Additionally something I was thinking about earlier - is that the entire premise of the thread was posed in a rather biased way.
I'm personally not a creationist and I consider the entire premise to be a bit far-fetched, but "creationist" and "evolutionist" are not necessarily mutually exclusive as the thread's direction would seem to imply.
Creationism only applies to the "starting point" there's nothing in creationism that contradicts that starting point being because of the intervention of a deity and then from there evolution took over.
Especially since keep in mind one of the primary cruxes to evolution is presenting a path of evolution, and at last check there's still a few links missing in the chain of human evolution that creationism applies to. (although in recent years we've found some ancestors that are even closer than before we've still not found the absolute missing link - although if I remember the Nova correctly, it's likely the species that was the great-grandparent of the "Missing Link")
Now this isn't to say SOME creationists completely deny evolution - but they're in a drastic minority I would imagine - I would imagine MOST creationists just debate how human kind and/or the "Big Bang" started depending on the variant - not that evolution doesn't occur in the improvement and variation of species.
Honestly every mention of creationism in this thread by those attacking it has been filled with a large amount of over the top strawmanning that is hardly accurate.
It's one thing to disagree with a philosophy or school of thought (like I personally do with creationism) but at least represent it appropriately and state the points where the philosophies compare and contrast.
The problem is that creationalist who simply say the Earth and universe was created by god are fine, no one can prove otherwise and no one likely will prove otherwise in the forseeable future. Thats perfect grounds for faith because there needs to be SOME reason.
The problem are the morons who go about claiming the world is 5 thousand years old, dinosaurs are god's practical joke, and that damn monkey isn't their cousin. (I find that odd because half the time I suspect they're closely related to the missing link)
The rational ones aren't the problem, rational people can believe whatever they want just as long as their rational enough to not be obnoxious about it and rant against all contrary opinion and fact.
The rational ones aren't the problem, rational people can believe whatever they want just as long as their rational enough to not be obnoxious about it and rant against all contrary opinion and fact.
So who are you and Mr. Stuff combatting then in this forum? I haven't seen anyone running around talking about riding dinosaurs and the such. And the condescending tone by some of the posters leads one to believe otherwise when faith, creationism, or anything else faith based comes up.
Vaclav asked why the thread title and OP seemed to imply that lots of people were young-earthers. I suggested that they are out there in enough numbers to warrant it, but simply lack representation on this forum.
Vaclav asked why the thread title and OP seemed to imply that lots of people were young-earthers. I suggested that they are out there in enough numbers to warrant it, but simply lack representation on this forum.
I'm from the US, although admittedly I've always been an East Coaster. [And I do easily understand why my login - my grandfather's name, my middle name - would obfuscate my current nationality although it's reasonably precise for my ancestry]
And I'm not saying that YEC don't exist in any numbers of substance (heck, they've got a "role model" in public view with Palin) - but to think that they exist in numbers that make them a "majority" of creationists tends to be folly in my opinion.
That's not to say that in places they don't have undue amounts of influence however - much like the neocons of the late 90's - that were a minority, but a very strong one at exerting influence.
YEC do certainly provide a large amount of the volume of pro-creationist discussion, but that doesn't mean they themselves dwarf the silent majority of creationists.
But that's just me with my point of view from someone who tries to make sure both sides in any discussion are represented appropriately. I would personally say in line with an appropriate discussion of this topic there would actually be 4 appropriate groupings:
1) Complete faith in evolutionary theory as it currently exists.
2) Reasonable faith in evolutionary theory, but believing some points could be off.
3) Split faith between evolutionary theory and creationism.
4) Abject ignorance of evolution, complete faith in creationism.
[Although point 4 could be worded better, since even I see my bias bleeding through with the wording I selected]
It doesn't matter if you're Young Earth or Old Earth, creationist means that you believe all species were created *as is* and didn't change over time. That's what it means.
If you think species have changed into other species over time, that's evolution. If you think it was directed by God's hand, that's still evolution (with a smathering of Intelligent Design in), not creationism. That's the position of the Catholic Church, amongst other things.
Edit: Also, Topper could you address this part of my original post as well:
"Its a simple matter of thats what most people think the question is asking so thats what they address. I mean you yourself thought thats what it was asking otherwise your jab at creationists makes absolutely no sense in context."
Specifically the bolded part. Thanks.
I actually missed the word "colloquially", in which case, you're right. But that's unfortunate. For the human race, if nothing else.
As for the above, I have no idea what you're talking about. I never once confused evolution with the origin of life, and my jab at creationists was made while talking about genetic drift. So I'm not sure what you're expecting here.
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@Vaclav: Are you from the U.S.? We have a museum in K.Y. which depicts humans living alongside dinosaurs. There's a triceratops statue with a saddle that you can take a picture with. 'Banana Man' Ray Comfort and his partner in crime Kirk 'Crocoduck' Cameron recently put out an edition of "Origin of Species" with an intro written by them, calling Darwin a racist and linking him to Hitler, and distributed it to top American universities.
So, that position is out there, unfortunately, and it does need combating. I personally know at least six different young earth creationists (more than just know of; either friends or relatives).
I've heard of the "museum" and Kirk Cameron, but I have never seen or heard of Ray Comfort. So I went to wiki for an initial reaction on the man:
Considering that as a primary research and watching a few minutes of him on youtube. I'll agree, his background makes him a joke to anything. I'm all for amateurism to study concepts and bring something new to fields, since someone without the bonds of corporations or academia can and will think differently and have different opportunities presented to them. However, amateurism has to be self structured and mostly in contact with professionals or at least their works to give a person a fair base to work with.
He has no academic rigor at all, no nothing. Just slung together hackneyed theory without any basis for it. It's difficult to have a foot in hard sciences and the humanities as is, people like this just blow everything out of proportion. I mean he just basically undermines any fruitful analytical framework th rough sheer incompetence and laziness.
Banana look designed for humans because they are designed... BY humans. Wild bananas have huge black rock hard seeds, so we've bred them to be mostly seedless. Most bananas have starchy, not sugary, taste, and must be cooked (like plantain). A single mutation that made them sugary was found by chance and then favored by human farmers until the majority of bananas grown ended up being the sugary sweet treat they are today.
Well, the fact is that no one knows how old the Earth really is. We have carbon-dating and various other tools of measurement, but there is such a thing as systematic ambiguity.
Actually, we do know. It's more than 4 billion years old. That estimate comes from multiple different techniques, meaning there's parallel evidence pointing to the same order of magnitude. Even if you're putting into question radiometric dating, the order is of billions, not thousands. The Young Earthers are off by a factor of a million or so.
Measurements from divergence of species indicates the last universal ancestor of all living organisms on Earth lived no later than 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. That's basically a minimum to the age of the Earth.... assuming, of course, that Earth didn't get seeded with life from elsewhere in the universe, the Panspermia hypothesis.
BTW: Carbon dating is only used to measure the amount of time since something once living died. It cannot be used to measure the age of the Earth. Other types of radiometric dating must be used for the age of the Earth.
Vaclav asked why the thread title and OP seemed to imply that lots of people were young-earthers. I suggested that they are out there in enough numbers to warrant it, but simply lack representation on this forum.
So you argue on the basis 'that the belief is out there' even though no one has shown to have said belief on this forum. It seems like strawmanning to me. Why aren't you and others as vehemently arguing against the belief in Thor? Zues? Or other such gods you have mentioned? They may not be on this forum, but I'm sure they are out there.
For that matter why aren't you and others arguing against Muslims? There are a whole lot of them out there. Doesn't that belief need to be combatted as well?
I understand this is a debate forum, but sometimes people are way to hellbent to try and 'win the internet' than they are to have a discussion.
Even if chemical reactions must synthesize and disrupt matter according to strict rules, how could strictly-chemical refinement account for the assimilation of amino acids into the intricate proteins that maintain homeostasis present in life, or for even higher levels of complexity?
Simple self-replicating molecules evolved to create these processes over millions of generations. There's much we don't know about the details of abiogenesis and the evolution of proto-life, but there is no doubt generally about what happened, no reason to think it couldn't happen.
Coincidental chemical reactions of light, water, and minerals, even accommodated by natural selection, would not assimilate into the stable, customizable metabolism present in the course of a life of a gigantic beast, no matter how plentiful and well-timed.
Daniel Dennett (and possibly others before him) described a simple demonstration of the counterintuitive power of nonrandom selection. You might think winning eight coin flips in a row is probabilistically unlikely, right? The odds are one in 256. But using nonrandom selection, it is not only possible but easy (procedurally speaking, at least) to produce a person who has won eight coin flips in a row. Just set up a pyramidal tournament of 256 people*; the winner will inevitably have won eight coin flips. An observer who doesn't understand how the tournament works may think it miraculous that the organizer can show him an eight-flip winner every time, but that's because he doesn't grasp the number of failed trials that accompanied that success.
Now, before you attack this example, keep in mind that it's simply presented to illustrate the power of the principle of nonrandom selection. The nonrandom selection in evolution works very differently than a coin toss tournament - it's far more efficient, for starters, because it not only preserves but multiplies traits that contributed to success, whereas coins have no memory.
*Actually, you can make do with considerably fewer.
The fact that life lasts over time, and adapts without destabilizing, ought to prove that, while life may take advantage of coincidence, life has a purpose beyond a regular entropic course. Organisms, as mere carbon, hydrogen, etc., do not immediately destabilize according to entropy in rough conditions, under which other complex combinations of those same elements would destabilize.
Entropy, too, is a statistical phenomenon, not a physical force that actively goes around smashing complexity. All life demonstrates is that complex molecules can be reasonably stable, especially when said molecules have evolved such that they create an environment for themselves which maximizes their stability.
Perhaps that is because the broad concept of nature can include the nature of space, which is not considered an entity in Naturalism.
But, space is an entity, a continuous entity, to which all matter, energy, and light are exposed. Whoever controls space, can therefore control all relationships among all matter, all energy, and all light, without necessarily having control over any material object.
Well, mutations are random. So pick a path of randomness that leads directly to the diversity present among life today.
Once you start "picking", it's hardly random, is it? Besides, it's hard to replicate the actual course of evolution when all the things that should be dead but aren't are there getting in the way.
Expectations are subjective, and statistical analysis, as a mere reflection of subjective expectations, must be equally subjective.
There is nothing more objective than life and death. Even probable life and probable death are as objective as the probabilities you run into in Vegas, i.e. more than enough for the casinos to fleece you with. An expectation that your lucky rabbit's foot will change the odds in your favor doesn't make it so.
In a feedback loop, an organism responds to nature, and nature responds to that organism.
The feedback loop I was referring to was the genome "responding" to itself - or to its previous generation, at any rate. Faithful copying is positive feedback, tending to produce more faithful copying in the future.
That is a reason for an objection to the theory of natural selection: an unfit trait can become a fit trait simply through sheer tenacity of the organism, and what's to stop this from happening?
An organism that survives in spite of an unfit trait does not make the trait fit. I have already said this several times.
This is a question of ability. From where does this ability come, originally? Feedback loops are the means by which it is refined. But without the initiation of the ability, there could be no further refinement of it.
That question is beyond the scope of the evolution debate, as has been pointed out already in this thread.
But saying that the ability is due to chemical reactions is insufficient; what obligates chemicals to react as they do? The laws of physics? What makes them laws necessarily, rather than merely coincidence as well?
I can play the coincidence game, too, you know. I take the less-popular viewpoint, and it is equally substantiated.
How does the coincidence or noncoincidence of the laws of physics have any bearing on natural selection?
There is a young gene that has not yet reproduced successfully. Is such a gene a faithful replicator? No, not at this moment in time. So, is it going to disappear?
Doesn't each gene, in the beginning of its existence, fall into the category of "not a faithful replicator"?
Your tendency to latch onto the least viable possible definition for a term and then attack it is a form of strawman argument, and it's really getting tiresome. A faithful replicator has the capacity to faithfully replicate, whether or not it's done so yet.
What is the real use of this classification, if it can be affirmed for any particular gene only after such gene has either reproduced or died without having reproduced? We can find patterns in genealogy, but how can we be sure what they mean for a particular gene, until they express themselves? And even after they express themselves, they may not have expressed themselves fully.
Like "bad decision", it may be that we can only label a "faithful replicator" in retrospect. But this is due to limitations in our ability to predict the future, not any quality of the gene itself. Whenever we decide it's appropriate to apply the label, the gene was a faithful replicator for its entire functional existence. I think you're placing too much import on semantics and/or epistemology here; what we know about or call a thing can't change what it is and how it works.
Well, from the perspective of a single allele, the incidental "statistical noise" would be all other alleles throughout time. What does it matter, in application, what the historical trend is, if it does not obligate an allele to mutate or not to mutate? What makes you think things shall continue to happen according to their precedents?
Dice have no memory. A historical trend doesn't obligate them to fall in any way. And yet the house tends to take your money at the craps table. If you can't understand how this is possible, you really have no business discussing statistical phenomena.
It is scientists' (subjective) mistake to aliken one allele to another merely because they can't tell the difference between their chemical makeups. Then to declare that there is a meaningful trend among them... it's induction. It's careless projection.
Is this just an indictment of all science, or is there something special about this particular induction that has you upset?
What is it that determines the odds for survival, for a particular organism? Fitness obligates what specifically in reality? Claws? Sharp claws? Very sharp claws? The use of very sharp claws to fight off predators? The successful such use?
Everything in the universe affects an organism's possible survival, from the groundwater level to the course of an asteroid. But the only things we're concerned about for the purpose of evolution are those that heredity can pass on. Claws (however sharp) are of course an expression of certain heritable genes. Their usage can be instinctual or learned; instinctual behavior is heritable, and learned behavior can be as well if it is taught by a parent or social group.
It is a rigged description, because it is also possible that the effectiveness of traits comes from a feedback loop that has nothing to do with effectiveness, but rather with timing, or even emotion, between predator and prey, or mate and mate. In other words, it's possible that animals can read one another's minds or something, and make decisions based on what they find there, regardless of pain or pleasure in reality. If that were true, then adaptive traits would be involved only secondarily to survival and reproduction.
There was systematic risk inherent to the failure of the largest financial institutions. They were the most successful at capital allocation; they were the fittest. Obviously, if those banks were the fittest, their failure would imply the failures of all other sectors of the economy, as those other sectors must be less fit since they produce less material wealth than do the large financial institutions.
So, the banks had to survive by any means necessary, including theft.
That is survival of the fittest.
Kanye West, Viagra, cliffsnotes, non-enforcement of anti-trust laws, 2G1C... there are many other available examples of survival of the fittest as a moral structure in contemporary American culture.
There is neither anything moralistic nor Darwinian about human greed. Your thesis would suggest that these sorts of things didn't happen before 24 November 1859, which is ludicrous.
Spiders could grow to be three feet tall due to a series of random mutations that facilitate such a change.
And nonrandom survival would reap 'em, because for a spider in a modern environment, that kind of size is not advantageous. (For starters, it would suffocate.)
If the effect were all that mattered, why bother to differentiate between adaptive mutations and non-adaptive ones? How can anyone say with accuracy what the ultimate effect for life will be? All organisms die sooner or later, and experience some things during their lives. Some organisms have offspring, but the offspring die, too, after having some experiences.
Because as scientific animals we like to be able to describe what's happening and has happened in our universe. No one can do so with perfect accuracy, but that doesn't stop us from making a go at it anyway. My point, to repeat what I said above, is that our knowledge and descriptions of natural events doesn't affect the events.
This is a subjective judgment. Some people may value things other than their own personal survival- the happiness and security of their children, for one. Or someone might like to drink alcohol, and accept that it will destroy his liver and kill him.
There's nothing subjective about the observation that social groups can pool their resources and thrive where loners would fail. I'm not talking about what people want, here; I'm talking about what happens.
We ought to try to offer people better ways to express themselves, and have faith that people will be sociable and philanthropic because it appeals to something inside their own character, not because our survival demands their obedience to established traditions.
Maybe we should, but that says diddly-squat about the validity of natural selection.
Self-expression is a fine source of meaning. My existence right now can be satisfying, if I appreciate the subtle changes in and around myself.
Sure, it's good to alleviate the pain of illness and mortality, but that's because it helps people to express themselves more often, not because we can take a collective victory against the dispassionate universe that we might think we have bested.
That's all very wonderful, but again, not what I was talking about. The functional purpose of life - roughly, to make more life - does not have to be the meaning that we self-aware creatures choose for ourselves. The theory of evolution explains how we came to be; it does not tell us what to think or do. And your continued inability to separate these two very distinct notions is causing a lot of headaches.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Evolution is improvisational, neither strictly-ordered, nor strictly-random. A lot of coincidence is taken advantage of by life, but life itself was not initiated by coincidence. There is meaning innate to life. We're individuals with individual purposes, not pieces in a game of Nature.
Was this post supposed to be accepted at face value?
What was life itself initiated by?
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Even if chemical reactions must synthesize and disrupt matter according to strict rules, how could strictly-chemical refinement account for the assimilation of amino acids into the intricate proteins that maintain homeostasis present in life
Proteins really aren't that intricate. If you concede that amino acids can form via random chemical reaction, then why is it such a stretch to think that 20 of them could randomly arrange themselves in a useful order after trillions of attempts?
Once a protein exists, randomness is reduced because a protein can perform a function. A protein that can, for example, attach to an amino acid and move it will assist in formation of other proteins. The problem of entropy is overcome by the fact that protein can do work. Once you overcome the problem of entropy, there is no barrier to complexity.
But saying that the ability is due to chemical reactions is insufficient; what obligates chemicals to react as they do? The laws of physics? What makes them laws necessarily, rather than merely coincidence as well?
Chemicals don't react in a certain way because "the law says so", the law is just a way of describing observations of behaviors that have never been contradicted. When a certain chemical reacts a certain way under certain conditions every single time, after thousands or millions of trials, it's absurd to call that coincidence.
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An amino acid can form via random chemical reaction. This must happen 19 more times, though.
All of the other 19 amino acids must occur in the same local vicinity as did the first amino acid.
At the same time as one another.
When one of the amino acids attaches to another, if it attaches at a particular angle, the structure of the bonds there prevents further attachment of amino acids to this macromolecule. Each one of the 19 attachments must happen precisely.
For the specifications of the protein that initiated life, the order of the amino acids must be strictly-particular, also. All 20 amino acids may connect, but in the incorrect order, and construct nothing further, anyway.
All of this is overstated and exaggerated. About 20 different amino acids are required to form the various proteins necessary for human life and DNA. It does not take all 20 amino acids to form a single protein that can perform a function.
Even if they're all made, oriented, and assimilated properly, what do they do then? It's a tool that can sustain itself, but how does it replicate? For this to occur, it must destabilize, in order to reach out to grab more energy than it already has... The only way this can happen is for there to be synchronous orientation of other matter involved. This is the single bullet point that is a matter of absolutes, rather than a matter of probability. There is no alternative explanation for reproduction that is a logical one, except synchronous orientation. Even if you grant that somewhere in the universe, life was bound to occur, despite the unlikelihood of the other constraints, it is impossible that life could reproduce under the known limitations of the physical laws; they must be amended because of reproduction.
A remaining barrier to complexity is speed. Even if protein can do work, sometimes work cannot be done quickly enough to respond adequately to a rapidly-destabilizing force. The main thresholds are heat and light, but there may be others.
Unless I'm mistaken, a large part of evolution theory has to do with determining the likely conditions of early Earth. And again unless I'm mistaken, those conditions have been reasonably theorized to show how they would have assisted in the necessary chemical reactions. So I don't see how this barrier applies.
If I agree to this, how can I accept that all evolutionary traits are the results of only random mutation? Cells have always replicated a certain way under certain conditions, after trillions of trials. Is it absurd to call DNA replication coincidence?
Um... yes? DNA replication is not a coincidence, but mutation is not just a theory, it is proven. We know for a fact that sometimes errors in the DNA coding occurs. If you can point me towards evidence of unexplained anomalies in the laws of chemical reactions, I'd be interested to see it.
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As the many many anti-creationists are so quick to point this out in other threads, I suppose I'll point it out here. Evolution and abiogensis are not the same thing.
Evolution requires pre-existing lifeforms. The initial "arrival" of life-forms from non-live is abiogenesis, and is not part of evolution. Its also Significantly more theoretical (in the colloquial meaning of theoretical) than evoltuion.
There's a lot of circumstancial evidence for abiogenesis though. For one, virii. A virus is a piece of RNA that self-replicates by 'hijacking' a cell's reproduction capabilities. While the virus itself needs the machinery of a cell to reproduce, that some intermediate forms of life that are not even unicellular exist seems to point to the possibility of life having arose purely over time as chemicals assembling themselves. The virus would itself just be a form of proto-life that has evolved over time to take advantage of the existence of other descendants of those first strands of self-replicating RNA. I'm sure free-floating RNA did not replicate as easily as virii once cells started popping up, so they got nudged out in favor of virii (and prions, another simple form of proto-life).
(I use the term proto-life because whether virii or prions are life or only complex sets of molecules/chemicals depends more on where you draw the definitional line than anything.)
There's a lot of circumstancial evidence for abiogenesis though. For one, virii. A virus is a piece of RNA that self-replicates by 'hijacking' a cell's reproduction capabilities. While the virus itself needs the machinery of a cell to reproduce, that some intermediate forms of life that are not even unicellular exist seems to point to the possibility of life having arose purely over time as chemicals assembling themselves. The virus would itself just be a form of proto-life that has evolved over time to take advantage of the existence of other descendants of those first strands of self-replicating RNA. I'm sure free-floating RNA did not replicate as easily as virii once cells started popping up, so they got nudged out in favor of virii (and prions, another simple form of proto-life).
(I use the term proto-life because whether virii or prions are life or only complex sets of molecules/chemicals depends more on where you draw the definitional line than anything.)
Hold the phone a second: There's a lot of "circumstantial evidence"? And you are claiming this is a good reason to believe it as absolute truth?
With regard to abiogenesis it's not clear cut. Panspermia also makes sense (though I guess technically that just puts back abiogenesis to an off-planet event, but I assume by abiogenesis we usually mean that it happened 'on this here planet').
Also, I'm not privy to the latest research, so for all I know the evidence for on-planet abiogenesis is air tight.
With regard to abiogenesis it's not clear cut. Panspermia also makes sense (though I guess technically that just puts back abiogenesis to an off-planet event, but I assume by abiogenesis we usually mean that it happened 'on this here planet').
Whether it happened here or somewhere else is irrelevant to the issue. It still requires life from non-life.
But I'm glad you are acknowledging that abiogenesis is a theory (in the colloquial meaning) and isn't by any means established fact.
Also, I'm not privy to the latest research, so for all I know the evidence for on-planet abiogenesis is air tight.
And also, for all you know, its leaky like a sieve. The point being, you are assuming it is correct because it being correct would support your belief (I know you will dispute that word, but meh, don't care its accurate) that life spontaneously originated, rather than being created.
Look, I just need to know that you can bend a spoon through prestidigitation to say Uri Geller is a fraud, and I just need a pretty good explanation for how life could arise spontaneously to reject the explanation that posits an entity that is unproven and, for most people, actually considered unprov*able*.
Uri Geller has more claims of possibly being in the right than an entity that can't even show that it exists.
Look, I just need to know that you can bend a spoon through prestidigitation to say Uri Geller is a fraud, and I just need a pretty good explanation for how life could arise spontaneously to reject the explanation that posits an entity that is unproven and, for most people, actually considered unprov*able*.
So in other words, you don't require any proof and you accept it on faith?
(I don't necessarily think thats a bad thing, but for some reason I was under the impression that you did.)
Note: Since you're a real fiend for pointless tangents, WUBRG, to avoid quoting large swaths of text and responding with "How is this relevant?", I'm simply omitting all that's irrelevant or simply incoherent. If you feel that you've made an important point which I've skipped over this way, try rephrasing it.
In this example, the goal is defined before the process begins.
Doesn't have to be. If I set up this tournament, the result is the same whether or not my goal was to produce someone who's won eight flips in a row. Besides, as I said, this example is not particularly similar to the process of natural selection, except that it is a form of nonrandom selection.
Life is a matter of timing, rather than the mere existence of parts; their orientation, according to a specifically-ordered sequence, and directed properly in time, as well, necessitates synchronous orientation to avoid circularity in energy application.
In energy application, multiple things must work in tandem and synchronize, despite the constraints of their circumstances; such synchronization breaches the physical laws from which macromolecular stability is derived.
The whole system of a prokaryotic cell is interdependent, and will run out of energy without all of the parts involved working together in an approximately-simultaneous process. The window of opportunity in which these numerous coincidences would have to occur, in order to create reliable reproduction in life, is a few hours at best, rather than a few million years, because of the speed at which energy is lost through heat.
List of required synchronous processes for a life form:
1. Create metabolism
2. Activate metabolism
3. Reproduce
4. Withstand mutations
5. Manage any interaction between these processes
If any one of these fails at any moment, the whole cycle becomes susceptible to the whim of entropy. Abiogenesis may account for a nucleic acid and a nitrogenous base or two, but not for the reason these things began to engage in entropy-defying processes, such as the transmission of RNA out of a pore in the nucleus to a ribosome, which would fail reliably according to regular entropy. The microtubules are oriented synchronously with the home nucleus and the destination ribosome. Life not only distributes energy according to the economics of entropy, but also preserves existing structure despite entropic forces. This happens both in simple ways and in complex ways, but, at its simplest, it still requires synchronous orientation that is super-circumstantial, at its starting point.
You're taking it for granted that a cell is the simplest possible self-replicator. If it were, abiogenesis (but not evolution) would be in real hot water. But you have not established this fact.
The theory of natural selection is concerned with causation.
As I've said before, only in the broad Aristotelian sense of "explanation". There is no reason for you to be focused on a strict conception of causation; if evolution steps outside that conception, all it means is that you're being too narrow-minded, not that evolution is wrong.
Than what is the true definition of fitness, for an individual organism?
Fit" traits were defined, by the theory of natural selection, as those traits which persisted over a certain amount of time. Traits exist in organisms, correct?
I've rejected this definition several times already, and provided a more suitable one. I hate having to repeat myself: a fit trait is one that raises its bearer's potential for survival.
Or does the trait have to be used in a way that is clearly advantageous to the organism, in a way similar to how a person can use a tool to accomplish a task with greater ease? Oh, I get it now. The theory of natural selection is simply humanity's projection of its use of tools on to the rest of life, so we don't question why the tools we've made seem to have lost their use to us through technology and innovation. Well, that's quite clever!
It's actually kind of disturbing the way you ask a question, answer it on my behalf, and then attack the answer. It's technically just strawmanning, but it looks almost pathological, like you can't tell the difference between your ideas and mine.
All I wanted was to get to the bottom of the misunderstanding here: capacity. It's no fallacy to investigate the intended referent of a concept. What's the referent for capacity? There is none- capacity is a subjective notion. In reality, any thing may retain or lose the capacity to do anything, because it's all atoms and energy, etc.
Capacity is objective; look at the possible futures that follow from the present, and see what can happen in them. Things may "retain or lose the capacity to do anything" only if you live in a world of magic. In reality, atoms and energy are arranged in specific ways that bring about specific capacities according to the laws of physics, and they are not rearranged arbitrarily.
Which is it: retrospect, or predicting the future?
Learn to parse. Because we cannot predict the future, we have to apply labels which concern future events retrospectively. For instance, "bad decision" means the decision will lead to bad consequences. But because I don't know it will lead to bad consequences until those consequences have already happened, I can only say a decision was bad in retrospect, even though, objectively, it was bad even at the time I made it.
It is accepted that life can survive, in some form, with very scarce resources. It is unnecessary that the groundwater level remain stable, or that meteors bypass the earth, or any other conceivable natural event except the sun exploding, for life to survive.
According to the theory of natural selection, nature selects traits caused by random mutations. A mutation can lead to the development of a trait which is advantageous to the survival of the organism, in which it occurs. What makes a trait advantageous? It's advantageous because it allows the organism to out-combat its predators, or find access to more food to better maintain its size; all reactions to previously-developed traits. It's a regress of new mutation responding to old mutation, through the medium of natural selection.
The origin of any trait, according to the theory, is a mutation that was random- not a response to anything. Nature did not select it, so much as it happened to not select against it. This is a case, therefore, of an absence of evidence masquerading as the presence of evidence: the cycle may continue responding to itself according to natural selection, but the beginning of the cycle has, at its source, something beyond the scope of natural selection to explain- a random mutation, neither advantageous, nor disadvantageous to the organism, at the time of its inception.
This is like declaring an internal combustion engine can't work because it needs an electric starter. Of course evolution requires an initial environment for the adaptation process to do anything. But nature has helpfuly provided it with one, so how is this fact an indictment of the theory?
If nature can make comparisons, then it must have some way to make comparisons, and to remember them. This is intelligence.
This is simply not true. Nature is constantly, and without any trace of intelligence, comparing the masses of bodies in the solar system to determine what accelerates where. And it compares the fitness of traits in organisms not through intelligent evaluation but through the brute fact of survival (which, incidentally, is the only sort of "memory" it has, too).
Christianity taught that everyone is guilty of sin, due to original sin. Therefore, forgiveness of sin was the most lauded gift possible for a person to receive. So, in order to fit in with Christianity, everyone had to sin, in order to receive forgiveness.
People took for granted this sin/forgiveness exchange for so long, that sin began to interfere with society. It led to the World Wars, after which, everyone threw up their hands and said, "Forget this. Humanity is evil. There is nothing that can be done for us. We must stop trying, futilely, to prevent sin, and try instead to learn to live with sin as best we can. We accept sin, so long as it does not lead to the destruction of all humanity. Any less destruction, however, we can accept, with the appropriate price."
So, everyone accepted sin as a premise, on which the rest of their understanding was to be based. They raised their children with the expectation that misbehavior would occur. Generations were reared believing that sin was not so bad, in moderation. In fact, they came to believe, sin was necessary, and no sin whatsoever was actually worse than a moderate amount of sin. Sin came to define meaning.
Now, everyone is so lost because of the ambiguity of this path, that we have been forced to make yet another concession: reprimand. Now, judgment of any sort, for any reason, has become a slippery slope: once you judge me, I get to judge you back according to reciprocity, and you judge me back once more from your perspective of reciprocity, since you could not have seen the need for my reciprocity, because everyone believes in the power of moral relativism, which is, after all, based on the powerful theory of relativity that led to the all-powerful atomic bomb and the end of the World Wars.
Enter the theory of survival of the fittest. We survived the World Wars because we are the fittest, the most adept at making comparisons on a relative basis. Fitness translates into how well someone can make everything seem pleasant, even though it feels shameful. How well can someone ignore the negativity and make life pleasant for those in his or her company. Service with a smile. Smile for the camera. Put a smile on.
The problem is, the cells which constitute one's body have sensation beyond the five senses of sight, touch, hearing, taste, and smell; they can interpret signals in very subtle or short patterns, and are focused by the context which these patterns establish collectively, rather than by one's own ego, no matter how much one concentrates to the contrary.
The cells can't be deceived so easily, and the pressure of intellectual instruction on the younger generation now is met with quite a contrast to the analysis provided them by their intuitions. Their cells are telling them, "There is such a thing as healthy desire, that is absolute, and not relative as you're told by the tv ads."
Cells have an inherent sensitivity to meaning, and they are offended when smiling is used to indicate something other than what the cells expect, indeed despite all of the other signals and context presently being established in the recognition of the cells as something else. The young generation is forced to repress themselves more and more, in spite of the cultural message that they are most liberated, and repressed less and less. They destroy themselves with apathy, hatred, and tunnel vision, which create a vicious cycle that feeds on itself.
So, the cells make it difficult on the young person to fake it. But perseverance despite these physical constraints is seen as fitness by Western society; the better one can delay his or her gratification to fit the cultural expectations, to deceive oneself and those around, the more one has mastered Nature and natural selection. Look, that is exactly what is going on here, and I doubt I can phrase it any more simply than that. Maybe the area I live in might somehow be isolated from the rest of Western civilization, but this interpretation is also reinforced by what I have seen through tv, the radio, the internet... I've seen nothing contrary to it. Natural selection was designed as a cultural ideology. Greed may have existed before natural selection, but never has greed been facilitated by the collective actions of society at this large scale. Something is different now than it was before. Something is off.
You complain that the theory of natural selection is ad hoc confabulation, and in response you produce this?! This is pure mythology, not one argument or shred of evidence in its favor, just assertion after assertion after wild assertion. Well, two can play that game:
You are obviously a mole in the employ of the Majestic Twelve, the sworn enemies of the Ascended Masters, whose goal is to spread confusion and disbelief about the truth brought to Earth by the Ninth Master (known to mortals as "Darwin") so that the Twelve will have a monopoly on knowledge of natural selection. I don't think you're actually one of their reptiloid agents, as they are rare and their shapeshifting powers are hardly necessary for subversion over the internet, but your cold, subjectivist thinking and bizarre speech patterns do suggest some extraterrestrial influence over your education; a reptiloid may well have been your teacher or even primary caregiver as a child.
Whether or not you're human, though, your actions are just another link in the long chain of events that makes the Majestic Twelve's goals clear. Even before Darwin, they were preparing for his revelation by writing the Bible so as to be incompatible with evolutionary theory. When Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, then, they were ready for it, and launched an immediate assault through their catspaws in the fundamentalist churches. Their offensive died down a bit through the early-to-mid Twentieth Century, as their resources were required elsewhere in the prosecution of the World Wars (which were part of their continuing campaign against the Eighth Master, Thomas Hobbes). But they have since resumed their anti-Darwin activities, mostly through their Christian catspaws again - though you represent a disturbing new strategy, coming on the attack from a direction that is largely non-Christian. You're still highly mystical, even animist, though, which gives you away: servants of the Twelve always want people to believe that they are forever being watched, but the watcher can be the Judeo-Christian God or some other intelligence, the details don't matter.
Ultimately, though, the machinations of the Majestic Twelve will come to nought, once the Tenth Master reveals himself and teaches the final insight, understanding of the human mind itself, which will unite humanity into telepathic unity and render all attempts to conceal truths futile. Only the Illuminati, which exist not as actual human beings but as a sort of self-perpetuating mind virus in us all, stand a chance of avoiding being unmasked; the Twelve will be doomed.
If descriptions were really thought not to affect any events, or human judgment, whatsoever, then the only motive for science would be to waste time, wouldn't it?
I dunno. What do you think, Mr. Computer? Or you, Mrs. Penicillin? How about you, Mr. Automobile?
I've rejected this definition several times already, and provided a more suitable one. I hate having to repeat myself: a fit trait is one that raises its bearer's potential for survival.
I would add "and reproduction" to the end of that definition to make it more accurate. After all, in the game of natural selection, you win by passing your genes on to subsequent generations.
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The problem is that creationalist who simply say the Earth and universe was created by god are fine, no one can prove otherwise and no one likely will prove otherwise in the forseeable future. Thats perfect grounds for faith because there needs to be SOME reason.
The problem are the morons who go about claiming the world is 5 thousand years old, dinosaurs are god's practical joke, and that damn monkey isn't their cousin. (I find that odd because half the time I suspect they're closely related to the missing link)
The rational ones aren't the problem, rational people can believe whatever they want just as long as their rational enough to not be obnoxious about it and rant against all contrary opinion and fact.
So who are you and Mr. Stuff combatting then in this forum? I haven't seen anyone running around talking about riding dinosaurs and the such. And the condescending tone by some of the posters leads one to believe otherwise when faith, creationism, or anything else faith based comes up.
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I'm from the US, although admittedly I've always been an East Coaster. [And I do easily understand why my login - my grandfather's name, my middle name - would obfuscate my current nationality although it's reasonably precise for my ancestry]
And I'm not saying that YEC don't exist in any numbers of substance (heck, they've got a "role model" in public view with Palin) - but to think that they exist in numbers that make them a "majority" of creationists tends to be folly in my opinion.
That's not to say that in places they don't have undue amounts of influence however - much like the neocons of the late 90's - that were a minority, but a very strong one at exerting influence.
YEC do certainly provide a large amount of the volume of pro-creationist discussion, but that doesn't mean they themselves dwarf the silent majority of creationists.
But that's just me with my point of view from someone who tries to make sure both sides in any discussion are represented appropriately. I would personally say in line with an appropriate discussion of this topic there would actually be 4 appropriate groupings:
1) Complete faith in evolutionary theory as it currently exists.
2) Reasonable faith in evolutionary theory, but believing some points could be off.
3) Split faith between evolutionary theory and creationism.
4) Abject ignorance of evolution, complete faith in creationism.
[Although point 4 could be worded better, since even I see my bias bleeding through with the wording I selected]
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
If you think species have changed into other species over time, that's evolution. If you think it was directed by God's hand, that's still evolution (with a smathering of Intelligent Design in), not creationism. That's the position of the Catholic Church, amongst other things.
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I actually missed the word "colloquially", in which case, you're right. But that's unfortunate. For the human race, if nothing else.
As for the above, I have no idea what you're talking about. I never once confused evolution with the origin of life, and my jab at creationists was made while talking about genetic drift. So I'm not sure what you're expecting here.
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I've heard of the "museum" and Kirk Cameron, but I have never seen or heard of Ray Comfort. So I went to wiki for an initial reaction on the man:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Comfort#cite_note-12
Considering that as a primary research and watching a few minutes of him on youtube. I'll agree, his background makes him a joke to anything. I'm all for amateurism to study concepts and bring something new to fields, since someone without the bonds of corporations or academia can and will think differently and have different opportunities presented to them. However, amateurism has to be self structured and mostly in contact with professionals or at least their works to give a person a fair base to work with.
He has no academic rigor at all, no nothing. Just slung together hackneyed theory without any basis for it. It's difficult to have a foot in hard sciences and the humanities as is, people like this just blow everything out of proportion. I mean he just basically undermines any fruitful analytical framework th rough sheer incompetence and laziness.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Such concentrated FAIL.
Banana look designed for humans because they are designed... BY humans. Wild bananas have huge black rock hard seeds, so we've bred them to be mostly seedless. Most bananas have starchy, not sugary, taste, and must be cooked (like plantain). A single mutation that made them sugary was found by chance and then favored by human farmers until the majority of bananas grown ended up being the sugary sweet treat they are today.
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Actually, we do know. It's more than 4 billion years old. That estimate comes from multiple different techniques, meaning there's parallel evidence pointing to the same order of magnitude. Even if you're putting into question radiometric dating, the order is of billions, not thousands. The Young Earthers are off by a factor of a million or so.
Measurements from divergence of species indicates the last universal ancestor of all living organisms on Earth lived no later than 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago. That's basically a minimum to the age of the Earth.... assuming, of course, that Earth didn't get seeded with life from elsewhere in the universe, the Panspermia hypothesis.
BTW: Carbon dating is only used to measure the amount of time since something once living died. It cannot be used to measure the age of the Earth. Other types of radiometric dating must be used for the age of the Earth.
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So you argue on the basis 'that the belief is out there' even though no one has shown to have said belief on this forum. It seems like strawmanning to me. Why aren't you and others as vehemently arguing against the belief in Thor? Zues? Or other such gods you have mentioned? They may not be on this forum, but I'm sure they are out there.
For that matter why aren't you and others arguing against Muslims? There are a whole lot of them out there. Doesn't that belief need to be combatted as well?
I understand this is a debate forum, but sometimes people are way to hellbent to try and 'win the internet' than they are to have a discussion.
IMHO, it is sad.
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Simple self-replicating molecules evolved to create these processes over millions of generations. There's much we don't know about the details of abiogenesis and the evolution of proto-life, but there is no doubt generally about what happened, no reason to think it couldn't happen.
Daniel Dennett (and possibly others before him) described a simple demonstration of the counterintuitive power of nonrandom selection. You might think winning eight coin flips in a row is probabilistically unlikely, right? The odds are one in 256. But using nonrandom selection, it is not only possible but easy (procedurally speaking, at least) to produce a person who has won eight coin flips in a row. Just set up a pyramidal tournament of 256 people*; the winner will inevitably have won eight coin flips. An observer who doesn't understand how the tournament works may think it miraculous that the organizer can show him an eight-flip winner every time, but that's because he doesn't grasp the number of failed trials that accompanied that success.
Now, before you attack this example, keep in mind that it's simply presented to illustrate the power of the principle of nonrandom selection. The nonrandom selection in evolution works very differently than a coin toss tournament - it's far more efficient, for starters, because it not only preserves but multiplies traits that contributed to success, whereas coins have no memory.
*Actually, you can make do with considerably fewer.
Entropy, too, is a statistical phenomenon, not a physical force that actively goes around smashing complexity. All life demonstrates is that complex molecules can be reasonably stable, especially when said molecules have evolved such that they create an environment for themselves which maximizes their stability.
Five big words. At least one is obviously a malapropism; none of them say much of any relevance to this conversation.
No one here is saying it is. Repeating an strawman ad nauseam doesn't make it go Pinocchio.
(a) What the...?
(b) What's your point?
Prove it.
Once you start "picking", it's hardly random, is it? Besides, it's hard to replicate the actual course of evolution when all the things that should be dead but aren't are there getting in the way.
No. I've already defined fitness objectively for you.
There is nothing more objective than life and death. Even probable life and probable death are as objective as the probabilities you run into in Vegas, i.e. more than enough for the casinos to fleece you with. An expectation that your lucky rabbit's foot will change the odds in your favor doesn't make it so.
The feedback loop I was referring to was the genome "responding" to itself - or to its previous generation, at any rate. Faithful copying is positive feedback, tending to produce more faithful copying in the future.
An organism that survives in spite of an unfit trait does not make the trait fit. I have already said this several times.
That question is beyond the scope of the evolution debate, as has been pointed out already in this thread.
Why? I don't have to tour a car factory to discover the limitations of my car.
How does the coincidence or noncoincidence of the laws of physics have any bearing on natural selection?
Your tendency to latch onto the least viable possible definition for a term and then attack it is a form of strawman argument, and it's really getting tiresome. A faithful replicator has the capacity to faithfully replicate, whether or not it's done so yet.
Like "bad decision", it may be that we can only label a "faithful replicator" in retrospect. But this is due to limitations in our ability to predict the future, not any quality of the gene itself. Whenever we decide it's appropriate to apply the label, the gene was a faithful replicator for its entire functional existence. I think you're placing too much import on semantics and/or epistemology here; what we know about or call a thing can't change what it is and how it works.
Dice have no memory. A historical trend doesn't obligate them to fall in any way. And yet the house tends to take your money at the craps table. If you can't understand how this is possible, you really have no business discussing statistical phenomena.
Is this just an indictment of all science, or is there something special about this particular induction that has you upset?
Everything in the universe affects an organism's possible survival, from the groundwater level to the course of an asteroid. But the only things we're concerned about for the purpose of evolution are those that heredity can pass on. Claws (however sharp) are of course an expression of certain heritable genes. Their usage can be instinctual or learned; instinctual behavior is heritable, and learned behavior can be as well if it is taught by a parent or social group.
Um... let's just go with "please rephrase".
There is neither anything moralistic nor Darwinian about human greed. Your thesis would suggest that these sorts of things didn't happen before 24 November 1859, which is ludicrous.
And nonrandom survival would reap 'em, because for a spider in a modern environment, that kind of size is not advantageous. (For starters, it would suffocate.)
Because as scientific animals we like to be able to describe what's happening and has happened in our universe. No one can do so with perfect accuracy, but that doesn't stop us from making a go at it anyway. My point, to repeat what I said above, is that our knowledge and descriptions of natural events doesn't affect the events.
There's nothing subjective about the observation that social groups can pool their resources and thrive where loners would fail. I'm not talking about what people want, here; I'm talking about what happens.
Maybe we should, but that says diddly-squat about the validity of natural selection.
That's all very wonderful, but again, not what I was talking about. The functional purpose of life - roughly, to make more life - does not have to be the meaning that we self-aware creatures choose for ourselves. The theory of evolution explains how we came to be; it does not tell us what to think or do. And your continued inability to separate these two very distinct notions is causing a lot of headaches.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Was this post supposed to be accepted at face value?
What was life itself initiated by?
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Proteins really aren't that intricate. If you concede that amino acids can form via random chemical reaction, then why is it such a stretch to think that 20 of them could randomly arrange themselves in a useful order after trillions of attempts?
Once a protein exists, randomness is reduced because a protein can perform a function. A protein that can, for example, attach to an amino acid and move it will assist in formation of other proteins. The problem of entropy is overcome by the fact that protein can do work. Once you overcome the problem of entropy, there is no barrier to complexity.
Chemicals don't react in a certain way because "the law says so", the law is just a way of describing observations of behaviors that have never been contradicted. When a certain chemical reacts a certain way under certain conditions every single time, after thousands or millions of trials, it's absurd to call that coincidence.
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All of this is overstated and exaggerated. About 20 different amino acids are required to form the various proteins necessary for human life and DNA. It does not take all 20 amino acids to form a single protein that can perform a function.
I'd like you to explain this in greater detail.
Unless I'm mistaken, a large part of evolution theory has to do with determining the likely conditions of early Earth. And again unless I'm mistaken, those conditions have been reasonably theorized to show how they would have assisted in the necessary chemical reactions. So I don't see how this barrier applies.
Um... yes? DNA replication is not a coincidence, but mutation is not just a theory, it is proven. We know for a fact that sometimes errors in the DNA coding occurs. If you can point me towards evidence of unexplained anomalies in the laws of chemical reactions, I'd be interested to see it.
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Evolution requires pre-existing lifeforms. The initial "arrival" of life-forms from non-live is abiogenesis, and is not part of evolution. Its also Significantly more theoretical (in the colloquial meaning of theoretical) than evoltuion.
(I use the term proto-life because whether virii or prions are life or only complex sets of molecules/chemicals depends more on where you draw the definitional line than anything.)
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Hold the phone a second: There's a lot of "circumstantial evidence"? And you are claiming this is a good reason to believe it as absolute truth?
With regard to abiogenesis it's not clear cut. Panspermia also makes sense (though I guess technically that just puts back abiogenesis to an off-planet event, but I assume by abiogenesis we usually mean that it happened 'on this here planet').
Also, I'm not privy to the latest research, so for all I know the evidence for on-planet abiogenesis is air tight.
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Whether it happened here or somewhere else is irrelevant to the issue. It still requires life from non-life.
But I'm glad you are acknowledging that abiogenesis is a theory (in the colloquial meaning) and isn't by any means established fact.
And also, for all you know, its leaky like a sieve. The point being, you are assuming it is correct because it being correct would support your belief (I know you will dispute that word, but meh, don't care its accurate) that life spontaneously originated, rather than being created.
Uri Geller has more claims of possibly being in the right than an entity that can't even show that it exists.
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So in other words, you don't require any proof and you accept it on faith?
(I don't necessarily think thats a bad thing, but for some reason I was under the impression that you did.)
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Doesn't have to be. If I set up this tournament, the result is the same whether or not my goal was to produce someone who's won eight flips in a row. Besides, as I said, this example is not particularly similar to the process of natural selection, except that it is a form of nonrandom selection.
You're taking it for granted that a cell is the simplest possible self-replicator. If it were, abiogenesis (but not evolution) would be in real hot water. But you have not established this fact.
As I've said before, only in the broad Aristotelian sense of "explanation". There is no reason for you to be focused on a strict conception of causation; if evolution steps outside that conception, all it means is that you're being too narrow-minded, not that evolution is wrong.
I've rejected this definition several times already, and provided a more suitable one. I hate having to repeat myself: a fit trait is one that raises its bearer's potential for survival.
It's actually kind of disturbing the way you ask a question, answer it on my behalf, and then attack the answer. It's technically just strawmanning, but it looks almost pathological, like you can't tell the difference between your ideas and mine.
Capacity is objective; look at the possible futures that follow from the present, and see what can happen in them. Things may "retain or lose the capacity to do anything" only if you live in a world of magic. In reality, atoms and energy are arranged in specific ways that bring about specific capacities according to the laws of physics, and they are not rearranged arbitrarily.
Learn to parse. Because we cannot predict the future, we have to apply labels which concern future events retrospectively. For instance, "bad decision" means the decision will lead to bad consequences. But because I don't know it will lead to bad consequences until those consequences have already happened, I can only say a decision was bad in retrospect, even though, objectively, it was bad even at the time I made it.
And casino games are subject to more intricacy than coin flips. Intricacy does not eliminate statistical behavior.
This is like declaring an internal combustion engine can't work because it needs an electric starter. Of course evolution requires an initial environment for the adaptation process to do anything. But nature has helpfuly provided it with one, so how is this fact an indictment of the theory?
This is simply not true. Nature is constantly, and without any trace of intelligence, comparing the masses of bodies in the solar system to determine what accelerates where. And it compares the fitness of traits in organisms not through intelligent evaluation but through the brute fact of survival (which, incidentally, is the only sort of "memory" it has, too).
You complain that the theory of natural selection is ad hoc confabulation, and in response you produce this?! This is pure mythology, not one argument or shred of evidence in its favor, just assertion after assertion after wild assertion. Well, two can play that game:
You are obviously a mole in the employ of the Majestic Twelve, the sworn enemies of the Ascended Masters, whose goal is to spread confusion and disbelief about the truth brought to Earth by the Ninth Master (known to mortals as "Darwin") so that the Twelve will have a monopoly on knowledge of natural selection. I don't think you're actually one of their reptiloid agents, as they are rare and their shapeshifting powers are hardly necessary for subversion over the internet, but your cold, subjectivist thinking and bizarre speech patterns do suggest some extraterrestrial influence over your education; a reptiloid may well have been your teacher or even primary caregiver as a child.
Whether or not you're human, though, your actions are just another link in the long chain of events that makes the Majestic Twelve's goals clear. Even before Darwin, they were preparing for his revelation by writing the Bible so as to be incompatible with evolutionary theory. When Darwin wrote The Origin of Species, then, they were ready for it, and launched an immediate assault through their catspaws in the fundamentalist churches. Their offensive died down a bit through the early-to-mid Twentieth Century, as their resources were required elsewhere in the prosecution of the World Wars (which were part of their continuing campaign against the Eighth Master, Thomas Hobbes). But they have since resumed their anti-Darwin activities, mostly through their Christian catspaws again - though you represent a disturbing new strategy, coming on the attack from a direction that is largely non-Christian. You're still highly mystical, even animist, though, which gives you away: servants of the Twelve always want people to believe that they are forever being watched, but the watcher can be the Judeo-Christian God or some other intelligence, the details don't matter.
Ultimately, though, the machinations of the Majestic Twelve will come to nought, once the Tenth Master reveals himself and teaches the final insight, understanding of the human mind itself, which will unite humanity into telepathic unity and render all attempts to conceal truths futile. Only the Illuminati, which exist not as actual human beings but as a sort of self-perpetuating mind virus in us all, stand a chance of avoiding being unmasked; the Twelve will be doomed.
I dunno. What do you think, Mr. Computer? Or you, Mrs. Penicillin? How about you, Mr. Automobile?
Which, as this thread and the consensus of academia alike would seem to indicate, is not yours.
Argument?
Texas sharpshooter fallacy.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I would add "and reproduction" to the end of that definition to make it more accurate. After all, in the game of natural selection, you win by passing your genes on to subsequent generations.