Evolution

[Ronin]

Where are the fossil records of the animals that we see today? If all living things evolved to something different then how they started, where are their fossils? In museums today there are billions of dinasour bones that we have collected, yet there is not one transitional fossil. For example if we all evovled what did a lion look like before it became what it is today? There should be examples of all the animals that are alive today. And there should be several examples for every animal. Darwin himself admitted if we can't find transitional fossils,for they should be everywhere, then evolution is wrong!
So where are the fossils?

[McCulloch]

Can someone explain to me what any of the posts on page 19 of this thread have to do with Evolution?

[jcrawford]

Would you have us go back to the Biblical truth of Calvin and Luther and the days of an earth-centered universe?

Which is it, are going to stand with Luther, Calvin, and their understanding of the Bible, or are you going to stand with scientists like Galileo, Darwin, and Einstien who brought us the truths of the sun-centered solar system, evolution, and relativity?

Now that Christian knowledge has advanced far beyond the early stages of the Protestant Reformation, I'll stand with dead theologians like Van Til and Rushdoony in opposition to anything dead poets, philosophers and abstract theorists have to say about the nature of reality since every thesis has its antithesis and all arguments their counter-arguments.

That is why man against God proves to be such a stimulating subject for debate.

[jcrawford]

According to jcrawford's thinking, since the KKK and David Koresh base their moral theories on Christianity and the Bible, therefore other Christians are also murderers and delusional suicidal maniacs.

That is more evidential of your thinking than anything I think.

[Goat]

IOW, nothing binds me to the brain-bound theories and personal beliefs of other cognitive scientists who seem utterly incompetent at the scientific task of re-cognizing and differentiating between the functions of their own autonomous and independent minds, brains and souls.

No, nothing binds you from any theory. ON the other hand, to be considered science, your proposition has to be testable, and make predictions, and be able to explain things at least as well as the current theories.

It does not. It merely is a statement of faith, that goes along with the misreprentation of all science.

My theories are as good as those of Marx, Darwin and Freud, since the only way such theoretical predictions may be tested, demonstrated or falsified is by the utter collapse of any faith in them as has been historically demonstrated to be the case except in the eyes of true believers in such abstract theories and propositions.

If you want to make the case that Marx, Darwin and Freud were poor theoreticians and inadequate or incompetent scientists, then the same logic and case could be made against me and my theories, I suppose.

Marx was not a scientist.. and his 'social theories' are just philosphy. Darwin's book on Natural Selection is very well docuemented, and has been strongly tested over the last 150 years. While many of Darwins ideas have not proven fruitful , and have been disguarded, the basic thesis of varation + natural selection being able to account for the origin of species has been repeated tested and have passed.

Psychology is a soft science. While Freud's work is not under the rigorus standards as required by modern science, he did first start to apply the concept of examining people mental states as much of a science as anything was during his time frame.

The one thing all those people have in common is they are 19th century. Both philosophy and science have made signifigent changes since then.

[jcrawford]

Methodological naturalism, by contrast, is defined as follows:

They contrast this with the approach known as ontological naturalism or metaphysical naturalism, which refers to the metaphysical belief that the natural world (including the universe) is all that exists, and therefore nothing supernatural exists.

That certainly neither reflects nor represents my thesis that the human mind is capable of cognizing and differentiating between the physical and metaphysical as well as what is natural and supernatural.

To say the brain is physical and functions naturally simply implies that the mind is metaphysical and functions supernaturally. Hence the division of science into the fields of natural science and supernatural science, with physics and metaphysics being the governing principles of all sciences.

[micatala]

Can someone explain to me what any of the posts on page 19 of this thread have to do with Evolution?

A reasonable question.

About the only connection to evolution would be comments related to evolution's place within the larger scientific enterprise, and the nature of that enterprise.
My position is that science in general is practiced via methodological naturalism. jcrawford seems to equate methodological naturalism with the metaphysical, and then insists that science as it is practiced today is inherently atheistic as a result.

I would propose going back to Jose's last post, as he was trying to get us focused back on the evidence for evolution which is the intent of the thread.

[jcrawford]

Can someone explain to me what any of the posts on page 19 of this thread have to do with Evolution?

We are trying to figure out whether it is possible to truly know and say with any sense of firm conviction and belief that the fossils evolved from each other or were all buried as the result of a cataclysmic deluvial and tectonic catastrophe which once engulfed the entire earth and killed every living creature on land, since millions upon millions of fossils have been found in what appear to be mass burials and fossil graveyards.

The mere fact that the automobile industry depends on fossil fuels should give some indication how massive these instantaneous burials must have been.

[micatala]

Here is Jose's post back on page 16.

Actually, the preceding post and many of the posts prior to that should probably be ignored, as they are quite off topic.
To refresh everyone's cognition, here is the OP...

Thank you, micatala. I was beginning to wonder if, perhaps, the Cheshire Cat had it right ("We're all mad here").

Reading through the thread, I noted the suggestion that we take a peek at Bones of Contention and Human Evolution. The latter might be enlightening. As I understand it, having pieced together jcrawford's statements, some direct, some indirect, we have the following situation here:

• jcrawford sees his views Right, period; scriptural support is sufficient
• because of the literal truth of Genesis (based on a number of assumptions of what it actually means), jcrawford and colleagues categorically deny the dates produced by geochronology, assuming the only true dates are those that can be inferred from scripture
• therefore, it follows that all fossils were deposited in the Flood, and all species represented by fossils were contemporaneous and pre-flood
• therefore, no living humans can have descended from the African populations, because they were all destroyed
• hence, the concept of evolution denies people the right to their own ancestry, forcing people who call themselves descended from Italian ancestors to say, instead, that they are African
• however, jcrawford does allow himself to refer to evolutionary data from time to time, even if incorrectly (claiming, for example, that the fossils in the Atapuerca cave were a mixture of modern humans, Neanderthals, and erectus, when the data clearly show that the fossils are of one type of hominid, with a mosaic of characteristics
• etc.

One of the things that makes conversing with jcrawford so enjoyable is that he likes to switch definitions of words, as noted above, to suit his needs--as with the discussion some pages back of "sub-human" and "sub-species," changing the sense of "sub" to suit his taste. We've been playing the same game for some time now with "cognitive scientist."

As McCulloch has noted, jcrawford is fond of using "private" definitions. This is fun--the rest of us respond happily for a while, then begin to see that nothing makes sense. It provides a great catharsis to realize that we aren't nuts after all, but that jc has actually been talking about something else. It's almost better than My Word, because we have to figure out which word is being used in a novel way.

I also enjoyed the round-and-round discussion of the array of hominid skulls. It's a masterful work of evasion. If no answer will do, ask another question! Or better, go back to a prior question, and say "I asked you first!" It's always a fun puzzle...nicely illustrating the transitional fossils in the hominid lineage.

Now that we are (or should be) going back to the questions raised in the OP, thanks to micatala, it might be worthwhile looking back through the early posts to see if the questions have been answered. Even if they have been, of course, it's helpful to re-visit the ideas with new sparring partners...provided, that is, that they are willing to look at the evidence in an effort to learn from it, not just to make sure they have the right terminology with which to make fun of it.

It occurs to me that the creationist and scientist approaches to the discussion are rather different--the creationist approach tends to address generalities, while the scientist approach relies on specifics. There may be no transitional fossils--or any fossils at all--for some lineage, or even for many lineages that have not been the focus of extensive study; but for some lineages, there are beautiful collections of a great many intermediates, even showing gradual changes. The creationist looks at the large number of lineages that are unstudied, to make the claim that there are no transitionals; the scientist looks at the data that exist, and concludes that transitionals help prove the theory, and certainly confirm the basic principles. I wonder if it would be helpful to look into the questions:

1. Where do we have data to confirm the principles?
2. Where do we not have enough data?
3. Once the principles are confirmed, is it valid to apply them to examples for which there is less data?

Here is jcrawford's response.

1. Where do we have data to confirm the principles?
2. Where do we not have enough data?
3. Once the principles are confirmed, is it valid to apply them to examples for which there is less data?

Once we have theoretically decided and established what all the "valid" data should consist of and be limited to, and have confirmed that the principles which we are basing our hypotheses on concerning the data which support them are neither faith-based presuppostitions or unjustified scientific hypotheses, then we may choose to invite creation scientists to join us in peer review of the results of all of our scientific discoveries as well as reviewing the cognitive methodolgies employed by the various scientists involved in our researches.

After all, if we exclude or discriminate against the evidence and data discovered in the scientific research of some of our scientific colleagues on the basis of presupposed ideological, methodological, or religious differences alone, then our own cognitive and epistemological capacities for establishing the validity of what we assume to be the absolute truth about what we believe to be the only valid theoretical knowledge possible, may be seriously called into question.

Here, jcrawford seems to be diverting the discussion away from the OP and from Jose's attempt to get us back on the topic of the thread by suggesting that we redefine the scientific enterprise to correspond more to his personal view of what science should be.

If we are to stay on topic, it seems to me the first step is to review the thread for examples of what the fossil data consists of. If we need to do more digging, we can then perhaps give as comprehensive a survey of what fossil evidence we have, at least for some example proposed lineages. I personally think it would be useful to have

1. An estimate of the total number of fossils that have been unearthed and cataloged.
2. An estimate of the number of different species these fossils represent.
3. Perhaps a breakdown of the fossils into some sort of categorization by geologic layer or age. What percentage of fossils are from pre-Cambrian times? What percentage from the age of the dinosaurs? What percentage from times since dinosaurs went extinct? What percentage from time at which we see the earliest primates?

Even if we don't agree on the exact dating, at least we could look at the sequencing based on the layers.

Also, since Darwin keeps being mentioned, we might ask what percentage of fossils have been discovered since Darwin's death.

[micatala]

jcrawford makes the faith based claim that fossils are the result of an instantaneous burial due to a global flood.

We are trying to figure out whether it is possible to truly know and say with any sense of firm conviction and belief that the fossils evolved from each other or were all buried as the result of a cataclysmic deluvial and tectonic catastrophe which once engulfed the entire earth and killed every living creature on land, since millions upon millions of fossils have been found in what appear to be mass burials and fossil graveyards.

The mere fact that the automobile industry depends on fossil fuels should give some indication how massive these instantaneous burials must have been.

Earlier, jcrawford claims we should not make faith-based presuppositions.

Once we have theoretically decided and established what all the "valid" data should consist of and be limited to, and have confirmed that the principles which we are basing our hypotheses on concerning the data which support them are neither faith-based presuppostitions or unjustified scientific hypotheses

Perhaps jcrawford would like to explain this contradiction.

[jcrawford]

Marx was not a scientist.. and his 'social theories' are just philosphy.

Why were his theories put into practice by millions of social scientists, political scientists, economic scientists and military scientists all over the world to the detriment and destruction of millions of other people then?

Darwin's book on Natural Selection is very well docuemented, and has been strongly tested over the last 150 years. While many of Darwins ideas have not proven fruitful , and have been disguarded, the basic thesis of varation + natural selection being able to account for the origin of species has been repeated tested and have passed.

Sounds like you at least graduated from high school. Can you point to one species which has ever been OBSERVED to have evolved from another species or give us a demonstration of variation and natural selection at work in some species alive today?

Psychology is a soft science. While Freud's work is not under the rigorus standards as required by modern science, he did first start to apply the concept of examining people mental states as much of a science as anything was during his time frame.

You must think that examing people's mental states is an example of good science, and since psychologists and psychiatrists claim mental health and illness to be their scientific specialty, the mind must exist in some way for it to be examined and diagnosed as being mentally ill as opposed to the brain being injured or diseased in some way.

The one thing all those people have in common is they are 19th century. Both philosophy and science have made signifigent changes since then.

Of course, since the scientific method is self-correcting and all of the damage done during the 20th Century as a result of 19th Century scientific or philosophical humanism is just swept under the rug of history with no modern scientist or enlightened humanist taking any responsiblity for the social catastrophe which 19th Centuray humanism wreaked on the world of the 20th Century.