Philosophy Now Forum

Posted: **Sat Dec 06, 2014 3:02 am**

Lev Muishkin wrote:
Greylorn Ell wrote:
I was wrong about you being better than that. Sorry.
So you are a godbotherer!
Obviously you are ashamed to admit it.

Munchkin,
You are nearly the most irrelevant person I've ever encountered in any forum.

I can't make you smarter, but perhaps you will be happier if I acknowledge that if God exists, I will do my best to bother the shit out of him for having created idiots like you.

Greylorn

Posted: **Sat Dec 06, 2014 3:24 am**

Wyman wrote:
I keep trying to explain that NS is not a causal factor. Of the handful of people on this thread with marginally functional minds, I really hoped that you would get the point. Obviously not. Shit. I'm disappointed, having made the mistake of higher expectations.
No, no, no, stop being an ass. I know less about biology than I know about physics. All I was asking in this line of conversation was, how is Natural Selection distinguished from simple, random chance as a theory - what distinguishes it? I guess by 'random chance' I mean the very broad definition of 'evolution.'
.
Whether 'causal factor' is the correct terminology or not, you must believe, on some level, that populations are altered in character by environmental factors - Eskimos got shorter and fatter because the tall, skinny ones died of cold or didn't find girlfriends.

Another reason Eskimos could be short and fat is that a small group of short, fat Eskimos was off hunting for fire wood one day when the rest of the Eskimos got hit by a meteor.

I see NS as a sub-type of the broad definition of evolution, where certain inherited traits, because of pressing environmental factors, become so favored that the parts of the population without that trait perish. The meteor scenario would not be described as NS where the first would.

You act as if I am advocating for some position or other, when I am just asking a question. I could go 'look it up' and then come back and use 'proper' terminology, but then everyone would just keep quibbling over definitions anyway and we would be right back at name calling and showing off. Step by step conversations where participants reach common points of understanding before going to the next step are more meaningful. Although I doubt there is anything in this one worth salvaging.

Let's keep this as simple as possible. You wrote:

"...how is Natural Selection distinguished from simple, random chance as a theory - what distinguishes it? I guess by 'random chance' I mean the very broad definition of 'evolution.'"

Random chance determines what is available to be selected.

NS is the selection process.

Random chance is not a definition of evolution. It is the only mechanism that Darwinists (proponents of a particularly incompetent and non-scientific explanation for the evidence of evolution) have invented to explain the fossil evidence which shows that life forms have developed from simple to complex over several billion years. Creationists cannot explain this evidence, and their incompetence is about the only thing that gives Darwinists the slight advantage that they hold.

Anyone with a three-digit IQ who made an honest study of the evidence and evaluated the theories designed to explain it would conclude that the evidence is real, and the theories suck.

Posted: **Sat Dec 06, 2014 3:44 am**

Greylorn Ell wrote:... It is the only mechanism that Darwinists (proponents of a particularly incompetent and non-scientific explanation for the evidence of evolution) have invented to explain the fossil evidence which shows that life forms have developed from simple to complex over several billion years. ...

Er! Hello? Darwin based his theory upon his observations of living creatures both natural and domestic.

Have you actually read his book?

Posted: **Sat Dec 06, 2014 4:04 am**

Arising_uk wrote:
Greylorn Ell wrote:... It is the only mechanism that Darwinists (proponents of a particularly incompetent and non-scientific explanation for the evidence of evolution) have invented to explain the fossil evidence which shows that life forms have developed from simple to complex over several billion years. ...
Er! Hello? Darwin based his theory upon his observations of living creatures both natural and domestic.

Have you actually read his book?

AUK,
"On the Origin of Species..." was my introduction to formal biology. Before that I'd only looked at cells and little critters under a microscope, out of curiosity.

After OS I read "Descent of Man and Selection..."

I subsequently found that my understanding of Darwin's take was different from that of university professors and writers on the subject. These are difficult people to collar; they are as skittish as religious religionists, and I think for the same reason. They are all promoting an absurd dogma.

IMO Darwin performed an essential service to society by loosening the grip on theories about the beginnings previously held by religionists. Unfortunately, the grip on human thought got transferred to an equally incompetent group of religionists, Darwinist camp followers. These people differ from Catholics, Muslims, etc. in only one respect: they have adopted a different belief system. Like the conventional religious religionists, they know nothing of what they write or speak, and are mostly purveyors of the dogma they've been taught.

If the aggregate IQ of these disparate groups was 100 for each of them, if averaged it would amount to about 70, defying all known principles of statistical mathematics.

Greylorn

Posted: **Sun Dec 07, 2014 5:48 pm**

Let's keep this as simple as possible. You wrote:

"...how is Natural Selection distinguished from simple, random chance as a theory - what distinguishes it? I guess by 'random chance' I mean the very broad definition of 'evolution.'"

Random chance determines what is available to be selected.

NS is the selection process.

OK, that's how I understood it. Now, I'm not focusing on the random chance involved in creating variety within the species. I am talking about the selection process.

If members of a species happen to have traits A or B, they can coexists together for millennia. Only when the environment puts great pressure in some way or another on the species and only if traits A and B are somehow relevant to survival will natural selection be said to be the source of change. Aren't environmental changes random?

Suppose redheads were suddenly prone to a deadly type of skin cancer caused by a certain spectrum of radiation that heretofore was blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. Suppose that the ozone layer is destroyed, allowing the radiation to hit Earth and all the redheads die out within a couple centuries. Then a change in the species has occurred, but I wouldn't call it natural selection. I'd call it bad luck for redheads. What makes 'natural selection' the appropriate explanation for species change, rather than bad luck?

Posted: **Mon Dec 08, 2014 1:05 am**

WanderingLands wrote:There are some evidence and arguments that can be made against Evolution. An argument against evolution would be the fact that a body of all the species on Earth are composed with complexity - almost mechanically but still in an original organic way. Looking at the way live bodies work, there is hardly (if any) observation of any body parts that are evolving into anything new whatsoever. Of course, many scientists defending evolution would say that it takes somewhere between millions (or to possibly billions) of years to somehow 'evolve', which is of course a poor ad hoc reasoning for why we don't see any evolving creatures.
Not at all, it's only logical!

Then there is also idea that we evolve due to 'chance' by 'mutation', and that it is somehow up to the species to adapt in order for survival.
It's not 'chance mutation,' rather 'calculable change' due to environment. Which happens to be par for the course, as all life/physics/facts on planet earth are in fact interrelated. We live in a biosphere, which in my mind, spells it out.

Well, there is obviously no game of chance when you look at the patterns of seasons, weather, and geographical conditions. If they really mean without cause or even without influence, then this would b a serious fluke. Another thing - about adaptability, is that surviving or adapting to environments is different from evolving (let's say from ape to man). Sure genetic make-ups change, but there is definitely no 'macro-evolution' that comes from people like Darwin and those that came after him.

Other points against evolution include the many faked fossils that have been promoted by evolutionary scientists; examples including Brontosauruses, Piltdown Man, Java Man, Nebraska Man, etc (view here. There are also new discoveries showing that the '98%' of DNA is not junk, such as found in a 2012 study published in Nature magazine.

Excerpt:

During the last 12 years, there has been a steady flow of scientific discoveries informing us that Chimpanzee and human chromosomes are so remarkably different that it is inconceivable for the ape genome to evolve into the human genome. For example:

In 2010, Nature published a scientific paper entitled "Chimpanzee and human Y chromosomes are remarkably divergent in structure and gene content." (Nature, by the way, is the most respected peer reviewed scientific journal for evolutionary genetics.)

The paper was the product of several teams of well-respected geneticists all of whom were fervent supporters of "ape to human evolution."

Nonetheless, they found that:

The human Y chromosome has twice as many genes as the Chimpanzee Y chromosome. Humans have at least 78 genes and Chimpanzees have only 37.

The Y chromosomes of Chimpanzees and humans are radically different in the arrangement of their genes.

Both of these facts make it impossible for apes to have evolved into humans because there are no genetic mechanisms that would account for the vast differences between the ape and human Y chromosomes.
I believe what many don't understand, is that everything evolves, even chromosomes, such that one has to ask, when along the chromosomes evolutionary journey, should it be called a chromosome. In other words it's actually ridiculous to compare that which exists today with that which existed yesterday, where yesterday is millions/billions of years ago. Such that comparing today's chimp and mans DNA is likewise ridiculous. If you're capable of wrapping your head around my point. (NO, I'm not trying to be condescending at all. I just don't know If I've been able to effectively convey.)
You can find more information about this in a website called Darwin Conspiracy (scroll down to find it).

http://www.darwinconspiracy.com/

Another article on this: http://healthland.time.com/2012/09/06/j ... after-all/

Posted: **Mon Dec 08, 2014 5:21 am**

Wyman wrote:
Let's keep this as simple as possible. You wrote:

"...how is Natural Selection distinguished from simple, random chance as a theory - what distinguishes it? I guess by 'random chance' I mean the very broad definition of 'evolution.'"

Random chance determines what is available to be selected.

NS is the selection process.
OK, that's how I understood it. Now, I'm not focusing on the random chance involved in creating variety within the species. I am talking about the selection process.

If members of a species happen to have traits A or B, they can coexists together for millennia. Only when the environment puts great pressure in some way or another on the species and only if traits A and B are somehow relevant to survival will natural selection be said to be the source of change. Aren't environmental changes random?

Suppose redheads were suddenly prone to a deadly type of skin cancer caused by a certain spectrum of radiation that heretofore was blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. Suppose that the ozone layer is destroyed, allowing the radiation to hit Earth and all the redheads die out within a couple centuries. Then a change in the species has occurred, but I wouldn't call it natural selection. I'd call it bad luck for redheads. What makes 'natural selection' the appropriate explanation for species change, rather than bad luck?

I'd go with bad luck.

And I adore Maureen O'Hara, so if I survived my demise long enough to generate trouble in whatever post-body environment in which I might find my conscious mind, I'm likely to be evicted from that environment in short order. I'd be gunning for the nitwit that changed the radiation spectrum.

Nonetheless, I'm a nasty person when I've set my mind to vengeance, and I might nail that jerk. What if I succeed? What if I restore the solar radiation spectrum, with no one knowing what was going on behind the scenes?

Incapable of seeing behind the scenes, Darwinists would not perceive anything that in their limited context would even constitute an event.

Greylorn

Posted: **Mon Dec 08, 2014 9:45 am**

Wyman wrote:...
Suppose redheads were suddenly prone to a deadly type of skin cancer caused by a certain spectrum of radiation that heretofore was blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. Suppose that the ozone layer is destroyed, allowing the radiation to hit Earth and all the redheads die out within a couple centuries. Then a change in the species has occurred, but I wouldn't call it natural selection. I'd call it bad luck for redheads. What makes 'natural selection' the appropriate explanation for species change, rather than bad luck?

Well it might be bad luck for the redheads but the NS part applies to the non-redheads who had the good luck to have the trait that enabled them to survive such an event and reproduce, as its not that the redheads had a trait that made them prone but the absence of a trait that made them immune.

Posted: **Mon Dec 08, 2014 2:53 pm**

So NS only makes sense, or becomes particularly relevant, when set against a teleological/religious explanation for the same events? I guess I have been so thoroughly bred/educated to see everything in terms of science and things being made of 'stardust' that NS seems pat now. 'Having a trait' that gives a survival advantage and avoiding extinction via some 'outside' cause (like a meteor strike possibly killing off the dinosaurs) both seem to be covered by the same physical laws to me and so both, more broadly speaking, are the result of chance.

Posted: **Mon Dec 08, 2014 9:33 pm**

Wyman wrote:So NS only makes sense, or becomes particularly relevant, when set against a teleological/religious explanation for the same events? I guess I have been so thoroughly bred/educated to see everything in terms of science and things being made of 'stardust' that NS seems pat now. 'Having a trait' that gives a survival advantage and avoiding extinction via some 'outside' cause (like a meteor strike possibly killing off the dinosaurs) both seem to be covered by the same physical laws to me and so both, more broadly speaking, are the result of chance.

I think we need to keep in mind the difference between teleological causation and scientific causation.

Posted: **Mon Dec 08, 2014 9:51 pm**

Wyman wrote:So NS only makes sense, or becomes particularly relevant, when set against a teleological/religious explanation for the same events? I guess I have been so thoroughly bred/educated to see everything in terms of science and things being made of 'stardust' that NS seems pat now. 'Having a trait' that gives a survival advantage and avoiding extinction via some 'outside' cause (like a meteor strike possibly killing off the dinosaurs) both seem to be covered by the same physical laws to me and so both, more broadly speaking, are the result of chance.

Those chance instances of happenings from outside the earths biosphere, while more catastrophic, have less to do with Natural Evolution, than those things within it. And stardust has everything to do with, not only life's creation, but evolution as well. Make no mistake, the coming together of elements started life and they evolve life.

It's possibly more true that what the asteroid brought with it, in terms of elements, or otherwise, had more to do with evolution, than the extinction of certain species. Can anyone say, "Panspermia?"

Posted: **Mon Dec 08, 2014 11:04 pm**

Wyman wrote:
Let's keep this as simple as possible. You wrote:

"...how is Natural Selection distinguished from simple, random chance as a theory - what distinguishes it? I guess by 'random chance' I mean the very broad definition of 'evolution.'"

Random chance determines what is available to be selected.

NS is the selection process.
OK, that's how I understood it. Now, I'm not focusing on the random chance involved in creating variety within the species. I am talking about the selection process.

If members of a species happen to have traits A or B, they can coexists together for millennia. Only when the environment puts great pressure in some way or another on the species and only if traits A and B are somehow relevant to survival will natural selection be said to be the source of change. Aren't environmental changes random?

Suppose redheads were suddenly prone to a deadly type of skin cancer caused by a certain spectrum of radiation that heretofore was blocked by the Earth's atmosphere. Suppose that the ozone layer is destroyed, allowing the radiation to hit Earth and all the redheads die out within a couple centuries. Then a change in the species has occurred, but I wouldn't call it natural selection. I'd call it bad luck for redheads. What makes 'natural selection' the appropriate explanation for species change, rather than bad luck?

Wyman,
There's not a lot to be said on this until we clarify a few things, starting with technical jargon.

Taxonomists use the terms species and varieties to distinguish types of critters from one another. Not to get too technical about it, but I found this easy "species definition biology" via google:
"The biological species concept defines a species as members of populations that actually or potentially interbreed in nature, not according to similarity of appearance." Varieties are critters within a particular species that may look or behave differently than their fellows, but can successfully screw them.

Thus your example about redheads is not relevant to species change, because fair skinned Caucasians have mated successfully with the blackest Negros and are likely to continue the happy practice.

Your final question can be addressed independently of taxonomy. You wrote, "What makes 'natural selection' the appropriate explanation for species change, rather than bad luck?"

The answer is simply, NOTHING! Natural selection is not the appropriate explanation for species change. Biologists have been waving their silly hands around species change explanations since Darwin wrote "On the Origin of Species..." which utterly fails to justify its title. (I recommend that you read it.) No so-called scientific explanations explain significantly divergent species. In fact, there is no legitimate scientific explanation for the appearance of the first cell, or the C-value Enigma.

I especially like the C-value Enigma (you can use Wiki if curious) because it involves actual science instead of verbal arguments-- specifically, DNA analysis, to invalidate Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, and Creationism in one swell foop. The only species-change theory that can explain it the C-value Enigma naturally and simply is Beon Theory.

Posted: **Tue Dec 09, 2014 12:35 am**

Arising_uk wrote:
Greylorn Ell wrote:... It is the only mechanism that Darwinists (proponents of a particularly incompetent and non-scientific explanation for the evidence of evolution) have invented to explain the fossil evidence which shows that life forms have developed from simple to complex over several billion years. ...
Er! Hello? Darwin based his theory upon his observations of living creatures both natural and domestic.

Have you actually read his book?

Darwin wrote many books. I confess to studying only two of the three that are related to questions about the origins and evolution of biological life forms: "On the Origin of Species..." and "The Descent of Man..." I did not read further because C.D. had told and repeated his story ad nauseum in those two major books. He is a superb writer, and in those books he did a fine job of addressing members of the biological and general science community, enough to discredit religionist nonsense about spontaneous 6-day creation.

That was Darwin's Big Contribution. He loosened the stranglehold that religionists had applied to ideas about the beginnings of life, in a nice follow-up to Copernicus' discovery that the earth is not the center of the universe. Together a nice, brain-rattling "one-two," punch. (The timing on intellectual-level punches is necessarily much slower than the timing on punches in a street fight, because intellectual punches involve a more slowly-reacting collective mind.)

IMO back when I studied him, Darwin failed to explain species differentiation. He used finches on different islands who had developed variations in beak size/structure (for example) as if they were different species, where in fact they were merely different varieties of finch. Marginally different at that. His theory nicely explains the natural development of varieties, and I've acknowledged that in my treatment of Beon Theory, which has the advantage of also explaining true species change.

BTW, I recently came across an essay that pertains to this subject, written for the intelligent non-scientist and the intelligent scientists as well (wish I could do that trick!). Here's a link:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2010 ... enes-wrong

The essay is brief, but requires an honest read. I don't know that there are even five people on this forum capable of giving anything an "honest read," but those are the participants I cherish. None of this material and none of my theories are engineered to be acceptable to the well-programmed masses.

And if the first notion that appears in your brain is that you are not one of those programmed masses-- you are.

Greylorn

Posted: **Tue Dec 09, 2014 1:12 am**

Ginkgo wrote:
Wyman wrote:So NS only makes sense, or becomes particularly relevant, when set against a teleological/religious explanation for the same events? I guess I have been so thoroughly bred/educated to see everything in terms of science and things being made of 'stardust' that NS seems pat now. 'Having a trait' that gives a survival advantage and avoiding extinction via some 'outside' cause (like a meteor strike possibly killing off the dinosaurs) both seem to be covered by the same physical laws to me and so both, more broadly speaking, are the result of chance.
I think we need to keep in mind the difference between teleological causation and scientific causation.

When I say 'the result of chance' I mean by 'chance' not a teleological cause in itself, but the negation of teleological causation - is that what you are referring to?

Posted: **Tue Dec 09, 2014 2:14 am**

Wyman wrote:
Ginkgo wrote:
Wyman wrote:So NS only makes sense, or becomes particularly relevant, when set against a teleological/religious explanation for the same events? I guess I have been so thoroughly bred/educated to see everything in terms of science and things being made of 'stardust' that NS seems pat now. 'Having a trait' that gives a survival advantage and avoiding extinction via some 'outside' cause (like a meteor strike possibly killing off the dinosaurs) both seem to be covered by the same physical laws to me and so both, more broadly speaking, are the result of chance.
I think we need to keep in mind the difference between teleological causation and scientific causation.
When I say 'the result of chance' I mean by 'chance' not a teleological cause in itself, but the negation of teleological causation - is that what you are referring to?

Yes, that is what I am saying. Teleological explanations are not generally regarded as scientific explanations. Darwin didn't do teleology. However, there are some neo-Darwnists who do teleology- others don't. To say that teleological explanations in relation to biology are controversial would be an understatement. There are traps that need to be avoided.

Consider this extract from the very interesting article posted by Greylorn:

"The whole point is that Darwin evolution is that it has no mind, no intelligence. But to "select' for certain results, as opposed to just "selecting" them by not having them die out-would natural selection need to have some kind of mind?

Yes, to the first bit, but a resounding "no" to the idea that we need to introduce "some kind of mind" into the mix. Why? Well, it depends on the nature of this "some kind of mind" Such general statements usually lead to a need to posit a teleological explanation. In other words, the need for some type of universal mind or creative consciousness to act as a driving force.

Other than that I think the article is quite reasonable.

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