I’m tinkering with videos again.
I intended to put this up last weekend, but something funny happened: I realized the first version was incredibly boring. I’m not quite in the rhythm of this video game; my first draft started with the same points, but then I started…adding…to it. Oh, this part needs further explanation: scribble up a paragraph of deeper content. Ooops, better qualify this part. Here’s an interesting aside; let’s digress for a bit. I recorded my words, and it was about a half hour long, and then I had to edit it, and it just hit me as pedantic and tedious and not at all in sync with the medium.
So I threw it all away. Extracted a few of the punchier bits, and made a 5 minute summary. It works better. Not perfect, but it’s all part of the process of learning.
Cool! Maybe I will show it to my Uncle Gary; I was at his house for his birthday last night (60) and he was claiming that evolution can’t be true because “the math doesn’t line up,” although we were interrupted by toddlers before I got a chance to ask what the hell that’s supposed to mean.
(He is an engineer and admittedly a math whiz, but WTF? We’re talking about *biology* here.)
Very nice video. I’ve been enjoying all of them. Thanks!
Six points, eh? Well the Bible has TEN Commandments, so that whups your six Concepts.
I understand the bit about populations but you have to remember that natural selection pertains to individuals within a population. So sometimes it gets confusing. The individuals get the variations. The population tends to reign in deviants. And shifting gene frequency doesn’t produce protein machines, regulatory networks, etc.
I agree with your points. Your points tell me that there isn’t a scientific theory of evolution because it proposes untestable concepts.
Science requires concepts be testable. How can we test the claim that chance genetic changes and contigencies produced tetrapods from fish-like populations?
Getting better PZ. A nice primer for what a creationist troll needs know in order to talk intelligently about evolution. Except, once they open their thoughts on-line, it is obvious they are ignoramuses that don’t understand the basics evolution, and think gottcha questions will refute *snicker* evolution. Only showing by as much evidence of peer reviewed scientific quality to support their idiotology, as scientists have shown to support evolution over the past 150 years by their inability to refute (with a Nobel Prize waiting in the wings) evolution, can they even begin to make to make a case. I know they never will.
I’m sorry you wasted all this effort, PZ. Sombodysdad#4 has figured out that there actually isn’t a theory of evolution at all. I guess the jig is up! And you would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for that meddling random internet commenter!
sombodysdad:
Genetic algorithms show the concept is sound. It has been tested; it works.
Random assortment and recombination are only theories, after all, so I don’t understand how gamete formation and fertilization could have produced sombodysdad. I don’t see how we could test the claim that genetics could have produced him.
So how about a video on the Gould vs Dawkins thing.
@JP:
See the Salem hypothesis and the Dunning-Kruger syndrome — his (probably well-founded) understanding of engineering and math are almost certainly giving him a false sense of confidence in areas outside his areas of study and competence.
The Talk.origins archive has some bad-math-related creationist claims.
Genetic algorithms are examples of evolution by means of targeted searches, ie intelligent design. They definitely do not support evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. The program is written to solve specific problems is given the resources and is guided towards a solution or solutions.
@sombodysdad .:
Do you think that anything that deals with the past is untestable? Would you agree that it is “untestable” that you yourself existed five minutes ago, or five years ago?
PZ the problem is you don’t have a testable blind and mindless mechanism capable of producing eukaryotes from populations of prokaryotes and archaea- never mind where those came from. Recombination is real but how did you decide it is a blind and mindless process? You can make fun of me all that you want that will never be positive evidence for evolution by means of blind and mindless processes.
ID is not anti-evolution. ID is OK with evolution by design- that is organisms being intelligently designed to be able to adapt to their environment.
No. We can test to see if something is an artifact or if nature did it.
No
Look, if you want something to be called science it has to be testable. Without that you can say just about anything and no one can check it to see if it represents reality or nonsense.
As for the scientific theory of evolution if someone could just link to it and say how it is a scientific theory of evolution I will gladly stand corrected. A Nick Matzke once told me that I was being foolish to ask for a scientific theory of evolution to actually be published. Foolish me for asking that scientific theories be written down so they can be checked, challenged, verified or refuted. Can’t have any scrutiny on the scientific theory of evolution.
@sombodysdad .
Wouldn’t the intelligent design be to calculate the optimal solution or solutions from known principles, rather than randomly exploring the space of possible solutions with an algorithm?
But the changes in genetic algorithms are blind and mindless. Saying that the the solution is “guided” implies that blind and mindless process can do the guiding!
@sombodysdad .:
So are you yourself the product of nature, or are you yourself an artifact? What tests would you suggest to determine one way or the other?
@sombodysdad .:
I strongly suspect that Nick Matzke told you no such thing. Do you have a link to what he actually said?
The changes in genetic algorithms are all guided towards a solution. The genetic algorithm that produced a small unknown antenna was designed to produce an antenna tuned for specific waves. Genetic algorithms don’t just happen upon solutions.
There isn’t any evidence that nature produced living organisms. There isn’t even a way to test the claim. But when we look real close there are many clues that converge on intelligent design. One of those clues has to due with total and perfect solar ecplipses:
Just-so cosmic collisions? I doubt that very much.
Then there is the genetic code (and its variants)- codes are arbitrary, meaning not determined by physics and chemistry. But we do know a source that produces codes. The there are all of teh other finer details of living organisms that all point to intelligent design over blind and mindless processes.
@sombodysdad .:
Since I don’t think you’re arguing in good faith, I will ask, rather, what have you found to be inadequate about various explanations of the theory of evolution that are online?
Intelligent design fuckwits, show us YOUR diety,. or shut the fuck up. Welcome to science….
The genetic algorithm was designed to explore various possibilities with random changes, which were then tested to see if they met the criteria.
Nick Matzke said it- over on Uncommon Descent
Various possibilities within pre-designed parameters. The antenna GA was never going to produce anything but a solution to the problem it was designed to solve.
I learned stuff from your video, PZ.
For instance, I learned that you own lots and lots of beautiful polyhedral dice. Jealous!
Explanations can differ seeing that they cannot be fact checked against anything. Why isn’t there a peer-reviewed scientific theory of evolution that can just be looked up and read?
You want proof, not science. If your position had the science then ID would fade away.
@sombodysdad .(#24)
There is nothing you could have written that would have destroyed your credibility here faster.
You might as well have typed “I’m totally a facetious twit arguing in bad faith”
sombodysdad:
You are mistaken. The only “guidance” is the fitness function, which corresponds to the real-life circumstance of organisms surviving their environment long enough to reproduce (aka natural selection). The “solution” in real life is population survival, for which the weak anthropic principle perfectly accounts (if it doesn’t survive, there can be no more generations!).
Again: the concept which you imagined to be untestable (i.e. stochastically iterated mutation and crossover with selection) has been tested, and it works. And, more importantly, it’s explanatory, sufficient and parsimonious.
(Contrast that with ID, which is merely sufficient)
<blockquote.You want proof, not science.Science deals with evidence, not presupposition, and you have, as expected, shown no links to the scientific literature. You lose because of that. Links, or you are WRONG. So does the legal system. Example, Dover v. Kitzmiller. WikI , PBS.
Where are YOUR Links, that aren’t laughably dismissed because of their source, like the Discovery Institute (presuppositional ignorant assholes)?
Which they clearly are not. If human beings were designed, for example, we should sue the designer: too many teeth for the size of the mouth leading to frequent deaths from the rotting of impacted wisdom teeth prior to modern dentistry, serious risk of choking because food has to pass over the windpipe to be swallowed, chronic back problems due to incomplete adaptation to upright posture, the ridiculous design of the female pelvis leading to high probabilities of death in childbirth before modern medicine, most of the genome actually consisting of junk… It is precisely the imperfections in organisms, and the “senseless signs of history” in (IIRC) Stephen J. Gould’s phrase, that show that evolution was indeed an unguided (not random, of ocurse) process, while cdesign proponentsism is a crock of shit – as well as being a barefaced fraud thought up solely to smuggle religion into science classrooms.
As for the blithering nonsense about solar eclipses @20, srsly? That’s the best you can come up with in the way of “evidence” for your
God“Intellligent Designer”?The video’s pretty good, PZ, but it might be useful to try a version delivered to an audience– it wouldn’t have to be a huge number, just enough folks who you can engage with and speak to. Your delivery in last seems stilted and I can see your eyes moving across the, what… teleprompter? Legal pad outline/text? I’ve seen you speak; regrettably, I’ve not had the experience of sitting in on a lecture, but I’m pretty sure that you work better with an audience.
My two cents…
Further to #32, if evolution is an unguided process, we would expect to find multiple failures of complete adaptation to the environment – which is exactly what we do find. In addition to the human examples I’ve given, consider for example the failure of many Australian marsupials to complete with introduced competitors from elsewhere. Why hadn’t the “intelligent designer” designed them so they could outcompete animals evolved elsewhere? We would also expect to find mechanisms which would allow new functions for pieces of the genome to arise by chance, without destroying old ones. This is exactly what we do find, in the phenomena of gene duplication by unequal crossing-over during meiosis, and we can see that this has led to divergence between the copies – for example in the evolution of mammalian hemoglobin. We can also see unguided processes of mutation and selection at work in the immune system of individual animals, so we know from current examples that such processes can and do produce useful adaptive results. By contrast, “intelligent design”, if it predicts anything, predicts perfect adaptation – which we do not find. Of course, cdesign proponentsists (who almost never do any actual research) can and do fall back on completely untestable claims – that the obvious imperfections in organisms have some function we have not yet discovered, or that the “intelligent designer” has purposes we do not understand. It is indeed cdesign proponentsism that is truly untestable, because its advocates never place any constraints on the aims and methods of the “designer”.
@sombodysdad .:
Do you have a test for it not being just-so cosmic collisions? I hope that you don’t imagine that your doubt is an actual test.
Do you imagine that codes can violate physics or chemistry?
Unconstrained by biology, chemistry, or physics?
What’s the test for this?
Hahahohoheehee, you’ve got yourself a real live ID kook, congrats PZ.
An unexpected benefit of the videos seems to be that they draw in a new chewtoy now and then. There’s also a creationist gibbering in the YouTube comments now.
I wish to understand the theory of ensoulment.
How are souls connected to a body/mind, and how do believers know they are there. Extra credit: what conservation laws do not apply to souls, and why/how?
@4, sombodysdad .
Easy.
If fish-like populations didn’t exist before tetrapods, that would falsify the theory. If genes (or populations) never changed, that would falsify the theory.
If genetic heritage testing showed no relation between tetrapods and fish, that would cast major doubt on the theory. But fish did come first. If no similar “transitional form” type fossils or species existed, that would cast doubt on the theory. But we have tons of those in fossils and in contemporary species (fish that walk on their fins, and so on).
I could go on.
No more coincidental than coincidentally having an intelligent designer that has an “eclipse only for 250 million more years” fetish. That is actually unlikely. You also have to count all the countless number of coincidences that didn’t happen. Like star constellations that show us vital information about our past and our biology, see my artistic depiction of this here. That would be a coincidence! But it didn’t happen. Hmm. Instead we have a moon that sometimes (not always) blocks the sun completely …only when it happens to line up. Not as impressive, now is it?
Then you have to explain the odd absence of, you know, design. Then you have to explain the odd absence of the designer.
How do you not then conclude that “genetic code” is a misnomer? Do you think the people who came up with the phrase “genetic code” had some special ability to tell that the physical chemical wasn’t due to physics of chemistry? Typical tinfoil hat low thinking skills.
If it wasn’t clear why I said we have to “count coincidences that didn’t happen”, I was mostly trying to say that, well coincidences do happen. So how do you tell if something is mere coincidence, or design? You have to compare the odds of it happening by chance, to the probability that 1) someone could design it 2) someone wanted to design it, and stuff like that. In the case of the moon, there is no apparent entity that could design it, and no apparent motive to design it that way.
*woops, I wrote “but fish did come first” in the wrong paragraph. It should be in the previous paragraph, obviously! :P
as a result of the subsequent conservation I learned the word ondontodes which turned out to be the skin bumps on fish skin that got hardened with enamel probably not very much like a trout, or sea bass maybe but close enough for the idea to work.
yes the six ideas are pretty basic and key to how it works,
in all these discussions and the deep conflict that there is with the fundamentalist I am reminded of the scene in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe radio drama where Zaphod was the only person to ever survive being subjected to the Infinite Perspective Vortex. the creationists seem to already be afraid of even a little corner of it without ever actually experiencing it
Very nice presentation. Well done and performed. I liked it.
@sombodysdad .:
Did you not just claim, @#14 ?
Which one is true? Your first claim, or your second one? They cannot both be true.
Do you not care that you contradict yourself?
@sombodysdad .:
I don’t believe you.
Scientific explanations are fact-checked against reality.
I don’t believe you would recognize a peer-reviewed scientific theory of evolution if it painted itself purple and danced naked on a harpsichord singing “peer-reviewed scientific theories of evolution are here again”
“Evolution is fake because of solar eclipses” has to be the best creationist non-sequitur I’ve seen in a while.
PZ
I liked the video and I think I actually learned something.
Thank you.
(p.s. your hair did not look good (it might be a greenscreen thing))
All great art (or the process of conveying an idea in any communication) involves removing the non-essential.
Good job on that one!
…but, you know, I sure would have liked to listen to ALL of that ‘pedantic’ stuff with all the cool details.
But maybe that’s just me. I just like details.
I have taken the liberty to transcribe the 6 concepts which PZ addresses in the eponymous video.
Would have been nice if these were in either the description or the video itself.
It is notable that the ID proponent who ventured here claims to entirely agree to them.
—
1. Evolution is about populations
2. Evolution depends on chance
3. Evolution takes full advantage of emergent properties
4. Evolution does not stand alone
(genes on their own are just a sequence of nucleotides)
5. Evolution is a contingent process
6. Evolution depends on diversity
KG @34 “…the “intelligent designer” has purposes we do not understand….”
Surely it’s obvious that
HeSheTheyWhatever has a really weird, vicious sense of humour.Emergence is a concept I used to, but can longer quite, wrap my head around. Maybe it is a vindictive reaction to the fuzzbrains who often push it as propaganda for fluffy “complexity” reasons. But at some point it breaks down to the element of surprise or unexpected higher level results. Would omniscient Laplace’s demon be surprised? Does emergence sell on epistemic ignorance where people don’t quite understand all the circuity stuff between genotype and phenotype?
I had long taken the view that genes are not 1:1 this for that factors and development is largely a matter of cell-cell interaction where genes merely subserve the process and was smitten by morphogenic field stuff (or Ernst Mayr’s somatic program), but even there it seems nongenic components are still reducible in principle, but beyond compression thus the methodological need for levels of explanation that capture most of the phenomenon in question.
Very good video, PZ, quickly killing off major misconceptions. I would just put one more point on the list for any similar video in the future. Creationists are always insisting on the point that evolution is “only chance”, so that they can then run around saying that natural selection is ineffective. So they’re happy to have “chance” be the main focus. I realize that you were aiming at believers in long-term cosmic guidance, but we also have to think of the misrepresentation of evolutionary biology as explaining remarkable adaptations by purely random wandering, a picture that just happens to leave out natural selection. As you know, that is used by creationist debaters to persuade gullible audiences that evolutionary biologists have no way to account for nonrandomly good adaptations.
Yes. That was the point of the throwaway line that if you’re rolling lots and lots of dice, you can start making predictions from expected statistical distributions. It’s on my list to make a video about that, explaining that stochastic processes built on a foundation of chance actually can make mathematically robust patterns.
I learned this one real quick running D&D (and AD&D) campaigns. One die, truly random distribution. 2D6, a bell curve. 3d6, more of a bell curve, etc. I learned, as a DM, that I could control what happened partly by changing the number of 6-sided die being rolled. Later I started using all the fancy die and things became more random.
Thank you for the video. I’m still trying to wrap my historian’s mind around all of the different things that influence evolution.
I said solar eclipses are evidence for ID and that ID is not anti-evolution. Clearly you have issues
John Marley chokes:
Why? Naick matzke said it. That is a fact. And you cannot link to any scientific theory of evolution. And that means you don’t have any credibility
Nice video indeed. You are getting better at it, PZ.
Perhaps you may be more elaborate about the role played by chance in evolution. There are too many creationists equating evolution with “mere chance”.
Genetic algorithms are intelligently designed to solve specific problems. Everything they do is guided towards a solution or solutions.`
If someone has a way to test the claim that blind and mindless processes produced living organisms I would love to hear it.
If someone has a way to test the claim that blind and mindless processes produced ATP synthase I would love to hear it.
If someone has a way to test the claim that blind and mindless processes produced eyes and vision systems I would love to hear it.
Heck you guys can’t even find any scientific theory of evolution.
sombodysdad “Evolution by design” is a contradiction. You are clearly pro-ID and anti-evolution.
We have some tolerance for stupidity here, but not for hypocrisy.
ID is anti-evolution (a science as it ignores imaginary deities) as it requires divine intervention. If you lie about that, what else will you lie about? Like your imaginary deity/designer? Still no evidence to support your ignorance and presuppositions. Nor can you provide any. That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Assert your imaginary designer all you want. Your assertion is dismissed without physical evidence. Point to your phantasm, don’t talk.
An example where one can find evidence for evolution. A university library.
Start reading.
rietpluim:
No it isn’t. ID is OK with descent with modification, ie evolution. ID is OK with a change in allele frequency over time, ie evolution.
ID argues only against evolution by means of blind and mindless processes having sole dominion over evolutionary processes. Evolution by means of intelligent design is still evolution. The stupidity is all yours, riet
Nerd:
ID does not require divine intervention. That much was testified to in Court.
You guys don’t even have a methodology to test the claims of evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. So how can you call it science?
If someone has a way to test the claim that blind and mindless processes produced living organisms I would love to hear it.
If someone has a way to test the claim that blind and mindless processes produced ATP synthase I would love to hear it.
If someone has a way to test the claim that blind and mindless processes produced eyes and vision systems I would love to hear it.
Heck you guys can’t even find any scientific theory of evolution.
Bullshit.
ID does not require divine intervention. ID does not require God. And no amount of whining will ever change that
PZ, I’d like to propose a #7 to your list, for sombodysdad and his ilk:
You don’t get to make up the definition of evolution. Evolution theory already has a widely accepted definition, which you are going to use if you want to challenge evolution theory, otherwise you’re just being dishonest.
“The Design Revolution”, page 25, Dembski writes:
He goes on to say:
But I am sure that will be ignored also…
reit:
I am not doing that. I am using the standard and accepted definitions.
What theory? There isn’t any scientific theory of evolution.
But do tell of this mysterious definition of evolution.
sombodysdad: Your misunderstanding of science and particularly evolutionary science is so vast as to be willful. You are not being honest and therefore you ain’t worth the time it would take to attempt to enlighten you and thus you deserve only to be mocked. Or even better, ignored.
PZ: I would have appreciated a quick restating of the principals at the very end. Other than that very minor quibble it’s excellent.
sombodysdad, I really feel sorry for somebody.
Intelligent Design surely necessitates an ‘Intelligence’ to do the ‘Designing’: call it ‘God’; ‘DeepThought’; ‘Little Green Person’; whatever, they really are all the same non-thing.
When you say “ID does not require divine intervention” I suspect a mere sophistry attack coming on.
I wonder if it could be said the immune response by lymphocytes could be said to evolve within human individuals during ontogeny given a population of lymphocytes with allelic variation generated by shuffling and hypermutation is then subjected to an analogue of natural selection. But these adaptions don’t get passed to the next generation of humans (contra Ed Steele in Lamarck’s Signature).
Wasn’t there a court case in which a piece of evidence was introduced in which the creationists had used a simple find-and-replace function to remove the word “creation” and replace it, wholesale, with “Intelligent Design”?
Ah, found it:
So gods are not needed. Yet the book that made the initial claim for Intelligent Design was a wholesale redo of a creationist’s tome. But no gods are necessary.
somebodysdad, not only do you not understand the Theory of Evolution, an idea with so much evidence to support it that it ranks of there with Relativity and Gravity, but you also do not even understand the history of the ID movement. It was created by creationists in order to get around court cases that, quite rightly, found that teaching creationism in public classrooms was teaching religion and thus unconstitutional. And Intelligent Design has been found, by the courts, to also be a transparent effort to teach creationism.
If ID doesn’t need a god, then how does your example of the solar eclipses work?
Ed Seedhouse- you bald assertions and false accusations prove that you are clueless
Why is God required for solar eclipses?
Late last year the BBC had a report about the emergence of a new species of finch in the Galapagos. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-42103058
I can’t find anything about this on Pharyngula. What’s the story here please?
Look, you guys can attack ID with your ignorance all day long. That will never produce any support for your unsupportable position.
You guys don’t even have a methodology to test the claims of evolution by means of blind and mindless processes. So how can you call it science?
If someone has a way to test the claim that blind and mindless processes produced living organisms I would love to hear it.
If someone has a way to test the claim that blind and mindless processes produced ATP synthase I would love to hear it.
If someone has a way to test the claim that blind and mindless processes produced eyes and vision systems I would love to hear it.
Heck you guys can’t even find any scientific theory of evolution.
And if someone sez that science doesn’t require concepts to be testable then you are just clueless.
Who is the “Inteligent Designer” in Intelligent Design? If you are going to invoke an outside agency to explain a phenomena, that outside agency must be identified.
Ogvorbis,
You are sadly mistaken as there isn’t any scientific theory of evolution.
@sombodysdad .:
I still don’t believe you.
Any comment on whether there is or is not a test for ?
Please resolve your contradiction and commit to one answer.
All right. Repetition, ignoring comments, insults: sombodysdad is clearly a troll.
These creatures you call mice, you see, they are not quite as they appear. They are merely the protrusion into our dimension of vastly hyperintelligent pandimensional beings.
somebodysdad, you keep stating that there is no scientific theory of evolution. Where did you read that? What is your citation for the claim?
And your cite should be from a published, peer-reviewed paper.
Rietpluim is clearly right. And the standard procedure for dealing with trolls is to cease feeding them.
vole #88
Here at Pharyngula, the standard procedure for dealing with trolls is to keep feeding them until they ‘splode.
Oh OK then, Chigau #89. The splosion won’t be pretty though. I hate that yucky greeny-yellow stuff.
The thing is, quite a bit of trollery ago, back at #78, I asked a question which is in danger of being drowned out. There are people around here who know a lot more than I do about genetics and evolution, and I would be genuinely interested to know their views about this alleged speciation event, which sounds potentially very important indeed. And unusually bad news for creationist trolls.
Ogvorbis ,
My claim is supported by reality. No one can link to any scientific theory of evolution. What does that tell you?
Owlmirror ,
I don’t care what you believe. There are tests for artifacts but there aren’t any tests for nature producing living organisms. You could refute that claim by linking to such tests but you won’t cuz they don’t exist.
That you’re out of touch with reality.
The theory of evolution — the process by which organisms change over time as a result of changes in heritable physical or behavioral traits. Changes that allow an organism to better adapt to its environment will help it survive and have more offspring — helps to explain reality.
And I notice you do not answer the other questions:
Oggy:
Oggy:
Link to the scientific theory of evolution. What you just stated fits in with the Creationists” view of baraminology.
vole, reality is on my side.
sombodysdad:”Ed Seedhouse- you bald assertions and false accusations prove that you are clueless”
Oh look – doesn’t understand the possessive case!
Ed Seedhouse is proud to be an ignorant coward
Ed Seedhouse:
@sombodysdad .
What an odd non-sequitur. What I said I did not believe you about was what you claimed Nick Matzke said.
You could refute my non-belief by linking to what he wrote but you won’t cuz it doesn’t exist.
I am not going to search through hundreds of posts for you. You can actually contact him and ask.
That said the fact that neither you nor anyone else can link to any scientific theory of evolution proves my claim
@sombodysdad .:
You can’t search, because what you claim he wrote doesn’t exist.
The fact that you can’t link to what you claim he wrote proves that what you claim he wrote doesn’t exist.
sombodysdad .
Please provide us with your working definitions of:
fact
scientific
theory
proof
claim
sombodysdad : “And yet I can easily prove that I understand both better than you do”
Then why have you wasted all that time showing absolute ignorance? Are you assuming a disguise?
Our gracious host is a biologist and a professor of biology. He does actual scientific research. What are your imagined qualifications? I say “imagined” because you haven’t provided any evidence for any of your extraordinary claims.
Wait! Now I am engaging you – clearly a fools mission. From now on I will only post to laugh at you, because that’s all you deserve. Every time you call me a fool is a badge of honour to me.
PZ, I concur with Scott @ 33 that having an audience might help your delivery. (I’ve attended your lectures here in the NW and they were accessible and delightful.) Maybe a student looking for extra credit…
For somebodysdad : https://www.thoughtco.com/evolution-is-a-scientific-theory-249906
@96 :
Morris’ maxim : “There is no scientific finding imaginable that cannot, one way or another, BE MADE TO FIT THE CREATION model.” When you have access to a Magical Sky Pixie that can produce any effect at whim, anything and everything ‘fits’.
@95
IDiots mistake complexity and ‘improbability’ for intentional design : “I ASSERT that since evolution cannot explain X, DESIGNERDIDIT !!!!!!!!!!!11!!!!!!1!!!!” Generally ignoring the fact that usually evolution can explain X (but since the explanation does not invoke the unknowable whim of a Magical Sky Pixie, IDiots and creationuts refuse to accept it. Then turn around and blubber ‘since evolution has no ACCEPTABLE explanation, it must be false !! Therefore, my evidence-free blubberings MUST be accepted as true without thought or question !!’).
Also ignoring the fact that ‘THE MAGIC MAN DIDIT !!!!1!1!!’ is utterly useless as an explanation.
What IDiots call design can indeed be generated by ‘blind’ and ‘mindless’ processes – computer programs can be EVOLVED to perform logical operations (thus demonstrating that the PROCESSES of blind variation filtered through selection works to create functional designs; you will, of course, clench your buttocks and fart out some excuse as to why they don’t count).
sombodysdad,
If there is a designer, then there has to be a goal said designer is striving toward. What is that goal?
One of the greatest visualizations of evolution in action is right here (a link):
https://youtu.be/plVk4NVIUh8
With some media release mumbo jumbo:
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/09/a-cinematic-approach-to-drug-resistance/
Absolutely stunning blow creationists out of water stuff right there.
Total bull. First off, the very first “basic principle” genetic algorithms they tested, and still play with, to refine them, had these basic principles – 1. Define some concept of what “food” will be for them. 2. Allow them to mutate their “code”, in this case literal code. 3. Let them do this, without outside interference, and once in a while peak in to see how they are doing. There was no “end goal” here, intelligent or otherwise, yet, they did mutate, they did develop variations, they often developed ones that made no logical sense to the experimenters, and the one attempt to “intelligently design” anything was based on taking the ones that did really well, and killing all of them, so as to let the rest keep evolving, and, hilariously, some oddity between the “test environment”, which was supposed to let them look at individuals and the “world” they evolved in resulted in some of them recognizing where they where, and playing dead, when in the test environment. But, this didn’t start out at playing totally dead, but as not functional as well in it, then, functioning even less well in it, then less well again, then finally appearing to not do anything at all, when in that environment – all because the scientists kept killing anything that, when they where looking at it, did something, in an attempt to see if they could sort of kill the evolutionary process itself, inside their experiment.
Second, you are vastly missing the bloody point here. Yeah, there is some level of intelligent choices being made to start the process, and define what the “outcome” will need to be, but all people making an antennae are doing is a very fast, and monitored, version of the equivalent of dumping thousands of gold fish, none of which are 100% a specific color, into an isolated pond, then coming back every few hundred years to see if they can find one that is 100% gold, or some other favored color. So, instead of waiting a few hundred years, hoping that chance will produce a fish that is the right color, and only checking every 100 years *for* one, they stick a robot in there, with the fish, to keep an eye out for one that is the right color, and inform them when they got it.
Since they wanted a freaking gold fish, it was pretty dang sensible for them to dump gold fish into the pond, instead of say, crayfish – intelligent design!! Since they decided, before hand, to pick a specific, and plausible, color to aim for, it was an intelligent choice – intelligent design!! Since they put a robot in there, to keep track of what was going on (the equivalent of having your monitoring software watch for a specific frequency, and other things, for the antennae), and inform everyone when it spotted one that is the right color, was also intelligent – intelligent design!! Only… the problem in both examples is that the freaking robot isn’t their to force the fish to evolve the way it builders want, just watch for something that did, nor would it change much – see prior example of the first experiments in this concept – if it it killed the ones that didn’t show the right color (and it would be damn stupid anyway, if the experimenters decided they also needed a all red fish, after killing off anything that had gold on it, or.. say, an antennae with a different frequency, which was now impossible, because all results that would have led to it where gone) – Whoops, **not intelligent design!!**.
Seems, the “process” to get the result isn’t deigned, or intelligent, but the choices applied when deciding what to aim for, and what to watch for, in this case, are. The only way you can call the whole thing “intelligent design”, is if you ignore the fact that the “evolution” part of the process doesn’t have to be at all. And, the fact that any “guidance” going on here might be, more or less, intelligent, doesn’t negate the fact that there is no sensible grounds to claim that *everything in a real world environment was “designed” to “guide” evolution*. At the very bloody least, a lot of changes to species end up being the result of things done by complete flipping idiots, that have no clue of the consequences, and where not “intelligently” deciding *ANYTHING*, about what they did to the environment, which led to those species evolving in reaction to them.
That, just by itself, negates the whole idea – if any idiot, or accidental, thing you do causes changes, which drive evolution, there can be no sensible argument, at all, that evolution is a “designed” process. Its just one that reacts to what ever unfortunate situation you put the thing evolving into. Neither the evolutionary process, nor, to go back to my example, the flipping fish involved, give a damn about what the fool that dropped them in the pond “intended” them to evolve into. They just change, over time, and due to contingencies in their environment, not even all of which are “under the control” of the people that put them in there.
That we can use this process to make something that is more controlled, and thus closer to your nonsense @somebodysdad, doesn’t make it evidence that everything else happened the same way. Because, again, the process doesn’t care if the result, in either case, was a) intentional, or b) a power spike, which changed some bits, or c) some moron experimenter, unintentionally spilling coffee on the machine, which, by pure chance, also changed some bits, instead of frying the computer. It Does Not Behave Differently To Non-Intelligent Unguided Events.
Evolution is at bare bones merely the shifting frequencies of alleles within a population over generational time. There are several phenomena that can cause these shifts including selection, drift and gene flow. In bacteria a really fascinating type of gene flow is known as lateral gene transfer which makes up for them lacking brains when dealing with our antibiotics:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1574-6976.2011.00273.x/full
Gould’s modal bacter holding its own against Huxley’s Psychozoans.
Actually, probably one of the strongest arguments in favor of evolution over design is that the “design” is far from optimal. The human knee and back are not optimal for upright walking. And if your goal was to provide immunity to malaria, would you do it by introducing sickle cell anemia? Design cannot be ruled out based on the evidence–but intelligent design certainly can. If you want to introduce a theory of dumbass design, knock yourself out. The problem is that a dumbass design theory would have little predictive power, precisely because there are so many ways dumbasses can fuck up. Intelligent design/engineering, not so much. They tend to progress in a fairly orderly fashion toward a goal. And if the designer is a sky pixie, then why would said sky pixie not make similar changes in ALL of the members of a species, rather that start with a mutation in an individual.
Evolution will look a lot like dumbass design, except that the goal will be toward survival in the environment. When the environment changes, the fitness changes. And why not start with an individual mutation. Evolution has time. Designers…not so much. Frankly, if I were a deity and my followers were saying I intended all of these fuck ups rather than just setting evolution on autopilot, I would be insulted.
Except Intelligent Design is NOT Optimal Design.
Disease and deformities are the only arguments that support evolution by means of blind and mindless processes
Prof Weird- That isn’t a scientific theory of evolution. Try again.
To Ed Seedhouse- I never said PZ didn’t do scientific research. What I said is that he doesn’t know how to test the claim that living organisms arose via physics and chemistry and what emerges from the interactions of matter and energy.
@115 somebodysdad .: That’s abiogenesis, not evolution.
@11 you said “The changes in genetic algorithms are all guided towards a solution. The genetic algorithm that produced a small unknown antenna was designed to produce an antenna tuned for specific waves. Genetic algorithms don’t just happen upon solutions.” How would you prove these assertions?
@66 you said “ID does not require divine intervention. ID does not require God.” Then what is the guide, and what differentiates it from God?
If we were engineered by interdimensional space aliens that would be ID without a supernatural deity.
The ID and creation proponents need to explain why there would be dead remnants of yolking genes in mammals that don’t lay eggs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2267819/
Sloppy ass design that.
What designed the designer? :)
@56
Ha!
sombodysdadioioio:”What I said is that he doesn’t know how to test the claim that living organisms arose via physics and chemistry and what emerges from the interactions of matter and energy.”
An evidence free claim. Prove it. Use actual evidence.
Notholdingbreath…because I don’t think you even understand what “evidence” is.
(plots, secretly, to waste sombodysdadioioio’s time because we ain’t coming back to this here thread, are we precious? Nobody tell him though..)
I sure wish the audio was about 10 db hotter. It is better to have to turn down the volume than to run out of volume trying to hear it.
John Morales, and what designed the designer’s designer? Is it designers all the way down? Is sumboddy’spop an interior designer with ideas above his station? So many questions, so little understanding, eh?
It requires a stupendous amount of arrogant and willful ignorance for creationists to make their vacuous claims, as sombodysdad (what a disappointment to the children!) so eagerly demonstrates. One of the built-in compensations of our universe is that the arrogantly ignorant will always very eagerly make themselves known by scrupulously avoiding Lincoln’s advice: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”
“There isn’t any evidence that nature produced living organisms.”
Abiogenesis has nothing to do with evolution. Willfully ignorant creationists always seem to have a lot of problems staying on a single topic as well as confusing abiogenesis with evolution. What is the evidence for nature not producing living organisms? Will your nonsensical claims even change when science discovers one or more paths showing that nature actually did such a thing?
“As for the scientific theory of evolution if someone could just link to it and say how it is a scientific theory of evolution I will gladly stand corrected.”
An obvious *lie*, since you could have trivially searched on your own but refused to perform such a self education since it directly contradicts the ideological willful ignorance that creationism requires. But then, where would creationism be without their seemingly never ending source of lies?
“The [Genetic algorithm] program is written to solve specific problems is given the resources and is guided towards a solution or solutions.” It is quite marvelous how creationists continually ignore the filter of selection (including natural, sexual, etc.) in biological evolution. Show us a earth dwelling life form that is doing well in an environment for which it is totally mal-adapted. Selection is the filter that biology and genetic algorithms both use. In what way can you show that selection resulting a 99+% failure rate is “intelligently designed”? Follow the link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction
Note the Gish Gallop below, jumping from biology to astrophysics on a biology website. Link: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
“One of those clues has to due[SIC] with total and perfect solar ecplipses[SIC] …”
The solar eclipse is not actually “total and perfect” except by innumerate fools. The moon’s orbit around the earth is elliptical and as a result the earth-moon distance varies from about 363,295 km to 405,503 km (“about” because the moon is slowly receding from the earth due to tidal action). You can clearly see the apparent size changes at these links:
https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/16/why-is-only-one-side-of-the-moon-visible-from-earth/22#22
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_eclipse
Creationists like to claim that the approximately 400:1 ratio between the diameter and distance to the sun and the diameter and distance to the moon exactly match when they only approximately match, and that is why we sometimes have annular solar eclipses instead of total solar eclipses (in 1992 we had an annular solar eclipse). This is easily checked but creationists never seem to bother checking details that do not conform to their truly idiotic narrative. It also obviously presupposes that the earth really is “special”, even though the astonishingly egocentric thinking (like geocentrism) of creationists was thoroughly disproved centuries ago.
“Why isn’t there a peer-reviewed scientific theory of evolution that can just be looked up and read?”
Obviously false because there is such a thing, and in fact there are at least thousands of such things added to the scientific literature every year. Of course you have to be both willing to actually read about evolution and understand what was written. If you are an adult you alone are responsible for your own education, not anyone here. Yet we frequently see creationists claiming that no one can show them something that they never looked for on their own and which they always carefully avoided since it does not agree with their ideologically based willful ignorance. You can always start at this *very* brief list of links:
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evo_02
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=biological+evolution
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=articles+on+biological+evolution
http://www.nas.edu/evolution/
http://www.nas.edu/evolution/TheoryOrFact.html
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/10499/nas-colloquium-the-future-of-evolution
http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=11876
https://www.sciencedaily.com/news/plants_animals/evolution/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/evolutionary-biology/
https://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.list/tagNo/8/tags/evolution/
etc.
You also won’t find the evolution of the camel in a single book since the details are much too large for a single book. Why have creationists never published their wondrous claims in peer reviewed science journals and received lots of citations therein?
“ID does not require divine intervention. ID does not require God.”
Note that the above does not state “a god” but rather assumes that there is only one god (with a capital G), and it does not require much imagination which one (s)he prefers. Of course the above claim is false, follow the Links at the bottom, especially the Discover Institute Wedge document that they foolishly published on their website before deciding to remove it out of the extreme embarrassment of having displayed their grand plan so openly to the scientifically literate. They apparently thought (to use the term very loosely) that only creationists would be reading their website. And of course multiple Discovery Institute “luminaries” have openly contradicted your statement as well. An excellent example of a profound level of willful ignorance taken to its logical conclusion.
“Intelligent design is not a evangelical Christian thing, or a generally Christian thing or even a generally theistic thing.”
You need to point out this “alternative fact” to the leading ID proponent organization known as the Discovery Institute[SIC] (where the disgraced Dembski is a “fellow”), which we all know that you already know about since you admitted it is a previously unsupported claim. Also note that William Dembski has zero credibility in the scientific community and he has been losing much of his support in the various creationist communities (which disagree with each other in quite obvious sectarian ways). Dembski *also* said: “”Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.”, funny how you have completely missed that and other obvious contradictions made by these horses asses themselves against your false claim. And here is another marvelous Dembski quote: “”Intelligent design opens the whole possibility of us being created in the image of a benevolent God. The job of apologetics is to clear the ground — to clear obstacles that prevent people from coming to the knowledge of Christ. And if there’s anything that I think has blocked the growth of Christ as the free reign of the spirit and people accepting the scripture and Jesus Christ, it is the Darwinian naturalistic view.” Oops, in what way does that support your counterfactual claim? Scientifically illiterate and former law professor Phillip Johnson is widely acknowledged to be the founder of “Intelligent Design”, and here is what he has openly stated: “This isn’t really, and never has been a debate about science. It’s about religion and philosophy.” Oops again, I have provided some of the relevant Links at the bottom.
“ID argues only against evolution by means of blind and mindless processes having sole dominion over evolutionary processes.”
Again false, follow the Links at the bottom. Religious apologetics only “works” for the sufficiently uninformed and terminally credulous, which is just one of the multiple reasons why apologetics was expelled from science some 4 centuries ago. Since every claim that you have made this far is false, is that you Dembski?
Links:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_Dembski
https://ncse.com/blog/2016/06/dembski-scandal-evangelical-mind-0018286
https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/2017/03/19/whatever-happened-to-intelligent-design-theorist-william-dembski/
https://sensuouscurmudgeon.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/william-dembski-is-moving-on/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy
https://ncse.com/files/pub/creationism/The_Wedge_Strategy.pdf
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/William_Dembski
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/search?q=william+dembski
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Phillip_Johnson
http://americanloons.blogspot.com/search?q=phillip+johnson
Excellent video. But I think some points need strong examples. For instance, point 6 ‘diversity’. Is variety, perhaps, especially important for a population to adapt when something in the environment changes or maybe to be able to migrate to other environments? Could you provide an example of this (or to contradict my point)? Note: I use the word ‘variety’, is this the same as ‘diversity’?
So, since diseases and deformities are ubiuquitous, by your own logic, the theory of “evolution by blind and mindless processes” is both testable – if diseases and deformities did not exist, that would call it into question – and passes the test.
I notice you have not responded to my #32 and #34 , or to Brian Pansky@39, both of which directly refuted your original claim that the evolution of tetrapods from fish by unguided processes is untestable – and in my case, also showed that the pseudo-theory of “Intelligent Design” is not testable – because you refuse to place any constraints on either the goals or the methods of the alleged designer. To the contrary, the scientific theory of evolution would indeed be refuted if it could be shown that any feature of any organism could not have evolved through unguided processes (or recent human intervention).
Your repeated demands for people to “Link to the scientific theory of evolution.” is either ignorant or dishonest (or more probably, both). Like all high-level theories, the theory of evolution by natural selection is not a static collection of propositions, but a continually developing research programme, including extensive technical terminology, methods, examples, controversies… so there is no definitive version that can be put on a few pages or that everyone will agree to. Exactly the same is true of the atomic theory in chemistry, the theory of planetary formation, the theory of plate tectonics. Only perhaps in fundamental physics will you find theories of high generality that can nonetheless be summarised succinctly or uncontroversially. Many textbooks and popular works will give you acceptable outlines of the development and current state (when they were written) of evolutionary theory, as does Wikepedia. Exactly the same is true of the other theories I have mentioned. Most such textbook descriptions will not</I. include the statement "No intelligent designer was involved" – because in the complete absence of any reason to think one was, that is not a matter of genuine scientific controversy. Similarly, chemistry textbooks will not include the statement that atoms are not pushed around by imps or leprechauns.
sombodysdad: “Except Intelligent Design is NOT Optimal Design.”
No. Evidently, it is not even competent design, unless you assume a malevolent bastard for a designer.
Again. Design assumes a purpose. Unless you state that purpose, you have no evidence.
A scientific theory makes predictions. An established scientific theory has a long track record of confirmed predictions. Evolution fits the bill. ID has never made a prediction of any kind. It is not science unless you consider it a branch of abnormal psychology.
So you are wrong.
This is simply a claim without proof made by an ignorant idiot.
Even I could do this as well as any educated biologist.
One way to do this would be to simply duplicate the process and see if one can indeed come up with life from nonlife.
This is in fact, an active area of research and has been for many decades.
BTW, we’ve actually come close and it is early in the game.
There is a lots more.
We know that the molecules of life, amino acids and other organic molecules are made and common in the environment. We even find them in meteorites.
This is simply the tired old god of the gaps fallacy again.
“We don’t know something so god exists, his name is jesus, and he is a Republican who hates the EPA, women, and nonwhites.”
God used to pull the sun across the sky in a big chariot with horses but these days, he is hiding behind the Big Bang and about to be evicted again.
Notice how somebodysdad keeps asking questions, ignoring or dismissing the answer, and repeating the question? And ignoring questions that might actually require a real answer? And tossing out the same meaningless phrases, refusing the tell us where it came from, and expects us to be convinced? Almost like there is some sort of play book for this shit.
Even for a troll he makes little effort. Maybe somebodysdad is a robot?
From #63
I just now spent a minute or two skimming this thread.
The creationist troll is neither bright nor at all educated. Most of what he posted is gibberish and the usual creationist lies.
This is one such.
In theory the Intelligent Designer(s) could be advanced technological aliens.
But that doesn’t really work.
Where did these super advanced aliens in their flying saucers come from?
They evolved. From nonlife to life to flying saucers inventing the earth’s biosphere.
Unless it is flying saucer beings all the way down. Which is impossible since the universe is only 13.7 billion years old.
In practice ID is standard creationism with a few sciency words thrown in to try to confuse people. It’s supporters are all fanatical mostly fundie xians and the money, millions of dollars all comes from xian missionary sources.