What's wrong with evolution?

Originally posted by Agerg
your going at extreme lengths to avoid my initial question Kellyjay 😉

but I apologise for over-estimating you smarts...I can see that for someone like you it is far more reasonable to ask "who are you talking too" and then evade the question than to actually spend a whole second and figure it out...I have this horrible tendancy to treat people as though they are intelligent until proven stupid!!! please accept my apologies 😉

I have stated this several times, I'll assume you have never read it
since you seem to be hung up on this. I have faith in my beliefs when
it comes to creation, it isn't science, it cannot be proven it is a matter
completely in the realm of faith. There isn't any test we can do that
will prove or show that 'God did it' just as there is only your word that
you were talking to me in your post we have been discussing.
Kelly

Originally posted by KellyJay
I have stated this several times, I'll assume you have never read it
since you seem to be hung up on this. I have faith in my beliefs when
it comes to creation, it isn't science, it cannot be proven it is a matter
completely in the realm of faith. There isn't any test we can do that
will prove or show that 'God did it' just as there is only your word that
you were talking to me in your post we have been discussing.
Kelly

but you fail to find the fundamental difference between:
finding a physical explanation for the diversity of life in a physical world, exploring it, searching for what may undermine it...resolving them and seeing if the model is still tenable, testing it, making predictions that later back up those theories and...

inventing a supernatural explanation whose credibility you have not tried to ascertain or even question!!!

Originally posted by Agerg
Kellyjay, based on the fact that you're the person whom I spoke to last and that barring a long since (and solitary) forgotton post by Freaky you have been the only religious participant since my last post only, and that the post you are having difficulty with follows directly from a long-winded effort on your part to dis-credit evolution as make-believe, coup ...[text shortened]... y the Hobgoblin did it all, and he lied to you about God...is my faith here justified?[/i]😕

...you have been the only religious participant...

Of course we all know religious folk: they attend NASCAR races, talk in tongues and believe the earth is flat. They couldn't possibly understand a concept as complex as the TOE. Better to leave science to the non-religious/atheists such as Plank, Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Boyle, Faraday, Mendel, Pasteur, Kelvin, Stokes, Pauli...

you lack the cognitive skills to connect even the simplest of dots

Perhaps he's a bit like Stephen Jay Gould (an atheist, palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist) who postulated punctuated equilibrium due to the scarcity of "dots":

"The main problem with such phyletic gradualism is that the fossil record provides so little evidence for it. Very rarely can we trace the gradual transformation of one entire species into another through a finely graded sequence of intermediary forms." (Gould, S.J. Luria, S.E. & Singer, S., A View of Life, 1981, p. 641)

And again:

Indeed, it is the chief frustration of the fossil record that we do not have empirical evidence for sustained trends in the evolution of most complex morphological adaptations." (Gould, Stephen J. and Eldredge, Niles, "Species Selection: Its Range and Power," 1988, p. 19)





As an aside: I'm stunned that this thread is still alive... and what is supposed to be an intellectual and scientific discussion has to always attract the rabid converse.

Originally posted by KellyJay
My gripe was with the gravity example; it addresses a force that acts
upon matter, the comparison as I read it, if gravity is true so is what
believed about evolution. I do accept evolution as it far as it has been
monitored, recorded, and viewed; however, making the claims it is
responsible for so much more is a matter of conjecture and belief.
The sp ...[text shortened]... ut solid evidence that doesn’t require someone
making claims that cannot be 2nd guessed.
Kelly

That was not what I was saying and if you'd read the posts carefully you should realise that.
To claim that gravity validates evolution would be ludicrous.

On the other issue you raise here, I have to say your position is pretty strange. You accept small scale evolutionary changes but not larger ones - or at least, you claim that small scale changes are warranted by the evidence but not larger scale changes?
I'm not sure how you can accept one but not the other.
Your arguments against accepting large scale evolutionary changes seem reasonable to me - although I completely disagree - so why accept small scale changes. What's the difference?
You claim that fossil evidence and other evidence that demonstrates large scale evolutionary change is only intrepretation - which is true. But then, so is the evidence that supports small scale change, so why do you accept this over the other?
Either you accept it or you don't.
I suspect, though of course I'm sure you'll pick me up on this, that you recognise that your position is untenable, but you're trying to cling to some position that allows you to hold to your belief system.
Which brings me back to my original question - what's the problem? Is it so bad if the interpretations are correct and evolutionary changes on the large scale do and have occurred?

Originally posted by Halitose
[b]...you have been the only religious participant...

Of course we all know religious folk: they attend NASCAR races, talk in tongues and believe the earth is flat. They couldn't possibly understand a concept as complex as the TOE. Better to leave science to the non-religious/atheists such as Plank, Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Boyle, ...[text shortened]... be an intellectual and scientific discussion has to always attract the rabid converse.[/b]

I'm stunned too, but anyway, your attempt to use (as some seem to want to do here) Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium is fallacious.
People either seem to believe that Gould was opposing evolution in some way, or that he'd produced some radical new interpretation of evolutionary theory.
If you're well versed in some of his writings (as it seems you may be) you'll know that he was not attempting to radically change evolutionary understandings but offer revisions to evolution that better fit the current data - exactly what science is all about. In fact, more recent work suggests that Gould may have been off the mark anyway ...

Originally posted by amannion
I'm stunned too, but anyway, your attempt to use (as some seem to want to do here) Gould's Punctuated Equilibrium is fallacious.
People either seem to believe that Gould was opposing evolution in some way, or that he'd produced some radical new interpretation of evolutionary theory.
If you're well versed in some of his writings (as it seems you may be) yo ...[text shortened]... about. In fact, more recent work suggests that Gould may have been off the mark anyway ...

Of course I'm not using Gould (and his theory) as a disproof of evolution. Gould was a fervent evolutionist to his dying day. It might be worthwhile to note however, that punctuated equilibrium was radically different... in that it admitted what the proponents of the Neo-Darwinian strain of the theory still laud as incontrovertible proof: a highly fragmented and inconclusive fossil record.

Originally posted by Halitose
Of course I'm not using Gould (and his theory) as a disproof of evolution. Gould was a fervent evolutionist to his dying day. It might be worthwhile to note however, that punctuated equilibrium was radically different... in that it admitted what the proponents of the Neo-Darwinian strain of the theory still laud as incontrovertible proof: a highly fragmented and inconclusive fossil record.

I think you'll find PE is hardly radical. It was presented as such when first introduced, but Gould's subsequent amplification of the PE idea demonstrated it as only a mild reworking of evolutionary ideas.
In fact, many current evolutionary biologists see little if any difference between standard models of evolution and PE models.

Originally posted by Halitose
[b]...you have been the only religious participant...

Of course we all know religious folk: they attend NASCAR races, talk in tongues and believe the earth is flat. They couldn't possibly understand a concept as complex as the TOE. Better to leave science to the non-religious/atheists such as Plank, Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Bacon, Boyle, ...[text shortened]... be an intellectual and scientific discussion has to always attract the rabid converse.[/b]

Firstly..I apologise for my agression towards Kellyjay, his methods of evasion not only in this post/other similar posts and a different one have annoyed me and I have not sufficiently reigned in my urge to lash out

Secondly Halitose, feel free to do a search through all my posts and find somewhere where I have even hinted any such assertion that all religious people are stupid/uneducated and that none are scientists...I don't even think KJ is stupid but his responses just get right up my nose sometimes

Originally posted by Halitose
Of course I'm not using Gould (and his theory) as a disproof of evolution. Gould was a fervent evolutionist to his dying day. It might be worthwhile to note however, that punctuated equilibrium was radically different... in that it admitted what the proponents of the Neo-Darwinian strain of the theory still laud as incontrovertible proof: a highly fragmented and inconclusive fossil record.

PE is a part of darwinian evolution. Gould simply up-played it's importance.

Originally posted by scottishinnz
PE is a part of darwinian evolution. Gould simply up-played it's importance.

And, sensing conflict within the ranks of evolutionary scientists, the media and creationists encouraged this ...

Originally posted by amannion
I think you'll find PE is hardly radical. It was presented as such when first introduced, but Gould's subsequent amplification of the PE idea demonstrated it as only a mild reworking of evolutionary ideas.
In fact, many current evolutionary biologists see little if any difference between standard models of evolution and PE models.

Be that as it may: whether PE was/is important is a moot point. The thrust of my argument (which seems to have come across too delicately) was Gould's admittance of an inconclusive fossil record; or to put it more bluntly, a record that supplied insufficient conclusive evidence for the neo-darwinian theory.

Originally posted by Halitose
Be that as it may: whether PE was/is important is a moot point. The thrust of my argument (which seems to have come across too delicately) was Gould's admittance of [b]an inconclusive fossil record; or to put it more bluntly, a record that supplied insufficient conclusive evidence for the neo-darwinian theory.[/b]

I did get your point, but forgot to raise it in my responses.
If evolution rested only on the fossil record that would be a significant concern for the validity of the theory, but it doesn't. Fossil evidence is only one in a number of pieces in the evolutionary puzzle.

Originally posted by amannion
Picture this fairy tale Freaky.

I throw a ball into the air.
Now get this.
Completely on its own, without any input from me, no interference ... the ball falls down to the ground.
It just happened.

Now you call it gravity, but that's just a fairy story.

Of course, evolution isn't a force.
But you talk about it as if it has direction, or require ...[text shortened]... nce of having reproducing organisms with inherited characteristics in changing environments.

Precisely part of the point, albeit somewhat off-track. Gravity: a force. Natural selection: hmmm... ?

Originally posted by amannion
I did get your point, but forgot to raise it in my responses.
If evolution rested only on the fossil record that would be a significant concern for the validity of the theory, but it doesn't. Fossil evidence is only one in a number of pieces in the evolutionary puzzle.

You're absolutely right: it is one of the missing pieces contributing to the overall unsatisfactory hypothesis.

Originally posted by Agerg
Firstly..I apologise for my agression towards Kellyjay, his methods of evasion not only in this post/other similar posts and a different one have annoyed me and I have not sufficiently reigned in my urge to lash out

Secondly Halitose, feel free to do a search through all my posts and find somewhere where I have even hinted any such assertion that all re ...[text shortened]... sts...I don't even think KJ is stupid but his responses just get right up my nose sometimes

No worries, mate. As usual, my flambouyant entry was precipitated by a cursory scan of the latest posts, which crossed a few neurons causing me to go off half-cocked. Take my sad attempt at a lambasting with a handful of salt.

Cheers. 🙂