Unicorns and the ToE

[Virginia-American]

... No, no, no, no. Febble, you really need to read and think carefully. Look very carefully at what I say ...

1) All machines that we know of require intelligence (like what you have, however you wish to define it) to create [far different from "all swans that we know of are white" ... notice the word 'require']
2) Thanks to the recent molecular biological revolution, we have now discovered nano-machines within cells
3) Therefore, it is a reasonable inference to propose that these nano-machines also required an intelligence to create

Do you see the key difference? It's huge. And you missed it. Febble, all our experience tells us that intelligence is REQUIRED to create working machines.

Get that word into your head ...

REQUIRED
REQUIRED
REQUIRED

This means that in all our experience, working machines cannot come into existence without intelligence.

I don't know how to emphasize this any more clearly. If you don't get it now, you may never. ...

Dave, nylonase is a counterexample.

It's an enzyme that allows certain bacteria to digest nylon.

It was formed via a single frameshift mutation. No intelligence required, just less than perfect replication.

http://www.nmsr.org/nylon.htm

[Febble]

It was formed via a single frameshift mutation. No intelligence required, just less than perfect replication.

AND a puddle of nylon waste for it to digest!!

Don't let Dave forget NATURAL SELECTION! (He tends to....)

• if it works, repeat (with modification) else discard.

is smart enough.

[Virginia-American]

Exactly. The same mutation has undoubtedly occurred many times, but was fatal in any environment without the nylon wastes.

[RAFH]

Exactly. The same mutation has undoubtedly occurred many times, but was fatal in any environment without the nylon wastes.

Well, I doubt fatal, unless my understanding is poor, it's not like the little buggers can't eat other stuff, just that they have a load of nylon and not much else to eat. So because there's little else to eat, those that can metabolize the nylon, do and survive, those that can't, well, they don't and they starve.

In other situations, where there isn't nylon and there is plenty else to eat, the mutation occurs and turns out to not be useful. It remains in the genome of that lineage for a while, but eventually become vestigial and fades away again. With bacteria, that might take a month or so, but certainly it wouldn't be very long. Bacteria can't afford to have non-productive shit lying about. Those that do get out-competed by those that do not and the lineages die out.

Either way, where there was no nylon to take advantage of, the trait dies away fairly quickly. It only survives where there is a cache of nylon to support it.

Which leads one to wonder about all those potential forms that existed for short periods, far to short to leave a trace. It's mind boggling to conceive what could have been.

[Pappy Jack]

Ok ... I'll watch it when I get home

Well, any thoughts yet? Or are you still looking for loopholes?

As you have previously given every indication that you think analogy is evidential, I would suggest that you must consider this simulation as excellent supporting evidence for the fact of evolution through natural selection, while it also points towards reasons as to why the transitional fossil record is imperfect.

Or do you think there is some fault in my reasoning?

[Oolon Colluphid]

Ooo...kay. Several bright sparks have suggested that this thread needs splitting. I agree... but haven't been looking forward to sifting 900-odd posts for the dozen or so separate topics presently herein. So, I'm starting at the bottom -- the most recent -- and will work backward as far as necessary (ie as I can be bothered to make it comprehensible).

Locking temporarily till I can at least get one new thread going.

-- Oolon, Science Advisor

ETA:

Nested hierarchies and Venn diagrams now here.

[Virginia-American]

Exactly. The same mutation has undoubtedly occurred many times, but was fatal in any environment without the nylon wastes.

Well, I doubt fatal, unless my understanding is poor, it's not like the little buggers can't eat other stuff, just that they have a load of nylon and not much else to eat. So because there's little else to eat, those that can metabolize the nylon, do and survive, those that can't, well, they don't and they starve.

In other situations, where there isn't nylon and there is plenty else to eat, the mutation occurs and turns out to not be useful. It remains in the genome of that lineage for a while, but eventually become vestigial and fades away again. With bacteria, that might take a month or so, but certainly it wouldn't be very long. Bacteria can't afford to have non-productive shit lying about. Those that do get out-competed by those that do not and the lineages die out.

Either way, where there was no nylon to take advantage of, the trait dies away fairly quickly. It only survives where there is a cache of nylon to support it.

Which leads one to wonder about all those potential forms that existed for short periods, far to short to leave a trace. It's mind boggling to conceive what could have been.

That's a good point, and generally "not selected for", rater than "fatal" would be correct. However, in this case, the frameshift was in a gene ncessary for carbohydrate metabolism. The article I cited says:

The new enzyme is 50 times less efficient than its precursor, as would be expected for a new structure which has not had time to be polished by natural selection. However, this inefficiency would certainly not be expected in the work of an intelligent designer. The genetic mutation that produced this particular irreducibly-complex enzyme probably occurred countless times in the past, and probably was always lethal, until the environment changed, and nylon was introduced.

[Dave Hawkins]

The main thing I learned on this thread is that Febble, who is probably representative of your average working scientist, believes contradictory things about the ToE.

At first she said the ToE would fail if we found a fossil centaur. Then she said it wouldn't. It would just have to be seriously modified. But then she went back to saying that the ToE would be in "big trouble" if we found one. The truth is that it would be modified, but never discarded and Febble should realize this. As such, it is an unfalsifiable theory. Therefore, Douglas Theobald (and his prolific disciple, Eric Murphy) is wrong.

What I learned from all of this is that ...

a) Ehrlich and Birch were right when they wrote

“Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus “outside empirical science” but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it.
http://www.rantsnraves.org/showthrea...ich#post138054

b) Febble, like most other average scientists, has a philosophical pre-committment to the idea of the naturalistic (non-ID) origin of species. And this is the fundamental cause of the contradictory behavior.

[Pappy Jack]

....b) Febble, like most other average scientists, has a philosophical pre-committment to the idea of the naturalistic (non-ID) origin of species. And this is the fundamental cause of the contradictory behavior.

And do you have any philosophical pre-commitment to any particular idea?

[Febble]

The main thing I learned on this thread is that Febble, who is probably representative of your average working scientist, believes contradictory things about the ToE.

At first she said the ToE would fail if we found a fossil centaur. Then she said it wouldn't. It would just have to be seriously modified. But then she went back to saying that the ToE would be in "big trouble" if we found one. The truth is that it would be modified, but never discarded and Febble should realize this. As such, it is an unfalsifiable theory. Therefore, Douglas Theobald (and his prolific disciple, Eric Murphy) is wrong.

As I have explained before, Dave, there is nothing contradictory about my position. It would really help if you actually read my posts. Science doesn't deal in proof, so falsification, in science, unlike in math, is probabilistic, not absolute. If we found a centaur, the ToE would be in "big trouble", to the extent that other theories (e.g. alien genetic engineering) might well emerge as being more probable. However, because the ToE is so well-supported by all other evidence, the first thing any scientist would do, faced with such a devastingly falsifying piece of evidence would be to suspect its validity. We deal with outliers all the time in science - we don't ignore them, but we need to know why they are exceptions to our models.

However, you are right that models, in science, tend to be modified, rather than discarded in their entirety. Falsification proceeds stepwise. We may have the big picture right, but details may be wrong. We discover they are wrong when our data is discrepant with our predictions.

Please read The Relativity of Wrong.

b) Febble, like most other average scientists, has a philosophical pre-committment to the idea of the naturalistic (non-ID) origin of species. And this is the fundamental cause of the contradictory behavior.

Febble, like ALL scientists, works on the assumption that things can be explained - that regularities can be observed in the universe, from which predictions can be derived. I am perfectly prepared to consider the possibility that life was designed. After all I work on the assumption that a great deal of my data arose from intentional behaviour. I'm a behavioural scientist, after all. In fact discerning intentional from unintentional behaviour is one aspect of my current research.

What I do NOT see is any evidence that life was designed, except, as I have pointed out, in the sense that it arose via a minimally intelligent algorithm.

So - Dave - what did you think of the video?

[Ray Moscow]

The main thing I learned on this thread is that Febble, who is probably representative of your average working scientist, believes contradictory things about the ToE.

At first she said the ToE would fail if we found a fossil centaur. Then she said it wouldn't. It would just have to be seriously modified. But then she went back to saying that the ToE would be in "big trouble" if we found one. The truth is that it would be modified, but never discarded and Febble should realize this. As such, it is an unfalsifiable theory. Therefore, Douglas Theobald (and his prolific disciple, Eric Murphy) is wrong.

Dave, surely you know that most scientific theories get modified, rather than discarded, when new data are found that don't fit the old theory? It is only when a new, better theory is found that explains all the data more clearly that the old theory gets discarded -- and the process usually takes a lot of time.

If a "centaur" fossil were to be found, the first (and probably right) assumption would be that it isn't really a centaur fossil, since it wouldn't fit anywhere in the known history of life on earth. But if it held up under scrutiny, a place would be found for it in the TOE and the life sciences.

b) Febble, like most other average scientists, has a philosophical pre-committment to the idea of the naturalistic (non-ID) origin of species. And this is the fundamental cause of the contradictory behavior.

I see no reason for a scientist or anybody else to apologise for not including magic and woo-woo in their assumptions. After hundreds and hundreds of posts on this, do you still not get it? Science is about nature, not about "supernature". When you bring the supernatural in, science stops.

Febble, as I recall, was until recently (and possibly is still) a theist anyway, so your dig about her "naturalistic" bias is misplaced.

Ray

[Lucretius II]

b) Dave, like most other average scientifically ignorant Creationists , has a philosophical pre-committment to the idea of the supernaturalistic (ID) origin of species. And this is the fundamental cause of their bizzare and contradictory behavior and willful ignoring of reality and what science can tell us .

[RAFH]

Once again, davey has nothing to add to the discourse, except his need to stir the pot. So he attacks poor little misguided Febble who doesn't know what to think and therefore evolution is invalid.

And, of course, a dig at eric, one of his main detractors who consistently shows davey's cluelessness.

All to stir up the pot and get the focus back on davey where it should be. Afterall, it is all about davey.

[Dave Hawkins]

Febble ... I thought the video was utter nonsense. I thought it more appropriate to comment on it in the thread dedicated to it. See my post there.

[Gagundathar Inexplicable]

Febble ... I thought the video was utter nonsense. I thought it more appropriate to comment on it in the thread dedicated to it. See my post there.

Translation: The video described something that was too complicated for me to understand, so therefore it MUST be wrong.

[Faid]

The main thing I learned on this thread is that Febble, who is probably representative of your average working scientist, believes contradictory things about the ToE.

At first she said the ToE would fail if we found a fossil centaur. Then she said it wouldn't. It would just have to be seriously modified. But then she went back to saying that the ToE would be in "big trouble" if we found one. The truth is that it would be modified, but never discarded and Febble should realize this. As such, it is an unfalsifiable theory. Therefore, Douglas Theobald (and his prolific disciple, Eric Murphy) is wrong.

What I learned from all of this is that ...

a) Ehrlich and Birch were right when they wrote

“Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus “outside empirical science” but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it.
http://www.rantsnraves.org/showthrea...ich#post138054

b) Febble, like most other average scientists, has a philosophical pre-committment to the idea of the naturalistic (non-ID) origin of species. And this is the fundamental cause of the contradictory behavior.

It seems that you learned NOTHING from this thread, dave.

First of all: Do you realize the difference between discovering a Unicorn (basically a horse with a horn on its head) and a Centaur (which is not just a chimeric mix of two genus, but one that has six limbs)?

No?

Come on, give it a try.

[Pappy Jack]

Febble ... I thought the video was utter nonsense. I thought it more appropriate to comment on it in the thread dedicated to it. See my post there.

We've seen it and marvel at your lack of understanding.

[ericmurphy]

The main thing I learned on this thread is that Febble, who is probably representative of your average working scientist, believes contradictory things about the ToE.

At first she said the ToE would fail if we found a fossil centaur. Then she said it wouldn't. It would just have to be seriously modified. But then she went back to saying that the ToE would be in "big trouble" if we found one. The truth is that it would be modified, but never discarded and Febble should realize this. As such, it is an unfalsifiable theory. Therefore, Douglas Theobald (and his prolific disciple, Eric Murphy) is wrong.

No, Dave, you're wrong. Pervasive violations of nested hierarchies would spell the end of common descent with modification, which is the central assertion of evolutionary theory. In order to accommodate them, the theory would have to be massively overhauled or even abandoned. But that would not mean that young-earth creationism is necessarily correct. It's incorrect on a million other grounds that have nothing to do with common descent.

What I learned from all of this is that ...

a) Ehrlich and Birch were right when they wrote

“Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus “outside empirical science” but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it.
http://www.rantsnraves.org/showthrea...ich#post138054

Gee, Dave, I can think of ways to test it. Here are a few:

Prediction 1: a universal genetic code.
Potential falsification: a finding of multiple, unrelated genetic codes.

Prediction 2: a nested hierarchy of species.
Potential falsification: organisms that violate nested hierarchies, such as feathered platypuses, non-vascular plants with seeds, birds with mammary glands, insects with placentas.

Prediction 3: consilience of independent phylogenies.
Potential falsification: independently-derived phylogenies which do not converge, or which produce wildly divergent hierarchies.

Prediction 4: intermediate and transitional forms in the fossil record.
Potential falsification: fossils which do not fit into nested hierarchies, such as a mammal-like bird or an insect-like starfish.

Prediction 5: chronological order of intermediates.
Potential falsification: a negative correlation between the stratigraphy and the phylogenetic tree. E.g., mammal-reptile intermediates older than reptile-amphiban intermediates, or reptile-amphibian intermediates older than proterostome-deuterostome intermediates.

Prediction 6: anatomical vestiges.
Potential falsification: a vestigial feature that was not functional in an ancestor. Examples: snakes with vestigial wings, insects with vestigial backbones, primates with vestigial horns, mammals with vestigial gizzards.

Prediction 7: Atavisms (e.g., living whales with legs, living humans with tails)
Potential falsification: the same as the falsification for anatomical vestiges.

Prediction 8: Molecular vestiges (e.g., the broken human gene for ascorbic acid).
Potential falsification: essentially the same as for anatomical vestiges and atavisms. A finding of pseudogenes for chloroplasts in any metazoan.

Prediction 9: embryonic features of ancestors, such as gills in amniotes.
Potential falsification: embryonic features that do not exist in ancestral lines, e.g., nipples in reptile embryos or bird-like beaks in eutherian mammal embryos, leg buds in teleost fish.

Prediction 10: Present biogeography should reflect common descent.
Potential falsification: elephants on remote Pacific islands, amphibians on remote islands, Antarctic or Australian indigenous cacti.

Prediction 11: Past biogeography. We should not find the same taxon on two landmasses that separated before the taxon evolved (excepting, of course, later imports)
Potential falsification: ape fossils in South America, elephant fossils in Australia.

Prediction 12: human and ape fossils should not be found in Australia, South America, or on remote islands which would have been inaccessible to ancestral apes at the time they evolved.
Potential falsification: human, H. erectus, Australopithicus, etc. fossils in Australia, the Americas, Antarctica, etc.

Prediction 13: Anatomical parahomology. There should be no anatomical features that are not derived from previously existing structures.
Potential falsification: an existing anatomical structure that cannot be derived from more primitive, ancestral features. A horse with wings would be a falsification, since there would be no anatomical features of any horse that could be modified into wings (no ancestors of horses have six limbs).

Prediction 14: molecular parahomology. All proteins currently in existence should statistically significant similarities to proteins with more primitive, core functions.
Potential falsification: proteins that are no related to any previously existing proteins (i.e., "new" proteins, in Dave's sense of the term, which are not derived from any previously-existing proteins). Also, derived proteins that are more deeply rooted in the phylogeny, i.e., older, than the core proteins they derive from.

Prediction 15: anatomical analogy. If two unrelated organisms evolve an analogous structure, that analogous structure must be explicable in terms of modification of ancestral structures in both organisms.
Potential falsification: gills in aquatic mammals or birds. There are no structures available in immediate ancestors from which gills can evolve. Evolution can't "skip steps."

Prediction 16: molecular analogy. If two different organisms evolve analogous molecular structures, those structures must be modifications of previously-existing structures in both organisms.
Potential falsification: no cases of molecular analogy, where all organisms that perform a function with a particular structure all use exactly the same structure; i.e., no convergent evolution.

Prediction 17: anatomical suboptimality. Since evolution can only work by modifying pre-existing structures, there should be many examples of suboptimal evolution.
Potential falsification: a mammal or reptile with no optical blind spots. Evolution cannot got back and "fix" a suboptimal design after the fact, since the ultimate use for any structure cannot be "known" by evolution.

Prediction 18: molecular suboptimality. There should be evidence of suboptimal design at the molecular level, such as the large amount of the human genome that seems to serve no known function. E.g., the human GDPH gene. There is one functional GDPH gene, and at least 20 non-functional copies of the gene.
Potential falsification: if the genomes of all organisms were efficiently designed, with only the DNA required and no more (no pseudogenes, no nonfunctional tandem repeats, "junk DNA."

Prediction 19: protein functional redundancy. There should be many genes that are common to all organisms regardless of whether they are needed. I.e., there should be genes in bacteria that also appear in humans even though they serve no function in human beings. Further, organisms which are related should have similar ubiquitous genes, and less closely-related organisms should have less closely-related ubiquitous genes.
Potential falsification: no pattern of relatedness to ubiquitous proteins. A chimp cytochrome c protein should be no more closely related to the human version than the rat protein, or the douglas fir protein, or the yeast protein, or the e. coli protein.

Prediction 20: DNA coding redundancy. The same pattern of relatedness should show up in the DNA coding for ubiquitous proteins. The more closely related two organisms are, the more similar their DNA sequences should be for ubiquitous genes.
Potential falsification: there should be no pattern of relatedness to DNA sequencing for ubiquitous genes, or a different pattern that is unrelated to the pattern for the amino acid sequence for the protein.

Prediction 21: transposons. Since transposons are random, but heritable, there should be a pattern in transposition that follows the phylogenetic tree.
Potential falsification: transposons that do not fit into nested hierarchies, or fit into different nested hierarchies from the phylogenetic tree.

Prediction 22: redundant pseudogenes. There should also be a pattern among pseudogenes that follows the phylogenetic tree.
Potential falsification: since pseudogenes are rare, it should be extraordinarily unlikely that the exact same pseudogene would appear in two distantly-related organisms. Therefore, pseudogenes should fit into the same nested hierarchies established by the phylogenetic tree. If there were no pattern, or a different pattern from that required by common descent, common descent would be falsified.

Prediction 23: endogenous retroviruses. Since endogenous retroviruses are heritable, their presence should mirror common descent, nested hierarchies, and the phylogenentic tree.
Potential falsification: endogenous retroriviruses which do not fit into the same nested hierarchies and patterns of common descent as the phylogenetic tree.

Prediction 24: genetic change. There should be sufficient genetic change to support the existence of macroevolution. When we compare the genomes of various organisms, we should see that genetic change traced out in the same pattern as the phylogenetic tree. Genetic change should be heritable and largely irreversible.
Potential falsification: if genomes were highly resistant to change, or commonly and typically reverted to wild type, macroevolution would be difficult to explain.

Prediction 25: the fossil record. Macroevolution predicts that as one looks at older and older sediments, one should see organisms that have increasingly primitive (in the cladistics sense of the term) features.
Potential falsification: essentially modern organisms all the way back in the fossil record, or alternatively, no pattern of primitive and derived characteristics chronologically.

Prediction 26: speciation. If speciation is an ongoing process, we should see various degrees of speciation, from fully-interbreeding populations to partially interbreeding populations to populations with reduced fertility or complete infertility to completely genetically isolated populations.
Potential falsification: if all species were genetically reproductively isolated and there were no instances of hybrids, it would be difficult for macroevolution to be true.

Prediction 27: speciation rates. Current estimates, based on the fossil record and mutation rates, are ~3 million years for complete reproductive isolation, on average. Rates of speciation and of morphological change should be as high as or higher than that observed in the fossil record.
Potential falsification: rates of morphological change that are much slower than that observed in the fossil record.

Read 'em and weep, Dave.

You never learn, do you?

b) Febble, like most other average scientists, has a philosophical pre-committment to the idea of the naturalistic (non-ID) origin of species. And this is the fundamental cause of the contradictory behavior.

Nope—your ignorance is the fundamental cause of your inability to figure out what is really being said.

And since you mentioned it, Dave—what's your non-naturalistic explanation for the origin of species? Goddidit?

[Dlx2]

At first she said the ToE would fail if we found a fossil centaur. Then she said it wouldn't. It would just have to be seriously modified. But then she went back to saying that the ToE would be in "big trouble" if we found one. The truth is that it would be modified, but never discarded and Febble should realize this. As such, it is an unfalsifiable theory. Therefore, Douglas Theobald (and his prolific disciple, Eric Murphy) is wrong.

You want to talk centaurs? Okay, let's talk centaurs.

Let's say someone came back from an expedition with a strange-looking taxidermy job that looked much like a centaur.

First, scientists would inspect the specimen. The first question in such cases is whether the animal is real or a composite. Plenty of composites are made by villagers, con men, and even unscrupulous individuals who should know better.

If the specimen was in fact real, as much of it would be described as possible. Genetic samples might be taken and analyzed, and the morphology would be well-studied. Exactly how are the legs formed? Does the skull look like a derived primate, or is it a derived perissodactyl, or is it something else? Can we tell from the osteology anything else about its affinities? If additional specimens could be attained, embryology studies might be conducted to determine exactly how the additional pair of limbs was patterned.

If the animal honestly looked like an actual genetic composite (that is, a design job) obvious signs of human engineering (oddly-spliced genes, etc) would be looked for. If these were found, it would be assumed to be a human-designed GMO.

If tissue types had different genetic components, it might be possible that the organism is a tissue chimera, which would also suggest human tampering. We could attribute such a creature to human design.

Only if it demonstrated completely novel morphology in numerous ways and completely novel genetics in numerous ways would we suspect supernatural design. But frankly, we'd suspect Nephele much more than we'd suspect Jesus.

[ninewands]

The main thing I learned on this thread is that Febble, who is probably representative of your average working scientist, believes contradictory things about the ToE.

At first she said the ToE would fail if we found a fossil centaur. Then she said it wouldn't. It would just have to be seriously modified. But then she went back to saying that the ToE would be in "big trouble" if we found one. The truth is that it would be modified, but never discarded and Febble should realize this. As such, it is an unfalsifiable theory. Therefore, Douglas Theobald (and his prolific disciple, Eric Murphy) is wrong.

Dave, surely you know that most scientific theories get modified, rather than discarded, when new data are found that don't fit the old theory? It is only when a new, better theory is found that explains all the data more clearly that the old theory gets discarded -- and the process usually takes a lot of time.

They aren't even entirely discarded. Davey, as an engineer, knows that Newtonian mechanics are still used in real world engineering. He would also be aware, if he had stayed awake in his numerical modeling classes, that Newtonian mechanics are still used because, for MOST real-world engineering phenomena, the results provided by Newtonian mechanics are "good enough" whether they are correct or not and that the computational resources required to model MOST "human-scale" phenomena by means of QM and/or relativity would be exorbitant. These later, better, theories are used in specific problem realms where their increased accuracy justifies the computational expense (try modeling semiconductor behavior without QM ... ) but the "old way" works just fine for most aspects of power line design.

If a "centaur" fossil were to be found, the first (and probably right) assumption would be that it isn't really a centaur fossil, since it wouldn't fit anywhere in the known history of life on earth.

i.e., a hoax ... see, Piltdown man ... and like Piltdown man, it would be scientists, NOT creationists, who would discover and publicize the hoax.

But if it held up under scrutiny, a place would be found for it in the TOE and the life sciences.

Yep ...

b) Febble, like most other average scientists, has a philosophical pre-committment to the idea of the naturalistic (non-ID) origin of species. And this is the fundamental cause of the contradictory behavior.

I see no reason for a scientist or anybody else to apologise for not including magic and woo-woo in their assumptions. After hundreds and hundreds of posts on this, do you still not get it? Science is about nature, not about "supernature". When you bring the supernatural in, science stops.

... and, in a corollary manner of thinking, when you bring in science the supernatural ceases to exist for the purpose of that inquiry. Don't you see YET, Davey ... you "creation science" types DAMAGE the validity of your "god-arguments" by yourselves. Every time you try to drag science into religion you destroy a little bit of what religion really IS.

Febble, as I recall, was until recently (and possibly is still) a theist anyway, so your dig about her "naturalistic" bias is misplaced.

Ray

Davey, I KNOW I've posted this for your perusal before ... please READ IT this time ...

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are. In view of this and in keeping it in mind constantly while dealing with the book of Genesis, I have, insofar as I was able, explained in detail and set forth for consideration the meanings of obscure passages, taking care not to affirm rashly some one meaning to the prejudice of another and perhaps better explanation.

– The Literal Interpretation of Genesis 1:19–20, Chapt. 19 [AD 408]

(emphasis added)

then ponder this one ...

With the scriptures it is a matter of treating about the faith. For that reason, as I have noted repeatedly, if anyone, not understanding the mode of divine eloquence, should find something about these matters [about the physical universe] in our books, or hear of the same from those books, of such a kind that it seems to be at variance with the perceptions of his own rational faculties, let him believe that these other things are in no way necessary to the admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures. In short, it must be said that our authors knew the truth about the nature of the skies, but it was not the intention of the Spirit of God, who spoke through them, to teach men anything that would not be of use to them for their salvation.

– ibid, 2:9

(emphasis added)

You see, Dave, it does NOT endanger your eternal soul to understand that the Jewish priests of 500 BCE had nearly ZERO understanding of modern science. Even if you take ALL of Genesis as allegory you are still free to follow the "admonitions or accounts or predictions of the scriptures" to your heart's content.

[Serafina Pekkala]

Hiya. Why does David always immediately insult anyone who brings him a point that he cannot refute? He cant refute the clock video so he insults Febble. He cant refute Erics point about nested hierarchies so he insults Eric. These insults are completely unecessary. David seems to be a pretty nasty person in real life.

Sari

[ericmurphy]

Hiya. Why does David always immediately insult anyone who brings him a point that he cannot refute? He cant refute the clock video so he insults Febble. He cant refute Erics point about nested hierarchies so he insults Eric. These insults are completely unecessary. David seems to be a pretty nasty person in real life.

Sari

I have this theory that Dave is actually a really nice, mild-mannered guy in real life. He saves the vitriol for his online persona.

So, Dave: how are we doing with that alternative phylogeny for living organisms? And don't forget the homologies!

[Febble]

Febble ... I thought the video was utter nonsense.

I don't believe you.

I thought it more appropriate to comment on it in the thread dedicated to it. See my post there.

You didn't comment on it. You commented on one of the introductory frames, in a series of comments that indicated that you had completely missed the point of the video.

The substance of the video is the evolution of the clocks, about which you have not, to date, ventured a single comment.

If you genuinely thought it was nonsense, I'd like to know why. Otherwise the more plausible interpretation is that you either didn't watch it or didn't understand it.

[Steviepinhead]

Dave, you think that life's amazing little "machines" are examples of super-advanced high-tech "intelligent design." Some very bright entity thunk up these little nano-marvels in some mystical "place" outside of Space'N'Time and then--in some manner that you have not yet deigned to share with us--intruded into the natural and physical and testible and observable in some manner so as to instantiate those designs.

You compare this with the (relatively) low-tech human practice of designing the (relatively) crude, lo-tech machines which fill our civilization. You apparently see the same sort of "top-down" process of intelligence ==> concept ==> detailed design ==> working model ==> functional "machine" at work in both life-at-large and human society in particular.

And, being's how you're not simply a self-announced successful entreprenuer, businessman, engineer, aviator, and budding jr. scientist, but also a god-fearing, patriotic American, you're of course all in favor of capitalist consumerism and representative democracy as opposed to them heathen, furrin' abominations such as centralized socialism and imposed dictatorship.

I mean, right? "Top down" design is plenty good enough to account for the complexity of life and technology, but "bottom up" capitalism and democracy are better than centralized, "managed," "designed" systems such as socialism and dictatorship?

Am I sensing a little contradiction in your thinking, here, dave...?

Why is it that you seemingly acknowledge that complex, robust, responsive, adaptive systems like consumer economies and political institutions (and civilization as a whole? and "technology" in particular?) can emerge out of the chaotic, competitive, cross-cutting, contradictory, "bottom up" rough'n'tumble of zillions of individual self-interested choices and transactions, while at the same time you seem to be claiming that other robust, adaptive, complex systems like biodiversity and advanced alien nano-technologies can only be thunk up, designed, and instituted from "above," by the One True Central Management Committee?

I'm not getting this, dave.

Complex is imposed from "above" by design, as in the failed communist-socialist economies?

Or complex can emerge from "below," out of the welter and stew of many small changes and choices?

Which is your position, and why?

And why is it so utterly different in the realm of economics and politics than in the realm of technology and biodiversity?

Just curious what your thinking is...

[RAFH]

You are assuming, Stevie, that davey is thinking or even willing to think. davey has adopted an apriori worldview, period. Anything that doesn't comport with that worldview is wrong, erroneous, fraudulent, misunderstood, miscomprehended, misinterpreted, etc. Period! Only those things that comport with his worldview are valid. Period.

End of story.

Of course, his purpose in coming online with his tripe is to garner attention and he actually likes negative attention as it supports his desired martyrdom.