I did. :idunno:
Do you not agree that all life is descended from a universal common ancestor by means of random mutations and natural selection?
toldailytopic "Evolutionary theory isn't about the origin of life"
- Thread starter 7djengo7
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I did. :idunno:
Do you not agree that all life is descended from a universal common ancestor by means of random mutations and natural selection?
How does that work? Do individual cats change?
It doesn't
The idea is that mutations in individuals provided a reproductive advantage so that natural selection favoured their offspring above others, dragging the "more fit" genomes into the ascendency.
7djengo7
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Since, by your word, "evolution", you do not mean anything, therefore, anything there is that works is something you do not mean by your word, "evolution". Why don't you try actually asking a question, instead of continuing to resort to your meaningless word games?
What you just said is essentially no different than saying, "Will you please explain how you think gyring and gimbling in the wabe works?" What you have said is nonsense, and whatever is nonsense is no question; you've asked no question. Will you please explain how you think potato often quits snulfing before it would? Maybe some with which?
Arthur Brain, like a broken record, in this very thread, has repeated, over, and over, and over, something along the lines of, "The theory of evolution is not about the origin of life!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" And, all I can do is respond to him by saying, "Hey, man, you're preachin' to the choir, here. I agree that what you call 'the theory of evolution' is not about the origin of life, because what you call 'the theory of evolution' is sheer nonsense, and sheer nonsense isn't about anything, period."
If you want what you wrote--"Will one of you creationists please explain how you think evolution works?"--to actually be a question, you're gonna have to mean something by your word, "evolution". Slapping a question mark at the end of a line doesn't magically turn what you write into a question. And, as you, Arthur Brain, The Barbarian, and many others in this thread, and elsewhere, have consistently demonstrated, you don't mean a bloomin' thing by your word, "evolution". That's the secret of your language game, as Darwinists.
You are shutting your eyes and ears because you are afraid of what you might hear or see.
7djengo7
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chair's manifest calling:
| Professional Fortune Cookie Author |
Fortunately, my eyes and ears are wide open, which is how I know that you mean nothing by words like "evolution" and "evolve". If you meant something by them, you'd be able and eager to speak coherently regarding them. Perhaps you're eager to do so, but, as you've consistently demonstrated, you're incompetent to do so, just as all your colleague Darwin cheerleaders have consistently demonstrated that they are equally incompetent to do so.
Pathetic
Darwin didn't know about Mendelian genetics, possibly because Mendel published in an obscure Natural Society journal in German, papers which weren't translated into English until later. Mendel knew about evolution by natural selection because he bought German translations of Darwin's books for his monastery's library.
Darwin had wrong ideas about how variation happens, which would have been corrected had he known about Mendel. But the problem for your post is that each new discovery that has anything to do with how life works has perfectly aligned with Darwin's main idea of new species arising because natural selection works on natural variations, which happen by various means.
Darwin didn't need to know about DNA coding for his theory to become established as the best explanation for how there is such a variety of species. Mendel didn't need to know about DNA coding to discover the particulate nature of inheritance. And much more was known about evolution by natural selection before the discovery of the base code that is the mechanism for inheritance, in 1953.
If evolution was wrong, the whole chain of discoveries would have hit a serious brick wall by now. Since Darwin published in 1859, physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy have all been revolutionised by discoveries that have caused radical rethinks. But Darwin's idea, essentially, is still right 160 years later, and no evidence has ever disproved it.
Stuart
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The Holy Wikipedia, on evolution, begins like this:
| Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes that are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Different characteristics tend to exist within any given population as a result of mutation, genetic recombination and other sources of genetic variation. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection (including sexual selection) and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or rare within a population. It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms and molecules. |
(For readers interested in a less technical introduction there is this).
So, let's roughly agree with you Stripe. What you write is pretty much what science has concluded.
What's wrong with it? (I'll come to your Nobel Prize ceremony and cheer for you!)
Stuart
Try reading. :up:
Right. You don't care. You're happy believing what you believe, and have only mockery and derision for anyone who dares challenge you.
Be a little more charitable chair. The question "what do you mean by 'evolution'" is a valid one.
And answers like "change in allele frequency in a population over time" or shortened versions thereof mean nothing since we both already agree this happens.
Could you stick with a definition of "evolution is the belief that every living thing we find today was originally a single common ancestor that reproduced and changed by means of mutation plus natural selection"?
genuineoriginal
New member
Below is the specific definition of science.
Please explain which parts of it you believe creationists are changing.
| Science SCI'ENCE, noun [Latin scientia, from scio, to know.] 1. In a general sense, knowledge, or certain knowledge; the comprehension or understanding of truth or facts by the mind. The science of God must be perfect. 2. In philosophy, a collection of the general principles or leading truths relating to any subject. Pure science as the mathematics, is built on self-evident truths; but the term science is also applied to other subjects founded on generally acknowledged truths, as metaphysics; or on experiment and observation, as chimistry and natural philosophy; or even to an assemblage of the general principles of an art, as the science of agriculture; the science of navigation. Arts relate to practice, as painting and sculpture. A principle in science is a rule in art. 3. Art derived from precepts or built on principles. Science perfects genius. 4. Any art or species of knowledge. No science doth make known the first principles on which it buildeth. 5. One of the seven liberal branches of knowledge, viz grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. |
7djengo7
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What? You don't agree that what you wrote reads quite as though it had been written expressly to go inside a fortune cookie? I guess you don't eat as much Chinese takeout as I do.
7djengo7
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While you're at it, define "works".
7djengo7
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Well, actually I eat way too much of the Panda Express stuff, and nowhere near enough of the really good Chinese takeout.
7djengo7
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Yeah. An individual cat will begin a zygote, then change into an embryo, and later, into a kitten, and later, into a mature cat, and later, it'll bite the dust. You disagree? And these are just a few of the (perhaps countless) ways in which an individual cat will change. Ah, but it will always be a cat.
Do individual genes mutate?
Does an individual gene mutate in an individual cat?
(Creationist argues that scientists don't know what evolution is)
Barbarian replies:
Unfortunately for you, science has a very specific definition, while the creationists constantly revise what they think the word means. But science continues to use the scientific definition, so when you bring up those imaginary creationist meanings, it's always the same answer; "you got it wrong, yet again."
Because science has one consistent meaning.
But the scientific definition has changed once. Darwin defined it as "descent with modification." That's still true, but the rediscovery of Mendel's work allows us to be more precise. The modern scientific definition is "change in allele frequency in a population over time."
That's a really good description of "scientas" as understood by the Hellenistic Greeks. Historically, it's what the Bible means by "science, so-called." The thing is, I was responding to someone about the definition of evolution. Perhaps I was unclear. Sorry about that. And yes, the definition of science today, is a bit different than it was in Hellenistic times, while in a very general sense it still does include what Paul was writing about.
Answers in Genesis used to have a good article on why "science" mentioned in the Bible, and science today are not the same thing at all. Might still be there (Barbarian checks)
Not there, but they do say this:
Now what did Paul mean by “science”? The Greek word gnosis means “knowledge” in a general sense, not in the technical sense we use the word “science” today. Greek expert W. E. Vine explains that “science in the modern sense of the word, viz, the investigation, discovery and classification of secondary laws, is unknown in Scripture.”
https://answersingenesis.org/presuppositions/science-so-called/
They do go on to deny that it applies to things like biology and astronomy, so they haven't abandoned their core beliefs.
The point is that in biology, "evolution" has a very good and specific definition. I realize that you were thinking we were talking about science generally, and I could have been more clear about that. It's clear enough if you look at the statement to which I was referring.
Barbarian replies:
Unfortunately for you, science has a very specific definition, while the creationists constantly revise what they think the word means. But science continues to use the scientific definition, so when you bring up those imaginary creationist meanings, it's always the same answer; "you got it wrong, yet again."
Because science has one consistent meaning.
But the scientific definition has changed once. Darwin defined it as "descent with modification." That's still true, but the rediscovery of Mendel's work allows us to be more precise. The modern scientific definition is "change in allele frequency in a population over time."
That's a really good description of "scientas" as understood by the Hellenistic Greeks. Historically, it's what the Bible means by "science, so-called." The thing is, I was responding to someone about the definition of evolution. Perhaps I was unclear. Sorry about that. And yes, the definition of science today, is a bit different than it was in Hellenistic times, while in a very general sense it still does include what Paul was writing about.
Answers in Genesis used to have a good article on why "science" mentioned in the Bible, and science today are not the same thing at all. Might still be there (Barbarian checks)
Not there, but they do say this:
Now what did Paul mean by “science”? The Greek word gnosis means “knowledge” in a general sense, not in the technical sense we use the word “science” today. Greek expert W. E. Vine explains that “science in the modern sense of the word, viz, the investigation, discovery and classification of secondary laws, is unknown in Scripture.”
https://answersingenesis.org/presuppositions/science-so-called/
They do go on to deny that it applies to things like biology and astronomy, so they haven't abandoned their core beliefs.
The point is that in biology, "evolution" has a very good and specific definition. I realize that you were thinking we were talking about science generally, and I could have been more clear about that. It's clear enough if you look at the statement to which I was referring.
There already is one. You just don't like it, because it's directly observed.
Which is like telling chemists that they can't define elements as made of atoms, because everyone knows there are atoms. The point is that by Darwin's definition, or by the modern synthesis, including genetics, evolution is directly observed to happen. Creationists like those running the Institute for Creation Research or Answers in Genesis, even admit that new species, genera, and often families evolve.
And often, they admit that agencies of evolution like mutation and natural selection increase fitness in populations. The major issue is over consequences of evolution like common descent. However, the ICR and AIG both accept a limited amount of evolution and common descent within "kinds."
So the "cat kind", including everything in the sub-order Feliforma evolved from a common group of "cat-kind" on the Ark, to produce the various families, genera, and species of cat-like animals today. That they have a common ancestor is clear from anatomical, and genetic data. Where creationists depart from science is that they deny the superorder Carnivora includes all organisms with a common ancestor.
And yes, they avoid using the term "evolution" for the obvious reasons. It wasn't even Darwin's term; he used it once in On the Origin of Species, in the last sentence of that book:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
That would be like saying "could you stick with a definition of chemistry as the belief that every heavy element we see today was originally formed in the explosion of a supernova."
That is quite demonstrably true, but it's not the definition of chemistry. We'll stick to the scientific definition. If it bothers you a lot, you could use Darwin's "descent with modification."
Don't feed the trolls.