Originally posted by jaywill
When quoting it is customary to include the source so that you may examine the context.

If possible I provide the source. If I cannot you usually know that.

Don't just disqualify a quotation just because you don't like it, with a dismissal of "quote mining". There are a lot of people thinking about these matters out there. Don't expect everybod ...[text shortened]... lithic that there is no variations of views. And that is one thing I intend to demonstrate.

I think that the phrase 'quote mining' was used to refer to a popular practice of searching through the material of respected people to find something that when taken out of context, appears to support your stance.
The quote you gave is not very clear without its wider context. My initial impression is that the writer is wrong, but without the context I cant be sure.
I must also add that I have in the past seen some very unscientific articles in Nature and do not consider it a very respectable science magazine, despite the name.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I think that the phrase 'quote mining' was used to refer to a popular practice of searching through the material of respected people to find something that when taken out of context, appears to support your stance.
The quote you gave is not very clear without its wider context. My initial impression is that the writer is wrong, but without the context I ...[text shortened]... ticles in Nature and do not consider it a very respectable science magazine, despite the name.

If someone wants to make the charge of taking a quote out of context, let them demonstrate it. So far we just have an innuendo.

I don't think it was you who objected.

Originally posted by twhitehead
I think that the phrase 'quote mining' was used to refer to a popular practice of searching through the material of respected people to find something that when taken out of context, appears to support your stance.
The quote you gave is not very clear without its wider context. My initial impression is that the writer is wrong, but without the context I ...[text shortened]... ticles in Nature and do not consider it a very respectable science magazine, despite the name.

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

I must also add that I have in the past seen some very unscientific articles in Nature and do not consider it a very respectable science magazine, despite the name.
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Like most liturary establishments I would expect that there are sometimes occasional internal disagreements over the value of work performed.

After all they do have to widen circulation to stay finacnially afloat.

Don't you think the quote had some significance nonetheless? It was their chief science writer.

Originally posted by UzumakiAi
It means it is a force that does not exist without organisms, whereas gravity is constant wherever there is matter... Since organisms are composed of matter, gravity is a universal and all-inclusive concept... you do not find natural selection in black holes, or in minerals, or in matter at a fundamental level. Natural selection is found in only certain places, and is not a law as much as it is a process created out of many laws, or constants.

Natural selection is not a force.

Originally posted by Mexico
True enough, was simply backing up my point. Although I think he was probably referring to animal species. Even though the same rules apply, you get where I'm coming from....

Fruit flies are animals...

Originally posted by amannion
No.
Progress implies a goal - natural selection has no goal.
Whatever works gets through the sieve - if it doesn't, then it doesn't.

(Did you mean adaption or adoption?)

How do you know natural selection has no goal ?

Isn't that like a statement of faith?

Some of us have a hard time accepting that energy and matter randomly "natural selected" itself from lifeless pond of water to an amoeba.

I think some foresight, some look ahead ability is evidenced there.

Not only a theists like me assumes some intelligence behind this development, but even some evolutionists have been forced to break ranks an allow for an intelligent agent.

You have heard of Panspermia? That is non-theistic intelligent agents, ie. space aliens, may have populated the planet with the seeds of life.

Fred Hoyle is one evolutionist who speaks of Panspermia. He is also responsible for popularizing the Steady State theory of the expanding universe.

Chandra Wickramasinghe is another scientist advocating intelligent agents from outer space seeding our planet with life. He writes:

"The emergence of life from a primordial soup on the Earth is merely an article of faith that scientists are finding difficult to shed. There is no experimental evidence to support this at the present time. Indeed all attempts to create life from non-life, starting from Pasteur, have been unsuccessful."

[Chandra Wickramasinghe, interviewed by Robert Roy Britt, Oct. 27,2000. Posted online at http://www.space.com/searchforlife/chandra_sidebar_001027.html]

Twhitehouse, mentioned that evolution theory also includes explanations about non-living things. So we are back at the origin of life problem here and evolution verses ID.

Originally posted by jaywill
How do you know natural selection has no goal ?

Isn't that like a statement of faith?

Some of us have a hard time accepting that energy and matter randomly "natural selected" itself from lifeless pond of water to an amoeba.

I think some foresight, some look ahead ability is evidenced there.

Not only a theists like me assumes some intelligen ...[text shortened]... n-living things. So we are back at the origin of life problem here and evolution verses ID.

I think you're intentionally ignorant.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
I think you're intentionally ignorant.

Explain how you know that natural selection has no goal.

I don't expect a perfect irrefutable answer. I'd be happy with an attempt at a plausible explanation.

You observe something of an effect in organism's speciation that you want to call Natural Selection.

How do you know what you observe has no goal?

Originally posted by twhitehead
As I said, Natural Selection, includes a vast range of factors every one of which comes into play in determining the survival of an individual.
Throughout, there are two main components:
1. pure chance.
2. characteristics of the individual which affect the probability of its survival within the realm of pure chance.

For example, a person may get ru think it would be right to assign standards and/or values to any of it. Why would you want to?

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

For example, a person may get run-over by a car and thus have no further offspring. Such an event is partly subject to pure chance. However, there are a number of probabilities involved:
1. the environment in which he lived ie the existence of cars, the quantity, and the regularity with which he crossed roads etc.
2. his general alertness and carefulness when crossing roads etc
and so on.
========================================

I understand the logic. And I would understand that it is not a perfect anlogy. But I am concerned about the amount of time for chance to do its work of yielding a more survivable street crosser.

Shall we say some scenarios are:

1.) A human who has the ability to jump up over the car as it approaches. It is a matter of his offspring developing much stronger legs to be able to leap over approaching cars.

Of course for evolution to take this route the scenario of cars on the street have to remain for millions of years. Is the environment going to wait around and not change for those strong legged humans to tumble out of chance activated natural selection?

2.) Maybe the humans could evolve into having elastic legs so that a street crosser could suddenly stride his legs on either side of the approaching car.

Elastic legs could be the answer to survival. But other things in the environment are applying preasure for humans to have more effective legs. They other factors may call for shorter, stubbier like the need to often pick up things from the ground.

Either way if frequent street crossing city dwellers develop jumpy legs or elastic legs and migrant farm workers develop stubbier legs for picking crops by hand, do you think patterns of human migration are going to allow ancestors to remain in one place long enough?

You firstly need millions of years and you secondly need species to stay put in one environment for long enough. There is a lot working against random natural selection especially if you deny any intelligent look ahead, goal aiming ability.

If I imagine Ancestor fish X to be the progenitor of land crawling creatures, I have to imagine that that body of water remained for millions of years. The trial and error had to take place somewhat locally. And though (arguably) an ocean may remain for 10,30, or 100 million years, I can't see a fresh water lake doing so.

The offspring of Ancestor fish X will experience a multitude of varied environments, don't you think?

Originally posted by jaywill
If you know anything about the advancements in computer programming, there is a discipline which treats processes as objects. This is called "Object Oriented Programming" or OO. It is the approach to data processesing which forms the basis of such computer languages as C++, Java, Pearl, Python, Visual Basic (arguably).


My only purpose for mentioning t ...[text shortened]... cess as an object.

Isn't one instance of the process of "natural selection" an object?

Tell it to Freaky. He doesn't want to believe in natural selection because it is a process, not an object that weighs 14kg and is blue.

For me, if you want to call the process of natural selection an object, I'm fine with that.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Fruit flies are animals...

Time flies like the wind...

Originally posted by jaywill
Explain how you know that natural selection has no goal.

I don't expect a perfect irrefutable answer. I'd be happy with an attempt at a plausible explanation.

You observe something of an effect in organism's speciation that you want to call Natural Selection.

How do you know what you observe has no goal?

By the definition of the word 'goal': "a projected state of affairs which a person or a system plans or intends to achieve or bring about."

'Natural' selection unlike 'artificial' selection occurs, by definition, without any plan or intent. Hence it has no goals.

It is that way because that's the way the terms have been defined.

Originally posted by jaywill
How do you know natural selection has no goal ?

Isn't that like a statement of faith?

Some of us have a hard time accepting that energy and matter randomly "natural selected" itself from lifeless pond of water to an amoeba.

I think some foresight, some look ahead ability is evidenced there.

Not only a theists like me assumes some intelligen ...[text shortened]... n-living things. So we are back at the origin of life problem here and evolution verses ID.

Panspermia in no way implies intelligence... Its the theory that the Precambrian explosion of bio-diversity occurred due to an extra terrestrial body carrying a single celled organism to earth, which then later became LUCA. It's not widely accepted and is generally invoked by those who want to refute the theories of abiognensis/....

Originally posted by jaywill
How do you know natural selection has no goal ?

Isn't that like a statement of faith?

Some of us have a hard time accepting that energy and matter randomly "natural selected" itself from lifeless pond of water to an amoeba.

I think some foresight, some look ahead ability is evidenced there.

Not only a theists like me assumes some intelligen ...[text shortened]... n-living things. So we are back at the origin of life problem here and evolution verses ID.

I know it in the same way that I know gravity has no goal.
A goal implies a supernatural aspect to it and I emphatically deny any supernatural element to naturalistic explanations of the universe.

I appreciate your inability to accept such a natural explanation - for it suggests that there is no inbuilt purpose or reason to everything. But from my perspective, that's just tough - it's the way it is.

I see no evidence of foresight. Can you give me any examples of such evidence?

Panspermia is not an argument for the intelligent creation of life - it merely changes the place of origin to somewhere else. If you mean Directed Panspermia, which posits intelligent life deliberately seeding the Earth, then all this does is suggest that life on Earth has an intelligent origin. It claims nothing about life anywhere else.
By the way, be careful about using discredited theories or theories that have no supporting evidence to support your claims.
Calling the esteemed, but maverick cosmologist Fred Hoyle an evolutionist is the most bizarre thing I've heard in some time.

Sorry, but when someone claims that intelligence is involved - they are by definition a theist since they must introduce a supernatural aspect to their claims.
I'm sure there are many scientists who would claim some sort of intelligence behind creation or life - but they are theists too.
The world isn't a dichotomy between theists and scientists. There are a few that are both. (Misguided though they be.)

Originally posted by jaywill
Explain how you know that natural selection has no goal.

I don't expect a perfect irrefutable answer. I'd be happy with an attempt at a plausible explanation.

You observe something of an effect in organism's speciation that you want to call Natural Selection.

How do you know what you observe has no goal?

A goal implies intention.
Natural selection is natural. It is not a thing, not an entity, it's merely a useful description for a process that occurs when you have self-replicating organisms - a natural process.
No intention.
No forethought.

No goal.