From: riggs@descartes.tec.army.mil (Bill Riggs)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Logic and God (was: Young earth creationist logic NOT!)
Date: 28 Aug 92 23:25:19 GMT
Followup-To: sci.skeptic
Organization: LNK Corporation, Riverdale, MD

In article <2A9DE242.19910@ics.uci.edu> bvickers@ics.uci.edu (Brett J. Vickers) writes:

>
>I have not dogmatically repeated anything.  Evolution is a scientifically
>factual process.  Do you know what evolution is?  Your comments suggest
>that you don't.  That's okay, a lot of people don't.  Put simply, it is
>a change in allele frequencies of a given population over a period
>of time.  This change occurs, and is observed to occur all the time.
>No one would debate that it occurs, not even you.  In this manner, it
>is a scientific fact.  The theory of evolution and the fact of evolution
>are two different things; the theory explains how the factual process
>of evolution occurs.  This is what Steven Jay Gould and other respectable
>biologists mean when they state that evolution is a fact.  Unless you
>disagree that allele frequencies within populations change over time,
>you must also accept evolution as fact.
	If that were all there were to evolutionary theory, then this
is not a problem. "A lot of people" who you state *don't* know what
evolution is (as you define it) includes a good number of readers/posters
of sci.skeptic. We have one guy out here, who apparently is convinced
of the truth of evolution, who keeps stating, like a broken record, Evolution
equals "No God". And they are perfectly right, because, the ultimate
conclusion of evolution theory is not that we get a certain allele
frequency in population A at time B, but that the process is completely
self-contained, requiring no external intervention. This assertion is
what I doubt.





>
>Understand what you're debating before you begin the debate, please.
>Your statements betray a lack of knowledge concerning evolutionary
>theory.

	Still trying to impress us all with your knowledge of the subject
matter, I see. This is how flame wars get ignited.

>
>>	I would really like to know what your definition of a
>>"scientifically factual process" is supposed to be. The Marxists
>>claimed that they had a "scientifically factual process" as well
>>(objective, too).
>
>I just gave it to you.  I fail to see the parallels between
>Marxism and evolution.  Please don't sidetrack the debate with
>silly and potentially slanderous political arguments.

	Well to begin with, both Marxism and evolutionism are primarily
materialistic 19th century systems. Evolution would not be a political
argument if its proponents had not elevated it to the level of dogma.




>
>Nobody is saying evolutionary theory is the only "right" way to
>look at the evidence.  But as things stand right now, it's the
>best.  If you have a better theory supported by the evidence,
>produce it.  Until then, I humbly request you squelch your protest.
>What you've said about evolution is just as easily applied to any
>other scientific discipline.  Your beef is not with evolutionary
>theory, but with science and the way it is advanced.

	There are a LOT of people on sci.skeptic who DO say that
evolutionary theory IS the only consistent and logical way in which
the evidence can be interpreted. But we really ought to consider
whether changes in allele frequencies of a given population over a period
of time are the appropriate foci of analysis, or whether some other
focus might be more relevant to answer the questions we are interested
in asking.



>
>>Darwin and Lamarck could be just as wrong
>>as Galen and Aristotle were, but we have not found the way to
>>extract the data yet which proves them so.
>
>This is just plain balderdash.  Lamarckianism has already been disproven,
>and much of Darwinian evolution has been completely overhauled.  It's
>really quite simple to disprove the sufficiency of Darwinian theory;
>find evidence of situations where individuals are selected for on some
>basis other than reproductive fitness.  That would do it nicely.

	Spoken like a true purist. If you keep this up, will the end
product still be adequately described as "evolution"? Someone sent
me a rather longish piece in the mail, presumably to "educate" me
about evolution. That piece goes into detail about gene mutation,
recombination, and speciation. Fair enough to say that Darwin and
Lamarck were not gene experts, and Darwin, at best, was an expert
only on speciation. Not fair, however to claim that Darwin and
Lamarck were not evolutionists.

	

>
>>It is
>>quite possible to be logically consistent, intellectually balanced,
>>and just plain wrong if you are working off the wrong data. I would
>>have thought this point to be relatively non-controversial.
>
>Please explain what you perceive this "wrong data" to be, and why
>it is wrong.  Where does "wrong data" come from?  Doesn't everything
>we are presented with on this earth serve as data?  How, therefore,
>can it be "wrong"?   (Unless, of course, you're one of those
>creationists who believes in a deceitful god).

	You know, my original point was that creation scientists are
justly criticized for falsifying and misinterpreting data. Too bad
that got washed out in all the noise. 



>
>>[My 5000 bouncing ball argument deleted for brevity]
>
>I'm not going to bother to respond to the determinism vs. probability
>thread; it has lost its relevance with respect to the rest of this
>article.  Suffice it to say that nothing is truly deterministic
>as evidenced by quantum mechanics.

	Sez you. How do you know that there is not some deeper level
of interaction underlying quantum mechanics in which everything, once
again, becomes deterministic ? A level which lies beyond your sense
perception ? Whenever I see a distribution curve, my reaction is to
want to account for the deltas as well as the pattern.




>
>>	As a historian, I would not hang my hat on evolution. There is not
>>enough data there to prove beans. Whether Darwin was right or not depends
>>quite solely on his ability to have made a calculated scientific
>>wild-ass guess. On the other hand, we have the option to believe in a Creator,
>>at the minimum out there with a set of cosmic dice, designing creatures
>>and experimenting with gene pools. The contrast in beliefs is clear - the
>>rest is an argument over the data.
>
>Let me see if I understand you correctly.  The theory of natural selection
>is a "wild-ass guess" completely unsupported by the evidence?  Perhaps
>you'd like to put your money were your big mouth is, and support that
>claim.  That is perhaps one of the most disingenuous and ignorant claims
>that a creationist has made in this forum in some time.  The data
>supporting evolution the fact and evolution the theory is voluminous.
>Look at the fossil record, the strands of DNA that make life what it
>is, the comparative anatomy of living things, etc.  The fact that
>speciation is observed in occurrence should be enough to pound your
>silly refrain of "lack of evidence" back into the ground.  I couldn't
>possibly go into detail on all of the evidence given its overwhelming
>abundance.  But all of these things are evidence for the evolutionary
>nature of life.
>
>If you're going to dance around the issues and try to pass creationism
>off as a valid scientific theory, then you've really got your work cut
>out for you.  But I'm hoping to see you try.

	There is a lot of data at hand. There is also a lot of data
that is either inaccessible or missing. Consider the following quotation
from the article I got in the mail:

	
"Speciation is the process of a single species becoming two or more
distinct species. Many biologists feel speciation is key to
understanding evolution. These biologists believe certain evolutionary
phenomena apply only at speciation and macroevolutionary change cannot
occur without speciation."

"Other biologists think major evolutionary change can occur without
speciation. Changes between lineages are only an extension of the
changes within each lineage. In general, paleontologists fall into the
former category and geneticists in the latter."

"Biologists know little about the genetic mechanisms of speciation. Some
think series of small changes in each subdivision gradually lead to
speciation; others think there may be a few key genes that could change
and confer reproductive isolation. One famous biologist thinks most
speciation events are caused by changes in internal symbionts. Most
doubt this, however."

"Populations of organisms are very complicated. It is likely that there
are many ways speciation can occur. Thus, all of the above ideas may be
correct, each in different circumstances."

"OBSERVED SPECIATIONS"

"It comes as a surprise to some to hear that speciation has been
observed. In the genus _Tragopogon_ (a plant genus consisting mostly
of diploids), two new species (_T._ _mirus_ and _T._ _miscellus_)
have evolved. This occured within the past 50-60 years. The new
species are allopolyploid descendants of two separate diploid
parent species. "

"Here is how this speciation occured. The new species were formed
when one diploid species fertilized a different diploid species and
produced a tetraploid offspring. This tetraploid offspring could
not fertilize or be fertilized by either of it's two parent
species types. It is reproductively isolated, the definition of
a species."

"Two other plant species have also arizen within the past 110
years in this manner, _Senecio_ _cambrensis_ and _Spartina_
_townsendii_."

	In brief, the guys who have the least representative data, the
paleontologists, also have the rosiest view of what it takes
to make meaningful strides on the evoutionary track. A few
million years, see the fossil records - of changes - QED !

	The geneticists, who have to explain how it all
happens at the gene level, have higher standards, and, as one
might expect, not many current examples of speciation going on.

	Now you can look at the glass as being half empty or
half full, but I stand by my assertion that it is a small glass.


	Bill R.

	"My opinions do not represent those of my employer or any
government agency."
-- 
Bill R.