What is natural selection?

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]====================================
You really don't understand a thing, and you're mixing a lot of different stuff, trying to use the same argument for all.
Result: you make yourself look pretty ignorant.
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For some reason I am not concerned with how ignorant I look to your opinion.

I am ...[text shortened]... ck to sleep! Or go say five "Hail Darwins" or something religious.[/b]

Fair enough.You want a second opinion, but what is it? What is your second opinion?
Don't give us ID,since it isn't a valid scientific alternative. So what is? What's your alternative?
We can go around and around in circles all day and all night. In the end your mind isn't going to be changed, nor will ours. You will refuse the existing accepted model. We won't.
But any rejection of an accepted model requires an alternative.
So, I'm all ears ...

Originally posted by jaywill
How far are you going to take natural selection? Black moths on black smoky trees surviving white moths on black smoky trees is one thing. Going from ape's brain to a human being's brain is another.

In what way is it another thing? Every time I try to pin down someone who makes that sort of vague statement, they just get vaguer.
Where is the impossibility limit:
1. Chimpanzee brain.
evolves to
2. Clever chimpanzee brain (slightly closer to human brain).
evolves to
....
....
....
evolves to
n. Human brain.

Is there a particular step / feature of a human brain that you believe could not evolve from a creature with all other features except that one feature?

Originally posted by jaywill
I am saying Intellegent Design is somewhere behind these things working this way.

Are you claiming that an Intelligence created the laws of physics and chemistry that allow things to work this way or are you claiming that an Intelligence overrides the laws of physics and chemistry in order to achieve something that said laws are incapable of achieving on their own.

Originally posted by amannion
Fair enough.You want a second opinion, but what is it? What is your second opinion?
Don't give us ID,since it isn't a valid scientific alternative. So what is? What's your alternative?
We can go around and around in circles all day and all night. In the end your mind isn't going to be changed, nor will ours. You will refuse the existing accepted model. We ...[text shortened]... 't.
But any rejection of an accepted model requires an alternative.
So, I'm all ears ...

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Fair enough.You want a second opinion, but what is it? What is your second opinion?
Don't give us ID,since it isn't a valid scientific alternative. So what is? What's your alternative?
We can go around and around in circles all day and all night. In the end your mind isn't going to be changed, nor will ours. You will refuse the existing accepted model. We won't.
But any rejection of an accepted model requires an alternative.
So, I'm all ears ...
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If your "existing accepted model" is that no "know how " of any kind of intelligence can be detected being applied in the phenomenon of living organism, then I probably will not ever accept that.

Maybe something of the model can be salvaged if you opened your minds to evidence that the mechanism of changing life is not without guidance or some kind of goal aimed intelligent channeling.

I think the closest thing in your macro evolutionary model which is worth exploring is something like Punctuated Equilibrium. I said something LIKE it.

In your model I would like to see scientist look into the direction of things which could cause abrupt and sudden alterations of organisms.

Perhaps some cataclysmic event caused sudden changes. I would like to see some consideration of that possible scenario to all-incompassing aimless gradualism .

Then maybe in another 50 years the reasonable parts of Darwin's idea could be refined and saved and the less reasonable ones discarded for better explanations.

And you should open your minds that purposeful intelligence is at work in the phenomenon of life. Some of you probably are not going to do that because it cost you your prefered philosophical world view.

And when you come to the dead end where experimental repeatability and empircal evidence of a scientific method can provide no more help, don't think that has to be the end of our search for truth.

As far as origins of biological life are concerned, I think some evolutionists have exchanged one miracle that they don't like for another miracle that they prefer.


I think abiogenesis is a miracle. If you want to cling to it then you better start looking around for a causer of the miracle.
All history suggests that life comes from life.

Maybe there's a form of life higher than anything we know. Look around for it.

Originally posted by twhitehead
In what way is it another thing? Every time I try to pin down someone who makes that sort of vague statement, they just get vaguer.
Where is the impossibility limit:
1. Chimpanzee brain.
evolves to
2. Clever chimpanzee brain (slightly closer to human brain).
evolves to
....
....
....
evolves to
n. Human brain.

Is there a particular step / fe ...[text shortened]... at you believe could not evolve from a creature with all other features except that one feature?

==========================

Is there a particular step / feature of a human brain that you believe could not evolve from a creature with all other features except that one feature?

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Yes. I think learning human language is probably one area.

I have looked at some research compiled and examined on the research of linguists by a linquist, Arthur Custance. And it suggests that the first speaking human being had to have learned how to talk from another talking entity. There is no other way language could have developed.

So gradual evolving of the brain to utter the complex symbols of spoken language, let alone written language, are really hard to explain through Darwinian gradualism, so far.

Originally posted by jaywill
Yes. I think learning human language is probably one area.

I have looked at some research compiled and examined on the research of linguists by a linquist, Arthur Custance. And it suggests that the first speaking human being had to have learned how to talk from another talking entity. There is no other way language could have developed.

So gradual ...[text shortened]... ge, let alone written language, are really hard to explain through Darwinian gradualism, so far.

1. Chimpanzees can learn a human language.
2. Many animals have a basic language of their own.
3. Are you claiming that all world languages are descended from prior languages and that if a group of children with no experience of language are kept isolated, that they will not develop a language?

So, do you have any other limitations?

Originally posted by jaywill
All history suggests that life comes from life.

No it doesn't. It suggests that complex life comes from less complex life. But since the definition of life is man made and has grey edges, one must extend that to the suggestion that complex life comes from less complex self replicating systems which may or may not fall into the current definition of life.

Originally posted by jaywill
And when you come to the dead end where experimental repeatability and empircal evidence of a scientific method can provide no more help, don't think that has to be the end of our search for truth.

But whether you realize it or not, any other form of search essentially boils down to pure guesswork, wishful thinking or 'blind faith'.
You see, many Christians believe that there is evidence for God or that they have experienced something that they take as evidence for God, but don't realize that that too is within the category of "experimental repeatability and empirical evidence of a scientific method". Part of the reason they refuse to accept it is because when it is repeated in a scientific manner it falls short.

Its rather like every human being believing they are the centre of the universe.

Originally posted by Mexico
Actually the internet started out as something really really really really simple and turned into the ridiculously complex system that it is today... So in a way it did exactly what you said you can't believe it would do.

Personally I know little of Protein Synthesis, so I can't speak of it. But I'm sure there are documented forms of that system which we' re is no reason why they wouldn't develop to a similar level to us..... Simple really.....

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Actually the internet started out as something really really really really simple and turned into the ridiculously complex system that it is today... So in a way it did exactly what you said you can't believe it would do.

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Did I say it didn't start with simplicity? Did I say that there were no parts of it that were simple?

Sure, a binary 1 or a 0 is simple.

My point is that loading on huge amounts of time don't make its emergence by accident more plausible.

You see you Darwinists see "Big Time" as a culprite. I see rather a "Big Mind" as the culprite.

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Personally I know little of Protein Synthesis, so I can't speak of it. But I'm sure there are documented forms of that system which we're simpler and less efficient. Please correct me if there are not and I'll go do some reading.
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It was indeed fascinating. I really want to go back and look at it again. It was not a reigious program. It was purely college science. But it was very fascinating.

I highly recommend you look into all the things that go on to pair up and process those chromosomes and match those genes - triggers, pulleys, processesing boxes, conveyor line type operations, switches turning things on and off.

I do computer programming. And the processing logic impressed me.

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Incredulity appears to be your only argument here. With respect to Natural Selection in particular its been proven to happen, there is no debate over it happening or not. Which is why Freaky has had so many responses to him. Its a proven scientific theory, not something which may or may not happen. Which is also why this got moved to spirituality.
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I don't know about the history of the discussion.

A question is how much are you going explain by Natural Selection?

You don't think you can stretch that mechanism of favorable mutations so far that it accounts for the total development of all species ?

Do you think that the concept can be exaggerated as to what it is responsible for? Or are you satisfied that it can explain the total history of biological life on earth?

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As to mars, if mars had life and the driving forces for environmental change such as and seasons, plate tectonics and all the catalysts. Then there is no reason why they wouldn't develop to a similar level to us..... Simple really.....
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We're kind of a unique place here on planet earth, aren't we?
Another accident perhaps?

Don't get me started on the fine tuning of the planet earth (and the whole universe for that matter) to allow for the existence of life.

Originally posted by jaywill
We're kind of a unique place here on planet earth, aren't we?
Another accident perhaps?

Don't get me started on the fine tuning of the planet earth (and the whole universe for that matter) to allow for the existence of life.

And why not? There are two major factors that you have probably ignored:
1. The anthropic principle
2. Your own observational bias.
You probably believe that the planet earth is fine tuned far more than it really is. The last person I had that discussion with thought that the tilt of the earths axis was exactly right for him, which is total nonsense.

Originally posted by jaywill
[b]====================================
You really don't understand a thing, and you're mixing a lot of different stuff, trying to use the same argument for all.
Result: you make yourself look pretty ignorant.
========================================

For some reason I am not concerned with how ignorant I look to your opinion.

I am ...[text shortened]... ck to sleep! Or go say five "Hail Darwins" or something religious.[/b]

I am pretty sure that sexual reproduction, the functioning cell, the seeing eyeball, the thinking brain, the digesting digestive system, the breathing respritory system, the immune system, protein synthesis, cell division, blood clotting, required Intelligent Design.
You can't be sure... you never studied or understood it. Don't you think there's a strong bias here? The only people who believe in ID are religious. All who work independently AND the MAJORITY of Christian's believe it's ridiculous... Do you think there's a lobby against ID? I tell you: THERE IS NOT. It's simply ridiculous, nothing more.

Stuff like this requires KNOW HOW. Energy and matter do not arrange themselves to do things like these without know how.
What do you know of science to dare to discuss it? Science goes against your little made up world? No one cares! Make your own personal view of the world that only is accepted in your small fundamentalist group. Science searches for the truth, and in the end will always win. People like you are scorned by history. If there's one thing history tells us is religion has always been wrong.


In the intervening millions upon millions of years beteen a dinosour and a bird you had something which was not quite scales and something that was not quite yet feathers. And issue is that how could such an animal survive million with years with a part of its body which was not exactly scales and not exactly feathers, but was something in-between.
What?? Why do you insist in looking ridiculous with these arguments? Again, you don't know what you talk about...


And the rest of your post is equally full of crap. Go back to sleep! Or go say five "Hail Darwins" or something religious.
There's no belief in my position. That would go against science.
I don't have patience for you. You're just too stupid to be taking my time. Luckily evolution will sort out people like you.

Know this: No intelligent design is required to explain the complexity of life forms existent here. The arguments you used are erroneous, but you can't possible know why... you were just taught to repeat the arguments without understanding them.
When I don't know about a subject, I shut up and listen. You definitely should do the same.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
I'll respond to both yours and amannion's posts as they talk about the same thing.

Manipulating genetic traits is an action (breeding cows, for instance) with a target (more meat/less fat) in the mind of the selector (said rancher).

According to amannion, natural selection is when the environment takes over. This is where the formula starts to get a ...[text shortened]... are best for continued survival? How does the environment know anything of the big picture?

I think it's unlikely that you will understand natural selection, Freaky, until you have addressed an underlying problem evidenced throughout this thread: your tendency to attribute agency and intention just more or less willy-nilly.

Originally posted by serigado
Environment knows nothing about anything... nor it needs to know. There is no intention or purpose.
Do you think everything has a purpose? Things simply happen.

Environment knows nothing about anything... nor it needs to know. There is no intention or purpose.
You may want to speak to ammanion about your take on NS. The post to which you are responding was my response to his post, specifically the following:

"Natural selection happens to life, not inside it. To argue that life must be programmed to naturally select is ridiculous. Life reproduces, the reproduction process is not perfect, so variations exist in offspring, the environment 'selects' those variations which are successful - which is merely to say that some live long enough to reproduce and others don't."

Here, NS is depicted as a force, and further that environment has a say in the process by means of its selection of successful traits. Here is where proponents of NS as not only the method of speciation survival but also as the origin of the same run into all kinds of fatal errors.

The error begins with mislabeling and continues onto wild conjecture. First, the mislabel. NS--- accurately described--- is nothing more than the fight for life. Every living organism is programmed to fight for its survival: the grass stalk kicks through the dirt into the open air and the fetus fights its way through the canal of birth. Such thriving is part of life, not a result of outside force. Environment is incapable of selecting anything: it just is. Nature doesn't need anything; doesn't require one species over another; is not dependent upon either the success or failure of any organism; faces neither profit or loss as a result of the status of its dependents.

To describe NS as nature's selection is to ascribe to an inanimate object (nature) properties of an agent. Certainly environment has an impact on living organisms, but it cannot be said to guide where it knows not, cannot be said to select where it thinks not.

The wild conjecture is, as jaywill pointed out, how NS got its first leg up, so to speak. If NS is as has been described, it 'works' on living organisms. In light of that assumption, there can be no plausible explanation for its 'work' on transforming non-living organisms into living organisms.

Originally posted by LemonJello
I think it's unlikely that you will understand natural selection, Freaky, until you have addressed an underlying problem evidenced throughout this thread: your tendency to attribute agency and intention just more or less willy-nilly.

My understanding of NS is only being questioned by those who have--- thus far-- been unable to accurate describe what it is. There has not been even one challenge to my grasp of how NS works in theory or in the 'real world.' The challenge is for those who hold NS as the mechanism for speciation survival to describe what it is. Several pages into the thread, we have heard various reports, mostly boiled down to two choices: a force or a process.

If a force, it is something which acts. If a process, it is necessarily a part of the organisms' genetic make-up.

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
My understanding of NS is only being questioned by those who have--- thus far-- been unable to accurate describe what it is. There has not been even one challenge to my grasp of how NS works in theory or in the 'real world.' The challenge is for those who hold NS as the mechanism for speciation survival to describe what it is. Several pages into the thr ...[text shortened]... ething which acts. If a process, it is necessarily a part of the organisms' genetic make-up.

Let me try....

Let us take an example; your own family. Look back in your own family until you find a brother or sister of your parents/grandparents etc thata did not have children.

ok? found one?