How to Disprove Evolution?

Another historical note... my understanding is that, while Darwin's theory of common ancestry was widely accepted by the late 1800's, his theory of evolution by natural selection was considered to be disproven as of the end of the 1800's and the beginning of the 20th century. Before the rediscovery of Mendel's work, inheritance was thought to be blending rather than particulate, and new beneficial mutations are diluted away to nothingness if inheritance really occurs in a blending fashion. But most of the folks who post here probably already knew all this.

The statement that "evolution cannot be disproven" is just silly. It's true that any one piece of evidence would probably not be enough to make us pitch the entire theory, but some-- like Haldane's example of the fossil rabbit from the Precambrian-- would certainly throw the whole paradigm into turmoil. Repeated anomalies would certainly make us abandon evolutionary theory, just as it required many, many repeated confirmations for evolutionary theory to attain the high scientific status that it enjoys.

Every genetic sequence we obtain has the possibility of being utterly inconsistent with the phylogenies that we've built so far. Every fossil we discover has the possibility of contradicting the evolutionary narrative that we've built over the decades. Every new morphological or biochemical structure, and every new behavior that we describe has the possibility of profiting some species other than the one bearing it. Every developmental sequence that we work out has the possibility of being completely unlike that of those organisms we thought were related.

I think it's important to point out not only how many tests the ToE has already passed, but to make it quite clear that the various pieces of evolutionary theory are being tested rigorously today. In fact, the more we learn-- the sharper we bring into focus what has occurred on Earth over the past 3.5 billion years-- the more vulnerable the ToE is to disconfirmation. The fact that it continues to pass test after test, despite this increasing vulnerability, should be emphasized.

There's a key difference between "unfalsifiable" as applied by creationists to evolutionary theory and "unfalsifiable" as applied by scientists to creationism. When creationists complain that evolution is unfalsifiable, what they're really complaining about is that scientists are open-minded: when new data changes our theoretical understanding, we change the theories, and thus our scientific theories are never utterly and finally overthrown.

The creationist keeps his theories unfalsifiable because he does not want them tested, knowing they can't pass the test. It's a very different type of unfalsifiability entirely.

Yes, there are ways to falsify evolution. I've been planning to create a whole series of articles about ways evolution could be falsified, though I haven't gotten very many of them together yet. Here's a couple:

Here's an article about the age of the earth (evolution requires an old earth, so falsifying an old earth could disprove evolution). I expanded on an article by Dalrymple and looked for holes in it.
http://www.turbulentplanet.com/Writings/Evolution/RadionuclidesOnEarth/radionuclidesonearth.html

Here's an article about the pattern of cytochrome-c. One could falsify evolution by showing that genetic patterns contradict phylogenic patterns. There are a lot of patterns that could potentially be found cross-species comparisons of genetics (for example, one might potentially find that large creatures have one version of a gene, medium sized creatures have another, small creatures have another; this pattern would contradict a phylogenic pattern).
http://www.turbulentplanet.com/Writings/Evolution/CytochromeC/cytochromec.html

Another potential falsification is to show that mutations don't happen at all. Evolution relies on mutation + selection + reproduction. If you can remove any of those components, it's not clear how evolution could work. Further, it's not at all clear why mutations would exist at all in a god-designed world*. Afterall, if God created the world 6,000 years ago, there isn't much reason to allow creatures to accumulate mutations because they are more likely to be harmful than helpful. Does God want people to have children with crippling or lethal genetic defects?

* Some creationists will argue that mutations are a result of man's sin. I always find the "man's sin" argument to be weak. First, why would sin cause genetic defects in the first place (a world without genetic defects could still be quite bad, so why the genetic damage in addition to everything else)? Second, when they throw around the "sin-did-it" argument, they're essentially saying "it's magic" because there's never any evidence of "sin" causing anything and never provide any kind of process by which it could cause any of the things they attribute to it. It's just plain magic.

However, many many many many many, damn near all claims made by folks about their "brand" of religion don't even pass the logic test, let alone the evidence test.

Still trying to get that "Holy War" going :)

If evolution's unfalsifiable, how is it simultaneously in crisis? However will it meet the several Waterloos we've heard so much about?

There's an easy way to falsify evolution today that doesn't require going back in time. British scientist J.B.S. Haldane, when asked what would constitute evidence against evolution, famously said, "Fossil rabbits in the Precambrian." Any haphazzard distribution of fossils in the strata would be excellent evidence against evolution. The quotes that Creech cites are either taken out of context or simply mistaken.

Don't forget Biblical Creationism, and neoCreationism/Palyism renamed as Intelligent Design ....That's an oxymoron if ever there was one, is false
proven by archeology, geology, physics and Human Art.

Cave paintings may be 'oldest yet'
.

If evolution's unfalsifiable, how is it simultaneously in crisis? However will it meet the several Waterloos we've heard so much about?

Perhaps folks are being a little too practical-minded on this one. Theories that are dismissed as unfalsifiable are (typically) unfalsifiable even in principle. ID is that way because no matter what possible, crazy evidence we might find, it can still be explained by "the designer wanted it that way." So, all possible evidence is consistent with ID.

Evolution is obviously falsifiable in principle because we can think of all sorts of crazy, unlikely observations that would be gigantic anomalies for Darwinian theory. Here are two dramatic examples:

Starting tomorrow, all new puppies are born with fully-functional gills.

We witness a whole new species poofing into existence in Central Park.

These may seem absurd, but they would clearly be incompatible with Darwinian theory; and that's what it means to be falsifiable. The other examples people have offered are more likely to be observed (if still quite unlikely), but why should that make a difference for judging falsifiability?

BWE you must be talking about This holy war

Left Behind: Bush's Holy War on Nature .

Or these

Chronology of Delphi - A History of 6000 Years .

No. I was referring to the ones that get going here when someone posts something like "Christians, can't live with em, can't feed em to the lions anymore."

Although that first link you listed is intimately related to these little spats that happen here on this discussion board.

Mike,
Practical minded is shorthand. Fundies represent a real problem with idiotic beliefs that lead to really really bad policies that go way deeper than just teaching evolution in science class. As k.e. pointed out, environmental problems become exacerated because they ignore systems and the way they work. Economic problems get worse because they go to bed with the neo-facists/conservatives, social problems get worse because they present an all/nothing approach to society, spiritual problems get worse because people see how dang whacked they are and become "materialists" without much thought for harmony or peace (extremely abstract principles I know) because it is the most opposed to the fundies extreme flavor of intolerance.

I think basically, this science argument is a microcosm of a much bigger argument. Essentially a replaying of the trial and death of socrates. Let's hope the outcome is different this time around.

I don't think it makes complete sense to consider whether evolution can be falsified -- it's like asking the question "Can physics be falsified?" or "Can sociology be falsified?" Evolution, physics, and sociology are all extremely broad, conceptual frameworks, not single questions. It's much more informative to ask single questions, as hypotheses predicted within the boundaries of these concepts. Those questions are what can be supported or refuted by evidence, using materialistic manipulations and explanations.

Can our current hypotheses about the evolutionary origins of mammals be falsified? Sure -- the Precambrian rabbit fossil would do it. Can our current hypotheses about gravity be falsified? Well, if you dropped a ball and it zoomed skyward instead of falling to the ground, that would certainly alter our understanding of how gravity works. If I have a hypothesis that childhood poverty predicts adult criminality, I could support or refute it with a well-designed study of any correlations between criminal convictions and the income of the families in which the convicts grew up, even though I can't, for practical and ethical reasons, experiment directly on people.

Can creationism be falsified? That doesn't really make sense either; we have to ask a more specific question. So, let's try this one: Can we rule out special creation as being necessary for human conception? We know quite a bit about how fertilization works in sexually reproducing diploids like ourselves. On the other hand, when you were conceived, God might have decided that it was time for your parents to have a baby. We know that condoms can prevent pregnancy, supporting the materialistic explanation that sperm must meet egg for fertilization to occur. On the other hand, condoms might simply offend the fertility goddess so that she will refuse to bless you with offspring. We know that some couples are infertile, and we can often identify causes such as a low sperm count or scarred Fallopian tubes. Then again, when this happened to your friends who really wanted to have kids, maybe it was God's way of testing their faith. And God gave a baby to your neighbor who never wanted children, just to test her as well; the broken condom was the will of God, not an accident. And so on....

As you can tell, it drives me batty when someone wonders about whether a theory can be falsified, when the correct question is whether a hypothesis is constructed in such a way that it can be falsified.

LOL exactly, Bob. Anyway, Dembski's timing is off. We had our Waterloo last year in Dover. Behe played Napoleon.

I've always found it amusing that creationuts always want to yammer about how evolution is unfalsifiable ---- right before they go ahead and give us all their "scientific evidence" ("no transitioal fossils", "second law of themrodynamics", "moon dust shows the earth is young") which, they claim, shows it to be false.

Quote "What happened, obviously, was that Darwin put forward a theory that presciently predicted the large time scales understood to be required for our solar system's development and life's evolution. (Or, rather, put his chip down on the hypothesis of geologist Charles Lyell, who proposed millions or billions of years and was Darwin's contemporary.)"

This is historically untrue. People were putting forward millions of years well before 1800. In the 1820s the geologists the Revds William Buckland and Adam Sedwick were talking about vast periods of time BEFORE Sedgwick taught Darwin geology in Wales in 1831. As for estimates for time in 1860 the Revd Samuel Houghton argued that the base of the Cambrian was 1800 million years ago, while Huxley reckoned 100 my. Darwin simply adopted contemporary ideas of geological time. Lyell proposed nothing new on geological time (read Martin Rudwick Bursting the Limits of Time Chicago 2005)- he even cites me.

Finally hardly any educated Christan's accepted that the earth was only a few thousand years old in 1859, out of a few hundred Christians who wrote on science in the 1860s which I have read only about half a dozen who went for a few thousand - and most were Americans.

Sorry about the history lesson.

Did you know that the first person to cite Darwin's work with approval after his 1858 paper was the Revd H B Tristram an evangelical Vicar in Durham in a study of Palestinian larks?

I think that falsifying the Theory of Evolution (that selective and randomly adaptive forces are the best explanation for the diversity of life) is a lot easier than this article makes out.

IMO, the reason why it's so hard to directly falsify it is because that is effectively asking you to make a rarefied inference. But that's not our claim - we've never said you can look at a phenomenon and know for sure what caused it. Rarefied inferences, be they of design or of evolution, are not our bag, baby.

Instead, it's considered far more productive to consider more explicit hypotheses. So, for example, if a Real Human Being (as opposed to many design advocates) comes across Stonehenge, what they don't do is look at it, perform a few quick mathematical calculations and conclude that it was designed. What they actually do is consider the range of available forces (whether natural or intelligent), pick the one that seems most likely and then check to see which category it falls into. In the case of Stonehenge, the inference would be: probably human design, therefore probably design.

So we need to be looking at the small scale, the fine detail of the ToE. And when you look at it this way it's clear that the ToE is in fact incredibly easy to indirectly falsify. All you have to do is point to one area anywhere in the history of life on Earth where the premise that the action of an intelligent entity (of your choice) was involved allows one to make better predictions than the premise that bog-standard evolution was the only available force.

Just one single area, in the whole of the historical life sciences. When you put it like that, the fact that the ToE is as yet unfalsified despite all their efforts seems quite incredible - it's fairly obvious the size of the wall that IDers and associated creationists are banging their heads against.

There's also a factor we often oversee: A theory is falsifiable when observations and experiments can be made that might disprove it: If such methods are made and the theory fails, then it was falsifiable (and falsified): If it is supported, it's still falsifiable.

Look at it this way: Suppose you're having a discussion with some nutjob who believes in the Geocentric system.

He claims that "Heliocentricism" is unfalsifiable.

Patiently, you describe all the observations that were made from the 16th Century till today that prove the Earth revolves around the sun, from observing the orbits of the planets to actually going out there in space and seeing for ourselves.

"Yes", he replies, but what methods can you think of now, today, that might falsify your theory"?

"Well", you say, "I don't think there ARE any anymore that..."

He smiles and says "QED".

Now, you may think this is far-fetched, but it is exactly the kind of "logic" ToE faces with these arguments.
The truth is: The Theory of Evolution has met many challenges to its validity in the past and was victorious. The fact it's becoming more and more difficult to come up with new ways to falsify it does not mean it's becoming unfalsifiable; it means that it's probably, well, right.

Lenny: I think the hope is that, once they've claimed long enough and loud enough that evolution is unfalsifiable by actually having any biological evidence, people will be more happy to accept falsifications of evolution that don't need the nasty stuff.

Some years ago, a creationist challenged me, "Burt, how would you go about disproving evolution? It's non-falsifiable and, by definition, cannot be science."

— bhumburg

{offtopic, my apologies}

Lenny, you seem to be famous...

http://www.hyahya.org/incompatible02.php

(although you are called "Lerry Flank". Maybe you should be offended :-)

Lenny, you seem to be famous... http://www.hyahya.org/incompatible02.php (although you are called "Lerry Flank". Maybe you should be offended :-)

As this theory has no scientific foundation, Muslims must not allow themselves to be misled by its arguments and thereby give it any support, no matter how well-intentioned. ... Muslims cannot seek a compromise on this issue. Of course people can think as they please and can believe in whatever theories they wish. However, there can be no compromise with a theory that denies Allah and His creation, for this would involve compromising on religion's fundamental element. Of course, doing so is totally unacceptable.

Julie Stahlhut hit it right on the head. Non-science types continually confuse "falsifiable" with "possible that something might come along and reveal falseness". This misconception about falsifiability is at the heart of why IDers and creationists, and their gullible supporters, don't understand why supernatural explanations are not science.

It's quite simple. A theory (a working model) generates testable hypotheses. A well designed true test is one where the outcome would verify the hypothesis, while being able to refute it, depending on the results of the test. This "falsifiability" makes the experiment or analysis of observed evidences a true test of a hypothesis. By extension the theory itself is falsifiable.

(Einstein's relativity suggested, in simple terms, that mass curves space and this expresses as gravity. In other words, his theory said that we should see light appearing to curve around large celestial bodies and he calculated to what degree. He famously devised a test that could either support or refute his position. Around 1919, observations made during an eclipse verified this critical component of his theory, whereas it could have refuted it entirely).

The Theory of Evolution has proven time and again to merely be "not false" and so its detractors complain that it's not falsifiable. Because they are terribly confused about the difference.

The ToE at it's heart is falsifiable because each and all of it's components and their related hypotheses are in themselves falsifiable. At this point in history, since the ToE rests on a vast bedrock of tested and verified hypotheses, it is hard to fathom how it could be literally turned over. It couldn't really. At worse, it would, and in fact does, get tweaked and re-worked and mended in its most undeveloped extremities. The 30-year discussion of punctuated equilibrium is a good example of how ToE is a healthy and robust theory always in flux, always going through testing and re-thinking.

Rabbits in the pre-Cambrian, Homo Sapiens in the Cambrian, yeah, these discoveries would be enough to disembowel the core of ToE. But so would have been the case if DNA research had shown no genetic links or similarities, no common ancestry and no relationships at all between any forms of life on earth. The ToE's most basic hypothesis, common descent, could have been refuted by DNA but instead was confirmed, a great example of the proper meaning of falsifiability. This is what makes a great theory like the ToE so strong: 150 years of the vast preponderance of evidence continually confirming the logical outgrowths of the theory itself, when all that evidence could very easily have obliterated them.

Evidence of saltation would do that.

Finding a fossil of a unicorn with finely-developed wings would disprove evolution rather quickly, I would think. Or an "angel", as in the Simpsons (starring Gould as a cartoon character). I'm still waiting. A visage of the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast won't cut it, tho.

Hmm... I can't think that this isn't known by nearly all here, but the point I wish to remind of is that this person's question, and the questions and challenges of any "active" Creationist - whatever label they happen to be using at the moment - are utterly disingenuous. The only answer they will accept as true is "Yes, Master."

The Creationist has no interest in science, or knowledge for that matter, but in having others confirm how "wise" and "reasonable" and so on their own blinkered take on existence is, and in praising them for it!
Since H. Morris, may his memory serve to warn the honestly dishonest, and bolstered by the perversions of "neo-conservatism," Creationism has become simply another pseudopod reaching out for the only perceivable goal of its proponents: absolute, irrational, unchecked political power.

Actually, there have been observations which at first blush appeared to be inconsistent with evolution by natural selection which is what we really mean by Darwinism. (Evolution didn't start with Darwin; he provided the mechanism to explain the observations.) My favorite is "directed mutation" which seemed to be due to Lamarckian inheritance. If verified, this would have caused a major paradigm shift in the Modern Synthesis, if not the death blow that the creationists hoped for. But it wasn't so. The lesson here is twofold: (1) genuine paradoxes (i.e., those based on data rather than theology) are examined closely by the "scientific establishment," and (2) in the process of such examinations, we learn a lot about how evolution works.

Note the obvious contrast with the rants of a so-called "think tank" and its fellows.

fossil evidence, fossil and geological evidence, radioactive dating, tectonic geological evidence, DNA evidence. If these were not in broad agreement evolution would long ago have been laughed out of the university. While this is not a syllogistic proof I believe that the huge amount of congruent evidence stands as an equivalent of proof, and the test of new evidence time after time. An iffy evolution would have to be re-written every time a major new field of science begins to address it. On the contrary new evidence has been, I believe in every case, broadly supportive of the whole general theory. And scientists have tended to find that challenges to specific items have only strengthened the theory as they have perfected it.

> Finding a fossil of a unicorn with finely-developed wings would disprove evolution rather quickly

Exactly how? What would be the evidence that it couldn't have evolved? Sorry, it doesn't make sense at the moment.

Assuming a "unicorn" were otherwise a tetrapodal mammal of the equine sort, then explaining how the equine went from tetrapod to hexapod (those extra finely-developed wings, presumably based on an extra set of flesh-and-blood limbs) would be a challenge.

All other tetrapod wings (pteranodons, birds, bats) have co-opted or exapted one of the existing pairs of tetrapod limbs, rather than developing from an extra set.

Perhaps explaining this would not be an insurmountable challenge, since one can spin scenarios involving a duplication of a body-plan module, test this against the genes and regulatory elements expressed in the unicorn's development, and so forth.

Of concern would be the developmental accomodation of this new limb "module". Despite some apparent evolutionary "flexibility" with regard to numbers of limb modules around the time of the diversification of the arthropods into myriapods, chelicerates, insects, and so forth, the vertebrate tetrapod clade does not seem very developmentally-flexible in this regard. What up- and downstream alterations in the developmental sequence would have had to have come about in order to accomodate the extra limb set without disturbing other critical developmental parameters?

Assuming these are functional "flight" wings, and that the unicorn is of roughly the same size and mass as other modern equines, we would also need to know whether a host of other complicated adaptations would have been required--hollow bones, greater oxygen uptake by the lungs and blood cells, other metabolic improvements--in order to plausibly support flight.

Also, where would the unicorn fit into the broader context of equine, or four-footed mammalian, paleo-history? From what common ancestor would the unicorn and the other equines be descended? Why don't any of the other twigs on that branch of the tree have an additional "limb module"?

For these and a host of other reasons, finding anything like a flying unicorn would pose some considerable short-term challenges. On first being confronted with such a marvelous being, one might be forgiven the temptation to at least consider the possibility of a "designed" chimera rather than a naturally-evolved crittur...

> Finding a fossil of a unicorn with finely-developed wings would disprove evolution rather quickly Exactly how? What would be the evidence that it couldn't have evolved? Sorry, it doesn't make sense at the moment.

ID can either accept this as evidence of common descent (if they have a brain) or can reject it as mere "common design" (if they don't have a brain).

— 'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank

When you put it like that, the fact that the ToE is as yet unfalsified despite all their efforts seems quite incredible - it's fairly obvious the size of the wall that IDers and associated creationists are banging their heads against.

Sure, unicorn would spawn all kinds of hard and interesting questions, but I fail to see it as an instant disproof of common descent, unless it can be disproved ad ignorantium. Rabbit in Precambrian is a much better example.

I've always found it amusing that creationuts always want to yammer about how evolution is unfalsifiable ------ right before they go ahead and give us all their "scientific evidence" ("no transitioal fossils", "second law of themrodynamics", "moon dust shows the earth is young") which, they claim, shows it to be false.

— 'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank

Comment #83739 Posted by hehe on March 4, 2006 07:58 PM (e) Sure, unicorn would spawn all kinds of hard and interesting questions, but I fail to see it as an instant disproof of common descent, unless it can be disproved ad ignorantium. Rabbit in Precambrian is a much better example.

# I don't know where to post this but this is too freakin' funny. Over at Jack Krebbs DB I asked about falsifying the theory of evolution: http://www.kcfs.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=001396;p=1 One evo named Les responded with: It's easiest with specific genes. If a eucaryotic gene is unrelated to corresponding genes in similar (recognizably related) organisms then it must have been "inserted" by an unknown mechanism. An intelligent designer is one such mechanism. Did you get that? The same people telling us that ID is pseudo-science are now telling us that that pseudo-science can falsify their science! I can't believe I initially missed it... Comment by Joseph --- March 4, 2006 @ 7:09 pm

I know I've said this before, but so what if a unicorn suddenly poofed into your backyard?

the reason the ToE is so widely accepted is because it works.

those of us who have used it to actually do real experiments find it of surpassing value as both an explanatory and predictive tool.

now, if unicorns and other things started poofing all about, and the regular observance of selection all of a suddent started to completely fail, THEN we'd have something to talk about.

until that time, i'll stick with what works, thank you very much.

even IDers have to admit that. Dembski said that evolution has been successful for research. Salvador I believe said something like, well, it's possible to use it but not let yourself really believe it.

I know I've said this before, but so what if a unicorn suddenly poofed into your backyard? the reason the ToE is so widely accepted is because it works. those of us who have used it to actually do real experiments find it of surpassing value as both an explanatory and predictive tool.

I'm not sure you could just ignore finds like that, if genuine. Of course it's all hypothetical.

When did unicorn (horse with horn) become conflated with Pegasus (horse with wings)?

did we abandon newtonian mechanics because quantum theory is more accurate?

If we all of a suddent started seeing unicorns everywhere, would that invalidate the value of evolutionary theory over the last years?

A visage of the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast won't cut it, tho.

All most all facts that appear to falsify Darwinism have been explained away by invoking ad hoc hypothesis. I have recently found a fact that can falsify Darwinism. To my knowledge, this fact has never been previously recognized as odd by either the creationists or Darwinists. No one seem to have paid attention to it. But that is not surprising because none of the present ideas will lead people to it. I came to it from a novel perspective which I will share with the public in the future. This fact is the only one you need to use to falsify Darwinism because no Darwinists that I have met had any clue.

This conspicuous fact that falsifies the Darwinian hypothesis is that no genes have shown signs of having reached the maximum divergence between any two species. The Darwinian idea suggests that a new species splits from an older species with nearly identical genes in the beginning and thereafter gradually accumulates sequence divergence in a time dependent manner. Accordingly, given enough time, a gene may diverge between two species from a beginning near 100% identity to a lowest identity point that still retains gene function. This point may be anywhere below 100% identity, depending on genes. If 500 million years is enough time for gene X to reach its maximum degree of divergence between species A and B, then X of species A would show the lowest possible identity to species B if A diverged from B 500 million years ago. Furthermore, if species A diverged from C much earlier than B, say 800 million years ago, the identity in gene X between A and C would be the same as that between A and B. But such a gene X has never been found and it is not because life on earth has not been given enough time to mutate or diversify. While different genes may require different amount of time to diverge from 100% identity to the lowest possible, 500 million years are certainly enough time for a large number of genes to do so. There are many genes that show border-line homology around 15-20% between human and sea urchin that diverged about 500 million years ago. Since unicellular eukaryotes diverged from multicellular eukaryotes at least 500 million years ago, we would expect that many genes from higher animals would have diverged from yeast to the lowest possible identity. These genes would then also show the same identity to bacteria. However, despite nearly a half century of gene sequence analysis, not a single animal gene has been found that shows equal identity to its homologous versions in yeast and bacteria.

Lyell proposed nothing new on geological time (read Martin Rudwick Bursting the Limits of Time Chicago 2005)- he even cites me.

— Michael Roberts

hey Shi, check out www.fixedearth.com . That guy falsifies heliocentrism with the same brilliant level of logic with which you falsified uh 'Darwinism'.

Re "(Einstein's relativity suggested, in simple terms, that mass curves space and this expresses as gravity. In other words, his theory said that we should see light appearing to curve around large celestial bodies and he calculated to what degree."

IIRC, there's some curving of light from gravity anyway; relativity predicts more of it than the previous theory.

Henry

Have these claims by Lubenow been specifically addressed somewhere? He seems pretty sure that the human fossils he mentions falsify evolution.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v15/i2/fossils.asp
---------------------------------------
Question: 'Why do evolutionists call the very robust Australian fossils Homo sapiens when they themselves state that they are almost identical to the Java Homo erectus material?'

Answer: 'Those robust Australian fossils (the Kow Swamp material, the Cossack skull, the Willandra Lakes WHL 50 skull, etc.), by their dating methods, are just thousands of years old. Homo erectus wasn't supposed to be living so recently. Hence, the evolutionist must call them Homo sapiens to preserve his theory.'

Question: 'Why are the skull KNM-ER 1470, the leg bones KNM-ER 148 I, and the skull KNM-ER 1590, found by Richard Leakey in East Africa, assigned to Homo habilis when the skull sizes, skull shapes, and the very modern leg bones would allow assignment to some form of Homo sapiens?'

Answer: 'Those fossils are dated at almost two million years. The evolutionist cannot allow modern humans to be living in that evolutionary time frame---no matter what the fossils look like.'

Question: 'Why is the elbow bone from Kanapoi, KP 271, found in East Africa in 1964, called Australopithecus africanus when the computer analysis conducted by evolutionists declares it to be virtually identical to modern humans?'

Answer: 'Because the fossil is dated at 4.4 million years! It would suggest that true humans are older than their evolu-tionary ancestors. No evolutionist worth his salt can follow the facts when they lead in that direction.'

> IIRC, there's some curving of light from gravity anyway; relativity predicts more of it than the previous theory.

I had thought that the newtonian theory of gravity says that gravity is dependent on the masses of the objects involved. Light has no mass, therefore, it should be unaffected by gravity.

> even IDers have to admit that. Dembski said that evolution has been successful for research. Salvador I believe said something like, well, it's possible to use it but not let yourself really believe it.

That's funny because the Catholic church said pretty much the same thing about the Copernican (heliocentric) model of the universe. They said that Galileo could teach it as long as it was never taught as fact - rather, but it was okay to teach it as an imaginary/pretend model which was useful for calculations.

That's funny because the Catholic church said pretty much the same thing about the Copernican (heliocentric) model of the universe. They said that Galileo could teach it as long as it was never taught as fact - rather, but it was okay to teach it as an imaginary/pretend model which was useful for calculations.

...the moment the church can again decide for all of us what can and cannot be taught as "fact" is the day we lose 400 years of human achievement.

"seeker" lists a bunch of strawman questions with already presented strawman answers.

congrats.

loser.

seeker lists a bunch of strawman questions with already presented strawman answers.

They may be straw men. I am asking a question. I didn't write this stuff, just wondering if it has already been addressed.

A claim can be obviously and undeniably true (not false), and yet be unfalsifiable. To think otherwise is to completely misunderstand Popper's concept of falsifiability. All falsifiability requires is that it could have been false if the evidence had been otherwise. That the theory of evolution qualifies is trivially obvious. ID, OTOH, cannot be shown to be false no matter what the evidence is -- as demonstrated so well by Behe's performance in Dover.

They may be straw men. I am asking a question. I didn't write this stuff, just wondering if it has already been addressed.

I had thought that the newtonian theory of gravity says that gravity is dependent on the masses of the objects involved. Light has no mass, therefore, it should be unaffected by gravity.

In his book Optiks Isaac Newton described a model that attempted to unify descriptions of light, matter and gravity by describing that both the action of gravity on light and the action of matter on light as effects of variations in lightspeed relate to the density of an underlying aetherial medium. Newton described light as starting to bend before it reaches the boundary of an air/glass surface, and related this deflection towards the region of greatest density to the tendency of paths to be deflected towards a gravity-source (again, to a region of greater mass-density). According to the model, particles and waves would be deflected in the same way, matter could be said to be "refracted" by the lightspeed gradient associated with gravity. Newton's postulated light-corpuscles - and the associated "wavelike" effects that he suggested were responsible for steering them - would be deflected in the same way. In modern language, we can say that Newton's aether model was an early attempt at a "geometrical" theory of gravity, or a curved-space model.

I've always found it amusing that creationuts always want to yammer about how evolution is unfalsifiable ------ right before they go ahead and give us all their "scientific evidence" ("no transitioal fossils", "second law of themrodynamics", "moon dust shows the earth is young") which, they claim, shows it to be false.

— Anteater

Interestingly enough, Behe gives an almost isomorphic argument in DBB: "That critical reviewers advance scientific arguments against intelligent design (whether successfully or not) shows that intelligent design is indeed falsifiable"

As irreducible complexity is only a negative argument against evolution, it is refutable and accordingly testable, unlike ID, by showing that there are intermediate structures with selectable functions that could have evolved into the allegedly irreducibly complex systems. (2:15-16 (Miller)). Importantly, however, the fact that the negative argument of irreducible complexity is testable does not make testable the argument for ID. (2:15 (Miller); 5:39 (Pennock)).

Popper's ghost, put a lid on the name calling.

Julie Stahlhut: If you take a theory to be a system of propositions closed under deduction, then assuming naive popperian falsificationism, you can say that theories are falsified as shorthand for the thesis that one of the propositions is false. Consider starting with Theory({A, A->B}) as a toy example. If we then add ~B, our toy theory is inconsistent. However, if we wish to avoid this consequence we can thus reject one of our earlier premisses. We might find that ~B was in fact in error itself, or that either of A or A->B is wrong. But the logic alone doesn't tell us which.

frank schmidt: Strictly pedantically, the notion of evolution by natural selection is in Empedocles (~450 BCE) but Darwin's genius lay in providing the evidence for it and overcoming the evidence against it.

Shion -

Primarily for the benefit of third readers who may be confused by what you wrote...

Genetic sequence homologies - which couldn't even be discovered until the 1960's - very strongly support the theory of evolution.

There are a fair number of genes which show a good deal of sequence homology between humans and sea urchins, or even humans and yeast or bacteria for that matter, relative to the remoteness of the common ancestor that these lineages share. This is because these are genes which are central to the basic metabolic functions of virtually every living cell. Although there has been a fair bit of divergence and specialization even in these genes, natural selection explains why mutations are less tolerated, on average, in these particular genes.

from Shi: ...given enough time, a gene may diverge between two species from a beginning near 100% identity to a lowest identity point that still retains gene function... If 500 million years is enough time for gene X to reach its maximum degree of divergence between species A and B, then X of species A would show the lowest possible identity to species B if A diverged from B 500 million years ago. Furthermore, if species A diverged from C much earlier than B, say 800 million years ago, the identity in gene X between A and C would be the same as that between A and B. But such a gene X has never been found and it is not because life on earth has not been given enough time to mutate or diversify... There are many genes that show border-line homology around 15-20% between human and sea urchin that diverged about 500 million years ago... However, despite nearly a half century of gene sequence analysis, not a single animal gene has been found that shows equal identity to its homologous versions in yeast and bacteria.

Evidence of independent abiogenesis will not only falsify evolution in general

"Newton's postulated light-corpuscles - and the associated "wavelike" effects that he suggested were responsible for steering them - would be deflected in the same way."

Yes, but I don't think that's the whole story. There were other contenders on the table. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a good account, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity tells us Nordströms theory were one of the alternatives at the time.

Furthermore we can see that Eddington fumbled the ball (he was later to become a nutty theoretician too) in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_power#Relativity_and_the_1919_eclipse . "However, recent historical examinations of the case have shown that the raw data was inconclusive, and that Eddington was arbitrarily selective in choosing which results to use."

But it ended well, since later experiments has amply verified GR and falsified the contenders.

Can I ask where you're getting your sequence-divergence data from?

"and falsified the contenders."

Oops. I don't know that. Perhaps the status are that GR are the simplest and most predictive theory. Anyhow, it's the prefered one.

and yes, you all collectively confused unicorn with pegasus. :)

Popper's ghost, put a lid on the name calling.

P.S. You don't seem to have any objection to STJ's calling seeker a "loser". My suggestion that seeker is a mental defective or a liar should be less objectionable due to its being substantive and, well, true.

Newton's postulated light-corpuscles - and the associated "wavelike" effects that he suggested were responsible for steering them - would be deflected in the same way."

— Torbjorn Larsson

Yes, but I don't think that's the whole story.

There were other contenders on the table.

Furthermore we can see that Eddington fumbled the ball.... "However, recent historical examinations of the case have shown that the raw data was inconclusive, and that Eddington was arbitrarily selective in choosing which results to use."

just one single area, in the whole of the historical life sciences. When you put it like that, the fact that the ToE is as yet unfalsified despite all their efforts seems quite incredible - it's fairly obvious the size of the wall that IDers and associated creationists are banging their heads against.

When Darwin first published his noodlings on natural selection, he made very specific claims about the time courses involved. (Unlike a recently litigated alternative perspective occasionally mentioned in these forums.) Specifically, his theory required millions or billions of years, not thousands of years, to work.

— bhumburg

The sun puts out a lot of energy. A heck of a lot. Physicists of Darwin's day could calculate the energy expenditure over time that the sun was releasing and knew the volume that the sun was occupying....

Regarding evolution, Kelvin was a saltationist, of the Behe "God is a poofter" sort.

In the fullness of time, fusion reactions were discovered, allowing the sun to release large amounts of energy and yet be billions of years old.

Regarding evolution, Kelvin was a saltationist, of the Behe "God is a poofter" sort.

Brokeback Behe admitted that he thought god poofed everything into existence. So we called him a poofter once or twice.

Regarding evolution, Kelvin was a saltationist, of the Behe "God is a poofter" sort.

— Popper's Ghost

Did I miss Behe making derogatory comments about God's gender identity?

> and yes, you all collectively confused unicorn with pegasus. :)

No, we didn't.

This conspicuous fact that falsifies the Darwinian hypothesis is that no genes have shown signs of having reached the maximum divergence between any two species.

— Shi

Behe is on record as summarizing ID as something like "poof happens". Like Kelvin, Behe believes the IDer is God.

I think TalkOrigins has a request out for a FAQ on how to falsify evolution... perhaps the ideas in this thread would be a good starting point for someone here to write one up?

This point has been made, one way or another, above. But I think it's worth repeating.

There's an important difference between "Theory X is unfalsifiable" and "Every attempt thus far to falsify Theory X has failed; right now there no one's got any worthwhile new tests to falsify Theory X."

If Theory X is particularly important, you can bet that it's going to be difficult to think of some new test that hasn't been already tried.

But here's a game you can play at home. Just because "science" knows the answer to a particular question, it doesn't mean you (or I) know. So you can make various "predictions" from evolutionary theory, then "test" them by looking up the answers.

Here's a trivial example that occurred to me. The prototypical case of sexual selection is the peacock's tail. Now, I understand dogs, for instance, don't have color vision. If peacocks (well, more specifically, peahens) didn't have color vision, the sexual selection explanation wouldn't hold water. So, question: do peahens have color vision? (And - though it's really beside the point - just out of curiosity, was the answer to that question well known when the sexual selection explanation of the peacock's tail first floated?)

What the fuck are you thinking you inconsiderate cuntfaces? Evolution, as everyone knows, was a developed theory of the great Charles Norris, or as most know him, Chuck. He roundhoused his way into science and proved himself worthy of admiration from all his fellow fucking scientists. So, if there is still any misunderstanding, by all means, go fuck yourself up the face hole.

and yes, you all collectively confused unicorn with pegasus. :) No, we didn't.

Oh look, the clowns have arrived.

A drive by chuck morrising. How, uumm, mature? Perhaps thats not the right word. How about mindless?

So you can make various "predictions" from evolutionary theory, then "test" them by looking up the answers.

So, question: do peahens have color vision?

(And - though it's really beside the point - just out of curiosity, was the answer to that question well known when the sexual selection explanation of the peacock's tail first floated?)

> Does it matter? A genuine fossil of any mythological, imaginary, or other creature you can come up with that can't show common descent is a big problem for evolution.

That can't show common descent in principle. I don't see why it is necessarily so with winged unicorn. It is actually hard to show why something could not have had common descent. Lack of transitional fossils? That's a creationist argument. Lack of evolutionary pathways we can imagine? IDC argument, again.

> Not necessarily an insurmountable problem, but a big problem nonetheless. It sure wouldn't help evolution politically. The fact that we don't find them greatly supports evolution, and that's the important point.

We're not talking about political problems.

If peacocks (well, more specifically, peahens) didn't have color vision, the sexual selection explanation wouldn't hold water.

Does it matter? A genuine fossil of any mythological, imaginary, or other creature you can come up with that can't show common descent is a big problem for evolution. That can't show common descent in principle. I don't see why it is necessarily so with winged unicorn.

It is actually hard to show why something could not have had common descent. Lack of transitional fossils? That's a creationist argument. Lack of evolutionary pathways we can imagine? IDC argument, again.

We're not talking about political problems.

Really? Seems to me, that's the most significant reason why this site exists in the first place.

the color is actually the minor aspect of it, really. lots of variation in contrast, shape, size, etc. indeed, the current hypotheses surrounding female mate choice in these birds revolves mostly around the size of the tail feathers, rather than the color.

OT:

anybody else having problems accessing ATBC?

(IIRC, btw, there was an experiment in which the color alone was the variable, and it did have a major impact on mate selection. But it's not important enough for me to look it up right now, unless someone really doubts it.)

I haven't been able to get to AtBC all day.

Yes, birds have color vision, better than ours; they have 4 (or more) cone types while we only have 3.

Behe is on record as summarizing ID as something like "poof happens". Like Kelvin, Behe believes the IDer is God.

— Popper's Ghost

Gee, really?

You might want to have your funny bone checked --- I think it may be broken.

> Sorry, but you gotta have something to show for a major transition like that.

Creationist argument.

> A huge quantum leap from equine to winged-equine is a big problem, period.

We're not talking about mere big problems either.

> Really? Seems to me, that's the most significant reason why this site exists in the first place.

So you're a demagogue too.

Also, the whole idea that a single datapoint should instantly debunk the whole theory seems mightily fishy to me...

I haven't been able to get to AtBC all day.

Yes, birds have color vision, better than ours; they have 4 (or more) cone types while we only have 3.

Also, the whole idea that a single datapoint should instantly debunk the whole theory seems mightily fishy to me...

You could falsify evolution by pointing to one example where a niche was not occupied by the creature best adapted to live in it. -With a little bit more language.

Sorry, but you gotta have something to show for a major transition like that. Creationist argument.

> A huge quantum leap from equine to winged-equine is a big problem, period. We're not talking about mere big problems either.

> Really? Seems to me, that's the most significant reason why this site exists in the first place. So you're a demagogue too.

Humor, me? Oh, golly. Really, what an absurd idea. You're sort of like all those people latching onto ID and somehow disregarding time travellers and space aliens and other ideas. All these finestanding scientific possibilities just disregarded without so much as a by-your-leave---poof!---and somehow everyone thinks ID is all about the poofter religion business. A real shame, eh?

LOL I have to share this, and AtBC is down, so I'm posting it here. I went looking for weblogs where creationists who want to support ID are complaining about being banned at Dembski's site, and I found this joke:

Q: What's the Difference Between Bill Dembski and An Apple?

A: The apple has a much thicker skin.

I love it.

I see you've been drinking again.

— Popper's Ghost

Josh Bozeman Says: December 3rd, 2005 at 2:58 pm If you don't see PuckSR's abusive comments, you clearly didn't look. He's attacked me personally on more than one ocassion. Then again, maybe you don't consider calling people "idiot" and "moron" to be abusive. If it's thin skinned to ban someone who constantly calls others "idiots" then I wouldn't want to be thick skinned! Funny how you attack Bill, claiming he doesn't allow anyone to disagree with him, yet if you truly looked thru his site, you'd see MANY comments from the following who disagree with Bill: cambion, PuckSR, keiths, jmcd (who was also abusive but allowed to comment many many times), and many others who have commented on the first page entries themselves. Surely you didn't miss all of these comments...

I see fascist like DaveScot has banned you for merely asking a question. He is RUINING UD. Bill would be wise to reclose his site before DS damages his rep! It's turned into a DaveScot/John Davinson lovefest, and from what I can tell Davinson's ideas are on the verge of complete lunacy. It also seems he cannot get along with others- as is the case with DS. Sorry you were booted like me- for nothing! Oh well, no talking to people like this. Joshua Taj Bozeman | Homepage | 01.30.06 - 11:47 pm | #

Yes, they have been addressed, as you could determine in a few seconds if you weren't a mental defective or a liar. google lubenow
Perhaps, since you find the answers so obvious, you could summarize them for each of the points I pasted in above? No need for such venom, I am asking a simple question.

Even better. I've been overdosing on IDiots.

Yes, they have been addressed, as you could determine in a few seconds if you weren't a mental defective or a liar. google lubenow

BTW, seeker, your "simple question" was "Have these claims by Lubenow been specifically addressed somewhere?" And I already answered it: "Yes". So it seems that you lying about asking a simple question. Rather, you want summarized responses to Lubenow's points. The short summary is: Lubenow doesn't know what he's talking about, his questions are pointless, and the answers would mean nothing to you. The longer summary can be obtained via google lubenow. Go, seeker, seek.

A huge quantum leap from equine to winged-equine is a big problem, period.

Poppers Ghost

Are you acquainted with ts/morbius?

BC,
Re "I had thought that the newtonian theory of gravity says that gravity is dependent on the masses of the objects involved. Light has no mass, therefore, it should be unaffected by gravity."

Light has no rest mass. It has energy, which is affected by gravity. Wait, did Newton regard light as wave or particle? On second thought, never mind that - the relevant question is what did physicists think just before Einstein's theory came out.

Ah, I see Popper's Ghost already addressed the question before I got around to posting this.

----

Re "Lots of the genes do not qualify for large scale phylogenetic studies, some of them do not even exist in all taxa and others have reached their maximum level of divergence (75% or less)."

If two sequences of DNA that used to be similar but are now at that maximum divergence, they wouldn't be recognizable today as the same gene, would they?

----

Sir_Toejam,
Re "OT:
anybody else having problems accessing ATBC?"

Quite frequently over the last several days. As of 230pm mt (aka 430pm et) today I haven't been able to reach it at all.

----

Re "Also, the whole idea that a single datapoint should instantly debunk the whole theory seems mightily fishy to me..."

I'll second that. Contrary evidence would have to be big enough to disrupt the patterns that are used as evidence of the theory (e.g., later species being slightly different than some one earlier species, predecessors of later species being less different from each other than are their successors, lack of much copying of large amounts of derived DNA between species, amount of difference in DNA correlating roughly with apparent time since divergence, etc.)

Henry

A horse of course in the Cambrian strata, would be a real problem. Maybe those who want to disprove evolution should spend some serious time looking for them.

Even better. I've been overdosing on IDiots.

— Popper's Ghost

I do hope you're not another fellow with spotty glasses who can't distinguish between Paley and Popper.

Which false statements do you have in mind?

Re "Lots of the genes do not qualify for large scale phylogenetic studies, some of them do not even exist in all taxa and others have reached their maximum level of divergence (75% or less)." If two sequences of DNA that used to be similar but are now at that maximum divergence, they wouldn't be recognizable today as the same gene, would they?

— Henry J

for me, AtBC has been up now for ~20 mins.

Which false statements do you have in mind?

— Popper's Ghost

"Sort of. None of it was taken seriously, except for Einstein's own work."

That is probably true. And since Einstein got it right, none of them was probably taken seriously afterwards either.

"There was even a "gravito-magnetic" theory from the 1890s that, assuming the speed of gravity was the same as the speed of light, gave the Einstein formula for the excess precession of Mercury. This work later gained notoriety when the 100 against Einstein tried to revive it."

Interesting. I did know Einstein moved to US due to the antijewish sympaties, but not that a pamphlet was used against him. ("100 Authors against Einstein" http://library.thinkquest.org/C004471/tep/en/biographies/albert_einstein.html )

"These recent historical examinations are garbage. Eddington was not "arbitrarily selective". He spelled out quite clearly the physical difficulties he had with each set of photographic plates, and why one set was to be preferred, in his expert opinion. It's in his papers and his main book on the subject. He gives all the data, both good and bad. A reader who wishes to draw a different conclusion is able to do so."

Oh dear. I haven't read those papers but those wikipedia entries instead. I can distinctly remember that I have been in an argument about Eddington's reliability, who Wikipedia claims became "crankish" later ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Eddington ), and perhaps I used this piece of information to support my argument.

On the other hand, the meager information I can pull off the web 'til I get my hand on better info, isn't clear on this point. "He remained on Principe Island to develop the photographs and to try to measure the deviation in the stellar positions. The cloud made the plates of poor quality and hard to measure. On 3 June he recorded in his notebook:- ... one plate I measured gave a result agreeing with Einstein." ( http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Mathematicians/Eddington.html ) One plate out of a larger set isn't clearly inconclusive or arbitrarily selective, but not clearly conclusive or unselective either. If you are sure that those parts of the Wikipedia entries are garbage, maybe you should try to get them corrected.

And since Einstein got it right, none of them was probably taken seriously afterwards either.

— Torbjorn Larsson

These recent historical examinations are garbage. Eddington was not "arbitrarily selective". He spelled out quite clearly the physical difficulties he had with each set of photographic plates, and why one set was to be preferred, in his expert opinion. It's in his papers and his main book on the subject. He gives all the data, both good and bad. A reader who wishes to draw a different conclusion is able to do so.

On the other hand, the meager information I can pull off the web 'til I get my hand on better info, isn't clear on this point.

As an aside, I think the best way to falsify an entrenched scientific theory is not to attack the theory itself, based on past precedent.

Rather, it is to propose a new theory that makes better and more accurate predictions than the predecessor, and then rigorously test this theory to show that it stands up to criticism.

I believe this would represent the case with evolution itself coming to prominence, as well as heliocentrism, einsteinean relativity, and so on... theories die when better theories take their place.

If the ID crowd really had something scientific, what they'd have is a testable, demonstrable, falsifiable theory that made better and more accurate predictions than any of the many theories under the umbrella of evolution. They don't, however, which leads me to believe they've got nothing.

BWE: ...this science argument is a microcosm of a much bigger argument. Essentially a replaying of the trial and death of socrates.

As I said, all false statements. Which in the case of the IDiots can take a while to sift through.

Also, the whole idea that a single datapoint should instantly debunk the whole theory seems mightily fishy to me...

"Also point out to your challenger that we scientists have a history of awarding revolutionary ideas (and their discoverers) with success and prestige, provided the ideas in question turn out to be more useful than the ones currently used."

Bad example. I've seen YECs cry out conspiracy. They say that scientists fake results in order to get famous.
Of course, I point out that it is in fact the science community that usually finds any frauds because scientists scrutinize each other and because if a new modification to a theory is discovered or a brand new theory, it is then put to the test with respect to other findings and experiments. I also point out to the Fundy that it is human nature to seek fame and fortune. There are over a hundred million YECs in the USA alone. If these guys could prove a young earth or disprove evolution they would be as famous as Jesus. I go on, don't think experiments haven't gone on. They have and they have failed miserably because you can't prove a lie using science.
By now, the Fundy has disappeared from the discussion.

I prefer to think of an evolutionary 'project', as distinct from 'theory' or 'field of science'. The evolutionary project contains a multititude of complementary hypothesis that are individually falsifiable, but which originate from, and as a whole make up, an idea that is both greater than the sum of its parts and no more subject to proof or disproof than a sentiment such as happiness, or the existence of the soul.

Evolutionary theory is, perhaps more than any other notion in science, a state of mind, not made up only of material evidence and deductive statements, but of a number of concepts that are anathema to the religious fundamentalist. Concepts such as "stuff can happen without (a) god being (directly) responsible for it", "things can change on a time-scale beyond that of a few (dozen) human generations", "humans are a kind of animal", "there are important things about life, the universe and everything that we may never come to know", "those stories you were told as a kid are just stories", etc. In other words, those broad assumptions, skepticism and an openness to ideas that go to define the enlightened, enquiring, post-theocratic mind.

Returning to my "project" notion, Darwin himself proposed a number of hypotheses, not just one (as creationists commonly appear to believe), and post-Darwinian science has produced many more. Evolutionary science, like all incomplete scientific projects, continues to evolve. Whilst nothing has come along that disproves the core hypotheses that make up Darwin's "theory of evolution by natural selection", modern theory contains additional and alternative hypotheses about evolutionary processes, as well as those that could be said to "finesse" the central theme of natural selection. Just how much emphasis is placed on what process varies from situation to situation, from scientist to scientist, and from one decade to the next, the most significant constant being that all scientists who respect evidence continue to agree that evolution happens.

It is part of evolutionary theory's problem in the Bible Belt that it appears so adaptable to new evidence that the claim of unfalsifiability becomes plausible. It presents as a moving target, to folk who just don't 'git' anything other than straight, plain shootin'. Evolution's apparent imperviousness seems to set it up as a challenge to the omnipotence of God, and even lends itself to comparison with Satan's cunning and seductiveness. Unfortunately, nothing short of major trauma forcing a confrontation with reality will shift the mind of the typical born'n'bred fundamentalist, and even then that same muddled mind could be knocked even deeper into cultic addiction.

What's my point? To a creationist who claims evolution can't be true because it's "not falsifiable", but refuses (as they do) to accept the same test for his own propositions, keep it simple and go with Haldane: tell him to pull a rabbit out of a Tyrannosaur's* mouth, or eat his words.

(*something pre-Cambrian is possibly less likely to resonate)

"the Eddington "cheated" line has been around for awhile. There was some paper I read years ago in a respectable history/philosophy of science that tried to make this case, which later became recycled as part of a popular book on famous "frauds" in science."

That would explain the Wikipedia entry, I guess.

It seems to have been a conflation (not least in my own mind) between possible fraud or mistakes, with how accurate the measurements were.

"The early accuracy, however, was poor. Dyson et al. quoted an optimistically low uncertainty in their measurement, which is thought to be plagued by systematic error. Considerable uncertainty remained in these measurements for almost fifty years, until observations started being made at radio frequencies." "F. W. Dyson, A.S. Eddington, C. Davidson, "A determination of the deflection of light by the Sun's gravitational field, from observations made at the total eclipse of May 29, 1919", Philos. Trans. Royal Soc. London 220A, 291-333 (1920)." "A. S. Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation, Cambridge University Press, 1987 (originally published 1920)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Gravitational_deflection_of_light

Now, optimistically low uncertainty isn't uncommon. It's exemplified in the value and uncertainties reported for some fundamental constants during history.

Socrates may be a fine example of martyrdom for the sake of free speech or freedom of thought, but he may not fit the role of persecuted scientist very well. According to numerous histories (I recommend I.F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates for its clarity), the charge of "corrupting youth" for which Socrates was sentenced had to do with his vocal support for the aristocratic faction allied with certain Spartans during a time Athens was resisting a takeover by Sparta. Neither scientific nor religious issues were involved.

As I said, all false statements. Which in the case of the IDiots can take a while to sift through.

— Popper's Ghost

You said "It's distinguishing the IDiots that's so difficult at times. After all, all false statements are supposed to be logically equivalent." I took that to mean that certain IDiots had made certain false statements that provided insufficient grounds for distinguishing said IDiots, and I was wondering which false statements those were.

Although I must admit, I no longer care (and have forgotten why I did).

General Relativity --

There is at least one alternate to Einstein's general relativity, with a critical space-borne experiment currently flying. So in about a year one of these two theories will have been disproved.

hehe said: "Sure, unicorn would spawn all kinds of hard and interesting questions, but I fail to see it as an instant disproof of common descent, unless it can be disproved ad ignorantium. Rabbit in Precambrian is a much better example."

The flying horse--not unicorn ;^)--issue has a bigger problem then the obvious evolutionary ones. This may have been mentioned further down this thread, in which case I apologize for being redundant, as I must return to grading duties and can't take the time to enjoy the rest of the messages just yet.

Just consider the actual construction of such a beast, assuming its size is relatively consistent with other equines in the modern world. Just how big would those wings have to be? And where would the poor thing *put* those monsters when they weren't in use?

Lynn, who long ago had to give up fond dragon fantasies for much the same sort of reason **sigh**

Darwin sought to explain known data, and was not particularly concerned about "falsifiability". He noted that the reason why organisms appear related is that in fact they are. Such statements lead to falsifiability possibilities, of course, however the assumption that "falsifiability" is the measure of science is peculiarly reductionistic. We're seeking good levels of confidence with our explanations, not theories propped up by the mere fact that they have yet to be falsified.

Nevertheless, falsifiability is a good shorthand test for the scientific nature of most hypotheses which purport to be scientific. It seems a bit odd that anyone would have trouble coming up with falsification criteria for evolution, but this just shows how far science has come from a real concern that evolution might not be an adequate model for life. Any one of the following would probably serve to falsify evolution if they were not present at this time: the fossil evidence of the succession of life, at least some intermediate fossils (where these might be expected), the hierarchical evidence of divergence, and at least some vestigial organs. In addition, we have found several ways to check on the predicted divergence of life in "neo-Darwinian" evolution, from morphologies to DNA evidence--all of these converging to bolster the evidence for the predictions of divergence and of "nested hierarchies".

The rabbit in the Cambrian would not necessarily falsify evolution, not if all of the other evidences for evolution remained as they are known today. That is to say, how in the world would we organize hominid and hominim fossils except evolutionarily, even if the troubling rabbit appeared in undisturbed Cambrian data? This is one of my points--evolution is an explanation for many data, and it is not necessarily going to be overthrown by one colossally inconvenient datum, like the Cambrian rabbit. Perhaps aliens or time travellers imported rabbits into the Cambrian, but they starved because the food they're adapted to eat didn't exist then. Anyhow, the rabbit in the Cambrian would raise questions especially about rabbit evolution, yet it would not obviously affect the evidence for the evolution of hominids, or any number of other lineages.

The succession of life is one of the big predictions made by evolution, and it would not necessarily be completely overthrown by one or more out-of-place species even if such would be a problem. There is no question that the succession of life is an absolutely essential, entailed, prediction of evolution, and is also one of the facts which led to evolutionary hypotheses by Lamarck, Darwin, and others.

Creationists, in particular, are typically eager to falsify evolution, typically claiming that they have done so. Their problem is that we never agree with their "falsifications", and thus although most creationists believe, or at least sense, that evolution is falsifiable in the Popperian sense, they assume that we do not allow it to be falsified. Indeed, if we were simply denying sound falsifications of evolutionary theory we would not be practicing science. But the problem for creationists is that they're simply demanding that evolutionary theory be capable of actually being falsified (and that we agree with their purported falsifications), not that it be potentially falsifiable.

IDists are quite another kettle of fish in this category. Many know, or at least fear, that evolution is potentially falsifiable, and that it has passed many tests. What they exploit is the fact that we cannot fully explain everything, and they bring up the haziest claims of falsifying evolutionary explanations at the point where our knowledge is, in fact, fairly hazy (not as hazy as IDists wish, though). What they will not acknowledge is that evolution remains falsifiable in important ways in at least some of even the poorly understood evolutionary developments, while of course their version of ID has never been falsifiable at all. The bacterial flagellum has some of the homologies predicted by evolution, while ID predicts nothing, unless it may be said to predict that a good designer would not be dependent upon using DNA from other organelles and processes (presumably an honest ID would predict this, but today's IDists refuse to make reasonable predictions that they know are immediately falsified).

Honest ID runs afoul of several of the predictions that evolutionary theory passes. It seems that most IDists really do not believe in the evolution of humans, at least not in their mental capacities, thus the various fossil intermediates militate against ID and for evolutionary theory (archaeopteryx can hardly make anti-human evolution IDists comfortable, since it reveals greater evolutionary change than what we see between australopithecus and H. sapiens). However, once again IDists would not actually predict non-evolution of vertebrate lineages, rather they prefer to "predict" that phyla cannot evolve.

Naturally they "predict" this because for taphonomic reasons (at least in part) we lack fossil evidence for the evolution of phyla. However, the DNA evidence for the evolution of the phyla is essentially similar to the DNA evidence existing for the rest of evolution, so they once again either fail a reasonable test of ID, or they refuse to make expected predictions knowing that these would fail.

ID can't predict that vestigial organs should exist, and presumably would allow that "Darwinism" acts there. Unfortunately for them, there are no data which point to ID acting in one case and "Darwinism" in another case, so once again they fail even to reach potential falsifiability.

Likewise, ID doesn't, and can't, predict that Cambrian fossils should appear in the sequence that they do. Essentially the succession we see is what would be expected from "Darwinian" evolution (even if the rapidity of their appearance surprises), much as vestigial organs are expected in our current understanding of evolution. Least of all, IDists can't predict the hierarchical nature of the phyla, the kingdoms, and the domains that we see. This is a prediction of "Darwinian evolution", along with the hierarchies of classes, orders, families, genera, and species (notably, this is a prediction of one seamless piece coming from evolutionary entailment). At the phyla level we might very well expect the hierarchical nature of the taxa to change, were God's intervention to be responsible for the taxa at and above the phyla level. However, reasonable expectations of differences do not appear at the phyla level of taxonomy.

It is natural selection which might be doubted somewhat to be a falsifiable concept. In the formulation, "the fittest survive", it either is a tautology, or is very close to being one. This complaint, however, ignores the fact that we recognize potential events in which the fittest might not be the survivors, as in certain Lamarckian scenarios, or indeed, if the ID designer were to endow us with "noble traits" which may not be of especial survival value. Indeed, don't we complain about ID because purposive traits which do not necessarily follow "Darwinian" selection strategies are not observed? Do we design objects because they are the "most fit" in the "Darwinian sense"? Of course we don't, which is why ID is falsified for not finding the evidence of traits which are not plausibly explained through the various mechanisms of evolution, including natural selection.

More importantly, we do know that natural selection is not always able to favor the fittest, perhaps because "random forces" create bottlenecks or founder effects. Also, we distinguish between "neutral evolution" and "selective evolution", both of which reveal sensibly "Darwinian" patterns in the genes and in morphology. That is to say, we are sophisticated enough not only to recognize falsification criteria for evolution, we also have falsification criteria for "neo-Darwinian evolution", and routinely "Darwinian evolution" passes by far the most "tests" of it.

Excessive mutation rates can also prevent "Darwinian evolution" from occurring, which would mean that the fittest do not survive due to excessive dilution with deleterious DNA (granted, the fittest of the mutants may still be the survivors (would be in most cases), while fitness overall declines due to more powerful effects than natural selection). In environments with persistent very strong ionizing radiation, "Darwinian evolution" does not happen (due to excessive death rates), or in cases of lesser exposure, selection struggles to keep pace with the deleterious effects of excessive mutations. A similar effect seems to be the case for Mycobacterium leprae (the cause of leprosy--Hansen's disease), though the degeneracy of that organism seems not to have been caused particularly by radiation.

The fact of the matter is that evolution is falsifiable, and so is natural selection's role in evolution. In some cases it can be shown that the fittest are not the survivors, while in other cases they are (various criteria can be used to determine what is "fittest"). Evolution via natural selection is in fact the only falsifiable theory to explain the patterns of life which has not been falsified. It is difficult even to come up with meaningful evolutionary scenarios which are not largely "Darwinian" by now, since evolution incorporating natural selection is the only evolutionary idea with a meaningful mechanism for explaining evolution, thus a mechanism for generating further hypotheses.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/b8ykm

Would the natural birth of a flying unicorn (instantaneous unprompted speciation) falsify evolution? If so, the "you never see a dog give birth to a cat" argument against evolution would actually support it.

I gave you a simple answer: google lubenow. Why should I have to do your thinking for you? Show that the "venom" isn't deserved.

I did google it. Still can't find the specific answers. You should answer me because you say I'm an idiot, but you can't even provide a simple answer. I've done nothing to deserve your ire, even though you act like a horse's *ss. So, can you provide anwers or are you just an evolutionary religionist who doesn't need specifics? Or do you just choose the ones that fit your view? Put up or shut up. Google horse's *ss if you don't understand the question.

It helps to cut to the chase.

"There is at least one alternate to Einstein's general relativity, with a critical space-borne experiment currently flying."

Gravity Probe B will be the first measurement of frame dragging and also the best measurement of geodetic effect. The idea is to test GR as much as possible http://einstein.stanford.edu/content/story_of_gpb/gpbsty3.html , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Probe_B , since frame dragging hasn't been tested yet.

That pesky verification business that IDiots doesn't want to do...

I've done nothing to deserve your ire

So, can you provide anwers or are you just an evolutionary religionist who doesn't need specifics? Or do you just choose the ones that fit your view? Put up or shut up.

How Churches Degenerate to Mere Social Clubs by seeker

Seeker:

Here!.

Now shut up and go away!

Would the natural birth of a flying unicorn (instantaneous unprompted speciation) falsify evolution?

"It is natural selection which might be doubted somewhat to be a falsifiable concept. In the formulation, "the fittest survive", it either is a tautology, or is very close to being one."

Isn't that because it's formulated backwards? If one say "the unfit are culled", as is presumably what happens, one acknowledges some of the fit ones will be accidentally culled to, and what will then appear to be the tautology? As you say, "This complaint, however, ignores the fact that we recognize potential events in which the fittest might not be the survivors"

Maybe one could add that pure RM+NS is working well in various computer games and simulations too, which is another test it passed without being falsified.

Seeker: Here!. Now shut up and go away!

In the formulation, "the fittest survive", it either is a tautology, or is very close to being one."

'Fitness' to Darwin meant not those that survive, but those that could be expected to survive because of their adaptations and functional efficiency, when compared to others in the population.

Popper's Ghost:

I totally understand. I just couldn't take seeker's clueless howling anymore. (like a cat in estrous)

whoops!

estrous = estrus

estrous = estrus

"It's only a tautology if "the fittest" are simply "those who survive""

Err, yes, and I see that in my commentary I made the same mistake that is commonly made ('all the fittest'); not the first time, IIRC. Nevertheless, the reversed order seems to make more sense to me sinse the unfit _will_ be culled with high probability, and the point of _this_ game is to be fit enough to procreate. (Then there are sexual selection and all that.) So why use the other definition?

First of all: a big "thank you" to all the contributors and serious commenters to this site (Yes, "serious commenters". I've been lurking for about a year now, and Larry, or whatever his pseudonym is now is not one of those serious commenters as I see it, nor is anyone who tries to copy his hit-n-run style). I got here by following a link from Talk Origins (as I said, about a year ago), and I haven't been dissapointed.
But I do find that some of the issues discussed here could sometimes use some more intellectual honesty.
For example: Sometimes there are too many rants going on about issues I don't think worth getting into a fight about, the most important of those being common descent.
It has been said before, but multiple descent does not change one bit about the value of evolution through natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift, etc...for the explanation of the diversity of life.
I'm not saying I don't accept common descent (au contraire, all the evidence I've seen leads me to accepting it, but all the mechanisms of evolution, as they are proposed now can also work without it.)
I'm just trying to say that some things aren't worth ranting about, when you've already got a theory that can explain them. Multiple descent wouldn't harm evolutionary theory one bit (except in the minds of some IDiots or other religious fanatics). The ToE would work just fine without it.

Sorry for the ambiguity.
By that last "it" I meant common descent.

I agree, Kim, except that I don't think it's intellectual dishonesty for proponents of the ToE to make it too strong a claim, opening it to attacks to which it isn't actually vulnerable. Such oversimplications are primarily made for the usual reason -- to make the theory easier to describe and analyze. It only becomes intellectual dishonesty if a multi-origin ToE is discarded out of hand on the grounds that it violates an unexamined dogma of a single origin. Not that hasn't happened. Some people have on occasion done that -- but I don't think such close-mindedness is a general rule.

Popper's Ghost,

Thanks for understanding. I didn't quite get the words out as I wanted.

Common descent is actually a given to me (as long as the evidence doesn't point elsewhere. If it does, well, we'll have to shift viewpoints, now won't we).

(Hint hint to IDiots: changing viewpoints in response to new data can be an improvement!...really!)
And, as you might infer from the above comment, I totally agree that any kind of dogmatism (let alone Godmatism) has no place whatsoever in science.
Kim

And yes, PG, you're right. "Intellectual dishonesty" was too harsh. It's just that sometimes I see people commenting who are clearly on the defensive, and write their comments accordingly.
If someone from "The Other Side" has a point, we shouldn't dissmiss it just because of his "side" on the issue. That isn't scientific, now is it?...
Btw: sorry for my crappy English. I'm from accross the big sea, and we're all bumhugs out here. Allthough we've got hardly any IDiots around here...(and certainly not ones that can get their ideas in the political arena...)
Kim

I totally agree that any kind of dogmatism (let alone Godmatism) has no place whatsoever in science.

Then you are definitely on the wrong site. However, if you want hubris, arrogance, disrespect, self-congratulations, name-calling, and other conduct unbecoming true intellectuals, you'll feel right at home here.

Not that everyone acts such, just the people that seem to post the most. As it is said, wisdom lies quietly in the heart of the wise, but the fool tells all he knows.

Common descent is actually a given to me (as long as the evidence doesn't point elsewhere. If it does, well, we'll have to shift viewpoints, now won't we).

As it is said, wisdom lies quietly in the heart of the wise, but the fool tells all he knows.

As it is said, wisdom lies quietly in the heart of the wise, but the fool tells all he knows.

Ahem...

-Seeker: as I said before: I've been lurking this site for a long time. I've read many people's posts. Please don't try to scare me off by accusing other posters to be in on "the great conspiracy". (yeah, I know I'm blowing it up, but, from what I've read so far, I'm no worse than you, and I do it for a specific, albeit sarcastic reason.)
That being said, now that I've come out of my lurking-space, I'm always willing to have an honest exchange of ideas...

-Popper's Ghost: Thanks for the link. Always eager to learn more.

(...I said LEARN, you IDiots, not be indoctrinated...)

(and now some IDiot is gonna say I've already been indoctrinated. I might as well shoot the wind beneath his wings, right)

(Btw, that is an expression in Dutch, I don't know if it translates well to English. If not, well, always eager to learn...)

Kim

Then you are definitely on the wrong site. However, if you want hubris, arrogance, disrespect, self-congratulations, name-calling, and other conduct unbecoming true intellectuals, you'll feel right at home here.

Re "In the formulation, "the fittest survive", it either is a tautology, or is very close to being one. This complaint, however, ignores the fact that we recognize potential events in which the fittest might not be the survivors,"

It also ignores the fact that "fitness" is a variable rather than a constant. It varies with changes in climate, and with changes in neighbors (i.e., evolution of other local species).

Henry

Well, changes in the overall environment (climate, other species, other individuals from the same species, individuals from the other sex,...)

Well, changes in the overall environment (climate, other species, other individuals from the same species, individuals from the other sex,...)

Posted by seeker on March 6, 2006 09:08 PM (e) I totally agree that any kind of dogmatism (let alone Godmatism) has no place whatsoever in science. Then you are definitely on the wrong site. However, if you want hubris, arrogance, disrespect, self-congratulations, name-calling, and other conduct unbecoming true intellectuals, you'll feel right at home here. Not that everyone acts such, just the people that seem to post the most. As it is said, wisdom lies quietly in the heart of the wise, but the fool tells all he knows.

and yes, you all collectively confused unicorn with pegasus. :)

It helps to cut to the chase.

— Popper's Ghost

Which argues against posts like "You're sort of like all those people latching onto ID ..."

"It also ignores the fact that "fitness" is a variable rather than a constant. It varies with changes in climate, and with changes in neighbors (i.e., evolution of other local species)."

I'm not sure that this it dodges the 'tautology' complaint, but it explains more of how it works.

"And if all traits were propagated unchanged, new traits couldn't arise, and the number of traits would monotonically decrease; natural selection alone isn't sufficient for evolution --- evolution is not tautological."

I don't think this is the correct conclusion, if you look at "survival of the fittest" as, for example, RM+NS.

"Darwin proposed blending, but that still isn't adequate. But natural selection acting on mutating traits opens up a world of possibilities. Contingent, not tautological, possibilities."

But with this you have a point. Again, I'm not sure that being contingent avoids the 'tautology'. Except if one couples that to the point about "expectancy to survive". Which I believe you may have done in a (to me) not so transparent way in the beginning of your commentary.

I'll latch on to Kim, "eager to learn". I think I just did.

"if you look at "survival of the fittest" as, for example, RM+NS."

Ahh, but one doesn't! So you have a roundabout point; NS can't be a tautology since it must be completemented with another mechanism to work, and that other mechanism may provide another out (complementing the "expectancy" out) of the assumed tautology. Which it does.

Sorry about fumbling the ball - I'm still on my first cup of coffee today.

Complementing, or (rather) amplifying, the "expectancy" out. (Goes for another cup of coffee.)

Re "RM+NS."

How about a more descriptive label-

Differential reproductive success of genetic variations.

How does cutting to the chase, as I did, argue against the concept of cutting to the chase? It might help if you cut to the chase, instead of playing the cloy moron.

It is posible to devise a test of the TofE given current technology. For example the TofE predicts that genetic similarities between species are more likely to be related to the timing of their last common ancestor than to their place in the economy of nature. Therefore if we pick 2 groups of mammals and predict DNA similar/different then test this with gene sequencing the TofE would have to make a prediction (since any genetic finding is compatible with ID the same would not be asked of it). No tricks here, all species meet the accepted definition of mammal as the females secrete milk and they all have hair on some part of their bodies at some point in their lives. Their putative fossil ancestors meet the criteria for mammals in having 3 ossicles and a single dentary bone for a mandible. In group #1 we'll put the spiny anteater, the banded anteater, the scaly anteater, the giant anteater and the aardvark. In the second group we'll put the arctic fox, the giant panda, the walrus, the mink and the tiger. The TofE would have to predict that the species in group #2 would be more closely related genetically. If this would turn out not to be the case perhaps evolution would't be falsified but it would have recieved a serious injury to one of its key hypotheses.

It is posible to devise a test of the TofE given current technology. For example the TofE predicts that genetic similarities between species are more likely to be related to the timing of their last common ancestor than to their place in the economy of nature. Therefore if we pick 2 groups of mammals and predict DNA similar/different then test this with gene sequencing the TofE would have to make a prediction (since any genetic finding is compatible with ID the same would not be asked of it). No tricks here, all species meet the accepted definition of mammal as the females secrete milk and they all have hair on some part of their bodies at some point in their lives. Their putative fossil ancestors meet the criteria for mammals in having 3 ossicles and a single dentary bone for a mandible. In group #1 we'll put the spiny anteater, the banded anteater, the scaly anteater, the giant anteater and the aardvark. In the second group we'll put the arctic fox, the giant panda, the walrus, the mink and the tiger. The TofE would have to predict that the species in group #2 would be more closely related genetically. If this would turn out not to be the case perhaps evolution would't be falsified but it would have recieved a serious injury to one of its key hypotheses. If this turns out to be a double post I do apologise. TPFD.

B. Spitzer, in comment #83677, wrote:
"Repeated anomalies would certainly make us abandon evolutionary theory, just as it required many, many repeated confirmations for evolutionary theory to attain the high scientific status that it enjoys."

Oh, please don't make the ID vs. Evolution debate about status. A bunch of pretentious, self-important intellects clawing for the apex of their scientific career; i.e., publication in some glossy science magazine just, makes me ill. Now that I think about it, the majority of paleontologists fit that description to a 't'.

A bunch of pretentious, self-important intellects clawing for the apex of their scientific career; i.e., publication in some glossy science magazine just, makes me ill.

Sir Toejam wrote:
"and a bunch of moronic, self-indulgent politicians, clawing for the apex of their political career; i.e., election to a senate seat or state governor's office, by indulging the fantasies of religious zealots makes me even more ill."

Politicians have an agenda...to be elected and influence democracy. The only agenda scientists should have is a pure search for scientific truth. If scientists allow their agenda to influence their pursuit of science, then they are no better than those politicians you pointed out. If we're going to equate scientists and politicians, then we should all be feeling pretty ill.

The only agenda scientists should have is a pure search for scientific truth. If scientists allow their agenda to influence their pursuit of science, then they are no better than those politicians you pointed out...

Actually, scientists have been allowing their agendas -- mostly selfish greed for prestige, recognition and funding -- to influence their pursuit of science for about as long as there have been scientists. That's why the "scientific method" was developed and refined: to carefully examine everyone's work and reward those whose petty personal or political motives led them to do good work.

Actually, scientists have been allowing their agendas --- mostly selfish greed for prestige, recognition and funding --- to influence their pursuit of science for about as long as there have been scientists

Livewire wrote: Politicians have an agenda...to be elected and influence democracy

Sir_Toejam: you read way too much into what I said. I merely said -- and much of your response corroborated -- that scientists are driven by motives and interests other than the abstract desire to increase human knowledge. I most certainly did not say this was wholly evil; nor did I deny that scientists work their asses off to keep each other honest.

On a more serious note, I have a question. For mutation to influence offspring, where does the mutation occur in multi-cellular organisms or organisms with sexual reproduction? Does it occur in the cells involved in offspring (sperm, egg, for instance) or does it occur during the multiply early stage of the embryo? I know that humans have an amount of viral DNA. This would have occured in the sperm (infected), fertilising the egg. I recall we even share some of the same viral DNA with chimps (proof for common ancestry). But what about other mutations? When do they occur?

— Renier

Re "For the mutation to be heritable however, it must occur in genetic material that is transmitted from generation to generation: the egg or the sperm,"

Or any cell that's in the lineage leading to an egg or sperm cell.

A bunch of pretentious, self-important intellects clawing for the apex of their scientific career; i.e., publication in some glossy science magazine just, makes me ill.

Another question: Mutations in the very early stage of embrionic development would then also lead the mutations that is inheritable in offspring?

Another question: Mutations in the very early stage of embrionic development would then also lead the mutations that is inheritable in offspring?

Why you would turn to KCFS for info is puzzling; look at their posts, they are controlled by a faction of agressive atheists (about 6 or 7 regulars) who specialize in viciously insulting selected targets.

Not much to learn there, except perhaps a little about how atheists "argue".

Aggressive atheists? My mind summons forth an image of a rabid dog, snarling and snapping at the thought of theists, starkly contrasting the reality of the KCFS leadership, many of whom are Christian.

To oppose the efforts of the creationists does not require "aggressive atheism." It merely requires citizenship, which KCFS has in spades.

BCH

agressive atheists

i dont get it it confuses me