On another blog I commented that Christians seem highly reluctant to correct each other, and was promptly shown the error of my ways :)
The conversation is getting into issues of evolution/creationism, which I'd rather not contaminate another perfectly good blog with, so I'm proposing that such debate be moved over here. This is in response to my comment that believing in special creation of animals was counterfactual.
You might want to study the "Cambrian Explosion" in which all the phylla of large animals appear in a short period of time in the fossil record.
A few major responses here:
1) depending on one's definitions of "phyla" and "Cambrian explosion", only about 1/3 of the metazoan phyla appeared during this period.
2) when we talk about "phyla of large animals" the kind of large animals we're (presumably) talking about are small, jawless, boneless fish. Things like mammals, birds, reptiles etc came far far later. They weren't even like the fish we have today.
3) when we say "short" we mean "over 10 million years".
4) we actually have a few transitional fossils from within the Cambrian, which show (for example) how worms evolved from arthropods via lobopods.
Any thoughts?
Also, new studies of specific genomes are showing a much greater diversity between humans and other previously assumed "cousins" such as chimpanzees.
You'd have to point me at the studies. My understanding was that all they'd done was pinpointed the most changed and most conserved areas of the genome. The interesting thing about the approaches they're using for this is that they're based on comparing the rate of change in possibly useful areas to the rate of change in "junk" DNA. Thus, this approach would only be expected to produce useful results (which it has) if:
a) a majority of the "junk" DNA was actually pretty much useless
b) said junk DNA was inherited from a common ancestor
With the enormous amount of information found in the human genome, a 6% variation is now much greater than it was thought to be before.
I just finished a maths degree, so I'm legally required to call you on this: how are you defining "information" here? See, information theorists define it as the inverse log of the probability of an event - but, by this definition, randomly-selected events will generally have more information. Computer scientists define information as the compressibility of a string - but that's also greater for random strings. Randomness increases information. (Note: I can explain this in more detail if you wish)
If you have a new, rigorous definition, please share it. Or if you meant some less measurable concept of information, please elaborate. Otherwise, please be aware that the tendency to throw buzzwords like "information" into the conversation without defining them is one of the other things that I consider extremely daft.
There's a lot more to learn than the evolutionists lead on about. Their idea that they have it all figured out [a la Dawkins] reminds me more of the claims of the young earth creationists. One of my favorite Wittgenstein quotes, "what we do not know we must pass over in silence." Good advice for those bloviating about things they cannot verify.
I would note that the word "evolutionists" could be replaced with "quantum theorists" and that sentence would still make exactly the same amount of sense. It's not arrogance if you're right :)
Evolutionary biology is (in some areas at least) a predictive science. That's usually taken as an indicator that a science is at least broadly correct. There is no other predictive model of origins - if creationists were able to create one, they'd have done so by now. If you think evolutionists are so wrong, why not win a Nobel by producing one?
(Note: I haven't started listing predictions and evidences here, because I could... uh... "bloviate" for hours and still not have discussed all of them. If you're interested, ask.)
Disclaimer: I spend way too much time debating this stuff, and hence know most of the arguments inside out. Thus, even if I appear to come out ahead in this discussion, it might just mean that I know the talking points better.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
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8 comments:
Hi Lifewish
Good post. You are wise to focus on that area that you have studied much more thoroughly than I have.
Here are some responses to your responses.
1)UCMP-Berkeley has a page on the Cambrian perod that explains The only modern phylum with an adequate fossil record to appear after the Cambrian was the phylum Bryozoa
Perhaps I'm misreading this but the Cambrian explosion seems to have been quite a remarkable increase from simple life forms to much more complex and much larger (relatively speaking) creatures.
2) Again, these are small creatures to us, but not to bacteria.
3) Evolution needs lots of time. 10 million years is indeed a relatively short period.
4) I'd like to see a link to your claim in #4.
Junk DNA is better described as DNA whose function is unclear.
An excerpt from that report:
The Science article reports on a paper suggesting that the non-coding 97% of the DNA, commonly referred to as junk DNA, might have a function. The authors of the paper employed linguistic tests to analyze junk DNA and discovered striking similarities to ordinary language. The scientists interpret those similarities as suggestions that there might be messages in the junk sequences, although its anyone s guess as to how the language might work. * F. Flam, Hints of a language in junk DNA, Science 266:1320, 1994.
You are the expert on this. My complaint was with the thought processes of Richard Dawkins, whose fanciful stories of blind watchmakers and random safe-crackers are not scientific but a kooky sort of atheistic supernaturalism. Through his reasoning he stands alongside the young earth creationists. Do you agree?
Re: Evolution. Microevolution is self-evident. My problem is with Macroevolution (abiogenesis) which is more improtant because Macro purports to explain where life came from, and it fails miserably.
And where did matter come from?
Do you think the ultimate answer to where matter came from will come from science?
Take care.
1) UCMP-Berkeley has a page on the Cambrian perod that explains The only modern phylum with an adequate fossil record to appear after the Cambrian was the phylum Bryozoa
True, but if you look at the preceding sentence you'll see it's talking about phyla with hard parts such as bone, cartilage and chitin. So that does include the earliest ancestors of the larger animals, but it misses out a good deal (for example, flowering plants and sponges). See this chart on the same site for a broader perspective.
2) Again, these are small creatures to us, but not to bacteria.
Depends on the bacterium. Many modern slime moulds can form large colonies that move around as independent creatures - compared to them, the earliest animals would have been rather small.
Anyway, my point was not to mislead yourself into thinking the organisms appearing in the Cambrian were anything remotely like their modern ancestors.
3) Evolution needs lots of time. 10 million years is indeed a relatively short period.
Evolution doesn't always need lots of time - it depends on what the external conditions are like. In particular: are there sufficient resources for "speculative" varieties to survive, and are there enough different environments to encourage differentiation?
An example of a situation where both these conditions are met would be the artificial one that humans have constructed for dogs. As a result, we have everything from Great Danes to Chihuahuas, and we'd probably have even more variety if more than a small number of people were interested in dog-breeding. A more metaphorical example would be something like the dot-com boom.
So the question becomes: were the conditions in the Cambrian favourable to this sort of massive variation? That's a harder one to answer, but I'd say: yes. These creatures had invented a new trick that basically gave them dominion over the Earth. They could easily kill anything else out there - the only risk was each other. The resources were there, the different environments were there - all that was required was plenty of breeding to fill the space up.
4) I'd like to see a link to your claim in #4.
See here.
Notes:
1) I got it wrong, it was arthropods evolving from worms via lobopods.
2) The site I linked to doesn't come with any academic endorsements that I can see, just the pictures of fossils. If there's anything you're bothered by, I'll happily look it up for you in the scientific literature.
Junk DNA is better described as DNA whose function is unclear.
Better still as DNA for which no function is currently known - your version begs the question somewhat.
If none of it was genuine garbage, it wouldn't have a neutral rate of mutation. That's something that's (more or less) empirically testable, and the majority of the junk has tested negative. Of course, scientists will keep applying new and improved tests - but currently they're not hopeful of accounting for even a majority of the junk, let alone all of it.
Some of it we're damn sure is junk because we can actually see where it came from. For example, IIRC some repetitive sequences of DNA are produced by miscopying. Other bits of human DNA are actually retroviruses - viruses that "hibernate" inside a handy genome and attempt to resurrect themselves a few generations down the line.
You are the expert on this. My complaint was with the thought processes of Richard Dawkins, whose fanciful stories of blind watchmakers and random safe-crackers are not scientific but a kooky sort of atheistic supernaturalism. Through his reasoning he stands alongside the young earth creationists. Do you agree?
I would probably disagree, but to be sure I'd need to know precisely which stories you were talking about and what problem you had with them.
Re: Evolution. Microevolution is self-evident. My problem is with Macroevolution (abiogenesis) which is more improtant because Macro purports to explain where life came from, and it fails miserably.
Two problems here:
1) Your definition of macroevolution is really weird. Generally, macroevolution is defined as evolution above the species level, whereas microevolution is variation within a species. Neither has anything whatsoever to do with abiogenesis, which is a whole other field that's more akin to chemistry than biology.
2) There isn't actually a clear divide between macro- and micro-evolution - even using my definitions, you're left with problems like ring species, which defy taxonomic classification. Currently, the lower levels of macroevolution are actually demonstrable: speciation demonstrably occurs, and species demonstrably diverge. The question is whether there's a point at which macroevolution stops working. No such point has ever been found, and the fossil record suggests it never will.
And where did matter come from?
You appear to be shifting the goalposts. If I understood correctly, we were arguing creationism versus evolution, not deism versus brane theory.
Do you think the ultimate answer to where matter came from will come from science?
If we're able to objectively confirm that a given answer is accurate, that answer will by definition be scientific. Whether it will come from the current scientific community is a harder question, but I'd note that at present this group has by far the best record of generating useful answers.
To conclude, I'd remind you of my earlier comment that all this debate, while interesting, is somewhat meaningless. Science doesn't work on the basis of who can find more literature apparently in their favour; it works on the basis of who can come up with the best predictions based on their model of the universe. Evolution produces such predictions; creationism does not. From a scientific perspective, that's game over.
Hi LW
Excellent follow up. I'm going to have to hit the books to respond.
You are more convincing than Professor Dawkins, thus you definitely have given me work to do in coming up with any kind of adequate response.
The only comment I would feel comfortable making now is in response to this:
it works on the basis of who can come up with the best predictions based on their model of the universe.
If the origin of the universe included the universe somehow, you would be right, but clearly matter comes from a point in time and space beyond which it (the universe / matter / and for that matter science) did not exist.
I think this is not moving the goal posts as origin is key to the debate. The question of origins is ultimately a philosophical or theological question IMO.
Our best hope is that all keep an open mind.
Thanks for the information.
You are more convincing than Professor Dawkins, thus you definitely have given me work to do in coming up with any kind of adequate response.
A lot of Dawkins' actual writing is more insightful than he's given credit for in most circles. There's a reason why "the selfish gene" is a bestseller. I'm unconvinced by many of his moral conclusions - the idea that religion is actively evil seems a little too good to be true - but I can't fault his biology.
Like I mentioned before, I know the evolution/creation debates inside out. As a member of the reality-based community, I must therefore warn you against accepting anything I say just because I get the better of this discussion.
I think this is not moving the goal posts as origin is key to the debate. The question of origins is ultimately a philosophical or theological question IMO.
I just want to get this clear:
1) Evolutionary biology is almost completely independent of how life came into being.
2) Abiogenesis is almost completely independent of how the planet came into being.
3) Planetary formation and the rest of cosmology is almost completely independent of how space, time and matter came into being.
The only possible reason for linking the three is if you have problems with all three fields of science and hence find it easier to erect one easily-demolished straw man. That's a common tactic of some of the more dishonest creationists, so I'm guessing you probably picked it up by accident from them. It's something to watch out for - no-one talks about "six different kinds of evolution" outside of Chick tracts.
It's entirely possible that questions like "how was matter created" can't be answered by scientific investigation. However, since the core of scientific investigation is simply the comparison of different hypotheses based on the evidence available, this would imply that there would be no objective way of knowing whether any given theological answer was remotely accurate.
Final reminder because I'm getting tedious: the core of this issue is the relative predictivity of evolution and creationism, not how well each can be mangled to fit any given set of evidence. If you speak to a creationist about this, please do ask him what concrete, testable predictions creationism has made (see this post for discussion of the criteria for a valid prediction). I'm 100% happy to discuss predictions of evolution with you.
Hi LW
You make three claims that have "almost completely independent" in them. Is that like "almost completely accurate?" The three assertions are almost completely confusing.
"Creationism" simply points to the probability that a conscious, uncaused cause created what we see. That the intricate complexities of life were created by this same cause is a logical progression.
Science (systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation) is like the bowling ball once it's hit the wood and began heading for the duckpins. The uncreated creator is the guy who tossed the ball after a few sips of cheap beer.
That said, I'm perfectly happy letting you figure out how it was done! Take care.
You make three claims that have "almost completely independent" in them. Is that like "almost completely accurate?" The three assertions are almost completely confusing.
The only area of connection between evolutionary biology and abiogenesis was right at the interface between the two (probably prior even to the hypothesised RNA world). Everything that's happened since then, from the evolution of cells right up to the evolution of beetles, has stuff-all to do with abiogenesis. It is entirely possible to discuss evolution without making any assumptions as to how the initial self-replicators showed up, and in fact that is what Darwin originally did.
I'll happily discuss abiogenesis as well (I happen to accept both abiogenesis and evolution as being the most probably accurate approaches), but that's a completely different conversation.
A similar relationship holds between abiogenesis, planet formation and brane theory (or whatever the favoured model of universe formation is at the moment - I've rather lost track). It is entirely possible, and in fact extremely desirable, to discuss the plausibility of each in isolation.
I emphasise that because this discussion seems to be quickly slipping into an extremely diverse debate about all sorts of stuff that is completely irrelevant to the original point(s).
"Creationism" simply points to the probability that a conscious, uncaused cause created what we see. That the intricate complexities of life were created by this same cause is a logical progression.
No, that's theistic evolution. Creationism differs in that it claims to have proof of these statements.
Science (systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation) is like the bowling ball once it's hit the wood and began heading for the duckpins. The uncreated creator is the guy who tossed the ball after a few sips of cheap beer.
The scientific methodology is the only one with the slightest effectiveness in any area of experience where it's actually possible to confirm its efficacy. Faith, by contrast, has demonstrated absolutely no superiority over other approaches in any testable area of human experience.
I consider it downright suspicious that people can only claim the effectiveness of faith with a straight face in areas where it is absolutely impossible to put it to the test.
But again, this is getting radically off-topic. Feel free to completely ignore the above, or to request a new thread for it.
That said, I'm perfectly happy letting you figure out how it was done! Take care.
Glad to hear it. Does that mean you accept evolutionary biology now?
I happen to accept both abiogenesis and evolution as being the most probably accurate approaches
There it is again. But it's your honesty and open mind that is leading you to make retractable statements.
I had said I'm perfectly happy letting you figure out how it was done!
Figure out and theorize are not necessarily the same.
I think science is not served when the observer makes a priori assumptions that there can't be a God when there could very well be a God. If there is a God wouldn't the sciences converge on that basic truth? If there is a God, would you be one of the scientists who resists that truth out of your own personal prejuidice?
Creationists point to creation as their proof. You say that creation didn't have to be created, that it evolved from inanimate matter [or do you have another hypothesis?]
We've probably gotten way off-topic. I don't even recall the original post. But perhaps this has given you an idea for a new thread. Take care.
I think science is not served when the observer makes a priori assumptions that there can't be a God when there could very well be a God. If there is a God wouldn't the sciences converge on that basic truth? If there is a God, would you be one of the scientists who resists that truth out of your own personal prejuidice?
As best I can tell, scientists make no such a priori assumption. Heck, even most atheists don't make such an assumption. The general rule that both these groups follow, though, is that claims should be exposed to evidence, to the possibility of rebuttal, before we accept them.
The easiest way of doing this is to make concrete, testable predictions about the universe that rely on the truth of the statement you're arguing for, and then go out and demonstrate the accuracy of those predictions. As I said before, I would be absolutely delighted to run through examples of cases where evolutionary biology has passed this threshold.
If there is a God, and you can adequately demonstrate that fact, you'll therefore instantly have almost all scientists and a decent proportion of atheists on your side. You need to put in the legwork first, though. Why should creationism be the only model to get a free pass here?
Creationists point to creation as their proof. You say that creation didn't have to be created, that it evolved from inanimate matter [or do you have another hypothesis?]
Depends which part of creation you're talking about. If you're referring to the functionality found in nature, then I would indeed say that evolved primarily through random mutation and natural selection (although there are other contributory forces and effects).
"You say that creation didn't have to be created, that it evolved from inanimate matter"
The first part of your sentence here is more accurate than the second part. Evolution, as applied to the philosophical debate about God, is not a positive case for God's nonexistence; it's a negative case aimed at undermining the Argument from Design. Many evolutionary biologists believe in God, but none (or at least very few) believe that the Argument from Design constitutes proof of that belief.
We've probably gotten way off-topic. I don't even recall the original post. But perhaps this has given you an idea for a new thread. Take care.
The original discussion was an attempt to determine which was more plausible: creationism or evolutionary biology? In a nutshell, my argument was that we can only judge the accuracy of a model by its predictions - by their fruits shall we know them. Evolution has such predictions; creationism does not. Hence, evolution is more plausible than creationism.
I don't believe you've addressed this core argument yet. It's fairly critical to my current worldview, so I'd be very interested to see if you can counter it.
Hopefully, even if I haven't changed your mind, I've given you a more thorough understanding of where my side of the debate is coming from. Take care :)
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