How do you know when a child is all grown up?
Try meaning something by your word, "child", and try meaning something by your phrase, "all grown up", and then try asking me an actual question using them.
By "all grown up", I hope you don't mean "an adult", for then you'd be saying, "How do you know when a child is an adult?" which, on the face of it (at least) seems like a pretty stupid thing to say. Would you disagree? I mean, are not "child who is an adult" and "adult who is a child" oxymoronic phrases? Would you, personally, be willing to say, "That child is an adult"?
You might say, on their 18th birthday,
Oh, were you asking me, "When does a child turn 18 years of age?" If so, then, indeed, I would answer by saying, "On his/her 18th birthday"; wouldn't you? If not, then what (if anything)
were you asking me?
but that's only because it's enshrined in law here and now.
What is "enshrined in law here and now"? That a person turns 18 on his/her 18th birthday?
In the past, adult could be any age
In the past, could 18 years of age "be any age"? Could 18 years of age be 19 years of age? Could it be 30 years of age? 100?
and many times people didn't know their birthdates.
So? At least they would not be given to making fools of themselves by wasting their time with horoscopes, I would imagine.
So how could we ever decide if someone was an "adult" or not
By meaning something by the word, "adult". No?
if there's not a singular point?
Do you even mean something by your phrase, "singular point"?
The answer is obvious to anyone not hung up on semantics.
The answer to
what? If you want an answer, shouldn't you ask a question? When you say, "How do you know when a child is all grown up?" while failing to mean something by your phrases, "child" and "all grown up", you've not asked a question. If, so far as I can tell, something said is
meaningless, I'm not about to pretend as though I think I've been asked a question. What is meaningless is no question; every question is meaningful. If you mean nothing by "child" and "all grown up", then you mean nothing by "How do you know when a child is all grown up?" and you've not asked a question, therein. What motivates you to say that I'm "hung up on semantics" (as though you're silly enough to imagine that that is, somehow, a
pejorative thing to say about me) is the fact that I have a knack for coaxing you into demonstrating that, in fact, oh so much of the stuff you write as a PhD Darwin cheerleader is merely pompous nonsense. If
you could, also, get "hung up on semantics", like I am, you'd quite swiftly abandon your role as a Darwin cheerleader, because, face it: why do you like to go about proclaiming that you have a PhD in
sheer nonsense??
Obviously there was a time when there were no humans at all, because humanity didn't exist yet.
So, there was a time when the human population was "about 10,000" humans
less than "about 10,000" humans: namely, about 0 humans.
What (if anything) would you say is the difference between humans and humanity? Which existed first: a human or humanity?
But once there is a category, humans
Ah, I see you feel it's time to try to distract me from your
previous failures to defend your
previous nonsense by, once again, trying to muddy your waters through the further inflation of your meaningless jargon. See,
now you've got yet
another meaningless phrase you can't account for: "category, humans".
then you're going to have an effective population size of around 10,000.
Why say "effective population size", rather than "population size"? And, why say "population size", rather than "population"? What made you choose to say "effective population size of around 10,000", thereby choosing to
not say "population of around 10,000"? What (if anything) is the difference between "an effective population size of around 10,000" and "a population of around 10,000"?
But that category emerges gradually,
Here, you're trying out your more recently introduced word game. So, in addition to "species evolve"--a phrase you, and your colleagues have consistently demonstrated to be utterly meaningless, now you have "categories emerge". You can't get your phrase, "species evolve", to mean anything, and, just the same, you're never going to get your new phrase, "categories emerge", to mean anything, either.
You said that a car going zero to 88 is just like a population of a living organism.
If by "just like", you mean that I said that a car going from 0 to 88 is
exactly alike, in all ways, a population, then you're either not adequately attentive in your reading, or you're lying. A car going from 0 to 88 mph
is just like the population of humans going from 0 persons to 10,000 in this regard: the car must, while gaining speed, at some point be going at 1 mph, and then, at 2 mph, and so on, up to 88 mph, while the human population, beginning at 0, while gaining individuals, must, at some point consist of no more than 1 individual, and then, at a later point, consist of no more than 2 individuals, and so on, up to a population of 10,000.
You deny this basic truth by saying that a human population can either be 0 humans, or "about 10,000" humans, but
never only 1 human, and
never only 2 humans, and
never only some positive number less than "about 10,000" humans. You're just that devoted to irrationality.
Evolution and populations don't work that way.
Nothing that
works has ever been called "evolution"--or, at least, it has never been called "biological evolution".
It could. But that's not what the data says.
So, whereas
you say, "It could", you tell me that "the data" does
not say, "It could". So,
you say things that "the data" does
not say. Why don't you just stick to saying
only the things "the data" says, if whatever it is you call "the data" is so important to you?
And no it's not nonsense verbiage. Let's think about the evolution of Dogs from wolves. (You do believe in that right?)
Since, by your word "evolution", you do not mean anything, you certainly do not somehow, magically mean something by a phrase like "the evolution of Dogs from wolves" which contains your meaningless word, "evolution". If by, "You do believe in that right?", you mean, "You do believe that
the phrase, 'the evolution of Dogs from wolves'
exists", I answer: "Yes. I do believe that the phrase, 'the evolution of Dogs from wolves' exists. It's a nonsense phrase, of course, but it's definitely a phrase that exists, seeing as how you just wrote it, and I just wrote it." Other than that, I do not see that you've asked me a question in saying, "You do believe in that right?", just as I could not see that you'd have asked me a question were you to have said, "You do believe in the mogrivation of dogs from wolves, right?"
How did dogs first diverge from wolves?
"Diverge"? Is "diverge" not just yet
another word you have, willy-nilly, substituted for the word, "evolve", which latter you say
meaninglessly? If so, then you mean no more by "diverge" than you mean by "evolution", which, of course, is absolutely nothing.
Were humans breeding wolves and suddenly two wolves popped up and people said, wow these are the first two dogs!
Can Hulk beat Superman? If so, at what? And when? And why would he want to? And, what about Harry Potter?
No. Nobody knew what a dog was, nor was it set in any kind of category until there were enough of them with the same characteristics to say, this is something different.
Are you saying that a thing is not what it is?
That's not even how modern breeds
Oh, so now you, once again, try to muddy your waters even more darkly by inviting in yet another word that you mean nothing by and will never be able to answer for: "breed". What's the difference between a "breed", and a "category", and a "population", and a "species"? See, your problem is that you have to mean things by the words you say, in order to say a sentence, so that somebody can either agree with you by affirming the sentence, or disagree with you by denying the sentence; but you do not mean things by these words. So, you give me nothing to affirm, nor to deny.
You can't even define something as a breed until you have a decent sized (very small in this case) population of dogs that all conform to a set of standards.
"decent sized (very small in this case)": meaningless
Is a dog not a dog unless some unspecified number of other dogs are dogs, also? If all dogs have died of except for one, does the one living dog stop being a dog while it's alive?
Nothing in this conversation has had much of anything to do with the Bible.
Your constant denial of the Bible by saying that there was never a time when there was no more than 1 human on Earth, and that there was never a time when there were no more than 2 humans on Earth, has to do with the Bible.
You are simply unwilling to have an actual conversation over a scientific topic.
By saying that I'm "unwilling to have an actual conversation over a scientific topic", all you mean is that I'm not willing to sit here passively and swallow vast quantities of the fairy tale nonsense you call "science" and pretend I think that you've got some really important truth to say. The stuff you've been handing me is so cookie-cutter, and you hand it to me in such cookie-cutter fashion, and
that's a really dismal sign of the times for English-speaking civilization. I'm not about to just sit by and not try to help others, as best I can, to understand, as I am blessed to understand, just how much of a vacuous, anti-intellectual debacle Darwinism is.
You spend your time arguing semantics
I spend my time coaxing you, and other Darwin cheerleaders, into demonstrating the meaninglessness in the things you, in your role as Darwin cheerleaders, are saying. Y'all never fail me in this.
rather than the actual meat of the argument.
Arguments are meaningful. You have to mean things to have an argument. By getting you to demonstrate that you mean nothing by things you say, I've gotten you to demonstrate that you have no argument.
Nota bene: I do
not say that you have
a very poor argument; rather, I say that you have
no argument,
period. That's what I've found out by being so "hung up on semantics": that Darwin cheerleaders
have no argument.
No wonder everyone else ignores you.
Well, I thank you, at least, for not ignoring me. You're not really listening to me all too well, but, you're not altogether ignoring me.