Did you entirely ignore the posts where I addressed this or do you just have issues with reading comprehension? And you have made claims of winning - you claimed my arguments were self-defeating. We are in a debate, ergo if I am losing, you are winning.

Ah, so that's what it's been about all along. I duly apologize for not really caring, since all I wanted to say was that both views are still unprovable. Whether or not people think I'm right is not really in my current interest, but what I did want to do was point out where your reasoning ran amuck since I've been reading what you've been saying to everyone else for some time now.

You want me to explain? Fine, I will. Natural selection is not macroevolution. Natural selection as pointed out by Charles Darwin is what powers evolution. Individuals with varying genotypes in a population will be sorted out depending on their environment, which makes the population's total phenotypic ratio dynamic. In other words, the population's net characteristics change depending on its current surroundings.

Now a key difference is that evolution involves the addition of information to individual genotypes; not the selection of already present information. Here's where I pointed out that you've been relying only on abduction: we can only observe changes happening to current genotypic information. The big step macroevolution takes involves beneficial mutations spread over billions of years, which I doubt that you can "demonstrate" with any sort of scientific observation unless you build a time machine to go back and record how an organism's genes actually changed over the course of all these years.

That's my point. You do have to admit that you were claiming natural selection and evolution to be the same thing. Are they, and is macroevolution a proven fact? Not. Bloody. Likely. The only thing making the debate so intense is that there are only two paradigms out there, and people who aren't theists will by necessity be evolutionists, and vice versa.

@AH: I'm sorry Hammie, it's all about the testosterone. A failure common to most of us males. =P

Please stop being so goddamn enigmatic and explain. I think you're talking about the fact that the scientific method cannot be applied to the concept of the scientific method itself: i.e. that the scientific method itself is unfalsifiable, but I'm not sure because you're not explaining fully enough: either you like being creepy and mysterious or you're just being lazy.

If you find a dude covered in stab wounds, you can't go back in time to observe precisely what happened, but it is still reasonable and proper to conclude that he was stabbed to death. Same with evolution.

Wrong. Unless you are talking about the literal sense of 100% certainty - which is silly because any a posteriori knowledge is literally unprovable and yet you would not argue that it is unprovable that the WTC blew up on 9/11/01.

Evolution is as proven as just about any a posteriori knowledge can be.


And yet you've failed to do so.


Yes.


We have observed evolution occurring in laboratory experiments using actual organisms as well as in artificial intelligence experiments involving computer programs and/or von nuemann machines. And we have observed macroevolution as well.


They are proven.

I'm just being lazy. In short, everything humans believe in can't really be trusted because we're human, but of course we have to believe in something to proceed. That's the antirealist view and it's really quite cynical.

Science makes several assumptions: (1) everything that's happened will still continue to happen in the same way, (2) humans can understand the universe, and (3) small bits of information are indicative of a whole.

If you mull on these points a bit you might begin to realize how flawed they might be.

@Kodos:


No, we have not. None of us have observed what needs to be observed, which is the past.

That is stupid. ._.

Oh lord.


No, no you don't. Maybe you do, but sane people do not.


You are denying that we have observed populations changing their genetic composition from generation to generation in response to evolutionary pressures? Yes or no answer, please.

No, Kodos. You see, Hamachi is arguing that we can't ever prove anything about the past so there is no point in trying to learn about it.

I guess we should get rid of criminal trials and such.

*Please Google genetic dominance before progressing further with this discussion*

No - however, these changes have only happened under certain conditions. The only populations we've observed changing their genotypes due to mutations and benefiting are simple microbes and viruses, hence microevolution and not macroevolution. I might add that those "new and improved" microbes were also a lot weaker than the originals when stuck back in their original environments.

You're accusing the entire postempiricist philosophy that developed since the 1960s of being insane, Kodos, not just me. But then again, I'm not altogether that surprised that you would. And no, the hippies didn't come up with it.

Edit: My goal is to remain objective like a scientist should. Learning about the past is good; it's just making completely unverifiable claims about the past that I have a problem about. If I was to extend Alexander Hamilton's metaphor of criminal trials, I wouldn't be the one against trials in general - I'd be the one pushing to postpone the verdict whenever there's a need for further investigation.

@AH: The funny thing is that I'm training to do exactly that. Heh, it's like the system's flawed but I have to love it anyways.


You could use that same reasoning to argue for the existence of a deity because it's "reasonable and proper" to believe that a creator caused everything evolution did. Anyone can speculate. If you found a dead, poisoned guy and there weren't any forensic analysts about, would you start arguing about whether he died from cyanide or rsenic?

@Kodos: If you look at the fine points of logical progression, you'll notice the relationship between these two arguments-
Modus Ponens: If A then B. A, therefore B.
Modus Tollens: If A then B. Not B, therefore not A.

In no case is "B, therefore A" a logical conclusion. Computer projections do not prove a theory simply because the projections have been programmed to work.

Ya know, I never wrote this to convice Kodos or anyone else, but I just want to set the facts straight. Anyone can read it and decide for themselves - but at this point I think I'll forget the whole thing and get back to drawing. xD

Hold up...did you just say it's "reasonable and proper" to believe that some dude somewhere, who has never shown himself or given us any proof whatsoever of his existence, created everything by himself and sits up there being all powerful and watches over us...?

The phrase "if and only if" exists for this occasion. >__>

(1) If and only if water has the equivalent energy to having a temperature of one hundred degrees Celcius and one atmosphere of pressure applied to it will it boil.

(2a) The water has had the equivalent energy to a temperature of one hundred degrees Celcius and one atmosphere applied to it, (3a) therefore it will boil.
(2b) The water has boiled, (3b) therefore it has had the equivalent energy to a temperature of one hundred degrees Celcius and one atmosphere applied to it.

Those arguments are equivalent. Are you claiming that evolution is not an 'if and only if' scenario?

I'll PM both of you your answers, but that's it since I'm not spending all my time here explaining the meaning of what I said, and then explaining the meaning of my explanation, etc, etc. To be honest I'm getting a bit tired of the cycle. Over and out.

Holy crap @_@

What Bachelor though! I have many friends, all bar me are either doing a Bachelor of Science or a Bachelor of Teaching (Different name, can't think of it). The BoS' have never, ever talked like that. You don't speak like anyone who is doing science. I don't see any clear or precise answers, more just a pedantic play with words and cryptic messages.

But I do want to understand what you're talking about because you seem very adamant on something which I just see as that Natural Selection =/= Macroevolution.

Treat me like I'm ten, small words and be as concise as you can. Also it might help to explain the concepts behind the two thingies.

._. That is stupid.

This is such a silly and pointless thing to argue. It's 'reasonable and proper' to think evolution happened as opposed to creationism because ALL THE EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THIS IS THE CASE. But you're saying that there is no point in ever trying to determine what happened in the past because no one was there to see it, no matter what the evidence suggests. That's find for theorizing in a philosophy class but it has nothing to do with real life.