I’m an undergrad at Appalachian State in NC doing the Environmental Biology/Ecology program. It’s nice to talk to a fellow biology student.
No, your position is known as the logical fallacy argument from ignorance. **Again, not being able to understand evolution does not make it untrue. **
Are you agreeing that man and ape have a common ancestor? I thought that you disagreed with evolution. What logic is there in creation? I suspect that is why they could not undo it.
I have never seen that amount of avoidance in my life. Half of them were strawmen. The other half amounted to “The proper distinctions are not being made”. There is no slam dunk anywhere in this against Creationists. It was just more of the same redifining of term and appeals to those who already agree with you.
Actually Hilario, Darwin would have pointed to different ethnicities as proof of transitional stages. The original evolutionists were racists and they used evolution to prove there ideas of the superiority of the “white race”. These theories came in very handy for Adolph Hitler. Of course the evolutionsist don’t want to own up to this history but the evolutionist of 60 years ago would have told you tha black people are closer to primates than white people.To all evolutionist from my simple observation, well I can see lots of monkeys and as well human still today, but if the evolution in true why I can’t see half human and half monkey or nearly human face monkeys roaming at the downtown buying their clothes or talking monkey at the counter, the link is missing, why?The scientist who first fantasizes this is Satan’s advocate, I hope you’re not one of them.
This is a great post. As you will see in this thread though, the usual suspects will merely ignore what you wrote so as not to be confused with the facts. Didn’t you know you are not allowed to have facts unless you agree with them? They will just keep tossing the same links at us, expecting us to read them as if they are gospel and dismiss the links creationists have provided, even the excellent ones in this thread like the Kolbe Center, and act as if we are idiots for not embracing their theories and the weak and superficial support use while they refuse to even look at the scientific evidence that does not fit the presuppositions. It must be nonsense because evolutionists say it is.
I have my copy of Darwin’s works right here…might you point out for us the exact page on which we might find this claim?
As far as I was aware, evolutionary biology was not a major underpinning of National Socialism, but perhaps my research has been bankrupt. Might you explicitly point out where within the historiography pertaining to National Socialism reliance on evolutionary biology was made? Better yet, let me get my copy of the Bormann vermerke; would you happen to know where within that document, publishing as it does most of Hitler’s personal commentary for the war years, that he makes reference to National Socialism being contingent upon evolutionary biology? Lastly, these “original” evolutionists who were racist…who would those be and could you provide explicit references where they express their status as racist? The evolutionists of 60 years ago, fortunately, were very prolific in their writing, e.g, Ernst Mayr and G. G. Simpson. I have a whole host of their works, but have never seen any reference therein to African-Americans being somehow phylogenetically more primitive than caucasians. From any of the published works of these authors, could you provide an explicit reference to such statements? Much appreciated.
Polemical arm-waving aside, Magnanimity, e.g., asked for a very specific example of a prediction of evolutionary biology–a transitional fossil–and was provided as much in detail by myself and others. Though Melchior continues to make endless reference to the apparently fatal evidence against “macroevolution” he has never defined macroevolution, never clarified his evidentiary standard, thus precluding any of his standpoints from falsification, and has never actually produced any data in defense of his standpoints, as anyone following the prior threads on evolution here will note. Lastly, the logical fallacy I believe he is endeavoring to accuse us of in his denouement, is argumentum ad verecundiam, and he has rather confused this with argumentum ad populum. In actuality, neither has taken place here. Argumentum ad verecundiam would consist, e.g., of: “Phil Currie is a brilliant paleontologist and he thinks *Troodon *displays a mixture of avian and theropod traits.” Last I was aware, this has not occurred, though I welcome any explicit example Melchior might be able to provide of such a fallacy in action. Argumentum ad populum would consist of appealing to gallery as such: “All these people here at the various museums, all agree that Troodon is transitional. Surely you would not dispute the opinion of all these people, would you?” As far as I am aware, this fallacy has not occurred either, at least on my part. But, again, if Melchior can provide explicit examples of an ad populum fallacy here, I would welcome it.
On what explicit grounds do mass extinction events invalidate evolutionary biology? Which mass extinction events did you have in mind? You refer to the “sudden appearance of new complex life” but fail to specify exactly when this occurred, what morphological novelties were involved, and why it is antithetical to evolutionary biology. Moreover, you have misrepresented the fossil evidence entirely. Fossils are arranged within a nested phylogeny on the basis of uniquely shared derived morphological characters, and thus it is difficult to conceive of any way to be more objective in examining their relationships, if any.
Care to substantiate this, or does your definition of Christian charity involve disparaging people baselessly?
Such as?
Such as?
Such as?
Such as?
Provide your proof.
Such as?
Let me overturn this one right quick, before it gets a bit technical with your other posts. I say “right quick” because it is actually fallacious to suggest that one must put forth a sophisticated definition of what he understands by ID before he would reject evolution. Recall that, historically speaking, evolution is the later theory. It comes later temporally and it thereby seeks to displace something previously held for a very long time. There is no problem with this as such, of course. The only requirement for breaking away from previously held and long-standing traditions in any discipline, however, is that one has incredibly good reasons for doing so. A lack of transitional fossils, along with a lack of argument for why evolution is necessary to doing contemporary biology, along with an obvious lack of philosophical rigour in embracing evolution (since it violates fundamental principles both of biology (like ‘life only comes from life’) and reality (that ‘something cannot come from nothing’), etc. all work together cumulatively leaving one with very little reason, at the end of the day, for adhering to evolution.
OK, I read the whole bit. Let me just give you, by way of preamble, a, shall we say, “collegial” suggestion. You needn’t bother with telling me how I might undermine the suggestions put forth. I would venture that I’m more than capable of seeing to this all by my lonesome. Aside from this though, what you do also suggests that you are framing the only legit roads for criticism, which would not necessarily be granted by your interlocutor. But, enough preamble…on to the questions.
Really? There are two theories here? As far as I can tell so far, there’s only one theory, and a whole lot of gratutitous handwaving on the other part.
It was scarcely meant to impugn your intelligence. Explicitly stating the grounds which would falsify any given hypothesis of homology, e.g., is commonplace in paleontological work. It facillitates testing of the hypothesis as quickly as possible. You are free to enumerate other ways in which this particular hypothesis might be falsified, but I do believe that the only defensible methods were already listed.
The demonstration of wider levels of synapomorphy (and thus demonstration of plesiomorphy in any given character state) is accomplished via outgroup comparison within the framework of an explicit cladistic anlaysis. You seem to imply some vast ambiguity in actually falsifying the hypothesis, as based upon the morphological data, that Troodon formosus displays markedly paravian braincase structure. However, comparative analysis with the braincases of other archosaurs readily will clarify character polarities in this case and thus uphold or refute that hypothesis. For instance, when Welman (1995) hypothesized that the lateral depression on the parabasisphenoid of Euparkeria capensis represented the foramina for the cerebral branches of the internal carotid arteries, his statement of homology could be readily tested via comparison with other archosaurs, and further examination of the actual material. In this case, the lateral depression exhibits no foramina piercing the concavity and the basal character state in archosaurormorphs is for the cerebral branches of the carotid to enter via twin foramina on the caudoventral face of the parabasisphenoid, ventral to the occipital condyle. We can test all the statements of homology provided in my description of the RTMP 86.36.457 in the same way. For instance, it would be possibly to falsify my statement that the middle ear displays a fenestra pseudorotunda by showing that the metotic fissure was not divided. As the fenestra pseudorotunda by definition arises from the division of the mitotic fissure, demonstrating that this fissure was not subdivided would readily falsify the alleged homology. Given a modicum of knowledge pertaining to the braincase morphology of Archosauria, demonstrating that the characters cited as avian are actually diagnostic of a more inclusive clade (and thus plesiomorphic–of no phylogenetic utility) is in fact quite easy. Of course, if the example of archosaurian braincases does not seem suitable, we can use any number of other skeletal traits in a vast number of archosaurian transitionals. And of course we could always discuss the evolution of tetrapods, the derivation of amniotes, and so on and so forth, if for whatever irrational reason, one chooses to reject Archosauria as worthy of discussion. Either way, however, you have not presented any grounds on which we should take seriously the apparent claim that it is not possible, or very difficult, to falsify the hypothesis offered in my earlier posts about the braincase morphology of Troodon formosus.
What you deride as absurd, is on the contrary, among the most basic philosophical requirements which must be met before a hypothesis can be considered scientific. Kuhn (1970, 77) emphasized: “The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgement leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other.” Moreover, he further stated (1970, 79): “To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself. That act reflects not on the paradigm but on the man. Inevitably, he will seen by his colleagues as the ‘carpenter who blames his tools.’” Any hypothesis in science must meet the Popperian falsification criterion and simultaneously produce predictions based on empirical evidence which can be further tested against incoming data. Rejection of one hypothesis without elaborating another hypothesis with which to compare the original, while simultaneously explaining the existing data, is untestably vauge, cannot be falsified, and moreover can make no predictions based on empirical evidence. Thus, failure to provide an alternative hypothesis for a data set to the one you are rejecting, as noted by Kuhn and other philosophers of science, just ain’t science, folks; it’s a rhetorical sham. Consider for instance, the hypothesis that troodontids (for continuity) are the sister clade to Ornithomimosauridae. I reject this hypothesis. However, I do not offer any alternative hypothesis to explain the character data in question, and thus my objection cannot be falsified, nor can it make any predictions based on empirical data. Ergo, it is not scientific. If you wish to reject evolutionary biology without specifying an explicitly defined alternative hypothesis, this is of course your prerogative, but you have moved from science to philosophy only, and should not attribute to your standpoint scientific rigor that it does not in fact possess.
First and foremost there is to my knowledge no theory of ID. It can produce no predictions based on empirical data, and is not falsifiable, and thus does not fall within the provenance of what constitutes a scientific theory. It is more so an attempt to define nature–in essence, a philosophy. In order for ID to be considered a scientific theory it needs to explicitly meet and address three very simple criteria: testable, falsifiable, and predictive. To date, it has met none of these criteria.