Discussion for AronRa and OFNF exclusive thread

[Rumraket]

Ok, since my statistical models are wrong, please provide your own “correct” models

Hellooo, we have already been over this.

We already have a mathematical theory of evolution in population genetics, it deals exclusively with changes in allele frequencies in populations over generations. Since eyes are encoded by genes, and since the genomes of extant organisms contain the genes to make eyes, and since those genomes have been proved time and again to be consistent with population genetics, then we're done. You have what you have asked for, game over.

False analogy. The process of evolution it nothing like a tornado. For starters, there is no reproduction or natural selection.

I never meant to imply that a tornado is analogous to evolution, my intention was to demonstrate that even though some things are not 100% impossible, they are extremely unlikely and we can safely conclude that it never happened.

Which is why I said your posterior probabilities are irrelevant, because they allow you to conclude exactly nothing of relevance. What use is it to conclude that the probability of fixation of a neutral allele, say, is 1 in 10[sup]30[/sup] when hundreds of such mutations, all with a probability of fixation of 1 in 10[sup]30[/sup] are fixed in thousands of populations every generation?

This number you come up with is supposed to make us think "omg, that number is so small it seems absurd", but then the real world shows us they get fixed constantly in droves.

That means your obsession with posterior probabilities of specific events is misguided, it doesn't allow you to even IMPLY that evolution requiring some x number of mutations can't happen.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

You are positing creative little fairy people, while having no evidence that creative little fairy people exist. Thus, yes, it would be very senseless to posit them as the creators of anything without first demonstrating they actually exist. The only sensible thing to do would be to state that one does not know how they are created, if one does not know about ice crystal formation. It is dishonest to make up answers (which do not actually answer the question) to answer questions. Furthermore, you seemed to miss the point I was making, as if you only read half of that paragraph. You are positing that the universe is finely tuned; I reject that idea for the simpler explanation of emergence. Now feel free to prove me wrong and demonstrate that the universe is actually fine-tuned.

My analogy of "little fairy people" was tongue n cheek, though I think you understood my point because of how you seemed to agree with what I was thinking later on. Let me try and make the analogy a little less fanciful: Maybe if we had normal sized people making symmetrical sculptures that looked exactly like snow flakes and we knew how they made them and then later we saw a snowflake for the first time, the instant reaction would be to attribute it to some of these sculptors who were just very skilled with little tools (maybe a fringe would posit that they are tiny themselves)

No, you would not. You could guess that to be the cause, but that is all it is, a guess and not an answer. Once you make that guess, it needs to be tested. If that guess is un-testable, than your answer is as good as “I do not know” in the first place.

You seem to be trying very hard to miss this point too. You are asserting that the universe is finely tuned; I would like you to justify that assertion.

The thing you are trying to express (god) is posited by you to explain fine-tuning. You do not have to change god to “fine tuner”; you need to demonstrate that fine-tuning actually exists. You are first claiming, with no justification, that the universe is finely tuned, than you go on from there to claim that the reason it is finely tuned is a god. You have not provided evidence for the former, let alone the latter assumption you are positing. Essentially, you are making up a problem and claiming that your made up answer accounts for your made up problem.

I admit I misunderstood you here. I did not answer because I thought you were merely pointing out where the specific scientific impasse we had, was. Because I didn't think science proved ether of our positions there (fine tuned/emergent) and so I really have no argument for you beyond the one you gave me for your feeling that it is emergent: "that seems simpler to me"

There is evidence that emergence does happen and has happened in the past. Thus, no, our positions are not equivocal. Mine actually has evidence to back it and yours is merely an assertion of fact.

My understanding was that we cannot yet see beyond the Big Bang to discover if the universe is finely tuned or made up necessarily from a lattice like multiverse which would, due to the anthropic principle, create a universe just like ours without a choice in the matter. I didn't think that multiverse or M theory were much more than hypothetical at this point. Though I admit that, if true, they would erode my belief a good deal. In much the same way that Kepler's belief in God was shaken when he discovered that the orbits were not perfect concentric circles.

Whether this is the only universe or one of many, has no effect on the fact that emergence is an observed phenomena. Furthermore, you are still simply asserting that the universe is finely tuned without demonstrating that it is. You could start by perhaps defining what “finely tuned” means and going forward from there.

Also, thank you Darkprohet232 for already pointing out that Miracles4Real missed my point completely. Twice Miracles4Real has demonstrated poor reading comprehension in only one short response.

I'm really reading as carefully as I can and responding to as many as I can. I mean this. I'm trying to respond to everyone. I'm only human.
I'm upset that I can't get to everyone because many posts (even the really nasty ones) have been very thought provoking and even enlightening to me and they are things I still need to process and think about.

I responded to the ones that are the most pressing or just wrong assumptions about me that I really needed to correct before learning more.
It's been an uphill fight to get some to just believe that I'm not a young earth creationist like they really would like to beat up on.


The responses pile up faster than I can get to them.

I also misunderstood you here I saw your point as merely pointing out the impasse we have and moved on. My apologies, I hope you understand how communication can be difficult with this medium and on these kinds of (sometimes quite abstract) subjects even if someone has great reading comprehension. If I miss a point and you write me off as unable or unwilling to learn (As Darkprophet, defender of reason, has) you'd be wrong. I can prove it.
I've already learned so much about evolution. more than I've ever learned in my highschool biology class.

Fair enough.

Now it is symmetry? I would agree there is symmetry, but fine-tuning, as you positing earlier is, in my opinion, much more than just symmetry. Furthermore, you no longer need to use the term god if symmetry is truly all a god explains, because emergence already accounts for the symmetry observed in the universe.

"Now" it is symmetry? that's always been a part of it. It's an order thing.
I'm sorry I don't seem to be eloquent enough to explain it. Please believe me when I say that I am not trying to scheme and move goalposts and change what I mean. I've tried several times to nail down exactly what it is but honestly it does come down to a feeling and a guess. Symmetry has always been a part of it, but the fact that there are laws and constants at all which give us this symmetry seems indicative of some kind of consciousness, for me.

Well, as I said before, you could start by defining what you mean by “fine-tuning”, because as the snowflake demonstrates, observing symmetry does not equal observing a designer with a mind of its own.

I think God is a simpler answer than Emergence. though I think simplicity seems pretty subjective. I think there maybe something more substantive than simplicity but I can't put my finger on it. I realize I need to get off of this "mine is simpler than yours" kick- Ive learned that this doesn't really work (another thing I've learned from posters here)

How would a god be a simpler answer than emergence? First off, we can observe emergence. Second, you are proposing a supernatural entity, with a mind all its own and independent of the natural world and abilities to influence the natural world (if not create it out right). How is that simpler?

God is, for me, the simplest explanation for the fact that that universe has laws and constants. I think this is where our impasse is.
Here is another analogy:
I think boulders rolling down mountains to form what we see as a symmetrical beautiful sculpture, seems less likely than a sculptor making it.
If we discover that there are boulders and they are falling down a series of inclines to create this sculpture, it still seems like someone arranged those inclines and ordered them to make this sculpture.
If it turns out that there are really billions of mountains on billions of rocks and I'm just looking at the one that happens to look the most perfect and beautiful-I would stop believing in a sculptor (at least a bolder arranging one)
Does that make sense?

I read your analogy and I believe I understood it, but I would disagree that we are seeing sculptures being created. Again, if you define what you mean by fine-tuning, I think this will go along way in getting passed our impasse.

Your deist view of a god is something this forum rarely ever sees (e.g., dandan and Onceforgivennowfree are both young earth creationists). I can respect your feelings, and just want to say that deism was my last step to atheism. The reason being is that a deistic god (one that started the universe/life and stepped aside to watch) is no different, in practice, from there not being a god in the first place.

I don't know how active God is in the current design. I must admit that this discussion on evolution has already made him less active and into more of a deist concept. So maybe you're right, maybe it's a final step on my way to atheism. But I won't change my mind just because you say you've been there done that.

I am not expecting you to change your mind because that is what happened to me, just given my two cents and I wanted to quote Sagan.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

A beautiful quote. I will try and remember to not use God as a personal security blanket.

I have no idea who thinks of science that way.

I've talked to some posturing scientistic people who demand I never guess anything unless it comports to verifiable scientific knowledge. They are not scientests of corse. They just use it like rhetoric to stomp out any theistic wonderings. Such a view is unworkable.

I do want to say that there is a difference between a guess based on what you already know, and a guess based on what you believe. A guess on what you already know to be true will get you a lot farther than a guess on what you believe to be so.

In general we look for a new law by the following process. First we guess it. Then we compute the consequences of the guess to see what would be implied if this law that we guessed is right. Then we compare the result of the computation to nature, with experiment or experience, compare it directly with observation, to see if it works. If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It does not make any difference how beautiful your guess is. It does not make any difference how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is – if it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. That is all there is to it.

Yeah.
I'm a layperson in the guessing stage.

Remember, the next step is testing that guess.

 

[Darkprophet232]

If I miss a point and you write me off as unable or unwilling to learn (As Darkprophet, defender of reason, has) you'd be wrong.

As bad as you are at reading posts, you're also really bad at guessing motivations. I write you off as being unwilling to learn (I believe everyone is capable) is that you haven't demonstrated that willingness. You've said it, but that is not the same. Most of the time you are corrected you respond with it being hyperbolic or tongue-in-cheek. This is not the mindset of someone willing to learn, but someone who is trying to save face.

You continue to use subjective terms (fine tuned, ordered, your definition of soul) and then when asked to define them, you either don't define them very well (ordered means symmetry and soul means consciousness) or ignore the question. You ignore a lot of questions, questions that would help us educate you. Please stop saying you're willing to learn and actually try to help the process along.

 

[Miracles4Real]

I hope I can end this now by pointing out, more directly what I've said several times by answering this question directly-Yes.
Yes if I discovered that the finely tuned qualities I see in the universe were actually just emergent properties from a necessarily existent multiverse of universes, each with different laws and constants or that the universe somehow could not really be any other way-I'd change my mind.
At least about that particular aspect of God.

You didn't even get close to answering my question. It was not yes or no, and it had nothing to do with your opinion of god. You are really bad at reading other people's posts.

I'll ask again, what would falsify your god? We falsified a flat earth by proving the earth is round, we falsified a geocentric universe by proving we have a heliocentric solar system, we falsified spontaneous generation by boiling milk. The most you've done is explained how I could change your god concept. I don't care about that, and science doesn't either, and I suspect that even if we could prove the Universe was emergent, you'd just alter you understanding again so that you could maintain your belief.

Can you read again what I wrote? I really would not believe in God as a universal origin if you showed "that the finely tuned qualities I see in the universe were actually just emergent properties from a necessarily existent multiverse of universes, each with different laws and constants or that the universe somehow could not really be any other way"
That is how you will falsify it. The above statement. the one I just wrote. Yes, that one. See /\ up there. It's the actual answer to how you'd falsify my god. Just like the geocentric theory you mentioned. okay, whew. I hope that's crystal sphere clear now...damn.

I hope you noticed how your rhetoric and desire to fight me made you turn science into an unworkable system that would screech to a halt because everyone is saying "I don't know" until they somehow come to an answer without speculating, worse yet, that answer becomes permanent and unchanging and a "road block" to knowledge- because you weren't willing to listen to what I was actually saying and demanded that I be some closed minded, scheming, Christian apologist shill? I think it's pretty disturbing actually.

Please, for the love of your god, stop putting words in my mouth. If it would make you feel better, watch some Angry Atheist Youtube videos and yell at him. But since you're here, talking to me, please actually respond to the things I'm saying (and others, if you would). Secondly, that's not how science works. It's not done by a random person screaming nonsense at a bunch of scientists, and then waiting for the scientists to disprove it. That's why we have the burden of proof. If a scientist thinks he has a solution to a problem or another kind of advancement of our understanding of something, it is on him to find proof of it. It has worked this way since we first utilized the scientific method.

What you're supposing is that a group of people get together, conjecture something almost randomly, say that the universe is finely tuned without explaining what that means, and then wait around for someone else to prove or disprove it. This group finally concludes that science is no longer working because astrophysicists and cosmologists are working on their own hypotheses and theories. The burden of proof is why science works and how peer review fetters out liars and cheats. You make a claim, you supply the evidence. Otherwise scientists would be wasting their time on investigating any number of fairy tales. Why do you fight this so hard?

Imean I've said, several times, that I'm willing to have my mind changed on the God thing but you demanded that I must NOT be just because I told you that the evolution question isn't something that addresses God, as Aron Ra deftly pointed out.

You can say whatever you want. You aren't willing to defend your conjecture anymore and I have a very long post you've completely ignored - as opposed to others where you just ignored large swaths of them. You're demanding that others have to disprove your claim of a supernatural designer, otherwise science isn't working anymore. You won't define what this designer is or what you mean by the universe is finely tuned, and you've changed what this god is that you want others to disprove. How is anyone supposed to give a shit about your opinion on science, when you admit you have no evidence and get entirely defensive on the mere suggestion that you have the burden of proof to support your claim?

I'm putting words into your mouth? You've literally done exactly that when you "interpret" what people say. I really think you should have watched the Ozomoroid video I posted. I didn't post it ironically. I know exactly what it means to make a guess and then test it in science. Yes people come up with things, yes almost randomly and try and test it! that's what science does. People make a guess first. I have a very positive opinion on science, my entire point of being here is just that. to learn about the science which I regard as the single most reliable method for knowledge.

I have never, even once said that science isn't working. I'm looking at the science to see if my feelings are justified or contradicted. What else are we supposed to do with science?! Maybe you think that anything which is not verified by science is somehow useless or wrong. Is that putting word's in your mouth, I don't see how it could be? If you do think that then it is an indefensible position! but when I say this you think I'm saying that science is useless.
I'm not making a positive claim for science, why can't you understand this? I'm a person with hunches and I'm looking at the science. You are the one that demands that I make some positive scientific claim or else what my claim is must be wrong.

I am not making any positive claim but I feel a particular way. I am learning and searching.
YOU are making the positive claim that my claim is wrong. When I tell you about this you say I'm shifting the burden of proof. You made the claim! I didn't!

I wonder if this experience will cause you to be less vitriolic and scientistic and actually listen to what people are actually saying rather than twisting it into what you need so you can battle it out. Hate that's become so comfortable, like old leather, that you can't do anything but hate, is an enemy of reason.

I don't hate you, you're not worthy of that emotion. But, is this all you have left? I suggest you turn this mirror of introspection around and take a good hard look at yourself and how you've conducted yourself so far.

Okay lets do that. I'm always one for self improvement.
In-tro-spection tiiime:
My ideas about God as an active and direct biological designer were challenged by the discussion.

When at first I joined there were some very nice and eloquent responses. I thought that it would be a good learning environment, patent and accepting of other opinions. so I've been sharing my feelings all while making sure I say that they are not scientifically evident and are just what I feel is the "simplest answer" wondering if others feel the same-
but some self appointed champions of reason came and jumped down my throat because I was somehow, in their view, demanding that science test for God when it isnt evident.
I tried (many times) to point out how this wasn't what I was doing and was a little urked by the overarching scientism (a pejorative term for giving science a role it doesn't have) in their statements which I was very puzzled by and denounced as cleverly as I could, without trying to be rude.

I was accused of saying that science doesnt work. Remarkably told that intuition was useless and philosophy was pointless. accused of shifting the burden of proof when I (for the love of Sagan) MADE NO POSITIVE CLAIM EVER. I came to one post that was so offbase and had so many misunderstandings and so much bad philosophy that I, for that moment, put it out of my head and didn't respond to it yet but you took that as a dodge of some kind.I work to respond to all that I can while learning a new interface.

I've been studying the resources left by posters and I've learned many things that make evolution much more robust than I've imagined and my ideas have been changed, my faith shaken- All while people like you tell me that I'm unwilling and unable to learn. that I'm scheming and moving the goal posts.

I've tried desperately to respond as well as I can while each thought provoking idea came up. Many idea's I've never seen before and had to process in a new way which can easily lead to misunderstandings. I'm unable to respond to everyone; this was taken as spin and more scheming.

Now I've been accused of misconduct. I'm trying to find out exactly what I've done wrong, why my conduct has been so bad. Maybe I'm being asked to consider the wrong idea that I was dodging or the wrong idea that I was trying to put words in peoples mouths or the wrong idea that I was shifting the burden of proof over and over. There may have been misunderstandings but I've been doing my best to take people at their word. I guess I am guilty of that. of misunderstanding a few people. I know that I wasn't trying to spin them into someone they are not.
Now I'm typing about how I'm typing. Now the cat just jumped on the table, aw jeez don't knock those over. ugh why does he do that?

Okay back to introspection. learning from my mistakes here phew...alright. hmm. Oh yeah I tried to show how people really do make guesses in science and how they really do have opinions there was that, which was taken as shifting the burden of proof. Then I tried to cleverly explain why it wasn't which was distorted into a grotesque strawman.

That leaves me here. A newcomer wondering if it's a good learning environment anymore. psh. I'm still trying to think of what my crime was here. I never was actually scheming or baiting or dodging, I know that...maybe the misunderstanding thing.
sorry for that.

 

[dandan]

RUMRAKET

Hellooo, we have already been over this.

We already have a mathematical theory of evolution in population genetics, it deals exclusively with changes in allele frequencies in populations over generations. Since eyes are encoded by genes, and since the genomes of extant organisms contain the genes to make eyes, and since those genomes have been proved time and again to be consistent with population genetics, then we're done. You have what you have asked for, game over.

Yes, and as I said before I have problems accepting your logic. You are basically saying”genomes change” “eyes are encoded by genes” therefore the eye came from a simple light sensitive nerve.
You conclusion doesn’t logically follow from your premises.

This number you come up with is supposed to make us think "omg, that number is so small it seems absurd", but then the real world shows us they get fixed constantly in droves.

That means your obsession with posterior probabilities of specific events is misguided, it doesn't allow you to even IMPLY that evolution requiring some x number of mutations can't happen.

Ok, since my statistical models are wrong, please provide your own “correct” models

Hellooo, we have already been over this.

We already have a mathematical theory of evolution in population genetics, it deals exclusively with changes in allele frequencies in populations over generations. Since eyes are encoded by genes, and since the genomes of extant organisms contain the genes to make eyes, and since those genomes have been proved time and again to be consistent with population genetics, then we're done. You have what you have asked for, game over.

This number you come up with is supposed to make us think "omg, that number is so small it seems absurd", but then the real world shows us they get fixed constantly in droves.

That means your obsession with posterior probabilities of specific events is misguided, it doesn't allow you to even IMPLY that evolution requiring some x number of mutations can't happen.

do you understand the difference between a "specific event" and a "specified event"?

For example a junk yard has a specific combination of parts, an air plain has a specified combination of parts.
¿do you understand why are you making a strawman?

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

Yes I agree with all of them.

In the strict sense the chances for a tornado to build an air plain from a junk yard is also different form zero, but for any practical purpose we can say that the chance for that happening is zero.

It is you the one who has to show a statistical model that represents the chances of evolving an eye and then prove that you have enough probabilistic resources to achieve such goal.

You then not arguing that it can't. You are arguing that it is extremely unlike for it to have happened.
And we took your "unlikely to happen", with a quite extent explanation on how natural selection works to explain that it is not so unlikely to happen. And also by explaining that evolution doesn't really have a goal, to remind you that you would see things that appear to defy the odds but that this is nothing special; it is extremely unlikely to to win the lottery, but a ticket is sold every second, and tough it is extremely unlikely for any single person to win the lottery there is a winner almost every week and nobody in their right mind would argue that it is impossible to win the lottery because it is very improbable for you specifically to win the lottery.
And to add a cherry on the top, we have all the fossils, that show transitional forms, and gradual progression and branching of nested hierarchies placed in a logical relation in time as we were to expect from evolution, which can also be cross correlated with genetic data of currently living species to check for the accuracy of those hierarchies, which is not evidence that it could, but that it did happen!

 

[Rumraket]

Hellooo, we have already been over this.

We already have a mathematical theory of evolution in population genetics, it deals exclusively with changes in allele frequencies in populations over generations. Since eyes are encoded by genes, and since the genomes of extant organisms contain the genes to make eyes, and since those genomes have been proved time and again to be consistent with population genetics, then we're done. You have what you have asked for, game over.

Yes, and as I said before I have problems accepting your logic. You are basically saying”genomes change” “eyes are encoded by genes” therefore the eye came from a simple light sensitive nerve.
You conclusion doesn’t logically follow from your premises.

That's because I'm not making this imaginary argument you seem wanting to ascribe to me.

We already talked about this and you didn't respond to it back then:

The problem that I have is your logic “Bacteria where capable of using citric acid by Darwinian therefore eyes evolved by Darwinian evolution”

Where the hell did you extract that statement? You really don't get much about my position it seems.

The experiment with bacteria evolving anaerobic citrate metabolism cements a number of things, that:
1. The evolutionary process really happens, because:
2. Mutations happen
3. Those mutations affect physiology, biochemistry and behavior of carriers, creating variation
4. That variation is subject to genetic drift and natural selection.
5. The long-term result of this process is diversification.
6. That diversity can be sorted into multiple nested hierarchies with a high degree of congruence, which recapitulates the evolutionary history of the individual organisms.

I don't conclude simply because of this, that "therefore eyes evolved by Darwinian evolution".

However, it does imply that, if some organ found in multiple species evolved from a common ancestor, we should be able to arrange the attributes of the organ and the associated genes into similar such nested hierarchical arrangements and trace it's evolutionary history.

I conclude that eyes evolved because of the massive congruence of the multiple nested hierarchical arrangements of genetic, morphological and developmental attributes of organisms with eyes. Because, just like everything else, eyes are heritable organs subject to variation and encoded in genes, which are subject to all the same basic effects listed above. It is simply the best supported and simplest explanation allowed by the evidence.

Let me go even further here. I'm not making a deductive argument at all, I'm making an inference to the best evidentially supported explanation. Do you get this?

You're leaving out that the evolutionary process predicts nested hierarchies in genetics and morphology. You're leaving out that we have confirmed these predictions. You're leaving out that we have different organisms showing eye morphologies that fit with what could have been different stages in the development of eyes like ours. That, in combination with our models of population genetics fitting with the phylogenies from comparative genetics, is what allows us to infer that the structures we see in living organisms are most probably due to the evolutionary process.

I'm getting tired of reading you getting the basics of the logic behind this wrong every time.

This number you come up with is supposed to make us think "omg, that number is so small it seems absurd", but then the real world shows us they get fixed constantly in droves.

That means your obsession with posterior probabilities of specific events is misguided, it doesn't allow you to even IMPLY that evolution requiring some x number of mutations can't happen.

do you understand the difference between a "specific event" and a "specified event"?

For example a junk yard has a specific combination of parts, an air plain has a specified combination of parts.
¿do you understand why are you making a strawman?

What the hell are you talking about? A junk yard has a specific combination of parts? Really? How many are that?

And how many parts does an airplane have? Where do you get this shit?

 

[Darkprophet232]

Can you read again what I wrote? I really would not believe in God as a universal origin if you showed "that the finely tuned qualities I see in the universe were actually just emergent properties from a necessarily existent multiverse of universes, each with different laws and constants or that the universe somehow could not really be any other way"
That is how you will falsify it. The above statement. the one I just wrote. Yes, that one. See /\ up there. It's the actual answer to how you'd falsify my god. Just like the geocentric theory you mentioned. okay, whew. I hope that's crystal sphere clear now...damn.

You keep double talking, would it falsify your god or change your perception of the origin of the universe? You need to understand that these are two different things. And even if we could demonstrate all of that, what would stop you from changing your definition of god to incorporate its new-found ability to create emergent multiverses, each with their own set of "finely tuned and ordered" natural laws? By not defining your god or giving it a set amount of properties, it can always change. As such, it is a pointless addition to the conversation that carries a lot of baggage with it. I really don't know how else to say this.

I'm putting words into your mouth? You've literally done exactly that when you "interpret" what people say.

Yes, you are putting words in my mouth. That you feel I did the same thing to a quote you gave, and then asked my interpretation of, does not change the fact that you are putting words in my mouth. Please stop doing that.

I have never, even once said that science isn't working.

Science is saying that you don't know anything and then just hoping to fall into the answer right on the first try.

I hope you noticed how your rhetoric and desire to fight me made you turn science into an unworkable system that would screech to a halt because everyone is saying "I don't know" until they somehow come to an answer without speculating, worse yet, that answer becomes permanent and unchanging and a "road block" to knowledge- because you weren't willing to listen to what I was actually saying and demanded that I be some closed minded, scheming, Christian apologist shill? I think it's pretty disturbing actually.

Thus far, your view of science has been one that random people make claims (in this instance you), and then scientists have to prove or disprove it. I point out to you that's not how science works, and you respond with these -- I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest -- hyperbolic and tongue-in-cheek responses. I was quantifying what your perception would mean in a simplified manner. You keep trying to force this into a zero-sum argument where either every claim must by disproved or proved by the scientific method and scientists are unthinking robots who don't use their intuition for their experiments, or intuition is just as good a tool for discovery as observation. The truth is it's neither, and your hyperbole is not helping the conversation.

I'm not making a positive claim for science, why can't you understand this?

It doesn't matter if it's not a "positive claim for science." Any positive claim comes with the burden of proof. All positive claims come with the burden of proof.

I came to one post that was so offbase and had so many misunderstandings and so much bad philosophy that I, for that moment, put it out of my head and didn't respond to it yet but you took that as a dodge of some kind.I work to respond to all that I can while learning a new interface.

You ignored my post, and a few others. I pointed that out. That doesn't make me the bad guy here. If you are unable to respond to everything, that's okay. There are a lot more of us then there are of you. It's understandable that you can't reply to everything. The decent way to respond to this is to say who you will be responding to and to what. The indecent thing to do is give an excuse and try to paint it as the other parties' fault.

Remarkably told that intuition was useless and philosophy was pointless. accused of shifting the burden of proof when I (for the love of Sagan) MADE NO POSITIVE CLAIM EVER.

Anyone can go back and read your posts. You have made numerous positive claims. Here are a few of them:

...I don't know very much about God but to me he seems to be real.

I'm saying that to me the universe appears designed by an intelligence.

I think the human ability to be intuitively moral like this is also something that comes from God.

Yes I feel like there is a designer. The order in the universe seems to me like good enough evidence for this.

It sure seems like an ordered universe though. Something a mind would do.

Throwing in the words "seems," "to me," "appears," "I think," does not stop these from being positive claims. You have been asked to justify these statements, and vehemently won't even attempt to, and claim that someone else has to do it, such as the Youtuber you linked. I did watch the video, and it is interesting, but it doesn't apply to you. The person he was refuting had made a scientific claim and attempted to evidence it. Using that evidence, ozmoroid was able to test and ultimately refute it. You won't take that first step.

ANY positive claim, whether for the realms of science, logic, religion, philosophy, even theater, comes with the burden of proof. ANY CLAIM. If you are unwilling to provide evidence for your claim, then don't voice it, accept that it's just a hunch, and keep it to yourself until you have something to back it up with. That's not to say to stop researching it. I'm not saying to just throw your hands in the air and give up, as you are implying that's what I mean when I bring up the burden of proof. I'm saying the correct time to posit an answer is when you can justify it. If you are unwilling or unable to do the work needed to justify your feelings and intuition, then don't posit them for the rest of us to consider. Otherwise, what has happened, will happen every time.

I've been studying the resources left by posters and I've learned many things that make evolution much more robust than I've imagined and my ideas have been changed, my faith shaken- All while people like you tell me that I'm unwilling and unable to learn. that I'm scheming and moving the goal posts.

Most of the hostility you are seeing in my posts are of your own imagination. You seem to want me to be this big, bad atheist that's mean, insulting, and hateful and trying to force you to say things you aren't. That says more about you then me. I'm challenging your rhetoric and asking you to justify your feelings and claims. If that is hostile to you, I don't know how to be nicer about it than to stroke your ego while I do it. Would it make it more palatable if I constantly reinforced how strong you were to come to this forum or issue other useless platitudes as I again ask you to define your terms or to stop trying to force this into a zero-sum argument?

Also, I would never say you're moving the goalposts; you haven't set them down yet. I'm not trying to be cheeky with this, you honestly have not set down any goalposts for the rest of to attempt to run at.

Now I've been accused of misconduct. I'm trying to find out exactly what I've done wrong, why my conduct has been so bad. Maybe I'm being asked to consider the wrong idea that I was dodging or the wrong idea that I was trying to put words in peoples mouths or the wrong idea that I was shifting the burden of proof over and over.

It's not the wrong idea when you've been plainly doing it for three pages now.

Oh yeah I tried to show how people really do make guesses in science and how they really do have opinions there was that, which was taken as shifting the burden of proof.

No one is saying that scientists (and people in general) can't have hunches, opinions, unsupported intuition or do guesswork. We're saying they can't STOP at that point if they wish to do science.

When I tried to cleverly explain why it wasn't which was distorted into a grotesque strawman.

I think it's fairly obvious at this point that you're not as clever as you think you are. Please stop this and just engage honestly. It will help the conversation move forward. I'm fairly certain that is why you have stayed around this long.

That leaves me here. A newcomer wondering if it's a good learning environment anymore. psh. I'm still trying to think of what my crime was here. I never was actually scheming or baiting or dodging, I know that...maybe the misunderstanding thing.
sorry for that.

Here's the really fucked up thing about this: I want to apologize for my tone, a few of my assumptions, and that I made you feel that this wasn't a good place to learn anymore. But what did you do last time I admitted a mistake? You used it against me as a tool to attempt to undermine my past and future comments. You have poisoned the well of good will between us. I will ratchet down my tone from here on in and attempt to be more personable (as I hope I did in this response), but I will remember how you have conducted yourself thus far.

The most beneficial way forward from here that I can see, would be for you to admit that positing god does not advance the conversation and both of us getting back on topic, namely the debate between AronRa and onceforgivennowfree.

 

[scalyblue]

I hope I can end this now by pointing out, more directly what I've said several times by answering this question directly-Yes.
Yes if I discovered that the finely tuned qualities I see in the universe were actually just emergent properties from a necessarily existent multiverse of universes, each with different laws and constants or that the universe somehow could not really be any other way-I'd change my mind.
At least about that particular aspect of God.
Though I admit that it has a few other prongs (in social systems for example) It could be completely dissolved in those too. Many scientists get the sense that the universe is'nt emergent but instead is finely tuned, I'm reading up and looking to be convinced though I feel like I'm at a moment of contention within the scientific community. I don't know if it can be answered just yet.

I hope you noticed how your rhetoric and desire to fight me made you turn science into an unworkable system that would screech to a halt because everyone is saying "I don't know" until they somehow come to an answer without speculating, worse yet, that answer becomes permanent and unchanging and a "road block" to knowledge- because you weren't willing to listen to what I was actually saying and demanded that I be some closed minded, scheming, Christian apologist shill? I think it's pretty disturbing actually.

I mean I've said, several times, that I'm willing to have my mind changed on the God thing but you demanded that I must NOT be just because I told you that the evolution question isn't something that addresses God, as Aron Ra deftly pointed out.
I wonder if this experience will cause you to be less vitriolic and scientistic and actually listen to what people are actually saying rather than twisting it into what you need so you can battle it out. Hate that's become so comfortable, like old leather, that you can't do anything but hate, is an enemy of reason.

Stop being an idiot.

You are asking somebody to be less vitriolic whilst indignant that you are being accused of being a closed minded scheming christian apologist shill, and your venue of discussion is a discussion thread about a debate with a vitriolic, closed minded scheming christian apologist shill. He's still there on the other side of the room blathering on about his idiocy with his gloves up. If you wanted an untainted discussion, you should have opened your own thread instead of jumping into this one like "A NEW FIGHTER HAS ARRIVED."

That being said. Emergence exists. It can be demonstrated. It can be falsified. The mechanisms by which it happens can be documented. It can explain things. It can predict things.

Fine tuning does not exist. It cannot be demonstrated. It cannot be falsified. The mechanisms by which it could happen are patently absurd. It cannot explain things. It cannot predict things.

You brought up talk of multiverses, why are they necessarily existant. The funny thing about the natural laws is that the universe we live in already exists with them, and cannot exist without them. Change one of those laws even by a fraction and everything goes boom. If you want to posit multiverses, you would necessarily include in that posit that every universe that spawns with unusable natural laws no longer exists.

You can't ask the winner of a marathon why he didn't lose.

You grew up and lived your entire life on the shoulders of the winner. He's already the winner. You're already there. All you can do is study the footage and maybe find out why he won, but there's a *lot* of footage, and a lot of unambigous failures.

Somebody tripped and broke an ankle at the starting line.

Somebody just tired out.

Somebody had a heart attack.

Somebody started with no arms or legs. ( She got farther than broken ankle, fwiw. )

"Well it's impossible for my universe to keep running because of the chances of something bad happening are very great, otherwise all these other universes would have won too."

No...because your universe is already past the finish line. It didn't happen. The very fact that you are able to ask the question begets the answer of the question.

Given the correct conditions, and enough time, any of the universes could have made the cut, there were many like yours but this one is yours and it's what we worry about because this particular race was shot in a different language in the dark on a nokia n-gage in low resolution mode, you aren't going to be able to see any of the racers fail, but you can posit why they could have failed by the nature of the one that you know about that didn't fail. Your existence is an emergent property of your universe being the only one we are aware of to still be able to run.

And that's also what life is. Life is, in essence, an emergent property of chemistry. Given the correct conditions and enough time, there is nothing in chemistry that precludes life from forming on its own.

Evolution, subsequently, is an emergent property of life. Given that self replicating chemistry exists, it will necessarily adapt to its environment, even slightly. Chemistry that is ill suited to its environment will be less likely to successfully replicate than chemistry that is better suited. Given enough time, these tiny adaptations are enough to explain all of the diversity of life on this planet.

And then we get into the fairy stuff.

Nobody could give less than a shit what you believe in, or whether that belief motivates you to do great things or sucky things.

You could believe that doctor house and the ultimate warrior were brothers, and had incestuous gay sex and their leavings spawned the earth and the sun and the sky and the stars, and I wouldn't give a shit.

You aren't going to explain *anything* that way though.

You speak of bravery in testing things instead of just saying "I don't know"

You have to fucking say "I don't know first"

"Why does the sun rise in the morning."
"I don't know"
"Let's find out!"
"How are we going to find out?"

Now here's where we deviate from your regularly scheduled program.

"I had a hallucination. An invisible, undetectable, unknowable sky fairy must eat the sun with her vagina and shit it back out every day like some horrific afterbirth."
"How do we test that?"
"Testing for that would be blasphemy against queen sky fairy, now move along before I either logistically or actually murder you, I'm busy writing my hallucination in a book that will inspire people to kill each other for thousands of generations for the glory of the sky queen."

vs.

"I had a hallucination. An invisible, undetectable, unknowable sky fairy must eat the sun with her vagina and shit it back out every day like some horrific afterbirth."
"How do we test that?"
"We can't, that's a stupid idea anyway. I should skip eating seventeen pounds of hash every day."
"Do you have another idea?"
"The sun is..moving around the earth with the sky?"
"How do we test that, genius?"
"......w......we....could....look....at the sky...and..m..measure it?"

 

[Master_Ghost_Knight]

so anytime any scientest has ever said that order in the universe is, for them, evedence for a designer- it must be a quote mine or else he was talking out his ass. Got it.

And you can be absolutely sure of it.

I've done all I'm willing to do to convince you that some scientists are theists.

I have never claimed that there are no scientist that are theists. Because there are, and there has ever been. You are the one who seem to purposefully misunderstand what I am telling you.

That some of them believe in God because of their discoveries.

I disagree. Sorry, I profoundly and fundamentally disagree. I don't know of any scientist that has ever in recent or in the history of science that has become a believer of God because of any scientific discovery that they have made, while the opposite is true.
It is true that theistic scientists have made discoveries, and have attributed their sense of wonder to God, but those scientists were theists before they were scientists, and while they give wonder to God, none of their discoveries incorporate God anywhere or require God to make their mechanics work. And all you have to do to prove me wrong, is to find a generally accepted scientific theory, or law, or rule that has God as a parameter.

While scientist can be theists, their science is atheist.

This causes me (and I would usually say "and many scientists" here but I don't think I'm capable of having you absorb that) to think there is a God behind it.

Funny, that cause me to think no such thing. So who is right?

It is not only not necessary, it is also an absurd concept dreamed up by people who had very little knowledge of the world.
Replace "God" with "gnomes", "fairies" or "unicorns", and you have exactly the same thing, except that the later is at least coherent, but I don't see you drop a beat when you say that those certainly do not exist. The way you see fairies is the way we see God.
To claim that an evolved ape like being, who talks. thinks and cares about thinks that an ape like being does, but for some reason is not made of the same thing that ape like creatures does, and does not even exit like an ape like being does, is no more random than to say that there is a cosmic pudding that farts universes into existence.

This is an entirely emotional argument based on an appeal to consequences. I sure don't want to be like someone that believes in faries! Maybe it is a cosmic pudding that farts universes into existence. I'll call it that if you want. eesh!

No, Its not called an appeal to consequence. It is called an analogy. Look it up in a dictionary.

I'm calling it God because that is an appropriate word. it evokes awe and denotes planning and consciousness.

No you are calling it God, because you want to confuse it with your other concept that you call God.

Einstein said "I'd like to know if God had a choice in creating the universe." and so would I.

Interesting, because Einstein also said this:

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.

Einstein's God, as Einstein himself puts it is pantheistic, its is a substitute word for the personification of Nature.
Einstein would be classified today as an atheist.
Thank you for providing a clear example for the phenomena explained above.

What do you think the role of philosophy is then?

Philosophy is very good to analyse discourse. It is very good to explain why some arguments are good while others aren't, it is able to tell you why some methods of knowing things is better than others, it is able to tell you why an appeal to consequence is not an argument, or why a straw man is not an argument an so forth.
It is however useless to tell you about things that exist, because, as any introductory philosophy textbook would tell you, ideas of things are not the things themselves, you can think ideas of things you can not however think the things themselves.
Philosophy is yet another thing that Christians know absolutely nothing about, if they did they would stop doing stupid shit like trying to define God into existence.

And how did you come to the conclusion that radical scientism was the best philosophy?

I didn't. I don't know what the hell radical scientism is.

Philosophy is useless to tell us anything about the real world?

Yes.

What branch of science is telling you what is ethical?

Depends on what you define by ethics.

What branch of science is telling you what laws we should pass?

Allot of them actually. Like biology, chemistry, environmental science inform laws and legislative pieces regarding sanitation, food handling, water delivery, public health, product safety, industry pollution to name a few. Solid body and elastic mechanics for civil regulations on infrastructures, urban provisioning, transportation, land, air and sea...

Are you kidding me with this stuff?

No, are you kindling me with this stuff??

The universe appears designed with laws and constants.

No it doesn't. And as I have explained the "laws and constants" are descriptive not prescriptive, and your argument to make sense would require at least for them to be prescriptive. Not to mention how ridicule the statement "appears designed" is.

Let me know how we can falsify this and we can move on to step 2- experiment.

That is your guess, that is your Job, not that it would matter after what I had just said.

Maybe if creating a universe were a repeatable thing, something we could do in a lab. but we would be doing all of this inside of a universe, one with ordered laws and constants. Drat!

Do you mean as opposed to outside of the Universe?

Oh science has failed us in this question! whatever will we dooOOOo! It was supposed to be omnipotent! NooOOoo!
Sweet science, why have you forsaken us!

First of all I have never stated that science is capable of answering every question. They are many things that science can not answer, but mainly because those things are unanswerable and nothing else can.
Secondly, science hasn't failed anything. The only thing that happened here is that you made a stupid remark. And just because you can't do it, it doesn't mean that a smarter person couldn't have come along and do it instead.

Then lets do the experiment!

What is your question?

If you don't use your intuition ever in your life, I don't know how you function. I think you're just disagreeing with me because you see me as some kind of enemy.

I never said I never use my intuition. However I do not pretend that intuition is away to know something because it isn't, and I would be speaking out of my ass if I said that I know something due to my intuition.

I'm not using the word soul the way you are strawmanning. I am using it as almost a synonym for the subjective experience of consciousness. If you used the word the way that I am using the word you would say that the soul is an emergent property of evolution or some such thing.

The you are not using the word in any sense in which the word soul would generally be used. Your usage of the world soul as you now describe is synonym to conscious and in turn it is nothing more than a very specific collection of natural interactions between material things, for each the word soul is not necessary to describe it and is completely antithetical with the christian concept of the soul.

Finish the quote. after the "-" I explained how philosophers use logic to prove they are conscious.

Which I have explained, is irrelevant, and I don't even need to hear the argument to tell you that it is wrong, this is no exception.

This is classic Decarte reasoning man. It is true because of the impossibility of the opposite. again you are so keen on disagreeing with me that you don't even know when we are in agreement.

And believe me when I say that I know Descartes better than you do, his inquiry and doubt of what he can tell for sure doesn't go far enough.
And incidentally you have unknowingly put into question his reasoning.
Let me put a bit closer that other sentence that you used as a counter argument.

Can science prove we are not all living in a computer simulated Matrix too!

I think therefore I am, says Descartes. And say you - How can you know that I'm not but the product of a computer simulation?
That every single piece of me, my physical form, my taught, hopes and dreams are nothing but a number on a computer, that although I think that I am, what I am is nothing but an illusion and in fact I am not.

I can present you another argument. Although you think and therefore you think you are, how do you know that what you know was a product of your taught and not something that is already possessed?
And if you take I think from. I think therefore I am, what argument does Descartes have left?

what experiment have they done that can get you inside of someone else mind and prove that it is real? Not just inside of their brain but inside of their mind?

This is nonsensical because their mind is what is in their brain. There is no such as a disembodied mind.

This is just wrong.
a simple Google search on the subject of animal consciousness will enlighten you here. Animal awareness is still debated, though thankfully those who do not believe animals are at all aware, are in the minority.

ok let's do that:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=dogs+don%27t+feel+pain
...
Guess not.

Even René Descartes argued that only humans are conscious and other animals are not.

Yes, because Descartes is a scientific heavy weight of the 21st century.

God is responsible for Y because it's the best answer I have right now to explain the ordered complexity in the universe, I'm open and looking for something better.

No, no, no!
God doesn't explain anything. If you think otherwise, the tell me by what mechanism did God do it?
You don't get to claim that X explains Y without X explaining Y. You would think that would be obvious, but I guess it isn't.

To you it's "none at all" because you don't think philosophy or instinct are at all useful tools. You demand all or nothing answers, maybe not from everyone but at least from a theist. I don't know how you even relate to other people with this kind of outlook, I suspect you don't actually hold it. I suspect you use philosophy and instinct everyday to great effect all the time.

Wrong. I do not demand all or nothing answers. I just don't accept philosophical claims about the nature of existence because philosophy can not make any valid claim about the nature of existence. I do not accept purported things from tools, when it is impossible for those tools to produce such things.
Christian apologists have tried for over a millennia to philosophically prove their God, if there is something that christian apologists should understand is that you can not prove anything to exist (including God) with philosophy, yet trying to prove philosophically that God exists is all that they ever done and it is all that they have left. It has never got them anywhere, and it never will, they already had a millennia head start, I wonder how longer still do they need to realize that.

Why did Einstein say "I want to know the mind of God"
He wasn't a christian.
He was not any denomination.
He didn't believe in a personal God.
I wonder if you would be jumping down his throat every time he used the word. Because he used it a great deal. I think his use of it was appropriate.

The answer is Yes. I would jump down his throat.

The only concept of God is from the bible?

It's the only origin for the concept of your God, to be more correct.

I think some people believe that the way to do science is to just say "I don't know" forever. About everything and to never have the courage to actually propose an idea that can turn out to be wrong. Science is a process that benefits from courage and intuition.

Saying that you "don't know" isn't the same as saying you "don't know forever". It doesn't mean that you can't ask questions, and make experiments and learn from it until you not not know anymore. You are the one that is saying that.
But IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT YOU KNOW BECAUSE YOU CAN ASK QUESTIONS!

I was only giving my opinion. Like many opinions it cannot be verified by science.

Then what good is it?

Things that are unverifiable are not meaningless!

Things that are unverifiable are the things which you can not tell the difference if they are there or not. by definition they make no difference, they change nothing. To me those things are the definition of meaningless.

I really would not believe in God as a universal origin if you showed "that the finely tuned qualities I see in the universe were actually just emergent properties from a necessarily existent multiverse of universes, each with different laws and constants or that the universe somehow could not really be any other way"

Why do you think that there is even anything to fine-tune?
Many times in the past science marveled at the amazing relations and coincidences between different types of forces, and then it turns out they were looking at exactly the same thing.
And frankly the only place I hear of the fine-tuning problem is outside of science.

 

[dandan]

Yes I agree with all of them.

In the strict sense the chances for a tornado to build an air plain from a junk yard is also different form zero, but for any practical purpose we can say that the chance for that happening is zero.

It is you the one who has to show a statistical model that represents the chances of evolving an eye and then prove that you have enough probabilistic resources to achieve such goal.

You then not arguing that it can't. You are arguing that it is extremely unlike for it to have happened.
And we took your "unlikely to happen", with a quite extent explanation on how natural selection works to explain that it is not so unlikely to happen. And also by explaining that evolution doesn't really have a goal, to remind you that you would see things that appear to defy the odds but that this is nothing special; it is extremely unlikely to to win the lottery, but a ticket is sold every second, and tough it is extremely unlikely for any single person to win the lottery there is a winner almost every week and nobody in their right mind would argue that it is impossible to win the lottery because it is very improbable for you specifically to win the lottery.
And to add a cherry on the top, we have all the fossils, that show transitional forms, and gradual progression and branching of nested hierarchies placed in a logical relation in time as we were to expect from evolution, which can also be cross correlated with genetic data of currently living species to check for the accuracy of those hierarchies, which is not evidence that it could, but that it did happen!

But that can be tested, we can objectively calculate the chances for somebody to win the lottery, we know how many probabilistic resources we have. There are statistical models that show ho9w likely is it to win the lottery.

So please provide your statistical model considering all the variables that you mentioned like natural selection.

However for any practical purpose we know that it is impossible to win the lottery 100 times in a row. If someone wins the lottery 100 times in a row, then fraud (intelligent design) would be the best explanation.

An individual winning the lottery 100 times in a row is as unlikely as any other combinations of 100 individuals winning the lottery one time each. However design will still be the best explanation for winning the lottery 100 times in a row.

 

[dandan]

RUMRAKET

You're leaving out that the evolutionary process predicts nested hierarchies in genetics and morphology. You're leaving out that we have confirmed these predictions. You're leaving out that we have different organisms showing eye morphologies that fit with what could have been different stages in the development of eyes like ours. That, in combination with our models of population genetics fitting with the phylogenies from comparative genetics, is what allows us to infer that the structures we see in living organisms are most probably due to the evolutionary process.

But none of that proves that Darwinian mechanisms where responsible of building the eye.

I ask you all to provide a paper that proves that Darwinian mechanisms where responsible for building the eye and none of you provided such paper.
I am also tired of repeating the same thing and correcting you over and over again.

 

[scalyblue]

But that can be tested, we can objectively calculate the chances for somebody to win the lottery, we know how many probabilistic resources we have. There are statistical models that show ho9w likely is it to win the lottery.

So please provide your statistical model considering all the variables that you mentioned like natural selection.

However for any practical purpose we know that it is impossible to win the lottery 100 times in a row. If someone wins the lottery 100 times in a row, then fraud (intelligent design) would be the best explanation.

An individual winning the lottery 100 times in a row is as unlikely as any other combinations of 100 individuals winning the lottery one time each. However design will still be the best explanation for winning the lottery 100 times in a row.

The analogy isn't that one individual will win the lottery 100 times in a row. It is that the lottery shall be won on a regular basis. By anybody. If only one drawing is made a day, three and a half billion years gives us 1,278,350,000,000 drawings. Even if only %0.0000005707 ( Current powerball win chance ) of those are winners it is still over 7000 winners ( Not simulated, just divided ), and given that there are hundreds, if not thousands of "drawings" every time a cell divides, and the probability is much, much better than winning the powerball for getting a neutral or beneficial mutation, because it isn't a damned random drawing with a simple win:lose ratio.

 

[AronRa]

ARONRA
List? What list were you looking for?

THIS LIST

No, as I already explained, the Osnabrück study did list the mutations with regard to the necessary changes in structure, but they were only discussing the assembly of the structure itself. They identified those mutations by the ubiquitous genes and the variations in the genome that were recorded, but they didn't identify the type of mutations involved, nor the mechanics of how each mutation prompted the specific changes described. That's why I added the 2nd citation from Upstate Medical, because their study does talk about the type of mutations and not so much about the incidental chemistry or the architecture. You should take both studies together for a more complete picture

I thought you had already seen this;

 

[Rumraket]

RUMRAKET

You're leaving out that the evolutionary process predicts nested hierarchies in genetics and morphology. You're leaving out that we have confirmed these predictions. You're leaving out that we have different organisms showing eye morphologies that fit with what could have been different stages in the development of eyes like ours. That, in combination with our models of population genetics fitting with the phylogenies from comparative genetics, is what allows us to infer that the structures we see in living organisms are most probably due to the evolutionary process.

But none of that proves that Darwinian mechanisms where responsible of building the eye.

I ask you all to provide a paper that proves that Darwinian mechanisms where responsible for building the eye and none of you provided such paper.

I've already asked you, what the heck you mean by "prove"? What I've shortly described above is the best it is possible to offer using science. If you want more, go somewhere else. No one here is in the business of offering certainty.

I am also tired of repeating the same thing and correcting you over and over again.

I have received exactly zero corrections from you. Curiously, I've been the one correcting you for this entire discussion, and I have asked a lot of questions you have yet to answer or even comment on.

 

[dandan]

But that can be tested, we can objectively calculate the chances for somebody to win the lottery, we know how many probabilistic resources we have. There are statistical models that show ho9w likely is it to win the lottery.

So please provide your statistical model considering all the variables that you mentioned like natural selection.

However for any practical purpose we know that it is impossible to win the lottery 100 times in a row. If someone wins the lottery 100 times in a row, then fraud (intelligent design) would be the best explanation.

An individual winning the lottery 100 times in a row is as unlikely as any other combinations of 100 individuals winning the lottery one time each. However design will still be the best explanation for winning the lottery 100 times in a row.

The analogy isn't that one individual will win the lottery 100 times in a row. It is that the lottery shall be won on a regular basis. By anybody. If only one drawing is made a day, three and a half billion years gives us 1,278,350,000,000 drawings. Even if only %0.0000005707 ( Current powerball win chance ) of those are winners it is still over 7000 winners ( Not simulated, just divided ), and given that there are hundreds, if not thousands of "drawings" every time a cell divides, and the probability is much, much better than winning the powerball for getting a neutral or beneficial mutation, because it isn't a damned random drawing with a simple win:lose ratio.

ok so provide your statistical considering all the variables that you mentioned

 

[dandan]

Do you honestly and sincerly believe that the list represents the mutations required to evolve an ATP motor form simpler systems?

It seems to me that the paper is simply showing the similarities between ATP motors in different creatures.

 

[dandan]

RUMRAKET

I've already asked you, what the heck you mean by "prove"? What I've shortly described above is the best it is possible to offer using science. If you want more, go somewhere else. No one here is in the business of offering certainty.

Just provide objective evidence that shows that complex things can “evolve” by Darwinian mechanisms.
If Darwinism is not certainly true, then why shouldn’t teacher teach the controversy?

You see the problem is that evolutionists typically compare the “theory” of evolution with other true theories like atomic theory, gravity, relativity, germ theory etc. If you what to say that evolution has the same level of certainty than any other of those theories the list you can show is objective and falsifiable evidence. If you can´t then you should expect and tolerate skepticism.


If I ask a “relativist” to prove that gravity alters space and time, I am sure he would provide a testable model that proves with near 100% certainty his claim. why can´t you do the same, or simply admit that evoluton is not a scientific theory?

 

[AronRa]

No, as I already explained, the Osnabrück study did list the mutations with regard to the necessary changes in structure, but they were only discussing the assembly of the structure itself. They identified those mutations by the ubiquitous genes and the variations in the genome that were recorded, but they didn't identify the type of mutations involved,

Do you honestly and sincerly believe that the list represents the mutations required to evolve an ATP motor form simpler systems?

It seems to me that the paper is simply showing the similarities between ATP motors in different creatures.

No, as I already explained, the Osnabrück study did list the mutations with regard to the necessary changes in structure, but they were only discussing the assembly of the structure itself. They identified those mutations by the ubiquitous genes and the variations in the genome that were recorded, but they didn't identify the type of mutations involved,

 

[dandan]

ARONRA

No, as I already explained, the Osnabrück study did list the mutations with regard to the necessary changes in structure, but they were only discussing the assembly of the structure itself. They identified those mutations by the ubiquitous genes and the variations in the genome that were recorded, but they didn't identify the type of mutations involved,

Ok, Do any of the other papers that you presented show the mutations required to evovle an ATP Motor, from a simpler system?