Huxley's Posts
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duduspace:Many thanks duduspace and nice to see you here again. You will have noticed that when it comes to the crunch, David will avoid the crucial questions I/we ask him and embark on a tirade of silly questions. Let me cite examples of question David dare not address; 1) Until today he would not address question relating to the age of the earth. We now know he is an old earth believer, but when asked to give a figure, he refuses to answer. 2) When asked to define evolution as accepted by the biological scientific community, he refuse to address it. Preferring to wallow in the strawman carricature of evolution that he and other creationism can easily shoot down 3) Asked about the lack of mammalian fossils in the pre-cambrian and cambria, he refuses to answer 4) When asked about what conclusion we can draw from the fact that he shares more DNA material with his siblings than with any of us, he refuses to comply 5) Asked why be asserts that human can never develop feathers as a malfunction, but can develop tails, he refuses to comply 6) Asked why would some whales be born with fully developed hind legs, he proffers no answers. There are many others but these are the few that come to mind right now. Does this suggest we are dealing with an honest man? I wonder why he would find it especially hard to define evolution as accepted by scientists and he feels able to cited a better that is evolutionary in thrust is largely indicative of delusion and great amounts of cognitive disonance. Is he incapable of seeing the contradiction? |
davidylan:You have difficulties understanding science. Science is NOT dogma. Darwin sketch out the relationship of organisms and arrange them as a tree. With greater understanding of TTE the relative position of various entities on that tree would have been ammended. By the way, I am not sure the tree you have posted is the same as Darwin printed in his book, the Origin, as there was only one sketch in the entire book and I don't think it looks anything like the one you have posted. Yes, TTE say that ALL living things share genetic material. So yes we share genes with the cockroach, but I don't know how much. At a guess, I would say about 10%. davidylan:Who said only one woman evolved. Where does it say ONE anything evolved. WHERE? Stop being dishonest David. There is a big difference between ONE Woman EVOLVED and saying ONE WOMAN's descendant survived. Humans ancestory suggest only one womans ancestory survived till present. What is hard in understanding this. Even your bogus bible say we are the descendant of one woman. That is not precluded scientifically and I have painted a picture, with some numbers in which such a scenario can be achieved. |
On human origins |
davidylan:Man, you do not understand science. Science works by the convergence of independent lines of inquiry. This work was an indepndent line of research and why did it trace humans origin back to Africa? Because that is where humans evolved. Do you want other evidence for human ancestory in africa? Well am sure as a scientist (insurance saleman) you know where to go get it. I have posted plenty of peer-reviewed articles here about human origins before. Shall I dig them out for you? |
davidylan:What the tree means is this - the further down you go the less DNA you share with organism. Yes, so all organism share genetic material - human share material with fish, and worms, and baoba trees. But we share more with gorilla, Chimps and Bonobo because they are closer to us on the tree. Remember the question I asked you some weeks ago? Is it conceivable that humans could suffer some malfunction that would result in someone developing feathers on their skin? Your answer was a categoric NO. I asked you why but you evaded. If you had tried to answer you could have understood better how the tree works. |
davidylan:Well, strictly speaking you are right that this is NOT by itself so much evidence for human evolution but evidence for common ancestory in Africa. This study traces human mDNA as human and NOT as proto-humans. But it is evidence for evolution in the sense that the theory of evolution predicts that humans evolved in Africa, which this study clearly confirms. Supposing this study had traced human ancestory back to Pakistan or Siberia, that would have been a categoric refutation of the theory of evolution. Hope that makes it clear. |
davidylan:Let me help you with this one. I had the same difficulty a while ago until and thought about it harder and I read the book Darwinian Detective, that provide a much better explanation. Just ask yourself the question - How many descendant from your grandmother 20 generations ago has living today? Let's say your granny who lived 1000 years ago, how many descendants do you think she has got living today? Let's assume she had 2 daughters who survived till childbearing age and also each had 2 daughters each. Lets also assume all the daugthers bore at least two daughter who also bore two daugthers all the way down to the present. How many descendant will she have today: Well, that is 220 = 1 048 576. Of course many of these daugthers will die without having children of their own. So lets cut the figure down conservatively to 100,000 descendants. So we have reduced it by 1/10th. Now these 100, 000 are scattered all over the world today, as they would have been scatter all around Africa as the moved about and settle new lands. Now suppose there was an environmental cataclysm in Africa in which 95% of her descendants live and there all die. You and your sisters who may now be living in America and Europe still carry her DNA and you survive the disaster. The human population is drastically reduced for for a small population of individuals who carry your granny's mDNA. Slowly you begin to repopulate the planet again. Other lineages that were not from your granny do the same but they are not as successful as your family and their DNA profile gets reduced and reduced and reduced and eventually die out. All other mDNA is lost but for your family. So from about 5% (5000 individuals) who carry your granny mDNA the human race is rebuilt. This is a very simplistic explanation and there have been sophisticated maths model produce to model this effect and this population bottleneck has also been found in our genome. Let me try and dig out the paper. |
Since I raise the thread, it would only be natural that I make the first post. OK, here we go: [url=http://artsci.wustl.edu/~landc/html/cann/] Nature 325, 31 - 36 (01 January 1987); Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution Rebecca L. Cann*, Mark Stoneking & Allan C. Wilson Department of Biochemistry, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA * Present address: Department of Genetics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822. Mitochondrial DNAsfrom 147 people, drawn from five geographic populations have been analysed by restriction mapping. All these mitochondrial DMAs stem from one woman who is postulated to have lived about 200,000 years ago, probably in Africa. All the populations examined except the African population have multiple origins, implying that each area was colonised repeatedly. [/url] |
Darwinian evolution is backed by more than 99% of scientist working in this field - paleontologist, molecular biologist, archeologist, anthropologist, etc, etc. This area of science has produces a wealth of material in the 150 years since Darwin proposed the theory. And to my knowledge, NOT a single evidence has been found to refute it. Not a single peer-review scientific paper/artricle has been produced that refutes it. Or am I too hasty in the conclusion. Maybe. If the theory of evolution is ever likely to be successfully refuted, it the refutation likely to come from the practising scientists or from those motivated by a religious agenda? The Creationists. Where are the creationists' material research that is likely to cast doubts on the theory of evolution? Do they publish in peer-reviewed journals? Where are the peer-reviewed materials and scientific publications that cast doubts on the theory of evolution? Please, post references to peer-viewed articles that support your position here and let us discuss them. |
SegzyJoe:Ah well. You are not only delusional you are also xenophobic as well, are you? This give me even more grease to my elbow to rid the world of attitudes like yours. |
Book Review: Questions of Truth: God, Science and Belief by John Polkinghorne and Nicholas Beale by AC Grayling http://newhumanist.org.uk/1998 John Polkinghorne's former student Nicholas Beale runs a website on behalf of his mentor, on which questions about religion, and the relation of religion to science, can be posted. This apparently self-published book is a compilation of 51 of these website questions with Beale's and sometimes Polkinghorne's answers. The questions range over creation, the existence of evil, evolution, intelligent design and most of the other familiar old debating points, plus "How does the death of Jesus save the world?", "Why believe Jesus rose from the dead?" and "How much do you need to believe to be a Christian?" Since these latter questions premise membership of the asylum already, I shall focus just on the various questions that touch on the relation of science and religion, because the interest attaching to Polkinghorne is that he is a physicist who became a Church of England vicar, which makes people think that he has a special line into the science-religion question. Were he a vicar who gave up the Church of England to become a physicist he would not be regarded as anything more special than sensible; but this is how the world wags. It is needless to itemise the questions and their answers, because the former are, as noted, the all-too-familiar ones, and the answers given by the composite Beale-Polkinghorne author are very familiar too. In fact they come down to the tired old three: god-of-the-gaps, argument-to-the-best-explanation and "religion and science both seek the truth but in different domains". And of course Beale-Polkinghorne milk the tendentious version of the Anthropic Principle which has it that the constants of nature are fine-tuned in order that we can exist. The gaps-god and best-explanation strategies (which both come down to "we don't know the answer so let's say Fred did it" can be left to sink in the murk of their own fatuity; undergraduates cut their teeth on refuting them. As for the Anthropic Principle: well, it passes belief that it can still be trotted out in this guise. The argument that the universe exists for the express purpose of making the existence of humans possible has long since been debunked, and it is discreditable of Beale-Polkinghorne to try to pass it off on the unsuspecting.In case you need reminding, the point can be illustrated as follows: I would not be writing this on a laptop if computers had not been invented, but this does not prove that computers were invented so that I could write this. So let us dwell instead on the "truth but in different domains" manoeuvre. To get this to work you have to cherry-pick which bits of scripture and dogma are to be taken as symbolic and which as literally true - so: Genesis is symbolic, the resurrection of Jesus literally true - the chief criterion being convenience, with the resurrection as a bit of necessary dogma whose violations of biological laws you just have to shrug your shoulders over. But you only do the cherry-picking and reinterpreting to the religious sources; science is not so easy to treat in this way. The rule appears to be that where science and religion directly conflict - about the origin of the universe, let us say - the religious tale (Genesis) gets turned into symbol, thus sidestepping the possibility of direct and testable confrontation. And indeed there is no possible test of religious claims; again conveniently, "God will not be tested." Moreover, as Beale-Polkinghorne exquisitely show, they can by this technique of evasion, rewriting, special pleading, Jesuitry and speciousness provide a religion-consistent answer to every question and every objection: which reminds one of Popper's telling remark, "A theory that is consistent with everything explains nothing." Thus in short, on the religious side of things you make up truth as you go along, by interpreting and reinterpreting scripture to suit your needs and to avoid refutation by confrontation with plain fact; and thus it is that Beale-Polkinghorne can claim that both science and religion seek truth. I would call this dishonest if I did not think it is in fact delusion, which - since a kind of lunatic sincerity is involved - it rather palpably shows itself to be. And it happens that "lunatic" is appropriate here, for the painful experience of wading through this book gave me an epiphany: that religious faith is extremely similar to the kind of conspiracy theory that sufferers from paranoid delusions can hold: the faithful see a purposive hand in everything, plotting and controlling and guiding - and interpret all their experience accordingly. I found the Beale-Polkinghorne explanation of natural evil (tsunamis and earthquakes that drown or crush tens of thousands, childhood cancers, and other marks of benign providence) as disgusting, though it is novel, as any that other apologists trot out. They say that the deity allows natural evils to happen because "he" has given creation "freedom to be and to make itself" - thus imputing free will to "creation" to explain natural evil in the same way as moral evil is imputed to the free will of humans. Heroic stuff. And of course Beale-Polkinghorne have to be mind-brain dualists (see their chapter on this, in which their dualism is described in their own version of Newspeak as "dual aspect monism" in which "mind and brain are not identical" - work that one out!) in order for them to keep a place for the concept of "soul", itself explained in a cloud of fudge by analogy with piano and the music played on it: ", layers, indeterminism, er, Penrose, chaos theory, quantum mechanics, er, blah blah, see my book chapter 9, all rather complicated, " Indeed. What is not complicated, though, is the scandal that the Royal Society is allowing its premises to be used for the launch of this book. The accompanying publicity material has in the small print the statement, "This book is being launched at (not by) the Royal Society, " Indeed again. No doubt the Royal Society required this disclaimer to be entered somewhere, having reluctantly and uncomfortably felt that it had to give one of its Fellows (Polkinghorne was made one before becoming a vicar) use of its facilities because he asked. Of course the point is that Beale-Polkinghorne and their tuppence-halfpenny religious publishers wish to get as much of the respectability of the Royal Society rubbed off on them as they can. This is the strategy adopted by the Templeton Foundation too, of sidling up to proper scientists and scientific establishments and getting their sticky religious fingers on to respectable coat-sleeves in the hope of furthering their agenda - which, to repeat what must endlessly be repeated in these circumstances, is to have the superstitious lucubrations of illiterate goatherds living several thousand years ago given the same credibility as contemporary scientific research. Polkinghorne dishonours the Royal Society by exploiting his Fellowship to publicise this weak, casuistical and tendentious pamphlet on its precincts, and the Royal Society does itself no favours by allowing Polkinghorne to do it. The Royal Society should insist that, as it is the country's one principal institution that exists to serve science, and as there are hundreds of other places where theology and religion are the staple and main point, there will be no more special pleading for and insinuation of religion by religious apologists within its doors. Questions of Truth is published by Westminster John Knox |
davidylan:How old do you think the earth is then? 10000 years? 100000 years? 1 million years, 10 million years, 300 million years? or greater than 800 million years? How old Davidylan? Some cited scientific articles would be much appreciated, David. Haha. |
If you wanted the best scientific opinion on the structure of the atom, who would you contact? If you wanted the best scientific opinion on plate tectonic, who would you contact? If you wanted the best scientific opinion on blood diseases, who would you contact? If you wanted the best scientific opinion of infectious diseases, who would you contact? If you wanted the best scientific opinion on Darwinian evolution who would you contact? Now, these are not idle questions, for they cut to the heart of the deception perpetrated the creationists worldwide and here at Nairaland in particular. The important question is; Why do people who have NOT invested time and effort to work and understand the precepts of biologocal evolution feel themselves capable of adequately critiquing it? Would such people approach particle physics in the same way that they launch themselves arse-first to biological evolution? Would they approach the issue of infectious diseases without first boning up on the fundamentals of the subject? To those clueless terrier of ignorance (yes, you all know yourselves), I ask the following questions: 1) What is The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection as espoused by the biological scientific community? I want you to define what these biological scientists mean by TTE as originally advanced by Charles Darwin, providing significant reference material from recognised and leading scientific books, publications and experts. 2) What is the Theory/Law of Gravitational Attraction as defined by the scientific community? If you did not know much about the theory of gravity, where would you turn to for information about it? 3) Where is the body of scientific evidence that refutes evolution? Where are the creationist "researchers" who travel the world extracting fossil of animals and plants from antiquity? Where to they public their material? Are such material peer-review by the general scientific body? 4) Is your opposition to evolution motivated by religion or is it a scientific-based opposition? 5) Why do you think acceptance of evolution is threatening to your religion? |
I have manage to do what seem impossible here on Nairaland. On a separate thread , I have managed to get the Nairaland grand old duke of young earth creationism to accept an old earth view of the earth. Davidylan now accepts that the earth is many millions of years old, at least 525 million years old. He now cites scientific publication in support of his narrow view of creationism when it suits him but how he reconciles the main core of the scientific papers with his narrow view of creations would take tremendous amounts of cognitive disonance. I suppose such disonance is nothing new to him and he has probably lived with this all his life. This is the paper from New Scientist that Davidylan cited in support of this views about creationism and his opposition to Darwinian evolution. The paper contains the following; The conga was the world's first dance, it seems. A newly discovered caravan of crustaceans from half a billion years ago shows that group behaviour evolved not long after animals themselves. Palaeontologists led by Hou Xian-Guang, of Yunnan University, China, discovered fossilised chains of up to 20 crustaceans linked head-to-toe, the earliest record of any collective animal behaviour and perhaps an adaptation to a migratory ocean lifestyle. "It's showing that, 525 million years ago, we've got really quite sophisticated and potentially complex interaction between different animals," says Derek Siveter, of the University of Oxford, who analysed the fossil along with colleagues at the University of Leicester, UK. They concluded that the undulating procession of ancient arthropods, each about 2 centimetres long, represents more than a quirk of fossilisation. Though none of their arms, legs or antennae survived a half billion years in stone, the animals probably interlocked appendages to stay together. "We hypothesise that the chain was in the water column and it met its demise by whatever reason or forces, then it sunk to the bottom," he says. Modern creatures called tunicates, or sea squirts, form long chains to boost mating opportunities, but Siveter doubts that his crustaceans engaged in a carnal dance because no modern crustaceans show this behaviour. Group feeding is off the table, too, because each animal's mouth appears blocked by its neighbour's tail. "The simplest explanation for this is that it is some kind of collective behaviour coming together for migration, perhaps associated with defence in numbers," he says. Nigel Hughes, a palaeobiologist at the University of California, Riverside, agrees that the parade represents more than the death throes of ancient arthropods. Rather, the fossils provide "snapshot scenes of 'normal' life" in the Cambrian, he says. "Finding an example of collective behaviour so long ago is really eye opening to us," says Iain Couzin, a biologist at Princeton University. He and colleagues are now creating computer models to understand the evolution of group action, which seems to arise often and with little individual complexity needed. "Collective behaviour is all around us and it's also within us, the function of cells within in the body is a form of collective behaviour." which he fully accepts as plausible and closer to the truth about the reality of crustacean life history. These are some of Davidylans posts on the said thread in support of the old earth view and in support of the scientific endeavours and processes that uncovers and makes available such knowledge to humankind. As is his wont, he uses scientific material without realy appreciating whether is fully supports his view. So when I noticed that he had cited the above article, I feigne ignorance and skepticism about the pedigree of the article to see if Davidylan would stand by his citation. This is what I did: davidylan:This is just a plain travesty of reasoning. Where does he get this figure from? The Shrimp has NOT NOT NOT been around for 400 million years. You cannot base you argument on so fallacious a claim and think you can get away with it. This is simply dishonest and wrong. This is his first response: Quote from: huxley on Today at 02:06:37 AMThis was my next post to his response: davidylan:Davidylan, Many thanks for the links to the New Scientist article. I like it when people reference respected material in such debates and I have learned a lot from that material. Many thankz. But I have got one important reservation and it is the following: Why should I trust the work of these Chinese scientist? Is it conceivable that they have got their methodology all wrong and have fed the world with wrong and misleading data about the alleged age of these crustaceans. Can we be sure that the figure of 525 millions is in the correct ball-park? I have great doubts that this work is credible and would much appreciate it if you would throw more light on their methods, because if their data is correct, it could potentially overturn some of the bedrock of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. And this was his following response davidylan:And this was my response: Thanks for that again. I think we are getting somewhere now. So you agree that this is a very scientifically credible work and the dates of 525 MYA is very plausible? It that were not the case it would have been challenge by the peer-review process. Now, 525 MYA ago happen to fall right in the middle of the cambrian period, which spans 543MYA - 495MYA, and you agree with the scientist of your reference article that crustaceans roamed the earth then. What other animals roamed the earth alongside the crustaceans? Why have human, rabbits, elephants, dogs fossils NEVER been found in rocks dating this period, circa 525 MYA? Why do they only appear in much later rock strata? Can you show me scientific articles, peer-reviewed as the one you cited, that show these mammals to have existed in the cambrian? At this point, Davidylan now realises that he has been caught in his lies, dishonesty and deception. Otherwise, why is he unable to provide an answer to these simple answers. This was his response and see for yourself his deception: Dude . . . you cant keep recycling around your own stupidity and forcing us to answer your own queries. You are the one who swears by the gods of science not me, you're the one who claims fossils prove evolution is true not me . . . answer your own question. Having been caught out, he then resorts to insults and adhominems, as in : dude, your own duplicity makes me sick. You who swears by the gods of science DID NOT know that there were crustaceans during the cambrian period . . . infact you labelled me dishonest and fraudulent for even suggesting what had already been published since the summer of 2008.And here is me, revealing to him how he was caught: Has my catching you so easily rile you? Do you now have to resort to insult instead of making arguments withs facts and data? I know this was gonna happen? This is not a debate about who knows more than whom, but a debate about getting to the truth about the reality concerning the diversity of life on the planet. Nobody can claim to know everything there is to know about a given subject. Even experts who work on their select field daily can never claim to know everything about their subject. Least of all me, you is not an expert, but an interested layperson. If I do not know a fact and its relation to the grand scheme of things, chances are good that I may know where and how to inform myself about that fact - I go to the learned sources, the experts, the likes of the scientific journals, books, etc, etc, to inform myself. I do not come here to parade knowledge or ignorance - I come so that we can together try to arrive at credible knowledge. So it does not bother me in the least if you call me ignorant. In fact, if you point at my ignorance of a fact, I am generally quite happy because it give me the opportunity to go bone up of the knowledge concerning that fact. [size=15pt]Why do you inform yourself about evolution?[/size] Now, what do you people think about Mr Davidylan? Does he appear to be an honest man or is he involve in deceiving the weak and gullible. Or is he completely self-delusional? If you are a Christian, do you agree with him that the earth is many millions of years old, in gross contravention of the Genesis narratives? IS Davidylan a man you would proudly associate with? Would you introduce you friends and family to this sort of man. Would you be happy if your daughther were engaged to such a character? |
davidylan:How can you tell if I lied? You do not think that you can say that. To lie is to be dishonestly conveying wrong information. This is what I said: davidylan:This is just a plain travesty of reasoning. Where does he get this figure from? The Shrimp has NOT NOT NOT been around for 400 million years. You cannot base you argument on so fallacious a claim and think you can get away with it. This is simply dishonest and wrong. When I saw you comments, I did not know how long shrimps/crustaceans have been around, nor did I go to check. What caught my attention was the 400 or 525 million years and I knew by feigning ignorance and skepticism, I could get you to reveal your hand about the issue of the young or old earth and whether you have credibility of the scientific processes. Which turned out to be 100% success on my part - I got you to admit acceptance of OLD EARTH and acceptable of the scientific process. It was all a bluff on my part for a GREAT result, I would say. I am prepared to accept the facts from the article you cite about the age of crustaceans, but before that I had absolutely no clue. But if you had asked me, it would taken me no more than about 10 minutes to retrieve it from one of my textbooks or other sources. On the issue of using sources - Yes I do use some YOUTUBE sources and they are now many professional experts who are using YT to reach a greater audience. Supposing the authors of your cited articles had presented their work in a video on YT, would you not have used it? If not, why not? |
davidylan:Has my catching you so easily rile you? Do you now have to resort to insult instead of making arguments withs facts and data? I know this was gonna happen? This is not a debate about who knows more than whom, but a debate about getting to the truth about the reality concerning the diversity of life on the planet. Nobody can claim to know everything there is to know about a given subject. Even experts who work on their select field daily can never claim to know everything about their subject. Least of all me, you is not an expert, but an interested layperson. If I do not know a fact and its relation to the grand scheme of things, chances are good that I may know where and how to inform myself about that fact - I go to the learned sources, the experts, the likes of the scientific journals, books, etc, etc, to inform myself. I do not come here to parade knowledge or ignorance - I come so that we can together try to arrive at credible knowledge. So it does not bother me in the least if you call me ignorant. In fact, if you point at my ignorance of a fact, I am generally quite happy because it give me the opportunity to go bone up of the knowledge concerning that fact. [size=15pt]Why do you inform yourself about evolution?[/size] |
davidylan: The above response need to be noted by ALL and saved and immortalised for posterity, as it displays Davidylan in his dishonest duplicity about the scientific process. Firstly it shows him agreeing with a very old earth view of the world, and secondly it shows him displaying confidence in the scientific reseach, peer-review, publications process. Note - I predict that it will NOT be long before he tries to detract or withdraw his overall approval of these processes and their result. Just keep watching this space. |
davidylan:Thanks for that again. I think we are getting somewhere now. So you agree that this is a very scientifically credible work and the dates of 525 MYA is very plausible? It that were not the case it would have been challenge by the peer-review process. Now, 525 MYA ago happen to fall right in the middle of the cambrian period, which spans 543MYA - 495MYA, and you agree with the scientist of your reference article that crustaceans roamed the earth then. What other animals roamed the earth alongside the crustaceans? Why have human, rabbits, elephants, dogs fossils NEVER been found in rocks dating this period, circa 525 MYA? Why do they only appear in much later rock strata? Can you show me scientific articles, peer-reviewed as the one you cited, that show these mammals to have existed in the cambrian? |
ots: ohaechesi:Then he is NOT god. |
davidylan:Davidylan, Many thanks for the links to the New Scientist article. I like it when people reference respected material in such debates and I have learned a lot from that material. Many thankz. But I have got one important reservation and it is the following: Why should I trust the work of these Chinese scientist? Is it conceivable that they have got their methodology all wrong and have fed the world with wrong and misleading data about the alleged age of these crustaceans. Can we be sure that the figure of 525 millions is in the correct ball-park? I have great doubts that this work is credible and would much appreciate it if you would throw more light on their methods, because if their data is correct, it could potentially overturn some of the bedrock of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. |
m_nwankwo:Hello, good contribution, but I wish you could have gone a little bit further in explaining to him just how it is that acceptance of evolution does not neccesarily entail disbelief in god. Can you also provide some of the more stronger evidence for evolution, particularly from molecular biology? You have always sounded reasonable to me and with you background in the sciences, I think you would want to play a much greater role in educating people about things like evolution. There is no greater duty the enlightened own society than to remove the veils of darkness from our fellow man. |
noetic:Forget about Genesis and try and answer simply questions rather deploying evasive tactics. How could you possibly criticise something that you do not understand? What are your scientific criticism for evolution? To be able to criticise it you need to at least demonstrate an understanding of what is the target of your criticism. Just checking - have you ever been to any establishment to learning - like a school, college, university? Did you pay attention to lessons while there? Or are you a product of one of the myriads of bible colleges in Nigeria? |
wirinet:Hello Wirinet, I made the comment which you have highlighted huxley:in part to yield some ground to the fact that a lot remains unknow about the origins of life although scientist now have very plausible explanations for how life came about. Almost every step through which life is thought to have undergone is being tested and replicated in labs, which good result. I think some teams have even succeeded in producing proto-cells in the lab, which represents a tremendous progress from the Miller experiments of some decades ago. As scientist, we still have to have some measure of provisionality about our work/theories. It is conceivable that we could reproduce life in the form of cells with complex behaviour, but we may never know (I think ) if this was exactly the same way that life originated on the planet. There may indeed be many routes that lead to this thing called life, and our planet may just have taken one of many routes. What we might end up doing in the lab may just be another route. This concept is called convergence, which I guess you are already aware of. Yes, I made the consertion to Davidylan because I want the debate to move onto EVOLUTION rather than ABIOGENESIS, which incidentally, the creationists are not adequately mentally equiped to make the distinction. |
noetic:What is this thing called EVOLUTION that you are so opposed to and criticizing, but you seem not to know what you are criticising? Don't you think it makes sense that you should first of all learn the claims of evolution before venturing to criticise it? How can you criticise something that you don't understand. Your strategy is commonly called "Shooting the strawman". It means you carricature or misrepresent a view so that you can more easily shoot it down. Are your opposition to evolution the result of scientific skepticism or from religious principles. If they are scientific, can you present the scientific data/evidence that renders evolution untenable? Once again I ask the following questions: 1) What is The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection as espoused by the biological scientific community? I want you to define what these biological scientists mean by TTE as originally advanced by Charles Darwin, providing significant reference material from recognised and leading scientific books, publications and experts. 2) What is the Theory/Law of Gravitational Attraction as defined by the scientific community? If you did not know much about the theory of gravity, where would you turn to for information about it? |
Quote from: huxley on Today at 01:53:45 AM Good. Now we know that much of the posturing here has been largely in ignorance.Yes, the human race is largely ignorant as to the naturalistic origin of life, but that is not to say that we shall for ever remain ignorant. Secondly, the fact that we have no explanation for something or an event does not preclude making further useful prediction/theories about that something Quote from: huxley on Today at 01:53:45 AM Before the eye fully "evolved" to what it is now, what did it look like before? Before a goat became what we know of it today, what was it like mid-evolution?You still have NOT define what an intermediate lifeform is? Before a goat, there was something similar to a goat, but with NOT exactly the same morphology as a present day goat. Now, Davidylan, to be sure that we are talking about the same thing, can you address these first please? It is only fair that you attempt my questions, as I have done yours. 1) What is The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection as espoused by the biological scientific community? I want you to define what these biological scientists mean by TTE as originally advanced by Charles Darwin, providing significant reference material from recognised and leading scientific books, publications and experts. 2) What is the Theory/Law of Gravitational Attraction as defined by the scientific community? If you did not know much about the theory of gravity, where would you turn to for information about it? |
davidylan:Davidylan, Many thanks for the links to the New Scientist article. I like it when people reference respected material in such debates and I have learned a lot from that material. Many thankz. But I have got one important reservation and it is the following: Why should I trust the work of these Chinese scientist? Is it conceivable that they have got their methodology all wrong and have fed the world with wrong and misleading data about the alleged age of these crustaceans. Can we be sure that the figure of 525 millions is in the correct ball-park? I have great doubts that this work is credible and would much appreciate it if you would throw more light on their methods, because if their data is correct, it could potentially overturn some of the bedrock of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. |
davidylan:This is just a plain travesty of reasoning. Where does he get this figure from? The Shrimp has NOT NOT NOT been around for 400 million years. You cannot base you argument on so fallacious a claim and think you can get away with it. This is simply dishonest and wrong. |
davidylan:1) I don't know. And I don't think the scientific community have definitive answers yet, nor will it be possible to prove categorically where it came from 2) I don't quite understand this. What is intermediate lifeform? Can you explain? |
davidylan:What are your two questions? |
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