The battle over Evolution (continued)

[ArmenianKid]

theres really only proof towards evolution. there is no proof towards creationism. im not craping on anyone's religon. but its how i think.

[winoman]

And to clarify, I don't believe Johnson or myself state that evolution is okay if it is intelligent. The lines of demarcation are clear in the case of evolution, it is about random changes, lacking purpose. The inverse of that would be intelligent design, and purpose, thereby bringing in a God. If it is intelligent design then it is no longer evolution is what I am saying.

Ah - but many/most of your intelligent designers would disagree. Many believe in evolution but just say we needed a creator to start it all off. The others basically agree with the fossil record and the links etc - but say these were designed changes. So it is evolution - just not through processes such as natural selection. Shame that the evidence continues to support selection (through study of the various fossiles that show evolutionary change and the often clear environmental forces to prompt such)...while ID - well thats just pure speculation...

[winoman]

theres really only proof towards evolution. there is no proof towards creationism. im not craping on anyone's religon. but its how i think.

Yes of course...yeah - and disbelief in evolution is much as if one says they disbelieve the scientific explanation for star formation...I mean when have we actually seen it happen? How can we say that what we call intermediary stages will actually result in a star and not a space blimp? ets etc....and its funny but scientists concepts of how stars form has evolved (whoa - can we ever trust science to be right?)

http://www.aplg.com/nemesis.htm

Nah - I choose to not believe that sh*t - I'd rather think that some alien entity just spit out into the space wind and the resulting orbs of glowing light are just the sign of this beings magnificance...

[Anonymouse]

Again - its not random - you fail to absorb this fact. There are mechanisms at work. And a fallacy to your critique concerning the Weasel expirement is twofold. You are tryin gto claim that it is trying to prove more then it is meant to...and secondly any expirement done by man is by definition intelligently designed (OK at least designed)...so you can conduct an expirment whereby man is out of the loop. But this isn't the point - its only trying to show that the claim of improbability is false -

http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/coinflip.html

So don't just relay on someone saying that they have calculated the odds and its improbable. You can make up a scenario to render that conclusion to just about anything.

That someone, is someone who replicated it and concluded that Dawkin's did not include many other variables in his model. Therefore, there is reason to doubt his findings. Second of all, he didn't know that improbability is false. According to him, he tried to show that according to his criteria of the given paramters, he found it probable.

The fact that you say Dawkin's experiment does not deal with randomness, means that you have not read about it, as Dawkin's himself considered in his variables, randomness. It is safe to say that Dawkin's model has received sufficient criticism and scrutiny to not be passed off as holy write. As Demski further elaborates:

"Given Dawkins's evolutionary algorithm, what besides the target sequence can this algorithm attain? Think of it this way. Dawkins's evolutionary algorithm is chugging along; what are the possible terminal points of this algorithm? Clearly, the algorithm is always going to converge on the target sequence (with probability 1 for that matter). An evolutionary algorithm acts as a probability amplifier. Whereas it would take pure chance on average 10 to the 40 tries to attain Dawkins's target sequence, his evolutionary algorithm on average gets it for you in the logarithm of that number, that is, on average in only 40 tries (and with virtual certainty in a few hundred tries).

But a probability amplifier is also a complexity attenuator. For something to be complex, there must be many live possibilities that could take its place. Increasingly numerous live possibilities correspond to increasing improbability of any one of these possibilities. To illustrate the connection between complexity and probability, consider a combination lock. The more possible combinations of the lock, the more complex the mechanism and correspondingly the more improbable that the mechanism can be opened by
chance. Complexity and probability therefore vary inversely: the greater the complexity, the smaller the probability.

It follows that Dawkins's evolutionary algorithm, by vastly increasing the
probability of getting the target sequence, vastly decreases the complexity
inherent in that sequence. As the sole possibility that Dawkins's evolutionary algorithm can attain, the target sequence in fact has minimal complexity (i.e., the probability is 1 and the complexity, as measured by the usual information measure, is 0). In general, then, evolutionary algorithms generate not true complexity but only the appearance of complexity. And since they cannot generate complexity, they cannot generate specified complexity either."

He then follows up stating:

"But this raises the obvious question, whether there might not be a
fundamental connection between intelligence or design on the one hand and
specified complexity on the other. In fact there is. There's only one known
source for producing actual specified complexity, and that's intelligence."

http://www.antievolution.org/people/dembski_wa/19990913_explaining_csi.html

[Anonymouse]

That reminds me, have you ever heard of Haldane's dilemma?

[ArmoBarbi]

That reminds me, have you ever heard of Haldane's dilemma?

No, do tell.

Yosef, there is evidence to support the theory of evolution - its not proof. (although Id be happy if there was proof)

[winoman]

Proof of basic concept of Evolution exists

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA202.html

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/essays/courtenay1.htm

(from above)

The Short Proof of Evolution
by
Ian Johnston
Malaspina University-College
Nanaimo, BC

[This document is in the public domain and may be used, in whole or in part, without charge and without permission, by anyone, provided the source is acknowledged. Last revised in March 2005]



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We live, we are constantly told, in a scientific age. We look to science to help us achieve the good life, to solve our problems (especially our medical aches and pains), and to tell us about the world. A great deal of our education system, particularly the post-secondary curriculum, is organized as science or social science. And yet, curiously enough, there is one major scientific truth which vast numbers of people refuse to accept (by some news accounts a majority of people in North America)--the fact of evolution. Yet it is as plain as plain can be that the scientific truth of evolution is so overwhelmingly established, that it is virtually impossible to refute within the bounds of reason. No major scientific truth, in fact, is easier to present, explain, and defend.

Before demonstrating this claim, let me make it clear what I mean by evolution, since there often is some confusion about the term. By evolution I mean, very simply, the development of animal and plant species out of other species not at all like them, for example, the process by which, say, a species of fish gets transformed (or evolves) through various stages into a cow, a kangaroo, or an eagle. This definition, it should be noted, makes no claims about how the process might occur, and thus it certainly does not equate the concept of evolution with Darwinian Natural Selection, as so many people seem to do. It simply defines the term by its effects (not by how those effects are produced, which could well be the subject of another argument).

The first step in demonstrating the truth of evolution is to make the claim that all living creatures must have a living parent. This point has been overwhelmingly established in the past century and a half, ever since the French scientist Louis Pasteur demonstrated how fermentation took place and thus laid to rest centuries of stories about beetles arising spontaneously out of dung or gut worms being miraculously produced from non-living material. There is absolutely no evidence for this ancient belief. Living creatures must come from other living creatures. It does no damage to this point to claim that life must have had some origin way back in time, perhaps in a chemical reaction of inorganic materials (in some primordial soup) or in some invasion from outer space. That may well be true. But what is clear is that any such origin for living things or living material must result in a very simple organism. There is no evidence whatsoever (except in science fiction like Frankenstein) that inorganic chemical processes can produce complex, multi-cellular living creatures (the recent experiments cloning sheep, of course, are based on living tissue from other sheep).

The second important point in the case for evolution is that some living creatures are very different from some others. This, I take it, is self-evident. Let me cite a common example: many animals have what we call an internal skeletal structure featuring a backbone and skull. We call these animals vertebrates. Most animals do not have these features (we call them invertebrates). The distinction between vertebrates and invertebrates is something no one who cares to look at samples of both can reasonably deny, and, so far as I am aware, no one hostile to evolution has ever denied a fact so apparent to anyone who observes the world for a few moments.

The final point in the case for evolution is this: simple animals and plants existed on earth long before more complex ones (invertebrate animals, for example, were around for a very long time before there were any vertebrates). Here again, the evidence from fossils is overwhelming. In the deepest rock layers, there are no signs of life. The first fossil remains are of very simple living things. As the strata get more recent, the variety and complexity of life increase (although not at a uniform rate). And no human fossils have ever been found except in the most superficial layers of the earth (e.g., battlefields, graveyards, flood deposits, and so on). In all the countless geological excavations and inspections (for example, of the Grand Canyon), no one has ever come up with a genuine fossil remnant which goes against this general principle (and it would only take one genuine find to overturn this principle).

Well, if we put these three points together, the rational case for evolution is air tight. If all living creatures must have a living parent, if living creatures are different, and if simpler forms were around before the more complex forms, then the more complex forms must have come from the simpler forms (e.g., vertebrates from invertebrates). There is simply no other way of dealing reasonably with the evidence we have. Of course, one might deny (as some do) that the layers of the earth represent a succession of very lengthy epochs and claim, for example, that the Grand Canyon was created in a matter of days, but this surely violates scientific observation and all known scientific processes as much as does the claim that, say, vertebrates just, well, appeared one day out of a spontaneous combination of chemicals.

To make the claim for the scientific truth of evolution in this way is to assert nothing about how it might occur. Darwin provides one answer (through natural selection), but others have been suggested, too (including some which see a divine agency at work in the transforming process). The above argument is intended, however, to demonstrate that the general principle of evolution is, given the scientific evidence, logically unassailable and that, thus, the concept is a law of nature as truly established as is, say, gravitation. That scientific certainty makes the widespread rejection of evolution in our modern age something of a puzzle (but that's a subject for another essay). In a modern liberal democracy, of course, one is perfectly free to reject that conclusion, but one is not legitimately able to claim that such a rejection is a reasonable scientific stance.

[winoman]

More evidence for evolution....

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoEvidence.html

Below: Genetic basis of evolutionary change: (technical but shows how study of genetics is proving that evolutionary change not such a difficult/incomprhensible thing after all...)

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoGenetics.html

[winoman]

Oh thats right - Haldane's dilema

...though to some degree answered by prior posts..

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/haldane1.html

[winoman]

More Popper - directly relating to Evolution as Science...

The fact that the theory of natural selection is difficult
to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and even some
great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology. ... I
mention this because I too belong among the culprits. Influenced
by what these authorities say, I have in the past described
the theory as "almost tautological," and I have tried to
explain how the theory of natural selection could be
untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific
interest. My solution was that the doctrine of natural
selection is a most successful metaphysical research
programme. ...
I have changed my mind about the testability and logical
status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to
have an opportunity to make a recantation. ...
The theory of natural selection may be so formulated that
it is far from tautological. In this case it is not only
testable, but it turns out to be not strictly universally
true. There seem to be exceptions, as with so many biological
theories; and considering the random character of the variations
on which natural selection operates, the occurrence of
exceptions is not surprising. (Popper, "Natural Selection and
the Emergence of Mind," _Dialectica_ 32(1978):339-355; quotations
are from pp. 344-346)

And Popper also wrote:
It does appear that some people think that I denied scientific
character to the historical sciences, such as paleontology, or
the history of the evolution of life on Earth. This is a mistake,
and I here wish to affirm that these and other historical sciences
have in my opinion scientific character; their hypotheses can in
many cases be tested. (Popper, Letter to _New Scientist_,
87(1981):611)