrology.

The student who did not find the horoscope accurate was a devout Christian who believed astrology was an affront to God, and possibly demonic.

Fascinating; and the relevance of astrology to this discussion is? ahh of course! the relevance is that it's a handy little strawman, an oft used tool of my opponents when all else fails them.

Your guy Belinski is a believer in astrology as well as creationism. At least he's intellectually consistent.

I refer you to my earlier post about this, you are mistaken in your claim about Berlinski and Astrology, perhaps if I emphasize this it will help you:

The fundamental point that Berlinski wishes to drive home is that astrology, as conceived, altered, fine-tuned, and practiced over millennia by brilliant and intelligent theoreticians and experimentalists, is a failed science.

Is your error now clearer to you? Perhaps if you'd read his book rather than leapt excitedly to conclusions based on its cover you'd have avoided this embarrassment, hmm Barbarian by name, barbarian by nature?

Publishers Weekly review of
The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky: Astrology and the Art of Prediction by David Berlinski

"Spanning the development of astrology from Sumerian origins to Nazi court astrologers, Berlinski's ruminative but shallow history seeks to rescue it from what he sees as the misconceived derision of modern science. The author of A Tour of the Calculus remains coyly agnostic about astrology's validity. He calls it a""finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems"" and cites many successful predictions and a statistical study supposedly verifying the""Mars effect"" on athletic talent, but when faced with the incoherent, metaphorical techniques by which astrologers interpret their charts, he can only shrug that since smart people used to listen to astrologers, there must be something to it. [GOOD GRIEF] If not rational, Berlinski argues that astrology is at least""rationalistic,"" in that""the peculiar nature of astrological thought has returned in all the sciences, in disguised form."" Unfortunately, this provocative point is made through facile comparisons--medieval notions of heavenly""influences"" anticipate Newtonian mechanics, electromagnetism and sociobiology, for example, while 15th-century medical astrological charts are""the forerunner of such diagnostic devices as CAT scans""--that illuminate neither ancient nor modern thought. Physicists will object to Berlinski's contention that they account for""action at a distance"" no better than astrologers do, while philosophers will blanch at his superficial take on the conundrums of causality and determinism. No more edifying are the self-consciously literary vignettes (the dying Copernicus""took his breath in long, slow, wet, ragged gasps, a bubble of pale phlegm forming on his lips"") [Now that's funny] with which Berlinski""humanizes"" this intellectual history. Readers looking for real intellectual meat behind the author's ostentatious erudition and metaphysical pseudo-profundities will go hungry."
source

Sounds like a real keeper, Sherlock.


.

Faced with serious problems nagging away at evolution "theory", your (like so many others) strategy is to create a diversion.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Bottom line, it's not crazier to suggest that astrology is a "finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems" than it is to suggest that ID is science. As IDer Michael Behe admitted, astrology is science in the same sense that ID is science. So it's not remarkable that Berlinski praises both.

You seem to be deliberately misrepresenting the thesis of Berlinski's book because ad hominem is all you have.

In fact I quoted him. He says it's been remarkably accurate, then coyly says he's agnostic about it. And it's consistent with his belief in creationism. They are both pseudosciences.

Even if he did "believe in astrology" which is patently untrue, that would have no bearing on his rejection of evolution

He thinks it might be true. And it is entirely consistent with this belief in creationism.

the reasons for which are summarized in the video clip,

As you learned all his objections collapse on inspection. If you think he has a valid one against evolutionary theory, maybe you should show us.

If you continue with this debating strategy you can expect my interest in discussing the science itself with you, to diminish.

As remarked by many here, your interest in supporting your beliefs is close to nonexistent. I'm just observing the fact. Which won't require your response. Your call.

Can we get back to evolution please? if I recall I'd just explained the sufficiency problem, how there's zero experimental evidence for the belief that random genetic changes coupled with natural selection is sufficient for say bacteria to eventually develop into worms.