New Book of Rules
in [Design]
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From: David Brown on 23 Aug 2006 04:25 John Larkin wrote: > On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:37:13 +0100, John Woodgate > <jmw(a)jmwa.demon.co.uk> wrote: > >> In message <c36me2904lsoj3m69790mn8j5kvn559sp6(a)4ax.com>, dated Tue, 22 >> Aug 2006, John Larkin <jjSNIPlarkin(a)highTHISlandtechnology.com> writes >> >>> You can't possibly know that, and there's no real evidence for it. >> The point is that there is not only no evidence for macroevolution, >> there is no way that it can occur, as you said! Are you now claiming >> that it does occur? > > Well, there's no fossil evidence for most families and genera. There's > no half-whale fossil, no half-fish fossil. If there is no > macroevolution, and everything evolves slowly in tiny increments, > there should be many more intermediate forms. Some things must ocurr > suddenly, with many changes happening almost simultaneously, to make a > bird out of a reptile. None of the major changes provided selective > advantage alone; quite the contrary. > Have you ever heard the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" ? It applies in evolution too - organisms (by which I mean the type of the organism, not individuals) evolve in response to changing environments and opportunities. Evolution occurs faster when there is a lot of pressure, and more slowly when there is not - that's partly why you get marsupials in Australia, while they were out-competed long ago in the rest of the world. When there is a lot of competition, or when life is hard and dangerous, small advantages make a big difference to survival rates and thus evolution runs faster. Take, for example, the step from water-based fish to land-based amphibian and reptile. During the half-way stage, you get beaten by normal fish in the sea, so your relatives who are even slightly better on land will have a big advantage. Thus your descendants quickly move to land, or return to the sea. Some few (like the African lung fish) can benefit from being a half-way stage, but most such transitionary species are very short lived. Once a good body has been developed in a stable environment, however, the mechanisms of evolution have less effect - look at sharks, that are virtually unchanged after something like a hundred million years. Simple probability theory explains why we therefore find far more fossils of sharks than of half-fish or half-whales. A big misconception about evolution is that people can't see how half-way stages might be "the fittest", and therefore the ones that survive. The most famous such argument is the claim that half an eye is of no use to anyone, therefore an eye could not have evolved. This is, of course, rubbish, since half-eyes can be extremely useful and many animals have them today (light sensitive patches of various kinds are not uncommon in sea animals, and snakes have an infra-red sensor that can be described as half-way to a third eye). We can never be entirely sure how different features developed, but we can make reasonable guesses and theories. Another example (which you mentioned above) is how dinosaurs turned into birds - half-wings and half-feathers are "obviously" useless. It turns out (from recent fossil evidence) that some dinosaurs were feathered many millions of years before the first birds appeared - indeed, there is no evidence to suggest that feathers were not common among dinosaurs (since feathers leave very little fossil record). Almost certainly this was for insulation - at least some dinosaurs were warm blooded. And half-wings can add stability when running fast on two legs. Evolutionary development is an emergent system - you get lots of tiny changes, some forward, some backwards, that add up in the end to something big and dramatic. I'm sure you are already familiar with the concept - it's the same principle that makes electronics work from random vibrations of electrons. So there is no need to evoke mystical new methods of evolution (natural or super-natural) to explain what we know of living and extinct organisms. Clearly alternative methods of development cannot be ruled out (indeed, random small mutations of the DNA is not the only known method, merely by far the most common one), and it is bad science to claim you know everything. But it is equally bad science to invent new ideas (or even to claim that the new ideas must exist) unnecessarily. > >>> The fossil record is astonishingly sparse of missing links. Maybe >>> that's why they're called "missing." >> That's just trite. There are millions of links; whenever an intermediate >> form is discovered, the media call it a 'missing link'. It's to a >> scientific term. >>> Your statement is Neo-Darwinian dogma without a scientific basis. >> Can you prove that ? > > It's not my duty to prove Darwinian evolution false; It's science's > duty to prove it true. So far, nobody has. It's still a fuzzy but > heavily defended theory. > When has science ever tried to "prove" that something is "true" ? You prove things in mathematics, not science. Science is about finding rational and useful explanations for the world we live in. Every scientific theory is an approximation, and has rough edges - but a good theory is close enough to reality that it is accepted as working fact. The theory behind evolution - that numerous microscopic random changes combined with filtering can produce macroscopic effects - is a mathematical proven fact, demonstrated by numerous solid scientific theories (such as electronics, or gas models). The basic theory of Darwinian evolution is considered a working fact by the great majority of scientists. It's a work in progress, with plenty of gaps to fill in, but until someone digs up a skeleton of a three-headed dog or a dinosaur with a digital watch, the scientific arguments are about the details, not the principles. >>> Some "scientific" truisms (male/female intellectual differences, the >>> concept of race, >> What are you doing now? Setting up more straw men? I don't deny either >> of those things and nor do the majority of scientists. Value judgements >> based on them are bad, but they are nothing to do with science. > > No straw man, just an observation that science often has dogmatic > fads, and they are sometimes proved wrong. > >>> heritability of experience) are not allowed to be considered. Some day
From: John Woodgate on 23 Aug 2006 04:57 In message <44ec10ea$1(a)news.wineasy.se>, dated Wed, 23 Aug 2006, David Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> writes >It's a work in progress, with plenty of gaps to fill in, but until >someone digs up a skeleton of a three-headed dog or a dinosaur with a >digital watch, the scientific arguments are about the details, not the >principles. Neither a three-headed dog or a dinosaur with a digital watch would negate evolution. Both would be surprises; the dog not much of one since three fused embryos that astonishingly survived to birth would do it. There has been a lot of pure speculation about how far dinosaurs really had evolved before the KT boundary. They had much longer than mammals have had, and look what they have produced - Eeyore!(;-) Oh, and digital watches. -- OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk 2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely. John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK
From: David Brown on 23 Aug 2006 08:21 John Woodgate wrote: > In message <44ec10ea$1(a)news.wineasy.se>, dated Wed, 23 Aug 2006, David > Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> writes > >> It's a work in progress, with plenty of gaps to fill in, but until >> someone digs up a skeleton of a three-headed dog or a dinosaur with a >> digital watch, the scientific arguments are about the details, not the >> principles. > > Neither a three-headed dog or a dinosaur with a digital watch would > negate evolution. Both would be surprises; the dog not much of one since > three fused embryos that astonishingly survived to birth would do it. > They would not negate evolution, but they would show that we are likely to have missed something major. > There has been a lot of pure speculation about how far dinosaurs really > had evolved before the KT boundary. They had much longer than mammals > have had, and look what they have produced - Eeyore!(;-) > > Oh, and digital watches. The idea of a dinosaur fossil with a digital watch comes from the book "Strata" by Terry Prachet. It was written before he started the Disc World series, and envisions planet builders adding artificial fossil evidence in the worlds they build. A couple of workers get caught adding a digital watch to a fossil as a prank.
From: John Woodgate on 23 Aug 2006 08:48 In message <44ec483d$1(a)news.wineasy.se>, dated Wed, 23 Aug 2006, David Brown <david(a)westcontrol.removethisbit.com> writes >The idea of a dinosaur fossil with a digital watch comes from the book >"Strata" by Terry Prachet. It was written before he started the Disc >World series, and envisions planet builders adding artificial fossil >evidence in the worlds they build. A couple of workers get caught >adding a digital watch to a fossil as a prank. There are a few stories of this sort in the 'Velikovski' school of literature. I recall one about an aluminium bracelet found in a coal seam! The three-headed dog comes, of course, from Harry Potter. (;-) -- OOO - Own Opinions Only. Try www.jmwa.demon.co.uk and www.isce.org.uk 2006 is YMMVI- Your mileage may vary immensely. John Woodgate, J M Woodgate and Associates, Rayleigh, Essex UK
From: ehsjr on 23 Aug 2006 16:01
David Brown wrote: > John Larkin wrote: > >> On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 16:37:13 +0100, John Woodgate >> <jmw(a)jmwa.demon.co.uk> wrote: >> >>> In message <c36me2904lsoj3m69790mn8j5kvn559sp6(a)4ax.com>, dated Tue, >>> 22 Aug 2006, John Larkin <jjSNIPlarkin(a)highTHISlandtechnology.com> >>> writes >>> >>>> You can't possibly know that, and there's no real evidence for it. >>> >>> The point is that there is not only no evidence for macroevolution, >>> there is no way that it can occur, as you said! Are you now claiming >>> that it does occur? >> >> >> Well, there's no fossil evidence for most families and genera. There's >> no half-whale fossil, no half-fish fossil. If there is no >> macroevolution, and everything evolves slowly in tiny increments, >> there should be many more intermediate forms. Some things must ocurr >> suddenly, with many changes happening almost simultaneously, to make a >> bird out of a reptile. None of the major changes provided selective >> advantage alone; quite the contrary. >> > > Have you ever heard the phrase "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" ? It > applies in evolution too - organisms (by which I mean the type of the > organism, not individuals) evolve in response to changing environments > and opportunities. Evolution occurs faster when there is a lot of > pressure, and more slowly when there is not - that's partly why you get > marsupials in Australia, while they were out-competed long ago in the > rest of the world. Opossum. The rest of the lecture is snipped. Ed |