Actually, if modern cosmology is correct, there might not be a center… rather the Universe that we see might be like the world we see around us. Where is the center of the surface of the Earth? Pretty much any spot you stand looks like the center. Ditto for the Universe.
Right - so if we call the earth the center we are justified.
OK.
What about Saturncentricism? Or tjm190centricism?
So its relative. Which means Geocentricism leads to Relativism. Heresy! Heresy!
But that only works because we are using locations on the surface rather than objects on the surface- any pair of coordinates can be said to be the center, but not any mobile object. But we know that either the Earth is moving around the sun, which is moving around the center of the galaxy, which is also moving- or all these things are moving around the Earth. But our knowledge of physics tells us that big things (like the Sun or a galaxy) do not orbit around little things.
A nitpick here… Physics tells us that Massive things don’t orbit around less massive things. A neutron star might be only a dozen miles across, but it could be up to 1.4 times as massive as the Sun… a black hole could be smaller still… and many times more massive than the Sun…
:doh2:
1.’ I see all the other planets orbiting the Sun.’
Neither of you seem to understand basic physics (either classical or relativistic) very well (no offense).
But when the center of mass of two object system is within one of the two objects, you have one orbiting around the other
As I did say that works as an approximation but it’s still not entirely true - the objects are still orbiting the center of mass and therefore the larger object is perturbed - it’s “orbiting” a point inside it.
I know, I know- you’re correct, it’s just an approximation- except MAYBE with black holes if there is truly a singularity.
Ack… yes, I know… I am just trying to keep things relatively simple for the sake of the argument. Though since I brought it up as a nitpick, I should have used the fully qualified case.
But why add that complication to the theory? Particularly when one considers that in every fashion, the Earth looks like a rather small planet. And why do things orbit around the Earth when the Earth is only the 6th most massive object in the solar system (after the Sun, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune)? I want an answer other than God made it that way…
Actually, I never said that I observed movement from the Moon. Only that when the Erth is seen from there, it appears very much like a very ordinary Blue and while planet.
So we essentially have a system where everything orbits the Sun, except the Earth. And despite the fact that the Earth looks like a rather smallish average planet, that the entire Universe revolves around it with no explination of the mechanisms involved other than that is the way that God made it (I do believe that God could have done it that way, but I also suspect that there would be physical laws that would easily describe it… which there do not appear to be.).
Relativity may be a philosophical concept… but in this case, I am talking about Einstein’s theories of Relativity. The fact of the matter is that things get more complicated when you start including inertial reference frames and acceleration into the equation.
You can believe whatever you like, but the fact is that the Modern Synthesis is the foundational theory of modern biology because it is consistent with and overwhelmingly supported by the evidence from a wide range of disciplines including palaeontology, biogeography, systematics and phylogenetics, ecology, comparative anatomy, comparative physiology, molecular biology, genomics, population genetics, quantitative genetics, mathematical biology, systems biology, biochemistry, immunology, developmental biology and so on - described in hundreds of thousands of research papers in hundreds of journals and summarised in university texts such as Ridley’s Evolution and Futuyama’s Evolutionary Biology.hecd2:
.I believe you exaggerate the case of neo-darwinism’s “overwhelming evidence” in its favor. By a wide margin.
I can assert it because it is true. No scientist of my acquaintance has a world view which necessarily entails neo-Darwinism. They accept neo-Darwinism because the evidence for it is, as I have pointed out, overwhelming. You are wrong to say that some variation of neo-Darwinism is the only possible natural explanation - after all, neo-Darwinism as a theory has only existed since the 1930s and 1940s. Before that natural selection and genetic theories were opposed to one another and still earlier, Lamarckian and other theories of inheritance of acquired traits were considered. Today, “classical” neo-Darwinism is being refined by various epigenetic and ecological effects which are being shown to have a substantial influence. Nevertheless, neo-Darwinism holds sway because it is supported by the evidence in much the same way as any other well supported scientific theory. You are conflating cause and effect here - the Modern Synthesis is the foundational theory of modern biology not because it is the only possible game in town - conversely it is the consensus because it is supported by the evidence.
As I have pointed out, ALL scientists, whether they are Catholic, Protestant, Mormon, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, animist, worshippers of Baal or Apollo or Artemis, agnostics or atheists seek *natural *explanations for phenomena when they are doing science. That’s what science is. Scientists of all worldviews therefore accept neo-Darwinism because it is a natural explanation with an overwhelming degree of evidential support. Any explanation that involves supernatural entities fiddling around with the natural world lies outside science.
I am certainly not exaggerating the evidence which overwhelmingly supports the Modern Synthesis as a scientific explanation for the origin of species. As for the so-called glaring issues, what are they? I would never claim that any substantial scientific theory is complete or free of issues altogether - but those who claim that there are “glaring issues” in the Synthesis which discredit it need to show what they are, and to put forward scientific (not miraculous) alternatives that better fit the data, otherwise they are indulging in a God-of-the-Gaps argument.
Well, no: the prevailing scientific view was based on a view that the universe was static. When it was shown to be expanding, Big Bang theory for the origins of the observable universe was accepted. This was not the replacement of an atheistic view by a theistic one, but the replacement of one natural theory by another.
Very much alone amongst the scientific community - almost universally rejected by professional biologists.
Your argument is made by or on behalf of every crank who fails to get his or her nonsense published in scientific journals. The fact is that every scientist has to submit to peer review - that is how scientific standards are maintained. In any case, as far as I know, Behe hasn’t tried very hard to get any of these ideas published in the peer-reviewed journals (one or two exceptions notwithstanding), or to conduct a bench-based research programme in support of an alternative hypothesis, preferring to present them in popular books to ignoramuses who can’t tell the difference between gold and dross. You obviously don’t read the primary literature, but if you did you would know that their purpose is not to allow people to air hairbrained ideas, otherwise they would be inundated with every conceivable silliness. You would also know that they are not dogmatic, but that many disagreements and arguments based on evidence and analysis are, indeed, aired.
No - my argument is that he is not respected because his scientific arguments are wrong, and have presented you with a small sample of references to demonstrations of the flaws in his thinking. However, for those who are unable or unwilling to follow the arguments, the fact that he is something of a laughing stock amongst professional biologists is an indicator as to his merit.
Um… whats neo-Darwinism? what was wrong with ‘original’ Darwinism, was it not a scientic theory overwhelmingly supported by evidence etc…
Whoever said your position was unfalsifiable was right. Anyone who disagrees with you and Behe are, according to you, unreconstructed biased materialists regardless of the merits of their arguments.hecd2:
That’s consistent with the bias in the community against his work, yes.
As I have said, you can believe what you like, but your personal incredulity is not evidence against the Theory of Evolution. You clearly misunderstand the concept of IC which is not based on pure complexity, but which claims that there are systems which depend on a number of components, all of which must be present for the system to function, and which therefore cannot have evolved independently. Not only has this concept been disproven on theoretical grounds, but no example put forward by Behe can be shown to be irreducibly complex. The concept has failed and has been consigned tto the dustbin of history.
I have no idea what “excellent insight” you can possibly mean. If putting forward a concept which is fundamentally flawed and subsequently making glaring errors in basic concepts of mathematical genetics constitutes “excellent insight” in your book, it certainly doesn’t in mine.
Well yes, the concept of Irreducible Complexity has been comprehensively rebutted and so Behe has tried a different angle in mathematical genetics; I have to say that whereas IC at least had the merit of a novel concept but that has subsequently been shown to lack merit, his “calculations” in The Edge of Evolution are glaringly wrong. Behe has to take his chance like all other scientists with novel ideas and persuade other scientists that he is right. That is the only forum that matters and he has failed there (the fact is that he has also failed in the social arena where, as star witness for ID at Dover, both he and the ID movement were humiliated).
You really don’t know much about the subject if you think that the work of people like Haldane, Wright, Dobzhansky, Fisher, Simpson, Hamilton and Mayr is “largely fruitless” or that the synthetic theory is based on an a priori assumption.
Well, what are you suggesting? As I have pointed out , it is not the purpose of Nature or any peer-reviewed journal to publish blatantly erroneous work in order to debunk it. Behe’s ideas have either been thoroughly trashed (the IC concept) or is so blatantly in error (The Edge) that it requires no response from the scientific community. And yes, Behe has increasingly become a crank riding a religious hobbyhorse.