There's plenty more to Darwinism, and everyone knows this. To carry on so is neither cute nor funny at this point. Darwin wrote more than one or two silly sentences. He wrote silly books full of nonsense, in which he explained all the things one needs to imagine if one is to buy his story.
This is hilarious, thanks:
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It's already been done. Pretending won't change that. You yourself argued that the mechanisms can't be omitted.
But why should I bother to address all or any of the versions you present? That's the real question. The impression I get is that you change your formula on a fairly frequent basis. I wonder if you change your oil as often.
Yet you claim the version you present today is the crucial one we all must accept, lest we be guilty of addressing a straw man. Get real! I want to see some credentials before I'll acknowledge your implied claim to be the Evoczar.
Even then, I'll <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/hehehe.gif" alt="" />at your daily formulas.
Now if you can defend any form of Darwinism, why do you need to disguise it?
So little different, in actual fact, that you are totally incapable of demonstrating any difference. Saying there is a difference is easy - actually demonstrating it is what an honest debater would do after making such a claim. I have given you opportunity, I have given you a resource, I have provided you with everything you should need to prove your point, and the fact remains:
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No, I can't make you
acknowledge that it's been done. SO WHAT?
Darwin also spent some time theorizing on some of the possible mechanisms by which descent with modification occurred, some of which was (gasp) wrong (the heredity of acquired traits) and some of which has proven fairly accurate, predicting in effect the field of genetics.
Oh? Have you evidence of any such prediction? Genetics is quite contrary to what Darwin proposed. Genetics says you get what you inherit - that's it. You may inherit things from your great grandfather, or even further back, but whatever you have is what one of your ancestors had.
Denial does not make reality vanish. Mutations are real, they have been observed. They are fact. You have several hundred mutations that neither your mother nor your father had. Those differences make your DNA trace different from your parents, part of how "DNA fingerprinting" works.
So, no evidence of the prediction, even with recourse to your comprehensive online Darwinian library? Could have just said so.
Now you equivocate again. You use "descent with modification" as a substitute title for Darwinian evolution, knowing full well it's not a substitute for the content of the mythology. You think that's clever?
Do you know that Darwin never used the term evolution?
I've seen it claimed. I wouldn't repeat the claim, knowing what I know of history.
He does talk about the "struggle for life" but this is part of natural selection.
He also does call it his "theory of natural selection" but this is still a mechanism for descent with modification and not some grander theory that has been now "diluted" and it has also been validated in the years since: natural selection has been observed, it is a fact that natural selection occurs.
Really? Have you a link? I've been curious about such claims for a while now, but unable to verify any of them.
I should be clear: I'm not looking for cases of poisoning or artificial selection. I mean
natural 'natural selection'. And I'm particularly curious to see it's employment in a predictive manner - not its employment as an explanatory device.
I realize this is fairly strict. Maybe that's why it's so hard to come by. One would think if it were scientific, it could be used to make predictions in nature; but... I haven't seen much.
... you seemed to have overlooked something rather important. Perhaps I can help with a little bold text
....struggle for existence leading to the preservation of profitable deviations ...
Which is the basis for natural selection: there are more offspring produced than needed to replace existing populations so there must be some losers, organisms that don't survive, don't reproduce, don't pass on their hereditary traits, while the "profitable deviations" are passed from one generation to the next.
And this struggle appears where in your summary "descent with modification"? And where in your watered-down formulas?
As something Darwin claimed was essential, its omission might strike one as a difference. That is if one spoke enough English to be familiar with the term 'difference'.
Pay close attention. He says "this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions"... Without constant struggle (and by this he means death of all but the "most fit") Darwin himself contends evolution won't happen.
And he then goes on to show how it does happen.
So you seem to agree that it's essential. Now do you agree that you've omitted it?
As we discussed elsewhere, Darwin was wrong about this too. Populations have been found to regulate themselves in the wild.
Are you going to argue that no organisms, no people even, die of starvation every year, many without reproducing, and that those that do reproduce do so in a limited way, often with the offspring harmed by fetal malnutrition so they are less functional than the offspring of the well-fed and "fit" organisms? This simple observation by Darwin was his insight that this - with variation - was enough to cause "descent with modification" ... evolution to us.
Why should I? But this wasn't really Darwin's own idea. He borrowed it from Malthus. When his pal Spencer applied "survival of the fittest" to society & economics, he was just taking the principle back to its origin.
Had you read
Descent of Man you might have known this.
For all your adoration, you continually overlook what he actually said. He also claimed "parent groups" would be driven to extinction by more "highly evolved" replacements, as I pointed out not so long ago. But no evolutionist cares. You're too busy assuming evolution has happened to look at it even half as critically as Darwin did. ...And you dare to speak of cognitive dissonance? Ha!
Actually I like Wallace better, he worked harder to come to the same conclusion from entirely different evidence.
Who you like, is that how you choose what to delete from your formulas? If it floats your boat... But it's still not saying the same thing Darwin said. Deletions have that effect.
Dare I say it? Why not? If any lifeform changed as much as your definitions change, you'd be claiming macroevolution faster than a goshawk flies through the trees. But you'd have to convert to Gould's sect.
Speciation occurs: parent populations have been observed dividing into daughter populations that no longer share genes between the groups. When those daughter populations are also different from the parent population (rather than one staying the same while the other changes) then yes, you do have the parent population become de facto extinct. The daughter populations are better adapted to their ecologies and replace the previous populations. THIS IS EVOLUTION.
But it's not in
not in your encapsulation phrase, and it's not in the watered down formulas either, at least not the ones we see here. You say nothing at all about extinction, but Darwin did.
In evolutionese: you address only intraspecies competition (fairly indirectly). Darwin discussed both intraspecies and interspecies competition. He concluded that inferior species would be driven extinct in most cases.
Now let's play the little game again, CTD: can you tell us what the "rest of it" is (or are you just going to continue waving your arms in the air)? Or does it become abundantly clear to any objective observer that
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You should hope the objective observer doesn't take too much offense when his intelligence is insulted.
That's a later idea & you know it. But it's what evolutionists teach, so it's fair game. You think you get to choose what we can pay attention to, and what we must miss. This is not how discussions proceed.
Okay so you admit that you cannot show that Darwin claims that rocks must necessarily turn into human beings: that's a start.
He made suggestions along those lines, but was reluctant to say anything firm. His followers are no longer reluctant. They define anyone who questions this doctrine as unscientific, and take action to expel them. Or have you not noticed.
And actions speak louder than words. That's how come we have the term "indeed" and we don't yet have the term "inword".
We recognize there are different sects among evolutionists. It would have been fair to claim you don't buy the "rocks-to-man" scenario. But to claim it does not exist is false. It exists in more than one form. There's even a group claiming crystals were the basis for bringing about life. Crystals are rocks, are they not?
Yes, but the claim in question is that the crystals operate as a catalyzing matrix for assembling preorganic molecules, not that the crystals themselves become part of the molecule.
Says you. But would you care to clarify exactly what the contents of these molecules are, and where they come from?
Nor do they claim that this necessarily happens, nor do they claim that this MUST RESULT IN HUMANS.
Do you mean happens today, or
happened in the past?This is just one (1) of many tentative hypothesis (not theory) on how life began on earth, however.
Those who subscribe to it believe the others to be impossible. Those who subscribe to the others, believe this one is impossible. But it is a strict requirement that one must subscribe to one of them or be expelled. One is not permitted to agree that the others are impossible
and agree that this one is also impossible.
Those evolutionists who have been expelled do not agree with this requirement, but they know it exists. And so does everyone else. But feel free to insult
everyone's intelligence once again.
The claim by Russ (and you through your adaption of it) is that evolution necessarily includes life forming from rocks and necessarily resulting in humans, and both of these are not in the slightest necessary to evolution in any part, piece or parcel ... all that is necessary to evolution is (a) the existence of life, (b) a mechanism to cause variation in organisms, (c) a mechanism for traits to be passed from one generation to the next, and (d) pressure on the population that causes some to survive and breed with better success than others. Descent with modification, through the mechanisms of variation and natural selection. The change in hereditary traits in populations from one generation to the next.
claim is that evolutionism's purpose is to provide a replacement for history. To that end, evolutionists are compelled to account for origins. Thoroughly. I acknowledge that they've tried. Do you?
I also acknowledge that some are too cowardly to defend what they stand for. Shall I number you among the cowards, or have you the guts to either renounce or defend evolutionism's claims?
If you want to discuss post-abiogenesis evolution, nobody's stopping you. If you want to discuss abiogenesis, or even cosmic evolution; nobody's stopping you. But you're not satisfied with being allowed to discuss these things. You choose to insult others & say there's a straw man when we all know there isn't.
You might try thinking for yourself instead of regurgitating evoslander. You introduce it where it serves no purpose. The typical employment of this straw man accusation is to avoid discussing abiogenesis or simply take the discussion off-topic. But in this thread your usage
is on-topic!I'm not aware of any evidence that says any such thing. If such evidence existed, it should have been presented. All you give is misinterpretations of evidence; the evidence itself can only reflect reality. When properly interpreted, evidence supports the history we read in the bible.
Putting it in bold doesn't make it true. All it really shows is that you are
uncomfortable about just considereing the concept that populations do change, and that the fossil record does in fact demonstrate that this has happened in the past. This is cognitive dissonance.
Putting it in bold got you to notice it this time. As for showing discomfort, your reasoning is irregular and dubious. You say I'm asking for something that will make me uncomfortable? I should think you'd oblige, rather than tell me "putting it in bold doesn't make it true". Oops... that rather assumes you could oblige, doesn't it?
BTW, thanks for choosing the "Shuck & Jive" title. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/thanks.gif" alt="" />
Oh? So evidence consists of evolutionists' conclusions now?
No, the evidence consists of the fossils that do not show what you claim all fossil evidence shows. This really is humorous that you are unable to grapple with the evidence, or even recognize it for what it is.
Your links just lead to a bunch of conclusions. At least the horse "evidence" link and the Pelycodus link (I wasn't interested in forams, but I'll take a peek).
Okay, I peeked. I suppose it's going to get me accused of being stupid or blind or something, but I don't care. I don't see anything jumping out & crying "I evolved". I'm guessing it's one of those "fossils mean something evolved" deals, eh? Because they're fossils I'm supposed to buy evolutionism? Or because someone says they're old? But rocks are already old and they're fossilized by definition, so how does that straw man thing go again? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />
Does it not trouble you in the least that none of the evolutionists here are able to present actual evidence & make an honest argument based thereupon?
Like the evidence of the foraminifera fossils, the horse fossils, pelycodus fossils, even hominid fossils that has been presented and ignored? The classic symptom of cognitive dissonance is to look right at the evidence and then claim that it does not exist.
What is it when one looks at conclusions and presents them as evidence?
When I say there's a lot more to Darwinism & evolutionism than your summary, you say "The fact is that you can't produce any such "rest" of the theory proposed by Darwin".
And so far you have been unable to present anything more ... and so far all that you have posted amounts to a lot of hot air with little content and no support for your argument.
Although my quoting you did entail the import of hot air, it also served quite well to support what I said. I hope no injuries resulted from the laughter, at least not serious injuries.
But it looks like your opinion varies considerably.
(responding to "Mechanisms should not be classified within evolution.")Again: why? Different mechanisms and processes exist and cause different results. They are part of the reality of evolution. What purpose is served by ignoring them?
Care to answer your own question? What purpose do you think is served?
One mechanism is variation (caused by mutations). One mechanism is natural selection (the "struggle for existence"). One mechanism is genetic drift. They are all part of evolution, part of what makes the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation occur. They are part of descent with modification.
See, you responded but could not manage an answer
to your own question. I call that funny.
By now I'm hoping you can understand a few things. If you can't figure out what the core beliefs of your religion consist of, that's your problem - not ours.
Curious that this is still
all descent with modification, that in all those quotes evolution is still the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation, and the
theory of evolution is that this is enough to explain the diversity of life as we know it. In spite of all your hand waving, your frantic denigratory attempts to disparage (goldilocks?) you still:
- have not shown that there is more to Darwin's theory than descent with modification through the mechanism of variation and natural selection,
- have not shown that my definition of evolution as the change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation is substantially different from Darwin's descent with modification in any way,
- have not presented ANY evidence to support your position in spite of repeated opportunities (repeating assertions don't make them true),
- have not shown that the evidence I've presented does not support evolution (claiming it doesn't is not sufficient, you need to demonstrate that it doesn't, and that means dealing with the evidence, not dismissing it),
- have not shown that there is anything missing from my (or any other modern) definition of evolution that was included in Darwin's theory, specifically the parts you claim have been omitted, neglected, or diluted out.
In short you have not in any way supported your position, you've just repeated it, waved your hands, engaged in substantial effort at distraction, and totally failed to address the issue: defining what is missing from the 'change in hereditary traits in populations from generation to generation' that was originally part of Darwin's theory.
Well, as you have argued yourself that there's more to it than "descent with modification", and you don't even acknowledge changing your mind repeatedly about 'what evolution is' I don't have much confidence in any definition or summary you care to present today. It'll probably change in a few minutes, and if this pattern holds you won't even acknowledge changing it.
But we have a term for this: bait & switch. It's also called 'equivocation'. That you openly display your intention to practice this is not a factor in favor of playing your game. That you play it in such an amusing manner, however
is!Now I have a question for all the evolutionists. Regarding speed, has the imagined evolution of man from monkey (or ape or apelike imaginary ancestor) been slow or fast? I mean if 1 is the slowest and 100 is the fastest, compared to the imagined evolution of other lifeforms, where does this rate? Shoot, define your own speed scale if you don't like mine.
