Fallacies of Evolution Redux

Discussion in 'Science' started by ChemEngineer, May 9, 2017.

  1. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    They wrote down their results - the theory they developed.

    You can read it if you want to.

    I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here.

    The theory these individuals created was tested and continues to be tested over and over and over again.
     
  2. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    I’d like to know why he thinks Faux is a more reliable source of evidence then science. Maybe, if he believes in God and God answers his prayers, he could jump from a thirty story building and pray all the way down he doesn’t hurt himself. If he survives unscathed, I’ll take that as reliable evidence that he knows what he’s talking about.
     
  3. Mamasaid

    Mamasaid Banned

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    Okay, take a walk with me down reality lane:

    You are a Canadian doctor. An ill patient in your office presents with some of the symptoms known of Lyme Disease. Okay, you have preliminarily and generally diagnosed Lyme Disease, but that just isn't good enough. You see, different strains of Lyme Disease differ in infectiousness and virulence. With what strain are you going to diagnose this patient (and thereby also prognose the patient), and how are you going to correctly treat it? How are you going to work with public officials to help identify vectors and help prevent disease?

    Why, you ask an evolutionary microbiologist!:

    https://aem.asm.org/content/81/21/7350

    Evolutionary Aspects of Emerging Lyme Disease in Canada

    "... Recently, it was found in the United States that some strains of B. burgdorferisensu stricto cause severe disease, whereas others cause mild, self-limiting disease. While many strains occurring in the United States also occur in Canada, strains in some parts of Canada are different from those in the United States. We therefore recognize a need to identify which strains specific to Canada can cause severe disease and to characterize their geographic distribution to determine which Canadians are particularly at risk. In this review, we summarize the history of emergence of LD in North America, our current knowledge of B. burgdorferi sensu stricto diversity, its intriguing origins in the ecology and evolution of the bacterium, and its importance for the epidemiology and clinical and laboratory diagnosis of LD...."

    "... Different RST groups are also associated with different rates of antibiotic-refractory Lyme arthritis (79), indicating that knowledge of the infecting strain genotype may be important for predicting disease outcome and treatment planning.
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2018
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  4. _Inquisitor_

    _Inquisitor_ Well-Known Member

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    I did quote the formulation of the scientific method, full text, I provided the context, I provided quotes from Einstein referring and referencing it, I provided other links confirming it.
    You are full of yourself, with nothing to back up anything you say.
    Your belief that theories are validated by different scientists getting together and voting which theory is scientific and which is not, is as far away from the scientific method, as anything you say is far away from from the observed reality.
     
  5. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    Where ? If it requires that much explanation, it’s wrong.
    Only a fool would deny the importance of a science that has doubled his life expectancy. Got a cell phone ?
    “The scientific method is defined as a method of research in which a problem is identified, relevant data is gathered, a hypothesis is formulated from this data, and the hypothesis is empirically tested”
     
    Last edited: Oct 9, 2018
  6. _Inquisitor_

    _Inquisitor_ Well-Known Member

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    For believers in evolution a lie is a fact.
    It is too bad that all facts I linked to and quoted disagree with them, and they never have any facts, any references to peer reviewed articles, to anything.
    They keep on coming as zombies "evolution is a theory and a fact."
    Because they say so and all different scientists got together and voted on what theory is scientific and what is not and issued a community statement.
     
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  7. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    If you don’t believe the evolution explanation, then where do you believe the modern cow came from ?
     
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  8. Mamasaid

    Mamasaid Banned

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    I.E., the global scientific community.
     
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  9. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    Who said evolution is a fact ? Science doesn’t. Science says that evidence makes evolution the most likely explanation for where we came from. Do you have another theory backed by as much evidence. If you do, state it. What’s your theory ?
     
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  10. Mamasaid

    Mamasaid Banned

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    :salute:

    Sir, me, sir

    Because it is.
     
  11. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

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    Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain how life evolves... it is important to understand that the current questions about how life evolves in no way implies any disagreement over the fact of evolution.
    - Neil A. Campbell, Biology 2nd ed., 1990, Benjamin/Cummings, p. 434
     
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  12. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    I hear you.....
    Except that as a math person, absolutes only exist in a closed system. There is still a consensus too that conclusions like evolution is the result of facts and is the best explanation. Conclusions in science are the result of evidence. We have seen no contradictory evidence. I’m not, and many aren’t, read to say 99.99% true is 100%

    But, biologists, where evolution is at its core, don’t have the same problem as physicists do who still must grapple with different evidence on different levels....like Newtonian physics vs quantum theory. So, there are just as many who aren’t absolutist about anything in science. They aren’t necessarily biologists.
    Some are willing to say 99.99% true is equal to 100%. A math person might not go there. Have had this discussion before with my biology friends,we agree to disagree.
     
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  13. Mamasaid

    Mamasaid Banned

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    A totally fair thing to say. I am also a math person, and what you say is strictly correct. But that is a somewhat esoteric definition of "fact".

    I think of it this way. If I have $1000 in my bank account and spend $500, it is a fact, ceteris parabus, that I will then have $500 in my bank account. That's mathematical fact.

    But taking into account all other possible events (protecting my account, stemming forgetfulness by keeping receipts, keeping abreast of current scams, having specialized cards and accounts for specialized purposes) and predicting the amount in my bank account and being right 99,999 times out of 100,000 - that is scientific fact. At that point, I have found the best possible explanation for my balance using evidence and theory from several fields and prior discoveries. MIGHT I be wrong? Sure, and my beer might, EVEN in theory, tunnel instantaneously through space and end up in your hand.... but I can assume it as fact that it will not, in the lifetime of this universe. Might I be able to improve upon the implementation of these principles, and refine them? Yes.

    Might evolution be wrong? Yes. Might the Earth not actually revolve about the Sun? Yes. Are both supported enough to be considered fact (in all but a mathematical way), and so we can stop worrying about the truth of them any longer?

    Yes.
     
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  14. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    Good argument. But I see a difference between conclusions about evolution which is summary of evidence and the earth revolving around the sun which is now an observable fact from outer space. We don’t observe “ evolution, “ we observe the evidence of evolution and by concensus , come to a conclusion.
    It’s very difficult in the natural world to quantify everything mathematically to reach a conclusion that is absolute. Math is a model but often an incomplete model in problem solving. Science has for decades tried to make models using math with weather in order to make weather more accurate and eventually absolute. . We haven’t . So, until we can define all the evidence mathematically, we can never be that absolute. . Are we really, really close with genetics ? For sure. But only the repeating decimals .999999.....equals one for me, not .99999 that ends after the fifth place.
    But it’s refreshing having this debate with a science person.:)
     
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  15. Mamasaid

    Mamasaid Banned

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    And to reach our conclusion that the Earth revolves about the Sun, we observed the evidence... Kepler's laws and their (kinda) successful predictions, looking at the Sun and calculating the speed of Earth through space by sifting through data gathered in the past, mapping the stars to use this data in the future to note their paths. We knew the Earth revolved around the Sun long before we actually ever watched it do so from any perspective other than by looking up from the ground. Nevertheless, it took us hundreds of years to realize we were looking at the Sun 8 minutes into the past. Yet we were "watching" it happen. Clearly "watching something" alone does not bring us facts, or even sometimes help at all. We had to test this notion that light speed was "not instant", in a setting we could control, by bouncing lasers off of stuff. Similarly, we test the principles of evolution in a setting we can control: the lab. We "watch" evolution happen in the lab, just as we watch a laser bounce off the Moon.

    We observe evidence of fusion at the center of the Sun and have never seen fusion at the core of a star, but we know it is fact. The evidence of this fusion comes to our instruments 1000s of years after it has happened. We have never watched stellar ignition happen, but we know it is a fact. We have never watched a planet form from debris, but we know it is a fact. Demanding that we "watch" these things happen is not a fair demand of short-lived humans. We have better ways anyway.

    Have you ever watched a mass of tellurium-128 (128Te) decay to half its former mass? Nope and neither has anyone else, as its half-life is known to be 7.7 x 10^24 years. Still it is fact. Just as we use our knowledge of movement of bodies to predict asteroid paths (as our explanations for it are accepted fact), we can look at all of the evidence and correct predictions to know the half-life of this isotope.

    Myself, I reject any notion that the truth of evolution, or of any of these things, is somehow found by a fundamentally different process than any other scientific fact we know.
     
    Last edited: Oct 10, 2018
  16. DarkDaimon

    DarkDaimon Well-Known Member

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    I added my responses above in bold.

    The problem always with those that are against evolution is that they always have to resort to conspiracies to explain why evolution is accepted by the VAST majority of scientists. I mean you say they are lying, but what do they have to gain by lying and risking their careers? I promise you that there is a Nobel Prize to anyone who can disprove evolution so why wouldn't some young, up and coming scientist not want to disprove evolution and get a Nobel Prize, fame and glory?
     
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  17. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    The only things that are factual with 100% certainty, are observations. Conclusions about these observations are not the same thing in science. They are concepts and ideas we derive from experimentation. Nuclear fusion at the sun’s core is not an observation. It’s an idea or concept like evolution.

    That the earth revolves around the sun has gone from a concept or idea to an observation in some respects with the advent of space exploration. We are constantly performing experimentation and making observations and gathering new evidence during space travel.

    As a matter of fact, everyone experiments all the time with gravity, everytime you put one foot in front of another. If you are experimenting with gravity this way while under the influence of alcohol or because you have an inner ear problem , you could very well come to a different conclusion about gravity because of your own evidence. . Guess what ? If you are in the act of falling as a result of your experiment, you come to a different conclusion about gravity then another observer.

    Your conclusion is just as valid for you as as an unaffected individual is for him. A person who is drunk, or one that is not but in the act of falling must deal with a different concept then you who are not fallin or under the influence.
    Science has to look at its ideas in this manner out of necessity. Otherwise, Special Relativity, itself a concept, does not exist with respect to gravity.

    Your observation of me stumbling and falling due to the nature of gravity is just yours, not mine. To a person falling, the ground is racing up to meet him and it’s everything else that is in motion, not the person falling. This is why everything about gravity, or fusion or even evolution in science is not evidence, they are theories and concepts dependent on the observer.

    To a mathematician or physicist. Math is a necessity, To a biologist and many natural scientists, math can be a necessary evil. They are not even thinking about special relativity or quantum theory till forced to do so. ( like studying the effects of radiation on cancer cells) That is one reason why they can, in their closed environment, view ideas and concepts with 100% certitude. But, to the rest of scientific community, they are still concepts and still theories. And this is why I’ll never assign a concept with 100% certainty while a person in a closed environment could. This is why General science uses the word theory all the time to still describe concepts. . .
     
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  18. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    “We knew the earth revolved around the sun.....”
    But we were always puzzled why our calculations never put the earth in exact locations as these early predictions indicated by experiment. The math wasn’t working. Hence , these were theories and not absolutes.
     
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  19. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Thus does science use a peer review process which allows observation and experimentation to rise far above the individual conclusion and into the realm of proven concept or fact. In this way the inebriated observation is discarded by the unimpaired allowing for accuracy and verification.
     
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  20. Mamasaid

    Mamasaid Banned

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    Again, it's not meant to be absolute (as a mathematical fact), yet it was, rightfully, accepted fact. Those disparities did not undermine the accepted fact that the earth revolves about the sun. Just as having to adjust a lineage I light of new information does not undermine the fact of evolution.
     
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  21. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    Th
    The biggest mistake science makes often is assuming that their theories are absolute. It can’t be both non absolute and factual.
    The entire concept of Newtonian physics once thought to be absolute. It begins to fail as speeds get greater. We noticed that when trying to apply it heavenly bodies and their predicted positions. (Check out the movie “ Hidden Figures” ”) btw, great movie ! It also fails when you project too far into the future for the same reason. It’s a physics of low speeds, generalizations and rounding off errors. It’s wrong to say it is absolute or even a theory that holds up under close scrutiny as our technology advances. Here’s a reference to illustrate problems with classical physics. It may be more correct to say that, every theory in science is situational.
    https://www.reddit.com/r/Physics/comments/7yksj4/differences_in_newtonian_and_einsteinian_orbits/

    Newtonian physics is only relative to some situations......and we still haven’t fully grasped what they are. Calling it factual is like saying the tides rise and fall. They don’t, the higher levels tend to be in the direction of the moon and the sun, and the earth just rotates beneath these varied water levels. That was not apparent either to the casual observer who wanted to predict when the tides would occur using early science.
     
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  22. Mamasaid

    Mamasaid Banned

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    And yet, despite the approximations in our theories of planetary motion, it remains a fact that the earth revolves about the sun. Just as our dating methods have margin of error, which poses no threat whatsoever to the fact of evolution.
     
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  23. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    I hear you. But to be clear, I would never say that evolution is a fact. It’s a theory we use that has more institutional supporting evidence by a huge margin then any other explanation. We problem solve using this theory because it’s been so reliable in human history and has resulted in raising our life expectancy and reducing human suffering. If deniers want to claim it’s not a valid source of reference, let them come up with the evidence. They can’t.

    Calling evolution a fact and not a theory outs you into a defensive position from the challenge of other non related “facts.” Imo, science shouldn’t go there. They don’t have to.
     
  24. dagosa

    dagosa Well-Known Member

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    Well......yes in the traditional or classic sense. I still refrain from referring to the theory of evolution as a “ fact of evolution”.
     
  25. tecoyah

    tecoyah Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    So does everyone else, especially scientists.
     
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