Tautology Wiki

== Semiotic necromancy - (Natural Selection) ==
This wiki extends http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(rhetoric) and resolves the Münchhausen Trilemma, one of the unsolved problems in philosophy with Virtuous circularity. It is considered the most pressing problem in all of EpistemologyRef#2 and can't be resolved from the Evidentialist and materialist rhetorical circularity which is why William Lane Craig, Stephen Law, Marianne Talbot never addresses Agrippa's trilemma, the infinite can't be explained from the finite. See Logical fallacies for the resolution of Agrippa's trilemma. All arguments involving our origins contain circularity and all arguments either for or against God are attempts at resolving the Bootstrapping trilemma as http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?title=Uncaused_cause tries without acknowledging it. Ironchariots like Descartes, assumed they are part or reality and their suppressed premise as with Aquinas is that 'caused' derives its meaning as Law of excluded middle reflection to 'uncaused' with no third option possible. It is the laws of logic which are circular and this circularity must be explained to avoid our beliefs from being arbitrary( "The epistemic regress problem" - Philos Stud(2008) 140:401-421). Because we have finite knowledge, we attempt to derive our conclusions from our premises in such a way that we don't repeat the premises using dissimilar or synonymous terms, attempting to avoid arbitrariness. Only in a state of infinite knowledge by God our Father can the conclusions be contained in the premises virtuously and be revealed to us with certainty because God cannot lie, personifying the law of noncontradiction. If the Father of our Lord Jesus were even capable of lying in principle, then we with finite knowledge would not be able to believe anything he says. 
We are certain of the fact that we don't know everything, but to even know this we must know everything to prevent what we do know from being contradicted by what we don't know, hence our knowledge constitutes a paradox. Therefore the only way we could know for certain that we don't know everything is if God revealed such to us, else our reasoning would enter an infinite suspension of judgement. The statement - "I could be wrong about everything" - is included in everything and is thus self-refuting. 
God, knowing everything has all his conclusions contained in his premises by necessity virtuously. Deriving God's existence without starting out with God is rhetorical circularity because any such argument bootstraps the laws of logic without justification into the conclusion, whether Paley, ID, Ontological etc. Only by assuming God first Presuppositionalism can God be derived in a virtuous Agrippian circle, justifying our Platonic language (virtuous the negation of vicious circularity). Viewing God as meaningless is the same as viewing natural the opposite of supernatural as meaningless in violation of the Excluded middle. The laws of logic and specifically the law of excluded middle is the bootstrapped fabric of our language and derives from Genesis and Revelation. Nietzsche was incensed by the fact that every time he spoke he had to bootstrap the Judeo/Christian Platonic archetype, it was a contributing factor to his eventual insanity. Platonic binary opposites(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_opposition) is a different term for law of excluded middle. Einstein's presuppositional beliefs made it impossible for him to accept quantum theory, he imposed his beliefs on the same experiments that Niels Bohr imposed his beliefs on. The mistake that Quantum mechanics or any other falsifiable theory like Russell's chicken made, is to confuse success with eventual reality. 
Adaptationists bootstrap their premises unto Tiktaalik, the conclusion is that Tiktaalik had kids, but this is already contained in the premise. From the YEC expressionist virtuous circular perspective the question is: If Tiktaalik had no kids, how could he be the ancestor of anybody? Extend the respective premises to every single fossil, we are not dealing with facts or evidences but the imposition of our pre-beliefs on the facts. Lets assume for sake of argument that half the fossils we find had kids on an arbitrary basis, then whittle that down to a quarter, lower lets say 5%. Why would the Adaptationist insist on stopping at 5%? Its all arbitrary and rhetorical circularity makes our beliefs arbitrary. Yes, ...but ... they had to have kids, adaptation insists, oblivious that his conclusion, the acquisition of attributes via the spawning of descendants is contained in the premise. Hence a repetition of the premise occurs. A repetition of the premise from finite knowledge, means the conclusion is arbitrary. Only in a state of infinite knowledge can the conclusions be virtuously contained in the premises: Because of God, therefore God. Eight people survived the flood, they were the eyewitnesses as to why the fossils have no kids. Fossilization occurs with rapid water burial.
=== Mythological archetypes ===
The Enûma Eliš mythological archetype is bootstrapped into our science by our secular high priests Jerry Coyne, imposing the Adaptation premise on the adaptation conclusion under the rubric Natural Selection. Democritus, Aristotle, Empedocles etc. had the same Adaptation premise that they boostrapped into their Adaptation conclusion, with a core tautological narrative obfuscating their rhetorical circularity, which derived from the Enûma Eliš. Note that YEC are also reasoning in a circle, a virtuous circle. 
Newton imposed the Christian archetype on his science, facts and evidence do not give us the capacity to reason, rather we impose our pre-beliefs derived from a particular mythological archetype on the facts and evidence in a virtuous or rhetorical circle. The only reason chemical reactions work is because of Genesis 8 induction. All attempts at deriving the age of the earth without reference to Genesis 8 risks committing the fallacy of Misplaced Induction, in the same way that Flew's falsification test for God is a category mistake - there can be no physical evidence for the non-physical. Insisting on physical evidence for God, is like attempting detect the laws of logic walking past your bed by sprinkling flour 
around it at night, it is the fallacy of Special pleading. Falsificationism only applies to certain categories. 
The laws of logic, reflecting the mind of Jesus Christ, the personification of the law of excluded middle, enable the expression of the experience and numbers(Fleeming Jenkin) the ratiocination about the measurement: numbers and the laws of logic cannot be experienced nor measured, preventing Münchhausen infinite regress and Descartian vicious circularity of logic,mind and metaphor. From the premise that Information is only expressed and not acquired(Adaptation) we experience neither induction nor matter but the Berkeleyan imposition of our volitionalism on matter. God imposes his will on the material from his domain behind the Godelian wall into our range of experience: anything that exists, exists solely because God knows about it, there are no such thing as 'natural laws', it is the Reification fallacy. 
Natural selection as the metaphor for Spencer's SoF is a Claim of logic and not a mechanism. Mechanism as a concept, is understood as the Darcy Thompson Composite Integrity(Behe's IC) nexus between complexity(dissimilar term for functionality), redundancy,vulnerability, functionality and aesthetics. 
When the oxymoron Natural Selection ( purposeless purpose) isn't used as a metaphor (Preferential decision) or as contracted shorthand for Patrick Matthew's - acquisition of new attributes enacted via the natural means of competitive selection(Democritus atomism),scrutinization ,survival, accumulation, preservation or cultivation - (what Darwin actually meant with ns); its usage in a sentence turns the sentence into a meaningless sentence. Natural selection was the metaphor for - natural means(Matthew,P) of Malthusian competitive preservation,selection of acquired attributes in the struggle for life. Dissimilar terms for 'selection' are competition(Matthew,P) , cultivation(Erasmus Darwin), fitness(Herbert Spencer) and preservation(Darwin's preferred term). Erasmus Darwin coined "Artificial cultivation" in Zoonomia which Darwin lifted without credit into Artificial selection. Thus cultivation,selection,preservation etc. can all be used interchangeably in the pattern sensePattern or design. Erasmus Darwin's 'artificial cultivation' is the Platonic contrast to 'natural cultivation' or natural acquisition of traits from the premise that the present attributes weren't in the distant past. In terms of this premise,which traces back to Babylonian mythology(| Enûma Eliš) the natural(unintentional) struggle for life resulted in those creatures(gods in mythology) more suited to their environment to acquire attributes in the descendant populations, with the conclusion that the distant descendants became new species. Prof. Peter Nyikos pointed out that if the other creature came to dominate, eliminating its adversary we would be told the exact same story and is thus unfalsifiable.
By the precepts of falsificationism this means that the conclusion(acquisition of attributes) is a Non-sequitur.The Enûma Eliš mythology became the tautological banality(Timeline of tautologies) "....those creatures,atoms more favorable, were selected,preserved,cultivated,acquired for survival...."
Samuel Butler concluded that Patrick Matthew summarized the works of Erasmus Darwin, Buffon and Lamarck and did not accuse Matthew of plagiarism as he did with Darwin. I will have to comb through Zoonomia again to find the specific term,phrase or sentence Erasmus Darwin used as the obvious contrast to 'Artificial cultivation'. Artificial in AS is a pejorative synonym for 'contrived' and an inversion of logic according to author John Brey's book 
Tautological Oxymorons. Human decisions are in fact a type of 'natural selection' and nature's decisions a type of contrived, forced,mangled 'artificial selection' . Note how inescapable the bootstrapping of our volitional language into the very sentence was, this risks confusing our metaphors with reality. 
Most likely something along the lines of 'natural cultivation', changed to Natural means of competitive selection by Matthew's. Thus Erasmus Darwin was the originator of Natural Selection and not Matthew, but the issue needs further research. Hundreds of authors had the same general thrust of the idea around this time - Milton Wain collection of pre Darwin authors. Haeckel's drawings for example traces back as far as 1830 in the Scottish Journal of Medicine. He was convicted in 1875 by the University of Jenna trial of fraud by six professors and on his conviction stated that he should feel very condemned for his lies but that all the other researchers are lying in the same manner about the issue. 
:The phrase Natural Selection is a synonym for bad luck, misfortune, and getting the pointy end of the stick. It is empirically, that is, scientifically, meaningless, but it makes a pretty metaphor . It originated in a categorical error parading as an analogy. For the past 150 years, it has deluded unthinking simpletons into mistaking it for a real phenomenon, when it is nothing but a collective anthropomorphization of non-specified natural causes of mortality presented as a mystical, animist 'presence' possessing the intelligence and powers of descrimination necessary to make actual choices, i.e., 'selections'. As such it may be accurately summed up as a childish religious mystique, that is, as a superstition for the Godless -mturner' on the http://www.arn.org discussion board....
Richard Owen#Bear_whale concluded that Lamarck was the true source of Darwin's passage on bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale. "...... Vague and general as is the illustration based upon Hearne's remark, it is made still more vague in a later reprint of the volume On the Origin of Species. It now reads, 'In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely opened mouth, thus catching, almost like a whale, insects in the water.' (Ed. 1860, p. 184.).....". See Richard Milton's comment on this at 12:10min http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=fvwp&v=7Wr-lXLGCxQ 
Owen identified Darwins tautological formulations: Darwin wrote: 'Although I do not doubt that isolation is of considerable importance in the production of new species, on the whole, I am inclined to believe, that largeness of area is of more importance in the production of species capable of spreading widely.' (P. 105.)
Richard Owen replies: ".....We readily concede ... the fact ... that the wider the area in which a species may be produced, the more widely it will spread. But we fail to discern its import in respect of the great question at issue....". Owen is stating that Darwin's transmutation is a Non-sequitur because his arguments states the obvious, it can't be disputed. All physics equations can be tested or disputed, not so with a Claim of logic. Owen and Butler as Adaptationists (acquisition of attributes) agreed with Darwin's conclusion namely transmutation of species, but took exception with the logic Darwin used in deriving such. 
Biologists having no theory , no means to define the universal mechanism Life1(makes us aware of ourselves) , opted to incorporate universal claims of logic from Greek Philosophy. Under the rubric of ns we have claims of logic ,Gould 2002 stated that Natural Selection is logical. John Wilkins asserted: "...If natural selection _were_ a tautology, that would mean it had to be true..." , ".... natural selection is both true by definition and also observed in the real world ....." , " ...... If Ray Martinez wonders why I said NS is true by definition, it is..." . The Law of Identity(A=A) is defined as true by definition and cannot be experienced,measured or tested by necessity, preventing Agrippian epistemic regress. 
By the precepts of empiricism the claims of logic are not Popper falsifiable,
you can't experience(observation,smell, sight touch) a logical validity - Stanford tautologies . Those who don't agree are therefore frustrated that so many can't see the logic of Natural Selection such as Daniel Dennett. Hopes Dennett would reply to Jerry Fodor's LRB article - Why Pigs don't have wings - with the serenity of a contemplating logician were dashed instead with the oratorical flair of man outraged that the logic of Natural Selection could be questioned. By the precepts of falsificationism any conclusion which derives from a rhetorical tautology is a non-sequitur as I explained on the Wikipedia rhetorical tautology article. Dennett describes natural selection as unifying space,time - everything .... claims of logic are a universal principle, it is the supportive scaffolding we assume in all domains by logical necessity. universal principles must not be confused with a universal mechanism. The 
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/tautology.html talk.origins article attempts at dealing with their befuddlement over the tautological status of natural selection vacillates between the fallacy of innocence by association and the erroneous assertion that physics equations are rhetorical tautologies.
Physics equations aren't tautologies. http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/ Massimo Pigliucci takes his students on field trips to "....measure natural selection....". The attempt at measuring the unmeasurable Claim of logic results in Meaningless sentences such as Kenneth Miller who thinks that "..natural selection is blind.." but presumably not stupid. Stephen Meyer views natural selection as "mimicking intelligence". Does Miller and Meyer mean that to measure natural selection with a machine the zero is labeled "stupid" and the span "intelligent" ?
Because the universal mechanism - Life1 - responsible for creatures being aware of themselves isn't defined, materialists have opted to turn the grammatical gargoyle - Natural Selection - into some sort of universal mechanism(much like d/dx is a universal operator),which is just as implausible as a single differential equation explaining all of physics(David Berlinski). It is as irrelevant to the Life1 mechanism as Xerxes dalliance with Artemisia over the sinking of a Calyndian trireme. 
Natural Selection was the metaphor for the phrase Survival of the fittest, which in turn was the shorthand for the full concept described by Herbert Spencer in his writings.
 
".....But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest. Out of the fittest thus multiplied, there will, as before be an overthrowing of the moving equilibrium wherever it presents the least opposing force to the new incident force. And by the continual destruction(compound verb) of the individuals that are the least capable of maintaining their equilibria in presence of this new incident force, there must eventually be arrived at an altered type completely in equilibrium with the altered conditions. (The Principles of Biology By Herbert Spencer)...."
=== tautologies ===
Pleonasm derives its meaning as the Platonic contrast to Oxymoron. When the pleonasm "free gift" is used in a sentence , it makes the sentence a Tautological expression. This differs from a rhetorical tautology and Tautological assertions(proposition) .
When it is stated that natural selection is a tautology, the contextual meaning is that as an oxymoron it is the metaphor for SoF , which in turn means - Survival of the fittest creatures struggling for life.(grammar) In this context survival implies fittest and vice versa and is thus a fallacious rhetorical tautology: concluding that attributes were acquired didn't derive logically from the premise. "..the idea of the 'Survival of the Fittest' must actually be traced back to Empedocles, six centuries before Christ....", p.117 'From the Greeks to Darwin by Henry Fairfield Osborn.
http://english---language.blogspot.com/2006/10/what-is-phrase.html 
"....Phrase - A group of words, which makes sense, but not complete sense, is called a Phrase. It is a group of related words without a Subject and a Verb. or 
A Phrase consists of two or more words lacking a complete sense and a complete verb. It may consist of one or more incomplete verbs - the Infinitives or the Participles standing on their own...."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology 
"....Terms are words and compound words that in specific contexts are given specific meanings, meanings that may deviate from the meaning the same words have in other contexts and in everyday language...." 
Darwin knew the difference between phrases and terms , he correctly referred to natural selection as a 'term' and 'false term' because the ordinary usage back then(and now) was that selection is a decision and as Wallace,Fodor pointed out nature makes no decisions. 
Biologists attempts at describing bacteria with terms such as "resistance" are largely metaphorical nonsense, it can be compared to plane spotters waxing poetic about Airbus vs. Boeing,the only difference is that plane spotters knows their metaphors are not an actual explanation for the PID control algorithms inside the black box calculating the flight dynamics. Dogs,bacteria and viruses implements control algorithms encased in a black box to which we have no access. When bacteria gets "resitanced" is the Floating Base Inverse Dynamics Control or vanilla PID control its means of dealing with this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK7cws0Ilsw&list=TLfeEY7e4qz4c
Natural selection as a Claim of logic is continually invoked as a force "....they are sifted by Selection..."(Kropotkin), "....ns acts...."(Darwin, AIG) perpetuating the fog of confusion surrounding it. The law of non-contradiction, identity etc. are not forces but claims of logic, neither refutable nor verifiable by necessity, like numbers they cannot be measured but enable not measurements, but the ratiocination about measurements: forces are measured. Both forces and claims of logic in our Range of experience are instantiated from the Domain of Platonic antonymity(Jesus Christ) outside the Godelian wall that locks down our knowledge. "..For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away..."http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+13&version=KJV
Darwin's premise was that the present attributes were not in the distant past , with the conclusion that they were acquired over long periods generating new species. Natural selection(preservation, cultivation - Erasmus Darwin) was the mechanism by which he attempted to derive his conclusion logically. He concluded that the acquisition of traits transpired by chance. Because ns turned out be a Claim of logic, his conclusion was by the precepts of falsificationism a non-sequitur, meaning it did not derive logically.
My argument is that his conclusion did not derive logically, not that the conclusion inherently was outright false, falsifiable or not. Logicians deal with the logical form by which conclusions deriver from premises. Darwin's *chance conclusion* was indeed falsified with the discovery of the cell's complexity etc. This was a discovery like water is h20 was a discovery. The falsification of the conclusion does not entail the falsification of the unfalsifiable claim of logic that attempted to bind the conclusion to the premise logically. Tautologies are defined as unfalsifiable in principle, they can't be refuted nor verified past,present or future under any condition or discovery. Darwin restated his premise as the conclusion ,instead of deriving it in such a way that he doesn't merely restate it in different form, which constitutes
Circular reasoning as explained at Logical fallacies(conclusion is assumed in premise) 
Darwin restated Democritus Atomism with the individual's characteristics propagating through populations much like Democritus individual atoms who were preserved out propagated the inferior atoms. Fleeming Jenkin then pointed out with the first or second edition of OoS that we observe a population reverting to the mean and not the acquisition of individual traits in the larger population. 
See chapter E in the book http://www.amazon.com/Wittgensteins-Beetle-Classic-Thought-Experiments/dp/1405121912
Darwin accepted this critique and changed his conclusion to changes in populations propagating instead of individuals. Because the structure of the Lamarck, Patrick Matthew, Erasmus Darwin(artificial cultivation), James Hutton arguments - which Darwin reformulated using Dissimilar terms - were unfalsifiable any conclusion whether correct or incorrect was a non-sequitur.
=== Quotations on natural selection ===
:... In the literal sense of the word, no doubt, Natural Selection1863 is a false term; .... - Charles Darwin , Quotations on Natural selection.
:.... It is hard ... to see where Natural Selection necessarily enters in, or to admit that it has had any share whatsoever in the production of these varied conformations....Unless indeed we use the term Natural Selection in a sense so wide as to deprive it of any purely biological significance... -D'Arcy_Wentworth_Thompson
:... the concept of natural selection is hopelessly confused .... David Berlinski , http://www.rae.org/pdf/dendar.pdf , http://archive.dailycal.org/article/18178/academic_extinction. Archaeology
:.. Darwin has laid himself open to much misconception .... by his continual use of metaphor .... Alfred Wallace
:... if you scratch two biologists you will get two different definitions of natural selection.... - http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/2492, .....what is the intended meaning of natural selection?.... (Jerry Fodor)
:....Probably the main lack that has been holding back any development of a general selection theory is lack of a clear concept of the general nature or meaning of “selection”.... Natural Selection Maximizes Fisher Information by Steven A. Frank http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0901/0901.3742v1.pdf
=== Lamarck ===
Lamarck's conclusion of acquired characteristics never followed logically from his Adaptation premise because the rhetorical tautological form of his arguments were a fallacy. His conclusion was falsified with experimental discovery. The logical form his arguments took was the same as that of Democritus, Lucretius,Aristotle(Claim of logic) from Greek philosophy.
My reading of Samuel Butler is that Darwin used the oxymoron Natural Selection to avoid being outed as plagiarizing Patrick Matthew's "natural means of competitive preservation" or "natural means of competitive(Malthus) selection.
:Argument in progress: All scientific theories have their origins in mythology such as Einstein's relativity theory which is based on Parmenides block universe where nothing ever happens(Popper#Parmenides, this need citations, will add later). This unintentional, undirected(random) natural competitive preservation,cultivation,selection or acquisition of attributes didn't originate with Erasmus Darwin, James Hutton(1791), Patrick Matthew etc. but traces back to Democritus, Aristotle,Lucretius and finally the Enûma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation. Paraphrasing Henry Morris(quoting Prof. Milton Munitz) two Gods(Marduk and dragon?) that arose out of a watery chaos did a type of Survival of the Fittest battle where the winning god(Marduk) gains attributes. We would have been told the same story by the Enûma Elish if the other god won the battle. Darwin used the oxymoron Natural Selection as the metaphor for Survival of the Fittest in the struggle for life as stated by him in OoS. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest insistence of the inverse is factually incorrect(they don't cite OoS). See http://tautology.wikia.com/wiki/Wallace_Letter_to_Darwin_on_natural_selection .
[[File:naturalDetection.jpg|left|thumb|Natural Detection not selection]]
Jesus Christ, antonymic Language incarnate, is our syntax cartographer who spoke the bounds of our grammar into existence 6000 years ago at the beginning of time. The composite integrity of Platonic antonymity is the nexus of our language and our being. It must be part of the premises in deriving the conclusion that God exists and Jesus Christ is his Son because language is the geometry of reality, the gauge of truth and isn't gradualistic, preventing infinite regress of mind. It is this antonymic Pattern or design view that Richard Rorty stated Atheists must not allow theists to impose on them. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote ".... we shall not be rid of God, until we are rid of grammar....and that Christianity is Platonism for the masses....". John Wilkins stated that ordinary language with its innate volition doesn't allow for biological concepts to be discussed. By 'ordinary' he meant Platonic contrast language. Materialists
are using volitionalistic antonymic language to express a world view, where will, volition or consciousness are illusions - (Mind or Matter). Words derive their meaning strictly as semantic opposites such as light the opposite of darkness.
The debates between ICR, AIG, Dembski's ID movement and atheists are doublethink grammar farces, a process of bastardizing syntax such as the non-metaphorical use of oxymorons and gargoyles like:".... ns does not cause an increase in information but only a decrease....". In acquiescing to the materialist's anti-Platonic language; AIG, ID'sts engage in semiotic necromancy, summoning dead tautologies(natural selection) in their shared abuse of syntax
.Donning polka-dot hats and pink tasseled slippers, 4th year medicine students are forced to practice semantic witchcraft with natural selection in front of the government ordained Babylonian high priest Jerry Coyne.
Numb to the Orwellian essence of their - natural(purposeless) selection(purpose) - they engage in verbal crucifixion of the Logos by destroying the authentic linguistic intercourse that regenerates Christ's linguistic Body. Syntax has a symbiotic relationship to facts and relates subject(what is inside of us) to object(external world). Dawkins abrogated syntax to his anti-Platonism in The God delusion by using a 'was' instead of a 'were not' to negate the historical fact stated by Charles Kingsley that society went from non-random(God) to randomness(absolute empire of accident) after OoS. See Purpose1. Judge Jones correctly pointed out that YEC isn't empirical or scientific. His aspersion that this indicates cognitive deficiency on the part of YEC is due to his unfamiliarity with the 
Münchhausen Trilemma - see(Logical fallacies).
On talk.origins I asked the question "Does evolution happen by chance". It was paraded by the posters as an example of the intellectual pygmy status of YEC. My question was actually a statement by the AAAS in 1991 that evolution transpires by chance , restated as a question.
All functionality are instantiations of Platonic antonymity, which is the only concept that ultimately exists(consciousness). Because this antonymity isn't falsifiable, Behe's Irreducible Complexity (IC) is not scientific,it is an incantation of the Law of Platonic antonymity. Atheists came to the correct conclusion about IC but not logically because their major premise - empiricism/unfalsifiability - is self-refuting: the premise itself isn't scientific because it assumes antonymity.
Our language with its innate volition constructs sentences as a Composite Integrity or indissoluble association of syntax,semantics and grammar, predicated on Platonic primary binary contrasts. It is this unscientific truth about language that Richard Dawkins Orwelian Newspeak (The God delusion) denies, using syntax that negates Platonic opposites(Nietzsche Platonic inversion) framed within the Logical fallacy of retrospective determination. His hyperbole(... grindingly , creakingly ,crashingly...) is inversely proportional to falsifiability of his narrative. Professing himself to be part of the "brights" he has become a Tautological Oxymoron his mental traffic La brea tar pitted into a Münchhausen infinite suspension of judgement .
The Münchhausen Trilemma, one of the Unsolved problems in philosophy, proposes that any world view reduces ultimately to the choice between unprovable axiomatic assumptions or infinite regress of language,reasoning,logic and metaphor and not the choice between empiricism / unfalsifiability. 
For example the statement: "....I only accept scientific evidence ...." is itself not testable or scientific. The major premise of YEC is God's sufficient condition of unfalsifiability to avoid Münchhausian infinite regress. All of logic and reasoning is an attempt to avoid infinitism and not unfalsifiability. ". http://forums.philosophyforums.com/threads/empiricism-vs-faith-how-one-cannot-be-both-empirical-and-faithful-41069.html states:"....anything beyond Empiricism is worthless to the advancement of the species....." The very sentence assumes unfalsifiable antonymity and is therefore self-refuting.
:Moved three paragraphs here to Logical fallacies
What is conceivable and what is not, what makes sense and what does not, depends on the rules of language, of grammar himself Jesus Christ the son of God. This process of trying to get rid of grammar traces back to the Age of Enlightenment and accelerated with the oxymoron Natural Selection. Wittgenstein's thesis was that our investigation is a grammatical one. Such an investigation sheds light on our problem by clearing misunderstandings away. The origins debate is one of inference as opposed to observation and thus careful delineation of the premises is required. A rock falling is an observation, gravity is the inference. Wittgenstein's puts forth the view that conceptual confusions surrounding the philosophy of language use are at the root of most philosophical problems. See falsification. In his work Philosophical investigations he reduces his work to linguistic analysis. 
In Platonic primary binary opposition to Chomsky's innate language theory is Skinner's behaviorism or Darwinian gradualism. Paley's watchmaker analogy makes no sense within the Nietzsche premise of Platonic inversion: it is predicated on the assumption of Platonic primary binary contrasts. Any logical system must assume things known to be true but that will never be able to be proven , hemmed in by a Godelian Wall.
George Gilder reviewed Berlinski's book in terms of Platonic opposites: concept precedes the concrete, the algorithm preceding the computer, the DNA word preceding the flesh, and theory preceding experiment. The irony is that while these authors deny a 6000 year old earth, the very language they use derives from Genesis (first chapter) and Revelation(last chapter). (Berlinski might be a secret Jewish YEC).
The non-Platonic premise turns language into a Semantic marshmallow that implodes into a wormhole of Aristotle type meaningless sentences. Aristotle's works were translated and copied in the Middle-East, filtered through a culture of cognitive puerility and dissonance of declamation , these copies were introduced to Europe in the 13th centurycitations? helping Aquinas merge Aristotle's metaphysics and logical incoherence into Catholic Eucharist mysticism. 
2They can't reconcile the mathematical abstractions(Biomimetics) with what they claim to study(biology or Life1) but can't define: Life1 itself.
Biologists can't define this universal mechanism, like they can't define the essence of magnetism,matter and energy. They can't provide the formula to create our own creatures(aware of themselves).
=== Claims of logic not falsifiable ===
Samuel Butler, Charles Hodge and Fleeming Jenkin's concluded with their keen sense of perception that Darwin's mode of reasoning is to derive conclusions in such a way that it can neither be refuted nor verified. Popper defined this type or reasoning as untestable(unfalsifiability). 
Jerry Coyne asserts that ns decides who the winners and losers are, much like Mars the god of war favored the Roman state over the Germanic losers.
The Christians who refused to burn incense to the Roman gods were persecuted because the gods could withdraw their favor. Today Christians in their senior year of medicine are also expected to burn incense and bow their knees and confess the Adaptation premise before the government ordained high priests of competitionist mythology(OriginOfSpeciesAsMyth), namely that the present attributes in organisms weren't there in the distant past, with the conclusion that the information and attributes had to be acquired as expressed in the present. The proposed mechanism by which the acquisition of attributes accumulated either gradually or PunkEek - natural means of competitive preservation(Natural Selection) - turned out to be a claim of logic , (Tautology Journals). Since the conclusion doesn't derive logically from the premise because the actual mechanism - Life1 isn't defined - the premise is merely restated as the conclusion and is thus a circular argument which is not the same thing as tautology.
Both Aristotle and Darwin had the same premise(present attributes not in distant past) and both rephrased Empedocles and Democritus claims of logic in an attempt at deriving their acquisition of attributes conclusion. Both their tautological claims of logic incorporated a difference in perception of scale commensurate with their acceptance or rejection of Irreducible Functionality. Darwinian gradualism and Aristotelian spontaneous generation(PunkEek) confuses the issues as it deals with a perception of scale and not the mechanism in deriving their conclusion from their premise logically. 
Claims of logic which can't be empirically experienced and was substituted for the lack of an empirical mechanism that would have glued the conclusion to the premise in such a way that circular reasoning is avoided. For the Adaptation world view to derive logically from their premise it must describe the Life mechanism,something which is not defined in terms of materialism. 
Aristotle's PunkEek(Irreducible Functionality) conclusion was derived from the claim of logic that those constituted would be preserved and those not constituted perish. This same rhetorical trope can be found in the works of Empedocles, Democritus, Lucretius and Epicurus. It is this rhetorical tautological logical fallacy in Greek philosophy that is reformulated using dissimilar terms in the writings of materialists such as Buchner, Fodor, John Wilkins, Michael Ruse , Richard Dawkins, Dennette etc.
The main aim of the Scholastic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism theologians was to use Aristotle's precise technical terms and logical system to investigate theology, with negative consequences because they were unable to identify Aristotle's rhetorical tautologies and so was Darwin. Clement, Origin incorporated Greek philosphy(Plato) into Christianity.
Influenced by Democritus, Aristotle's Logical fallacies Jerome , Augustine of Hippo and Aquinas denied free will in one form or another and thus enforced infant baptism. 
Denying free will is in reality a form of Atheism, William Provine does not believe there is any free will. They incorporated Aristotle, Lucretius claims of logicinto Christianity and with it the rationalization for perpetuating the Roman Caesars cruelty on Jews and the true Christians who rejected infant baptism. Democritus and Aristotle believed the universe existed for eternity and thus Augustine denied the plain scriptural reading that the universe was made 6000 years ago. Constantine who secretly worshiped the Sun god perpetuated the Roman Caesar political control, enforcing infant baptism and severe persecution for those who objected to this imposition because it undermined the political unity. 
Previously the open worship of Mars the god war was required for political unity - every inhabitant of the Roman empire had to perform rituals to the Pagan gods binding them in a common allegiance to Rome. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestal_Virgin cult became the cult of worshipping Mary. Under Constantine these rituals became infant baptism, today the semantic ritual that all must confess was summarized by Ken Ham when he stated: I believe in Natural Selection. Richard Dawkins asserts that those who don't believe in ns are stupid,evil, wicked or insane. Contrast this to falsifiable physics equations where your unfalsifiable beliefs are irrelevant, only what can be falsifiably tested. A belief is defined as unfalsifiable, God the Father of our Lord Jesus, the Great I am that I am isn't falsifiable because it prevents infinite regress. Falsifiability is subset of unfalsifiability ,preventing infinite regress. 
Rome sacked Jerusalem under Titus in 70AD, the persecution suffered by Jews under the Roman political control began before Rome adopted Christianity as a means of political uniformity to perpetuate their control of Europe. When Christians made up half the population by 300AD, it became ever more difficult to enforce political control with pagan worship. A calculated political decision was made to make Christianity thus a state religion and to persecute those who won't submit such as Jews. Correlation does not equal causation, if Christianity never existed then some other religions belief would have been invoked to persecute the Jews. The persecution that Jews experienced the last 2000 years under the banner of those calling themselves Christians were coincidental, not the actual cause. 
Richard Dawkins book the The God delusion has the premise that God's existance is improbable with the conclusion that he therefore doesn't exist. His arguments induces infinitism, therefore his conclusion didn't derive logically. The YEC premise is that information like matter, is neither created nor destroyed but only expressed, as the Platonic contrast to the Adaptation or acquisition of information premise . Unix wasn't "created" but is an expression of the pre-existing innate algorithms in the mind of man. In terms of this premise "creation" is a dissimilar term for "information expression".
=== ID is circular reasoning (Pending) ===
later
=== Misuse of metaphor ===
Patrick Matthew's letter to Darwin in 1871 he and other authors used Natural Selection(competitive preservation) as a metaphor. As time went on authors lost site of the fact that Natural Selection was the contracted shorthand for competitive preservation because literally it makes no sense(OoS 1863 ..false term..) so that today from http://www.uncommondescent.com , Aig, ICR ,Dawkins, college text books etc. the authors have no idea what they actually mean with the Oxymoron Natural Selection. They use it in a manner as if the concept was defined somewhere else, but can't tell exactly what this concept is nor how it could have allowed such authors to explain something they didn't know about(genes). Only full sentences can define a concept, natural selection is a term, not a sentence. Physics equations are sentences, for something to be a description it must at the very least be a sentence. Only after an agreed on concept has been defined could a term be used as a shorthand: this is not the case with the mainstream YEC apologetics movement(AIG, ICR), ID and Dawkins. From a financial money making perspective this is an ideal situation, because the unguarded reader also has no clue what he means with natural selection, allowing for endless books and conferences to be held. At http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/may/27/not-so-natural-selection/ Professor Lewontin from Harvard wrote: "... Nothing creates more misunderstanding of the results of scientific research than scientists’ use of metaphors. ...".
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/selection-units/ uses ".... unit of selection ...."
What would a 'unit of selection' , 'unit of preservation' or 'unit of cultivation' be? Darwin used 'selection' as a dissimilar term for his preferred term 'preservation' as in the 'natural acquisition of attributes via the competitive Malthusian means of preservation in the struggle for life '.
=== Samuel Butler ===
Samuel Butler determined that OoS used the same logical form as Lamarck, Zoonomia, Patrick Matthew and Butler determined that Darwin's book was tautological, but he couldn't nail it down to the term tautology like we can today. 
I quoted a passage from Butler's works on this issue and John Wilkins posted about this issue in blog post of his around 2009. Google for Samual Butler on http://www.evolvingthoughts.net/.
If cows were meant to produce beer instead of milk, would they still be a "success"(Differential reproductive success), for who is what a success? If fitness is a falsifiable concept then on what scale of porcine fitness would a pig with wheels mounted on ball bearings instead of trotters be. Darwin meant '...natural means of competitive enactment...' with '... natural selections acts ...'. He used acts in the pattern without a Purpose1 sense. In later texts authors wrote '.... natural selection operates ....' , using 'operates' as a synonym for 'acts' non-metaphorically because they didn't understand Darwin's intent, resulting in Meaningless sentences . In one of Darwin's letters he wrote that he should have used preservation instead of selection. See Prof. Burkhard on Natural selection as metaphor
AIG and ICR states that "... natural selection can't cause new genetic information...." and professer Humphrey defines natural selection as a conjuring trick(metaphorically probably). Wilkins states that natural selection is a "feedback process" and Kenneth Miller that ns is "blind" but presumably not stupid. Combing the concepts AIG is saying: " .... a feedback blind non-stupid conjuring trick can't metaphorically explain new genetic information ....." and take into account that Darwin didn't know about genes. Hence we have a preposterous language confused situation on our hands. Darwin himself is to blame for this because he plagiarized the natural means of competitive selection while reading Matthew's book on wood production from trees on the Beagle. The purpose of the Beagle trip was to secure trees and wood for the British fleet. Darwin used dissimilar terms to hide how he lifted his terms from previous authors such as Erasmus Darwin's Artificial Cultivation from Zoonomia, which he turned into Artificial selection. Darwin wasn't the only author who plagiarized in this manner Passages in Büchner's book on Materialism was a reformulation of Aristotle using dissimilar terms.
Even given eternity, a cell won't arise by itself(random pattern that only represents itself. Thus the only alternative from the YEC perspective is design(pattern that represents something other than itself), but not so with Epicurean Newspeak. From the theist perspective invoking a third option leads to the formulation of Meaningless sentences. This issue was debated in the thread Automated Selectionadd does non-random mean random thread for two months on Usenet(talk.origins) with Dr. Howard Hershey. 
A falsification test for evolution is to provide the formula for Life1 itself, the mechanical process of creating a tail wagging Basset aware of itself. With magnetism we can at least describe its effects mathematically, but we have no idea what is magnetism - The decline of the philosophical spirit . Neither do we know what energy is, we only describe its effects as the Platonic dichotomy, the tendence of energy Concentration to become Uniform in both closed and open systems. Energy, magnetism and gravity etc. are patterns that only represent themselves in contrast to a design which represents something other than itself. This leads to confusion between Pattern or designs where a thermodynamic(concentrate/uniformity) process is used in a design.(this argument is pending, see the differences in opinion between Granville Sewell Sewell and Scordova on http://www.uncommondescent.com second law of thermodynamics thread - they are both wrong and correct on points - they have no agreed on definition of what a design/pattern dichotomy is - Perry Marshall).
== Claims of logic not Popper falsifiable ==
moved to claim of logic
=== Natural selection as conjuring trick ===
moved quote to entry
Chomsky stated that Natural Selection can't explain the origin of language. Atheist professor William Provine laments that YEC have ".... discovered our empty natural selection language...". Which begs the same question Jerry Fodor penned at LRB: what then is the intended meaning of natural selection? Nicholas Humphrey thinks that via Natural Selection as a conjurer his consciousness is a "conjuring trick". Because the sentence itself was made by his consciousness, the sentence itself is a conjuring trick! If he used conjuring trick metaphorically, would that make his consciousness then a metaphorical conjuring trick perhaps? 
John Wilkins in a series of articles dealing with the natural selection tautology problem equivocates between logical necessities and falsifiable propositions and views ns as a descriptive schema. Jerry Fodor on his blogging heads podcast stated: "... if you scratch two biologists you will get two different definitions of natural selection...." - http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/2492
Samuel Butler showed that Darwin was a skilled plagiarizer. Darwin deftly changed Erasmus Darwin's Artificial Cultivation to Artificial Selection for example. Butler identified the tautological reasoning in OoS without using the term tautology. My own theory in this wiki is to show how Darwin used dissimilar terms such as selection, preservation(his preferred term) to reformulated Patrick Matthew's natural means of competitive selection (on Matthew's business card he stated he was the inventor of natural selection) in diverse ways. Matthew didn't invent anything but reformulated Lucretius, Aristotle, Democritus using dissimilar terms - Timeline of tautologies
Before Darwin the ToE was known as at the Doctrine of Derivation by Richard Owen. The premise of descent with modification through the ages from Anaxagoras, Lucretius, Democritus etc. had two basic but different views: Gradual Adaptation as opposed to spontaneous(Composite Integrity)(Aristotle and Empedocles) Adaptation. What the Greek philosophers(Timeline of tautologies) all had in common was the formulation of propositions using synonymous and dissimilar terms that refer to the same fact, guaranteeing the truth of their propositions which I defined on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28rhetoric%29 second paragraph as logical fallacious rhetorical tautological reasoning, which mustn't be confused with Tautological assertions or logical validities in propositional logic. This meant the Greek philosophers propositions were Popper unfalsifiable.
=== Thermodynamics as Platonic abstraction ===
Concentration/uniformity is the Platonic abstraction from which all of thermodynamics derive. The laws of thermodynamics describe the tendency of a concentrate of matter or energy to become uniform in both open and closed systems. (pending:Thermodynamic heat flow like gravity only represents itself. A design is a pattern that represents something other than itself-Perry Marshall)
Financial markets are bound by the dichotomy between certainty and uncertainty(contingency, probability). Information, like energy and matter can neither be created or destroyed, it is only expressed. Expressed is used here as the contrast to Adaptation. Careful consideration must be given to the difference between communication(reproduction of a signal) and Information, they are not the same. 
David Berlinski's observation that the concept of Natural Selection is hopelessly confused is because two different world views(Platonic and non-Platonic) are using the same semantics to express different meanings. Sentences have a structural ambiguity. There is nothing in the words themselves that will define what "... you have a green light means ..." - pragmatics. With oxymorons such as Natural Selection the world has entered their own type of Wittgensteinian private language away from Language himself Jesus Christ who is Alpha and Omega, the Author and Finisher of our faith.
From the KJVBible isn't defined YEC binary contrasts, all of semantics even Self-organization or the nebulous emergent can only be understood as a metaphor for the Platonic dichotomy between a pattern without a Purpose1 and pattern with a Purpose1, which Wikipedia defines as design. In terms of this premise there is no such thing as a "biological"get first dictionary date -1940? meaning for selection, any such third option is a Meaningless sentence. The discussion as to why Natural Selection is non-random as opposed to random (http://forthesakeofscience.com/2008/10/25/why-natural-selection-is-not-random) results in Meaningless sentences because Natural SelectionPurposeless purpose is used literallydictionary 1850 instead of metaphorically.
=== Acquisition Atheist and Expression YEC of attributes ===
The slow gradual, acquisition of new attributes(Adaptation or Evolution 8 Naming Conventions) enacted( no design sense) via the natural(unintentional) means of competitive(MalThus) selection, survival, accumulation,scrutinization preservation or cultivation(Erasmus Darwin) is a reformulation of Democritus Doctrine of Atoms(Henry Fairfield Osborn, using different terminology, as shown by Henry Osborn in his book From the Greeks to Darwin- http://www.archive.org/details/fromgreekstodarw00osborich.
Evolution 8(acquisition of attributes) differs from Evolution 9(YEC expression of attributes) as per Naming Conventions. Evolution8 can be used as the Metaphor for atheism and Evolution9 the metaphor for YEC. 
Niche - Marc Tess, ecosystem, society, cognition, climate are dissimilar terms used to describe the same concept: your condition of existence, to which you are not adapted (Polar bear not adapted to anything) from the YEC premise. In the same way preservation, accumulation, enactment, survival, John Tyndall's and Herbert Spencer's Differential reproduction 1871 and selection etc. are dissimilar terms that can be used to express the MalThus competitionist mythology( OriginOfSpeciesAsMyth) as reformulated by Darwin. Wearing pink tassels(David Berlinski) and a polka dot hat our university professors tautologify Stanford tautologies their cause-effect descriptions with this mythology.
=== Shannon's theorem of communication, not information ===
moved to Information. Pending: Gould in his book 'Wonderful Life' confused a condition of existence and a location of existence 
=== Differential reproductive success not used by Darwin ===
:Argument in progress - Aristotle would have phrased it as ... the spontaneous(sudden) acquisition of new attributes using limbs,eyes,shoulders lying around on the ground(Empedocles) via the natural(purposeless) means of spontaneous selection.... (This is Pending, will edit Aristotle later to provide citations. Aristotle understood that any functional system would be IC , or have D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's Composite Integrity or Irreducible Functionality, as seen from his comments on the formation of teeth; thus Aristotle's emphasis was spontaneous generation(selection) while Darwin was gradual acquisition enacted via competitive preservation,selection of parts incrementally that had to work, keeping the creature alive and not so much spontaneous generation. One could say Aristotle was more Punk-eek and Darwin gradual. This confuses the issues, because it deals with a perception of scale and not the mechanism life1, if we assume the premise that creatures acquired new attributes whether instantaneously as IC would demand or gradually.)
=== All of semantics function as metaphor ===
CharlesKingsley and many other authors such as Duke of Argyle understood Natural Selection to be used as a Metaphor and not literally, as time progressed and history revisionismJohnWilkins crept in authors began to use ns literally resulting in oxymoronic Meaningless sentences, which is worse than a tautology3. All sorts of confusion has been created from Ken Ham, Dawkins to Dembski. 
The most striking example is the error of explaining or refuting genes as a cybernetic abstraction in terms of the grammatical gargoyleDernavichInfidels Natural Selection: Darwin didn't know about genes and like the definition of Life1 could not have solved a problem he couldn't define in terms of materialist premises. The question of how Darwin could have solved a problem he couldn't define goes back to Aristotle and the authors before him stating the competitionist MalThus mythology. After quoting Aristotle Darwin wrote "... we can see here the principle of Natural Selection natural means of competitive selection shadowed forth. 
Quantum theory differs from Phlogiston theory, with natural selection we have the situation as if every theorem in physics were called Phlogiston theory, this is the type of situation biology? is in, largely because the actual mechanism responsible for the mathematical constructs expressed physically in the gait of mammals(Biomimetics) , insects etc. isn't defined: Life1 itself.
In the absence of a definition of Life1, the Epicureans have opted to formulate Meaningless sentences that have been so successful that even Ken Ham says ".... I believe in Natural selection ....". Meaningless sentences formulated using oxymorons becomes the litmus test for YEC Christians: if you use meaningless sentences you are denying your faith in Christ. If you don't use Meaningless sentences you won't even be allowed to pass your first year at Bob Jones university where a mandatory course must be taken to "explain" how a Purposeless purpose (oxymoron) mechanism results in loss of genetic information, instead of an increase. 
Artificial selection was lifted from Erasmus Darwin's Artificial Cultivation from Zoonomia - (Samuel Butler) a. AC/AS could be seen as the metaphor for: intended means of competitive selection,cultivation or preservation of desired traits.(this needs further citations - Tautology Notes) . As a semantic construct and term Natural Selection is an oxymoron and not a tautology, because Only sentences can be tautologies. Samuel Butler talk.origins post was the first to identify the tautological nature of the sentences that compact the oxymoron Natural Selection and that ns was the metaphor for SoF and not the other way around as Wikipedia revised history at 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival_of_the_fittest.
=== Elliot Sober ===
Elliot Sober and JohnWilkins equivocates between tautologies1 in propositional logic and rhetorical tautologies(which I defined on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28rhetoric%29 as arguments formulated in such a way that the truth of the proposition is guaranteed by using terms that refer to the same fact and cannot be disputed irrespective of their length or complexity). 
The ID and Creationist movements in general are trying to refute or disprove Evolutionary theories. Since evolutionary theories are tautological, neither refutable nor verifiable, they can't be disproven or Popper falsified and thus are non-sequiturs. Which means they could still be correct,but for different reasons. Neither can Creationist YEC beliefs be falsified(in general, there are exceptions), but because the Word of God defines God as "....calling those things that be not as though they were..."(not falsifiable), the YEC does not contradict itself. Since Godels theorem shows we must assume something we cannot prove(unfalsifiable), the YEC position isn't therefore irrational. 
Evolutionary theories reduces to: What happens, happens and therefore chance,design or whatever(anything you want). In Darwin's case his arbitrary non-sequitur conclusion was chance. Asserting that random chance will lead to genetic novelty as a stand-alone non-tautological proposition can be falsified and has been falsified.
With materialism design is ruled out apriori and chance is impossible , given the complexity of the cells, the proteome phase-space is too large ( ~2^400 ), too fragile ( E0~kt ) and too nucleation-dependent (hydrophobic core) to ever produce stable organisms, let-alone allow them to dissimulate - 
Bio-evolution lacks both a dynamic and an object.
The non-sequitur conclusion must be disassociated from the logically fallacious way in which the MalThus competitionist OriginOfSpeciesAsMyth premise was formulated, because tautologies(what happens, happens) can't be refuted or verified. If a conclusion is a non-sequitur, it doesn't mean that it necessarily is incorrect, but that it doesn't follow logically. 
:Argument in progress: In a sense one can define God as: He only accepts unfalsifiable constructs. Since God holds together the universe by his Word alone, he therefore only accepts that for which his only evidence is his Popper unfalsifiable faith. Therefore having faith which is the evidence for things not seen(unfalsifiable) isn't an irrational position to take for a child of God.
=== A physics equation isn't a tautology ===
Physics equations aren't tautologies(neither rhetorical or logical tautologies(Tautological assertions)), but the Wikipedia Epicureans have allowed my opening paragraph defining a rhetorical tautology3 to remain, yet removed this argument from the main page. Let it therefore be known that they think that physics equations are tautologies, which would make one question their intellectual fortitude in this and other matters of logic.
Black darkness is a pleonasm. In a sentence : ...Black darkness covered the land..; it turns the sentence into a Tautological expression . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28rhetoric%29 article used to confuse a rhetorical tautology with tautological expressions(pleonasm) which is used for a stylistic, poetic effect and not intended to guarantee the truth of the proposition. 
After numerous edits Wikipedia finally accepted my logic on the matter, but is was a struggle. 
In the immortal words of Darwin himself(Oos): "... the truth of the propositions cannot be disputed...", hence his 'one long argument' isn't Popper falsifiable and allowed him to come to any arbitrary non-sequitur conclusion; which in Darwin's case was random chance. The chance arbitrary conclusion was eventually falsified, but not his preservation of favorable attributes via the natural means of competitive selectionpreservation,cultivation(Matthew). This is a key issue that Ken Ham, Richard and the Discovery institute fails to comprehend or don't want to comprehend since it allows them to sell books surrounding the controversy. Phillip Johnson stated that there is ...nothing to discuss... if an argument reduces to an empty tautology3.
:Popper stated that the conventionalist changes the definitions when challenged on his theory. An example of this are the Wikipedia Atomist's arbitrary revisions to the main http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection article. Yearlong definitions from 2007,2009 etc. suddenly changed dramatically around 2011. A wiki entry here will be made later see http://www.evolutioncreationism.info/the-arbitrary-wikipedia-revisions-to-the-natural-selection-article. Walter Remine stated .... trying to nail down a definition of Natural Selection is like trying to pin down a flee in an urinal... and .... tautologies3 are at their most dangerous when they go unnoticed, we must therefore plug in the definitions of the terms to unmask them ..... Compare http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Natural_selection to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection. See Wikipedia Natural Selection and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection
=== Antony Flew's falsification test for God ===
moved to Logical fallacies
=== Adaptation ===
The Adaptation(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptation) premise is that the present attributes didn't previously exist in the ancestors but were acquired through Democritus Atomic competitiveness like mechanism restated by PatrickMatthew as natural means of competitive selection. Democritus premise was that atoms existed for eternity, meaning that he didn't have to explain where atoms came from in the first place.
Natural as Darwin used it should be seen as the metaphor(EpiCurus, Pierre Flourens) for unintended,chance,random - Charles Hodge. Note that in Preferential decision, natural was used as the metaphor for an intended decision(pattern with a purpose). Any term can be used as a metaphor to represent an idea in the Pattern or design or pattern without a purpose/ pattern with a purpose sense. With Erasmus Darwin's Artificial Cultivation, the selection of desirable traits was a pattern with a purpose. Erasmus AC is the channeling of repeating patterns. 
With PatrickMatthew's natural(unintended) means of competitive selection the intended description was of a pattern without a purpose. The mistake made by Matthew was that the proposition was formulated in such a way that it could not be disputed , hence it was Popper unfalsifiable and actually a reformulation of Democritus Doctrine of Atoms - Tautology Notes, HenryFairfieldOsborn. Atomism is derived from the struggle theme found in ancient near eastern myths in which the cosmos emerged from a struggle between a god and a great sea monster, the god representing order and the sea monster representing chaos - OriginOfSpeciesAsMyth.
The struggle theme is Popper unfalsifiable because if the sea monster out competed the god, we would be told the same story. With the struggle theme our thinking entered an infinite regress (Tautology Culture) and theists were unable to point out the Logical fallacies before Popper and the concept of a Meaningless sentence from Chomsky. Empedocles, Democritus, Aristotle, Lucretius , EpiCurus etc. incorporated the mythology with creatures competing against one another.
Darwin perpetuated the error with his natural selection which he used to avoid giving credit to Matthew.
Dembski, Ken Ham, RichardDawkins Behe etc. are formulating Meaningless sentences such as ... Natural Selection reduces information, it does not increase information .... by using the oxymoron ns non-metaphorically. Information is a pattern with a purpose that represents something other than itself - Gitt, Pattern or design.
(Add in section about how they also provide the Epicureans with a falsifiable construct, the whole point of this wiki is that EpiCurus, Aristotle ideas which Darwin restated aren't falsifiable)
Most researchers today insert a few odd jabs of Natural Selection in their journal papers after it has been written in order to get it published. According to PhilipSkell had they instead used Roger Rabbit, fruitcake or Aztec Cosmology, the core ideas would still be clear. The wordy terms evolution,selection add no clarity.
Natural Selection is a term and specifically not a sentence and thus as a term it can't be a tautology: Only sentences can be tautologies. As a term it can be used in a sentence with such saying the same thing twice. In most cases natural selection is an arbitrary piece of grammatical gargoyle(DernavichInfidels) tacked onto a tautological sentence with the author unable to specify whether he uses the term metaphorically or not.
==== Ns was metaphor for SoF ====
The term Ns was also used as the metaphor for the phrase SoF - http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Wallace_Letter_to_Darwin_on_natural_selection . Because ns is a term, Wallace was free to use it as a metaphor for SoF or anything else. Darwin's ideas were expressed using the term NS in terms of the Pattern or design contrast. The Wikipedia Epicureans reject this dichotomy, yet are using the same terminology as they revise history, interpreting in history in their world view and not the Pattern or design world view of a Victorian reader in 1859. JohnWilkins implied at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/precursors/precursnatsel.html that Darwin used Survival of the Fittest as the metaphor for Natural Selection which is incorrect, it was the other way around.
Phrases and sentences can't be used as metaphor for terms, only terms can be used as metaphors for phrases(SoF) and sentences, because ideas can only be fully communicated without ambiguity with sentences. Dictionaries provides us with a roadmap of how terms are used, they document the literal meaning mostly and not metaphorical usage of words. Selection in a dictionary means to make a decision, when used metaphorically it need not have such meaning. This means that a sentence like ..... by the process of natural selection no new information arose .... isn't even wrong until the wielder of the terms defines his terminology.
What precisely is meant today with ns by various authors isn't clear (Tautology Journals). The mistake made by YEC, materialist and ID is to assign an actual meaning to a term: no term nor sentence has an actual meaning - Sentences have no meaning.
Words have no real affinity with thoughts. Wittgenstein came to see language as an irreducibly complex living grammar that enables us to represent our thoughts with words, but such words can never be tied to a thought because it would lead to an infinite regression of metaphors. George Pieczenik discovered palindromic sequences in genes, exhibiting grammar like rules - David Berlinski.
Terms and sentences we use today were forged before the Age of Enlightenment to express the Pattern or design world view, which today is rejected. This leads to conflicting interpretations of observations(Peppered Moth Pattern or Design). When a bird observers a peppered moth on a black tree instead of a black moth he is engaging in natural detection . An eagle spotting a white lizard on a black outcrop is performing natural detection. 
 Our observations are interpreted within a paradigm that either accepts or rejects Pattern or design dichotomy.
RichardDawkins stated in one of his books(get citation) that we must not assume that a pattern with a purpose and pattern without a purpose(Pattern or design) are our only options. This raises the question: what must we then assume and what about that which we assume will we never be able to prove as shown by Godel's incompleteness theorem? Rhetorical tautologies is one way of inducing infinite regression. Dawkins, rejecting the Pattern or design dichotomy and leaving the issue open ended risks inducing Infinite regression.
== Pattern or design ==
moved to Pattern or design
=== Irreducible Functionality ===
moved to Irreducible Functionality and Pattern or design.
=== Logical fallacies ===
Logical flaws in the origins debate moved to Logical fallacies
==== Notes ====
Quotations on natural selection moved to Quotations on Natural selection
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness
:Nassim Taleb sets forth the idea that modern humans are often unaware of the existence of randomness. They tend to explain random outcomes as non-random.
This is a direct quote from Wikipedia.... where they specifically don't hyper-link 'non-random'. But when you place brackets around non-random to understand what the Epicureans mean with non-random it redirects to randomness. 
Thus the sentence from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fooled_by_Randomness reduces to Newspeak:
:Taleb sets forth the idea that modern humans are often unaware of the existence of randomness. They tend to explain random outcomes as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness.
This is not what Taleb wrote. He wrote that we tend to explain random patterns that have no purpose as patterns with a purpose(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design). In order to understand what Taleb is writing we designate non-random as the semantic opposite of random and the use the term as such in full sentences. But in Wikipedian Newspeak non-random is the same thing as random. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia - the psychological phenomenon of perceiving a pattern with a purpose in randomness. 
All creatures should be viewed as matter on which a mathematical construct was superimposed. Embryonic development is the physical manifestation of a topological mathematical abstraction. A chicken pivoting on two legs implements a neural control algorithm. This algorithm isn't the clumps of amino acids that form a gene, no more than the number two or three has a physical location. 
The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. With a metaphor the aim is to call up a visual image. When these images clash, it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking - Wallace Letter to Darwin on natural selection, George Orwell. 
Natural Selection or Natural preservation historically was a metaphor for Survival of the Fittest and specifically not the other way around - JohnTyndall, 1872. Natural Selection the term is no more a tautology then Preferential decision is: only ideas can be tautological and such ideas must be expressed using full sentences to avoid ambiguity. When Natural Selection is used in a full sentence but not metaphorically, the sentence becomes a Meaningless sentence.
Selection as used by PatrickMatthew should be seen as a metaphor for survival, cultivation or preservation(Darwin's preferred term). Darwin's Artificial selection was actually a concept lifted from Erasmus Darwin's Artificial cultivation. Samuel Butler wrote that Matthew gave a condensed version of the writings of Erasmus, Buffon and Lamarck. He viewed Darwin's work as a skillful plagiarizing of these authors. 
Darwin became increasingly exasperated when pressed by his correspondents over the pantheistic implications that his usage of 'natural selection' invoked, because he couldn't clearly state he used the term as a metaphor for Matthew's natural means of competitive selection(cultivation, preservation, survival). It would expose him as a fraud and not the originator of a new concept. - http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Milton_Wain_collection_of_pre_Darwin_authors , http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Darwin%27s_Predecessors .
The natural means of competitive selection should be seen as natural means of competitive survival as creature battle one another to dominate an ecological niche. Which is basically Democritus Atomism reformulated and extended. The battle between the atoms(non Life1) became the battle between the creatures(Life1). Democritus begged the question(Circular reasoning), he assumed that atoms obtained attributes that weren't previously there within his belief the universe had no beginning. He viewed that atoms gained attributes by dominating their ecological niche after triumphing over the weaker atom: this is Popper unfalsifiable because we would be told the same story in reverse, if the other atom triumphed. 
natural means of competitive selection as an unfalsifiable proposition explain everything whether individual selection or Group selection. Dawkins objects to group selection.
Dawkins doesn't seem to understand that a competitive selection(survival) process, either natural or directed applies to individuals and groups. He is using 'natural selection' but can't seemingly decide if used as a metaphor and if a metaphor, for what exactly? 
CharlesKingsley understood that 'natural selection' was the metaphorical term for the natural competition between animal or human races to dominate: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-3426
:.....That they should have died out, by simple natural selection, before the superior white race, you & I can easily understand...... 
CK proposed that mythological races, e.g., elves and dwarfs, were intermediate species between man and apes, and have become extinct by natural selection; i.e., by competition with a superior white race of man. 
Darwin failed to clearly demarcate his ideas with the term 'selection', its strong volition lead to anthropomorphic overtones, leading to Wallace suggesting that Survival of the Fittest be used. Natural Selection from then on was used as a metaphor for SoF(JohnTyndall)- 1872 up until it seems 1899 when it was realized that SoF is a Tautological proposition. Citations for this will be added in due course - see http://groups.google.com/group/tautology-notes/browse_frm/thread/893c5f2ed581a310 .
After this period Natural Selection was used more and more as a stand-alone term, but because it is only a term and not a full sentence, it led to ambiguity as to what exactly is meant, leading to the formulation of Meaningless sentences turning the English language in particular, with its structural ambiguity and metaphorical ambiguity into a Newspeak Semantic marshmallow.
==== Jerry Fodor ====
Lets reformulate Jerry Fodor's question at LRB:
* .... what then is the intended meaning of Natural Selection...? Fodor original question.
* Reformulate: What then is the intended meaning of Natural Selection as a metaphor historically and today given our knowledge context pre-genes and post genes as a cybernetic abstraction. 
Survival of the Fittest is an obvious Tautological proposition. Survival and fittest refer to the same fact, saying the same thing twice, making any conclusion a non-sequitur. Darwin used Natural Selection as a metaphor for PatrickMatthew's natural means of competitive selection the same way chemists use 'elective affinities' metaphorically. JohnTyndall used SoF as a shorthand for this. Epicureans are using semantics that have an innate volition to represent ideas devoid of volition. Neither Ken Ham nor RichardDawkins have a wiki paga to state whether they use the semantic object Natural Selection as a metaphor or not and in which knowledge context 1859, 1872(Tyndall) pre-genes or post genes. 
The Epicureans attempts history revisionism by not defining what they intend with ns at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection. It states paraphrasing that '.... ns is the process by which things become more or less commmon....' and until the author defines what concept from which time era, historical and knowledge context he is referring to, he isn't even wrong. For example in the Preferential decision example, Natural Selection was used as a metaphor for making a preferential decision for cake over banana. Epicureans object by saying that Natural Selection doesn't mean this, which depends whether they use it as a metaphor or not. 
The ns Wikipedia article states "...traits became more common...". Thus the premise is that the ancestors kf the polar bear didn't posses the attributes at present, this begs the question(Circular reasoning), since it is the very issue under dispute.
Polar bears are not adapted to anything, they only express their attributes. Wikipedia's ns article assumes that the polar bear acquired its attributes over generations via some mechanism it doesn't define - natural selection. (Is the term used as a metaphor or literally?) - Polar bear not adapted to anything.
Steel melts at 1500 and Copper at 800. Both steel and copper express their attribute: they are not adapted to anything. There never was a point in time where the melting point of steel wasn't 1500C. In the same way there never was a point in time where the ancestors of humans couldn't walk. 
Editing the page and adding SoF in brackets after natural selection isn't allowed by the Wikipedia editors. They keep on insisting what natural selection isn't, yet never define what precisely it is then. What is this 'non-random' process by which things become more or less common? The process itself can't be the word phrase natural selection, natural selection the term can only be the agreed upon object to symbolically represent this process, not the process itself. 
=== John Burroughs and Henry Osborn ===
* From 1872,1922(JohnBurroughs, HenryFairfieldOsborn) up until 1991 , 1993 around( journalist JerryAdler) , the term 'natural' was used to convey 'random accidents'. Natural selection and evolution were used interchangeably to refer to this chance process. After the ID movement Behe, Dembski demonstrated that even if one had all of eternity an amino acid won't arise via a process of accidents, the Epicureans prefixed natural selection with non-random, resulting in deepening Meaningless sentence because they insist that non-random doesn't mean directed - (see usenet Automated Selection thread). 
=== James Hutton ===
http://bit.ly/ds42t - Darwin's ideas must be interpreted in terms of JamesHutton, Time line of tautological ideas and especially PatrickMatthew, his mistake was to contract Matthew's natural means of selection and natural competitive selection(natural means of competitive selection) to the syntactically or grammatically correct Natural Selection, but (Meaningless sentence). He did this to avoid giving credit to Matthew who used the terms in 1831. His Meaningless sentences made it difficult to detect the Popper unfalsifiable tautological ideas in OoS and cause-effect inversion (water doesn't cause corn to grow). Throughout OoS Darwin used dissimilar terms that refer to the same idea, saying the same thing twice, making any conclusion from such a non-sequitur - Tautological proposition, Nytimes natural selection, Tautologies In Economist, Tautology Culture
The following to be added as time allows:
* (genes not having the actual trig equation that describes the cockroach gait from Biomimetics, but should be seen as an interface to the abstract Language space where the math equation comes from(God and Christ). 
* ( De Rerum Natura from Lucretius and the rebuttals to this around 1570 )
=== Artificial selection or cultivation(Erasmus Darwin) ===
Darwin's description of what he termed Artificial selection was an equivocation between correlation and causation or confusing correlation in patterns with cause.
( later date as time allows in terms of Tautology Culture, which needs revision).
The Rhetorical tautologys disguised the Circular reasoning(humans are not adapted for walking) with the fossils, which in turn was a side-effect of infusing the ancient Yin/Yang, God's slaying See monster, Thor, Zeus battles myth into our culture - OriginOfSpeciesAsMyth, too displace the Christian world view.
Irreducible Functionality, Composite Integrity or Interlocking Functionality and the Pattern or design dichotomy is proposed as a counter to the 150 years of wasted ink)(Fodor) under the rubric of Natural Selection. 
Fodor though, compounded the problem by trying to assign some sort of actual meaning to Natural Selection, instead of viewing it as a Sokal Hoax type Meaningless sentence. Behold the reaction from Daniel Dennett who's thinking is so oxidized with the ns Meaningless sentence that he responded with oratorical outbursts rather then the serenity of a contemplating logician. 
In the modern day evolutionary belief system non-random isn't considered the antonym of random, but a subset of random. Another formulation is " ..Design patterns are a subset of the universe of all patterns. Or, more briefly, design is a subset of pattern...."(HoWard1). Epicureans believe that purpose is a subset of non-purpose ajd reject the pattern/design dichotomy. 
We have the following concepts represented with the objects non-random,random, pattern and Design (pattern with a purpose).
* non-random is the antonym of random by theists.
* non-random and design are subsets of random and pattern and specifically not the antonym of random(HoWard1), RichardDawkins. 
=== Random, non-random ===
Many Epicureans, Evolutionists or Derivationists(Prof.Owen's Doctrine of Derivation) would neither agree nor disagree because they and the Wikipedia Aristotelians in particular refuse to allow an entry for non-random at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-random, it redirects to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random. In other words the Epicureans are busy with a form of Newspeak, trying to make language itself in a sense undefined by making non-random mean random. Yet, in other wikipedia pages such as [Clustering Illusion] non-random is used as a synonym for Design1. 
In the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design article, an excellent definition of design is given: pattern with a purpose. With the implication that pattern with a purpose is the antonym of pattern without a purpose(random). Before Epicurean Newspeak this was considered the same as non-random the antonym of random, in discussing this at Talk.origins Usenet backspace, the Epicureans insist that this isn't so. They don't consider non-random to be the synonym of Design1(pattern with a purpose). 
Pre RichardDawkins Newspeak, "Non" was a negative or antonymic prefix to provide random with a semantic opposite. All ideas are understood in terms of Pattern or designs antonyms and synonyms, not so in the Epicurean belief system with non-random/random dichotomy. They are invoking the Humpty Dumpty principle where they can make any word mean whatever they want to make it mean. Add section about using Natural Selection in the preferential decision making sense.
Wikipedia revisions Natural selection article. 
By flooding our culture,schools and universities with rhetorical tautologies(Tautology Culture), the Epicureans have made it difficult to detect their Newspeak and Circular reasoning. Tautologies and circular reasoning are not the same thing. Tautologies says the same thing twice, while circular reasoning assumes the premise in the conclusion.
=== Equivocation between tautologies ===
The various attempts at dealing with this resulted in equivocation between Tautological assertions, Tautological expressions and Tautological propositions - Tautology Journals and Tautology_Usenet#Pennock. 
Only tautological propositions(rhetorical) are fallacious, not so with expressions(colloquial) and assertions(axioms). Some of the core ideas in this wiki was inserted into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(rhetoric), while navigating Epicurean flak and subterfuge.
:" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_(rhetoric) ....A rhetorical tautology can also be defined as a series of statements that comprise an argument, whereby the statements are constructed in such a way that the truth of the proposition is guaranteed or that the truth of the proposition cannot be disputed by defining a term in terms of another ..."
This paragraph was strategically included because Darwin wrote in OoS: ... the truth of the propositions cannot be disputed ..... Falsifiable theories like Newton's inverse square law can always be disputed, not so with unfalsifiable facts. We after theories not facts or certainties - (physics equations aren't tautologies).
==Notes==
moved to Tautology notes1
=== This is the point ===
moved to Hutton, Matthew and Chomsky
=== Sentences have no meaning, they symbolically represent only an idea ===
moved to Sentences have no meaning
== Tautology ==
Moved to Tautology notes1
==Axioms are tautological assertions==
Moved to Axioms are Tautological assertions 
=== Natural selection, preservation, survival aren't tautologies ===
moved to Natural Selection
==Tautology identification==
moved to Physics equations aren't tautologies
==Physics equations aren't tautologies==
moved to Physics equations aren't tautologies
==Aristotle's influence on Aquinas==
moved to Aristotle
=== Popper on natural selection ===
Popper had a knack for seemingly agreeing with somebody but then really saying the person's theory is unfalsifiable as in his famous "recanting" that natural selection is a tautology3 (Naming Conventions) and metaphysical research program. What he really did was throw the Aristotelians3 a bone to shut-up and leave an old man alone, they couldn't grasp what he was saying, it went over their heads... Popper didn't really "recant". (If an experiment falsifies your position you amend your position - not "recant")
== Tautologies from Aristotle, Empedocles, James Hutton and Henry F. Osborn ==
moved to Timeline of tautologies
== Tautologies through the ages ==
moved to Timeline of tautologies
=== Tautological thinking in our culture ===
Moved to Tautology Culture
=== Natural selection as oxymoron ===
moved to Purposeless purpose
== Talk Origins Tautology article ==
moved to DarwinNeverSaidDifferentialReproduction
== Identify tautology ==
Identify the terms in a sentence or passage used in the pragmatics synonymous sense. Take any of these terms or words and reformulate the sentence as a question in terms of the other word. This will show whether the terms or words says the same thing twice. There is a difference between dictionary semantic synonyms and pragmatics synonyms because no word or sentence has a meaning: Only ideas have meaning.
A dictionary captures a certain idea in a context.. See http://www.evolvingthoughs.net for a blog post on this by Wilkins.
== Circular reasoning isn't a tautology ==
moved to Logical fallacies.
== Creation.com and tautology ==
Moved to Creation.com and tautology
== Darwin's 'Theory of Evolution' - what theory? ==
moved to http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/Theory_of_evolution
=== Buffon in a time machine to present age ===
moved to Buffon in time machine
== Natural selection and Phlogiston theory ==
moved to Natural Selection
== Wikipedia's Fitness article uses John Tyndall's interpetation of Democritus ==
moved to Survival of the Fittest
== What does Fitness mean? ==
moved to Survival of the Fittest
== Nature selects - pattern or design ? ==
moved to Pattern or design
== Is a tautology true by definition? ==
moved to Natural Selection
=== Wikipedia's Neo-Empedoclians ===
moved to Natural Selection
=== Which version of natural selection with what concept? ===
moved to Natural Selection
== From the Greeks to Darwin by Henry Osborn ==
moved to HenryFairfieldOsborn
== Example of a tautological proposition ==
moved to Tautology Journals
=== Irish Elk ===
moved to Tautology Journals.
=== Wikipedia natural selection Nov.2009 revision ===
moved to Natural Selection
=== Wikipedia's natural selection opening paragraph ===
moved to Natural Selection
=== Where did matter come from ? ===
Neo-Aristotelians would say that "evolution" doesn't deal with this, which is an appeal to AbstractAuthority: Mr.Evoluton, Mr.Science and Mr.Religion don't exist, they don't say anything neither do they inhabit separate domains a mistake Gould makes with his NOMA(concept lifted from the writings of KarlMarx). Only a conscious being can say something or not deal with something, be religious or materialistic. The Neo-Empedoclians don't wish to deal with the question because the of the notion that their spiritual leader had about "atoms fighting each other". Empedoclian tautological thinking infused into our science, culture religion and politics. The entire premise of our society at large pivots on a battle-for-survival myth formulated in such a way that it cannot be disputed(Darwin's term). The mythology was arbitrarily associated with selection, adaptation , words given the atheistic premises of most isn't available to them as per DernavichInfidels
=== Saying the same thing twice ===
- merged with opening section
== Darwin on propositions which cannot be disputed ==
moved to Natural Selection
== Darwin's definitions of Natural Selection ==
moved to Natural Selection
== Natural selection ==
moved to Natural Selection
== Lucretius ==
moved to Lucretius
== Democritus ==
moved to Democritus
== Is survival of the fittest a tautology ? ==
Spencer got SurvivalOfTheFittest from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Reinhold_Treviranus, Buffon. 
Depends on who says SoF and in what context with what background knowledge and Pragmatics since a term only means what an individual intends it to mean. Try and contact Herbert Spencer and ask him two questions:
* Other than noting the species survived how was their fitness or suitability measured?
* Other than noting they were suitable how was their survivability measured? 
Spencer sold over a million books, OoS was read by a person in 1860 with Spencer's ideas, today Spencer is hardly ever mentioned. From his writing with fitness he meant suitable, he was widely sited during the 19th century. As Darwin wrote:"..natural selection or survival of the fittest which is a better expression....." which to a read back then meant: "....survival of the most suitable is a better expression....." Today nobody knows what is meant with the word "fitness", what concept is being conveyed isn't clear. "Fitness" isn't a concept, but a means for signal sender to encode his particular concept within in his reference frame a 150 years after Spencer.
== Natural Selection or Natural Preservation ? ==
moved to Natural Selection
== principle of divergence ==
moved to Natural Selection
== What is the theory of evolution? ==
moved to Natural Selection
=== If natural selection is blind, why isn't it stupid? ===
Moved to Natural Selection
=== Notes on Darwin ===
moved to Tautology notes1
=== Links ===
http://lofi.forum.physorg.com/Natural-Selection-is-Recursive_6572.html
http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Natural_selection
* Core ideas
* Uncommondescent.com
* Bornagain77
* Erik Scully
* Pamela Winnick Journalist(ex)
* Forum
* Episcopal church tautology
* Darwin metaphor
* William Lane Craig
* Speed of light
* Ken Ham
* Stevedoetsch
* John Jones
* Differential reproductive success
* Tom Campbell
* Theology
* Aristotle
* Ernst Mayr
* Bacterial resistance Resistance is an effect, not a cause. There is a cause effect inversion.
* Skeptic za org
* Simon Blackburn 
* Samuel Butler
* Pandasthumb
* Henry Morris
* self-organization
* Wallace Letter to Darwin on natural selection
* preferential decision
* Biomimetics
* D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson Pending http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D'Arcy_Wentworth_Thompson
* Newspeak
* Creationwiki
* AristotleTautological , Tautology Journals , Tautology Usenet, Tautology Blogs , Tautology Notes
* Tautology Culture
* Memes1
* Ian Pollster Usenet
* Species Concept
* Robot1 analogy
* Tautology Equivocation , Gravity Past, Tautology Afrikaans Wikipedia
* About dot com , Chris Colby , Stephen Meyer , Jeffery Shallit
* Colorless green
* Bio-evolution lacks both a dynamic and an object
* Sean Pitman
* PZ Myers
* Phillip Johnson
* William R. Greg
* Darwin's Predecessors
* Irreducible Functionality Complexity is ambigious .
* Paul Janet Professor back in 1870
* Popper
* Maverick Philosopher
* Aristotle Metaphysics
* Milton Wain collection of pre Darwin authors
* Wikipedia Selection article
* Naming Conventions Back to the future or forward to the past.
* David Skjaerlund Traces back Evolutionx to ancient Egyptian, Babylonian or Sumerian religions.
* http://www.wireclub.com/Forums/ViewTopic.aspx?ParentId=834264&ForumId=647371 Democritus and materialism
* http://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2010/01/it-is-what-it-is.html
* http://groups.google.com/group/alt.philosophy/browse_frm/thread/3ad8e23dc2d07d34/03e43d55c1ec3faa#03e43d55c1ec3faa
* http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/
* http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/09nsel06.htm Tautology and circular reasoning. Note that a tautology isn't the same thing as circular reasoning.
* http://rightwingnews.com/2010/02/the-best-quotes-from-jonah-goldbergs-liberal-fascism/ The meanings and concepts with liberal were different a 100 years ago then today
* http://www.uncommondescent.com/evolution/functional-hierarchy Will comment on the natural selection usage later
* Charles Hodge 1874 What is Darwinism?
* Automated Selection
* Peppered Moth Pattern or Design Detection and selection can be used in either pattern or design sense
* http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Natural_selection
* Andrew Dickson White 1898 A history of the warfare of science with theology in Christendom.
* http://conservapedia.com/Natural_selection They equivocate between validities and falsifiable propositions. No scientific theory like Newtons inverse square law is ever a fact. Only logical unfalsifiable assertions are facts because we say they are.
* http://asktheatheist.rationalresponders.com/topic/perry_marshall begs the question and ns tautology mangling as usual.
* Eduard Zeller Stoics , Epicureans
==Allan Orr==
* http://bostonreview.net/BR21.3/Orr.html
* http://www.bostonreview.net/BR21.5/orr.html
* http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/orr.htm Dennett replies
* http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=testing-natural-selection
* http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/dennetts-strange-idea-is-a-bad-idea-for-recognizing-biological-function/
==Later==
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/ce69aa80b40c883d/b9305c130c6383c3?q=#b9305c130c6383c3 Tautologification of society. At university students are forced to provide a rhetorical tautological narrative of the world. Refusal to do so will lead to dismissal and failed grades. It allows the MIT, Harvard Epicureans to mold and shape their students world view, forcing them to come to conclusions which might be true but are non-sequiturs. There are no YEC at Harvard, a true Xtian will be expelled and one that graduates there will have his name removed from the book of Life by the Lord Jesus. We are in the same situation with the Epicureans 2000 years ago, they don't mind us going to church as long as we also engage in rhetorical tautological and truism thinking on Monday, using the phrase NS1.
During Roman times Xtians were burned alive by the Epicureans, our milksop laws prevent them from doing this to us today. But their tautological stranglehold over society and culture have become so strong that they excert powerful economic sanction against us. The early Christians paid with their lives back then , why should our fate as YEC be any different(economic ruin, losing your job, impossible to do biology courses)?
http://members.iinet.net.au/~sejones/PoE/pe04hist.html Epicurus
http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/korthof92.htm Creationism and its critics in Antiquity
http://www.hanrott.com/epicureanism/epicureanhistory.php Epicureanism after Epicurus
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1932236473/ref=cm_cr_asin_lnk
http://tomkow.typepad.com/tomkowcom/2010/04/darwin-and-his-defenders.html Analogy with presidential elections
=== Talk origins tautology section ===
http://www.talkorigins.org/sandbox/kwork/Ver4_tautology.html
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/1bd8a311d0211e87/9a2ecf1859da52dd?#9a2ecf1859da52dd
http://www.archive.org/stream/defenceofsincere00fulk/defenceofsincere00fulk_djvu.txt Vain repetition , tautology 1582 A.D. Cambridge press or
http://www.archive.org/details/defenceofsincere00fulk
=== Notes on Natural selection as used by authors ===
* WhatIsTheTheoryOfNaturalSelection 
* Steven E. Jones Extensive notes on circular reasoning, natural selection etc.
* AristotlePragmatics , AcPragmatics , BushMen, AntonioLima , AltenBerg16
* Ian Inkster
ArunRajPragmatics , AnaxiMander , AlexanderVargas , AnswersGenesis* AndrewArensburger, DagYoPragmatics , ChristopherDenneyPragmatics , CharlesBirch , CoryAlbrecht* BecauseOfConvention , BeeSource , BenkeShet , BabylonDictionary ,BaronBodissey
* Doubting Thomas
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