How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

[Purple Knight]

This is not a question of whether or not evolution is crazy, but how crazy it seems at first glance.

That is, when we discard our experiences and look at claims as if through new eyes, what do we find when we look at evolution? I Believe we can find a great deal of common ground with this question, because when I discard my experience as an animal breeder, when I discard my knowledge, and what I've been taught, I might look at evolution with the same skepticism as someone who has either never been taught anything about it, or someone who has been taught to distrust it.

Personally my mind goes to the keratinised spines on the tongues of cats. Yes, cats have fingernails growing out of their tongues! Gross, right? Well, these particular fingernails have evolved into perfect little brushes for the animal's fur. But I think of that first animal with a horrid growth of keratin on its poor tongue. The poor thing didn't die immediately, and this fits perfectly with what I said about two steps back paying for one forward. This detrimental mutation didn't hurt the animal enough for the hapless thing to die of it, but surely it caused some suffering. And persevering thing that he was, he reproduced despite his disability (probably in a time of plenty that allowed that). But did he have the growths anywhere else? It isn't beyond reason to think of them protruding from the corners of his eyes or caking up more and more on the palms of his hands. Perhaps he had them where his eyelashes were, and it hurt him to even blink. As disturbing as my mental picture is of this scenario, this sad creature isn't even as bad off as this boar, whose tusks grew up and curled until they punctured his brain.





This is a perfect example of a detrimental trait being preserved because it doesn't hurt the animal enough to kill it before it mates. So we don't have to jump right from benefit to benefit. The road to a new beneficial trait might be long, going backwards most of the way, and filled with a lot of stabbed brains and eyelids.

Walking backwards most of the time, uphill both ways, and across caltrops almost the entire trip?

I have to admit, thinking about walking along such a path sounds like, at very least, a very depressing way to get from A to B. I would hope there would be a better way.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Ha! so because DNA similarities are known to propagate from parents to offspring THEREFORE all similarities PROVE an ancestral relationship?

Seriously? this is a scientific argument? You, a biologist know of no other way to manipulate genome structure? look up "GMO" when you get some time.

Where did anyone say that?

And did you read that paper? Where did they assume similarities = common ancestry?

I have not read nor commented on the paper or its authors. You claimed apes and humans share common ancestry and it was toward that claim, my response was directed.

[Miles]

BTW, Johannes Kepler (of Kepler's Laws fame) actually did horoscopes for people. He was one of the few Renaissance scientists who were not independently wealthy, and because he could use extremely accurate information on the position of stars and planets, he made a pretty good living from it.

After I retired from my first career, I became a teacher for a few years. Once, in a science class, several students expressed confidence in Astrology. I suggested a test to see how it worked. Each student gave me their birthday, I made up horoscopes for the class. The next day, I handed them out. Each had a place to rate how accurate it was. All but one student found them to be extremely accurate. After this, I had them hand theirs to another student to see if they agreed as to how accurate it was.

Then they discovered that I had given identical horoscopes to every one of them. I had written about things true of most people, along with a few things all people like to believe about themselves. And then I asked them if they could hypothesize why so many people believe in astrology.

The student who did not find the horoscope accurate was a devout Christian who believed astrology was an affront to God, and possibly demonic.

Fascinating; and the relevance of astrology to this discussion is? ahh of course! the relevance is that it's a handy little strawman, an oft used tool of my opponents when all else fails them.

Your guy Belinski is a believer in astrology as well as creationism. At least he's intellectually consistent.

I refer you to my earlier post about this, you are mistaken in your claim about Berlinski and Astrology, perhaps if I emphasize this it will help you:

The fundamental point that Berlinski wishes to drive home is that astrology, as conceived, altered, fine-tuned, and practiced over millennia by brilliant and intelligent theoreticians and experimentalists, is a failed science.

Is your error now clearer to you? Perhaps if you'd read his book rather than leapt excitedly to conclusions based on its cover you'd have avoided this embarrassment, hmm Barbarian by name, barbarian by nature?

Publishers Weekly review of
The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky: Astrology and the Art of Prediction by David Berlinski

"Spanning the development of astrology from Sumerian origins to Nazi court astrologers, Berlinski's ruminative but shallow history seeks to rescue it from what he sees as the misconceived derision of modern science. The author of A Tour of the Calculus remains coyly agnostic about astrology's validity. He calls it a""finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems"" and cites many successful predictions and a statistical study supposedly verifying the""Mars effect"" on athletic talent, but when faced with the incoherent, metaphorical techniques by which astrologers interpret their charts, he can only shrug that since smart people used to listen to astrologers, there must be something to it. [GOOD GRIEF] If not rational, Berlinski argues that astrology is at least""rationalistic,"" in that""the peculiar nature of astrological thought has returned in all the sciences, in disguised form."" Unfortunately, this provocative point is made through facile comparisons--medieval notions of heavenly""influences"" anticipate Newtonian mechanics, electromagnetism and sociobiology, for example, while 15th-century medical astrological charts are""the forerunner of such diagnostic devices as CAT scans""--that illuminate neither ancient nor modern thought. Physicists will object to Berlinski's contention that they account for""action at a distance"" no better than astrologers do, while philosophers will blanch at his superficial take on the conundrums of causality and determinism. No more edifying are the self-consciously literary vignettes (the dying Copernicus""took his breath in long, slow, wet, ragged gasps, a bubble of pale phlegm forming on his lips"") [Now that's funny] with which Berlinski""humanizes"" this intellectual history. Readers looking for real intellectual meat behind the author's ostentatious erudition and metaphysical pseudo-profundities will go hungry."
source

Sounds like a real keeper, Sherlock.

Faced with serious problems nagging away at evolution "theory", your (like so many others) strategy is to create a diversion.

Considering there are no serious problems nagging away at evolution "theory", it might be well to remember that it was you who brought Berlinski into the discussion as some kind of, what. . . Expert? When he's little more than an academic who lacks expertise in any of the fields relating to evolution, and who went off the deep end promoting astrology, a "finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems." C'mon Sherlock, even you can't believe that. Or do you?
Moreover, Berlinski actually seems proud of being a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, an organization dedicated to promulgating the pseudoscience of intelligent design.

So, if there's any diverting going on, you brought it upon yourself. I suggest that the next time you bring in someone you believe is worth listening to it isn't some yahoo with no competence in the subject at hand.


.

[JoeyKnothead]

I've mentioned before that bad grammar ('a bacteria', it should be 'a bacterium') and a penchant for made up words ('dooficity' and so on) disincline me from replying much to your posts.

"I can't refute your references, so what I'll do instead is complain about your lack of a formal education, as if by doing so those who pass em this way might be proud for me."

I do understand how just making stuff up is important to some evolutionists, but still, there are basic standards of English, not the lexical relationship between "intelligent" and "intelligible".

Ooh, internet tough guy gonna call folks liars from the safety of his chair.

You resort to ad hominem attacks cause you ain't got you no argument, or what argument you do have is the intellectual equivalent of a sodden paper bag.

[Sherlock Holmes]

BTW, Johannes Kepler (of Kepler's Laws fame) actually did horoscopes for people. He was one of the few Renaissance scientists who were not independently wealthy, and because he could use extremely accurate information on the position of stars and planets, he made a pretty good living from it.

After I retired from my first career, I became a teacher for a few years. Once, in a science class, several students expressed confidence in Astrology. I suggested a test to see how it worked. Each student gave me their birthday, I made up horoscopes for the class. The next day, I handed them out. Each had a place to rate how accurate it was. All but one student found them to be extremely accurate. After this, I had them hand theirs to another student to see if they agreed as to how accurate it was.

Then they discovered that I had given identical horoscopes to every one of them. I had written about things true of most people, along with a few things all people like to believe about themselves. And then I asked them if they could hypothesize why so many people believe in astrology.

The student who did not find the horoscope accurate was a devout Christian who believed astrology was an affront to God, and possibly demonic.

Fascinating; and the relevance of astrology to this discussion is? ahh of course! the relevance is that it's a handy little strawman, an oft used tool of my opponents when all else fails them.

Your guy Belinski is a believer in astrology as well as creationism. At least he's intellectually consistent.

I refer you to my earlier post about this, you are mistaken in your claim about Berlinski and Astrology, perhaps if I emphasize this it will help you:

The fundamental point that Berlinski wishes to drive home is that astrology, as conceived, altered, fine-tuned, and practiced over millennia by brilliant and intelligent theoreticians and experimentalists, is a failed science.

Is your error now clearer to you? Perhaps if you'd read his book rather than leapt excitedly to conclusions based on its cover you'd have avoided this embarrassment, hmm Barbarian by name, barbarian by nature?

Publishers Weekly review of
The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky: Astrology and the Art of Prediction by David Berlinski

"Spanning the development of astrology from Sumerian origins to Nazi court astrologers, Berlinski's ruminative but shallow history seeks to rescue it from what he sees as the misconceived derision of modern science. The author of A Tour of the Calculus remains coyly agnostic about astrology's validity. He calls it a""finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems"" and cites many successful predictions and a statistical study supposedly verifying the""Mars effect"" on athletic talent, but when faced with the incoherent, metaphorical techniques by which astrologers interpret their charts, he can only shrug that since smart people used to listen to astrologers, there must be something to it. [GOOD GRIEF] If not rational, Berlinski argues that astrology is at least""rationalistic,"" in that""the peculiar nature of astrological thought has returned in all the sciences, in disguised form."" Unfortunately, this provocative point is made through facile comparisons--medieval notions of heavenly""influences"" anticipate Newtonian mechanics, electromagnetism and sociobiology, for example, while 15th-century medical astrological charts are""the forerunner of such diagnostic devices as CAT scans""--that illuminate neither ancient nor modern thought. Physicists will object to Berlinski's contention that they account for""action at a distance"" no better than astrologers do, while philosophers will blanch at his superficial take on the conundrums of causality and determinism. No more edifying are the self-consciously literary vignettes (the dying Copernicus""took his breath in long, slow, wet, ragged gasps, a bubble of pale phlegm forming on his lips"") [Now that's funny] with which Berlinski""humanizes"" this intellectual history. Readers looking for real intellectual meat behind the author's ostentatious erudition and metaphysical pseudo-profundities will go hungry."
source

Sounds like a real keeper, Sherlock.

Faced with serious problems nagging away at evolution "theory", your (like so many others) strategy is to create a diversion.

Considering there are no serious problems nagging away at evolution "theory", it might be well to remember that it was you who brought Berlinski into the discussion as some kind of, what. . . Expert? When he's little more than an academic who lacks expertise in any of the fields relating to evolution, and who went off the deep end promoting astrology, a "finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems." C'mon Sherlock, even you can't believe that. Or do you?
Moreover, Berlinski actually seems proud of being a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, an organization dedicated to promulgating the pseudoscience of intelligent design.

So, if there's any diverting going on, you brought it upon yourself. I suggest that the next time you bring in someone you believe is worth listening to it isn't some yahoo with no competence in the subject at hand.


.

I referred to a short clip in which Berlinski nicely summarizes the serious issues in evolution "theory", I share his assessment. This is a strawman though. The thread is not about astrology so why bring that into it? we both know that the reason is the usual one adopted by the desperate, cornered evolutionist, attack people by any means possible when one lacks the means to attack their arguments.

So many here seem utterly incapable of decoupling a person from their arguments, what should be obvious, the norms of intellectual discourse, is simply alien to most here.

[Sherlock Holmes]

I've mentioned before that bad grammar ('a bacteria', it should be 'a bacterium') and a penchant for made up words ('dooficity' and so on) disincline me from replying much to your posts.

"I can't refute your references, so what I'll do instead is complain about your lack of a formal education, as if by doing so those who pass em this way might be proud for me."

I do understand how just making stuff up is important to some evolutionists, but still, there are basic standards of English, not the lexical relationship between "intelligent" and "intelligible".

Ooh, internet tough guy gonna call folks liars from the safety of his chair.

You resort to ad hominem attacks cause you ain't got you no argument, or what argument you do have is the intellectual equivalent of a sodden paper bag.

I've made no reference to your education or lack thereof, the grammar is poor sometimes and some words are just made up, if you want to make excuses for that go ahead but I do speak the truth.

Finally I did not call you a liar, that accusation is uncalled for and unsupported by any evidence.

I happen to disagree with many of the claims made in the name of evolution in this and other threads, this is not the end of civilization as we know its just a hypothesis of little overall significance in the grand scheme of things.

[JoeyKnothead]

So many here seem utterly incapable of decoupling a person from their arguments, what should be obvious, the norms of intellectual discourse, is simply alien to most here.

Given your penchant for ad hom attacks against folks whose arguments your incapable of refuting, that's as hypocritical an argument as I've ever seen.

Look in a mirror.




Your.

[Jose Fly]

So surgeons would need retraining?

Probably not, but I don't really think of surgeons as scientists.

all our pharmacists would need retraining?

Definitely. They'd need to understand this new mechanism by which new traits (e.g. antibiotic resistance) come about.

ophthalmologists would be out of a job?

Same as surgeons.

virologists could no longer work? Dr Fauci and the WHO and CDC would need to be retrained?

Definitely. If there's some new mechanism by which new species, sequences, and traits appear, they would need to know about it.

The fact is the evolution doctrine is arguably irrelevant from a practical standpoint, its actual significance is negligible.

The only value evolution has is in enabling people to pass evolution exams and help people like Dawkins sell pop-science books.

I described multiple areas in science where evolution is useful and important. You simply saying "Nuh uh" isn't a valid rebuttal. Funny and stereotypical yes, but not valid.

[Jose Fly]

I have not read nor commented on the paper or its authors.

Why not?

You claimed apes and humans share common ancestry and it was toward that claim, my response was directed.

It wasn't just a claim, but a claim that was supported via citing the paper.

So who exactly were you referring to when you made this comment? "so because DNA similarities are known to propagate from parents to offspring THEREFORE all similarities PROVE an ancestral relationship?"

Has anyone here said anything like that? If so, where?

[Miles]

BTW, Johannes Kepler (of Kepler's Laws fame) actually did horoscopes for people. He was one of the few Renaissance scientists who were not independently wealthy, and because he could use extremely accurate information on the position of stars and planets, he made a pretty good living from it.

After I retired from my first career, I became a teacher for a few years. Once, in a science class, several students expressed confidence in Astrology. I suggested a test to see how it worked. Each student gave me their birthday, I made up horoscopes for the class. The next day, I handed them out. Each had a place to rate how accurate it was. All but one student found them to be extremely accurate. After this, I had them hand theirs to another student to see if they agreed as to how accurate it was.

Then they discovered that I had given identical horoscopes to every one of them. I had written about things true of most people, along with a few things all people like to believe about themselves. And then I asked them if they could hypothesize why so many people believe in astrology.

The student who did not find the horoscope accurate was a devout Christian who believed astrology was an affront to God, and possibly demonic.

Fascinating; and the relevance of astrology to this discussion is? ahh of course! the relevance is that it's a handy little strawman, an oft used tool of my opponents when all else fails them.

Your guy Belinski is a believer in astrology as well as creationism. At least he's intellectually consistent.

I refer you to my earlier post about this, you are mistaken in your claim about Berlinski and Astrology, perhaps if I emphasize this it will help you:

The fundamental point that Berlinski wishes to drive home is that astrology, as conceived, altered, fine-tuned, and practiced over millennia by brilliant and intelligent theoreticians and experimentalists, is a failed science.

Is your error now clearer to you? Perhaps if you'd read his book rather than leapt excitedly to conclusions based on its cover you'd have avoided this embarrassment, hmm Barbarian by name, barbarian by nature?

Publishers Weekly review of
The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky: Astrology and the Art of Prediction by David Berlinski

"Spanning the development of astrology from Sumerian origins to Nazi court astrologers, Berlinski's ruminative but shallow history seeks to rescue it from what he sees as the misconceived derision of modern science. The author of A Tour of the Calculus remains coyly agnostic about astrology's validity. He calls it a""finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems"" and cites many successful predictions and a statistical study supposedly verifying the""Mars effect"" on athletic talent, but when faced with the incoherent, metaphorical techniques by which astrologers interpret their charts, he can only shrug that since smart people used to listen to astrologers, there must be something to it. [GOOD GRIEF] If not rational, Berlinski argues that astrology is at least""rationalistic,"" in that""the peculiar nature of astrological thought has returned in all the sciences, in disguised form."" Unfortunately, this provocative point is made through facile comparisons--medieval notions of heavenly""influences"" anticipate Newtonian mechanics, electromagnetism and sociobiology, for example, while 15th-century medical astrological charts are""the forerunner of such diagnostic devices as CAT scans""--that illuminate neither ancient nor modern thought. Physicists will object to Berlinski's contention that they account for""action at a distance"" no better than astrologers do, while philosophers will blanch at his superficial take on the conundrums of causality and determinism. No more edifying are the self-consciously literary vignettes (the dying Copernicus""took his breath in long, slow, wet, ragged gasps, a bubble of pale phlegm forming on his lips"") [Now that's funny] with which Berlinski""humanizes"" this intellectual history. Readers looking for real intellectual meat behind the author's ostentatious erudition and metaphysical pseudo-profundities will go hungry."
source

Sounds like a real keeper, Sherlock.

Faced with serious problems nagging away at evolution "theory", your (like so many others) strategy is to create a diversion.

Considering there are no serious problems nagging away at evolution "theory", it might be well to remember that it was you who brought Berlinski into the discussion as some kind of, what. . . Expert? When he's little more than an academic who lacks expertise in any of the fields relating to evolution, and who went off the deep end promoting astrology, a "finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems." C'mon Sherlock, even you can't believe that. Or do you?
Moreover, Berlinski actually seems proud of being a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, an organization dedicated to promulgating the pseudoscience of intelligent design.

So, if there's any diverting going on, you brought it upon yourself. I suggest that the next time you bring in someone you believe is worth listening to it isn't some yahoo with no competence in the subject at hand.


.

I referred to a short clip in which Berlinski nicely summarizes the serious issues in evolution "theory", I share his assessment. This is a strawman though. The thread is not about astrology so why bring that into it?

Because it shows a true lack of an understanding of science and its methods. Science and pseudoscience are one-and-the-same to Berlinski. Something that carries over into his assessment of evolution, which he characterizes with lie after lie and baseless exaggerations. Honestly, he's worse than Kent Hovind, which I never thought possible.

we both know that the reason is the usual one adopted by the desperate, cornered evolutionist, attack people by any means possible when one lacks the means to attack their arguments.

Actually, attacking Berlinski is like shooting ducks in a pond. And just what arguments has he put forth? Nary a one. All his statements are claims, never any argument.

So many here seem utterly incapable of decoupling a person from their arguments, what should be obvious, the norms of intellectual discourse, is simply alien to most here.

As I've pointed out, lacking any argument to respond to, all that's left to attack is the person and his claims. As to Berlinski's "argument": "We're dealing with a collection of anecdotes" "to a series of hunches" and " I would say the most salient points are first of all the fossil record, which is simply mystifying. We can't make much sense of the fossil record. It does not sustain any kind of Darwinian prediction that can be intelligently derived from Darwinian theory, and it doesn't seem to sustain anything else as far as I can see. It's a perfectly mystifying record." Other than the lies that "We're dealing with a collection of anecdotes" "to a series of hunches", his comment that the fossil record is mystifying seems spot on. I have no doubt he's incapable of understanding it. And that he fails to grasp the science that has gone into understanding it all comes as no surprise as well You have picked one loose screw to summarizes your existential problems, Sherlock.


.

[Sherlock Holmes]

BTW, Johannes Kepler (of Kepler's Laws fame) actually did horoscopes for people. He was one of the few Renaissance scientists who were not independently wealthy, and because he could use extremely accurate information on the position of stars and planets, he made a pretty good living from it.

After I retired from my first career, I became a teacher for a few years. Once, in a science class, several students expressed confidence in Astrology. I suggested a test to see how it worked. Each student gave me their birthday, I made up horoscopes for the class. The next day, I handed them out. Each had a place to rate how accurate it was. All but one student found them to be extremely accurate. After this, I had them hand theirs to another student to see if they agreed as to how accurate it was.

Then they discovered that I had given identical horoscopes to every one of them. I had written about things true of most people, along with a few things all people like to believe about themselves. And then I asked them if they could hypothesize why so many people believe in astrology.

The student who did not find the horoscope accurate was a devout Christian who believed astrology was an affront to God, and possibly demonic.

Fascinating; and the relevance of astrology to this discussion is? ahh of course! the relevance is that it's a handy little strawman, an oft used tool of my opponents when all else fails them.

Your guy Belinski is a believer in astrology as well as creationism. At least he's intellectually consistent.

I refer you to my earlier post about this, you are mistaken in your claim about Berlinski and Astrology, perhaps if I emphasize this it will help you:

The fundamental point that Berlinski wishes to drive home is that astrology, as conceived, altered, fine-tuned, and practiced over millennia by brilliant and intelligent theoreticians and experimentalists, is a failed science.

Is your error now clearer to you? Perhaps if you'd read his book rather than leapt excitedly to conclusions based on its cover you'd have avoided this embarrassment, hmm Barbarian by name, barbarian by nature?

Publishers Weekly review of
The Secrets of the Vaulted Sky: Astrology and the Art of Prediction by David Berlinski

"Spanning the development of astrology from Sumerian origins to Nazi court astrologers, Berlinski's ruminative but shallow history seeks to rescue it from what he sees as the misconceived derision of modern science. The author of A Tour of the Calculus remains coyly agnostic about astrology's validity. He calls it a""finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems"" and cites many successful predictions and a statistical study supposedly verifying the""Mars effect"" on athletic talent, but when faced with the incoherent, metaphorical techniques by which astrologers interpret their charts, he can only shrug that since smart people used to listen to astrologers, there must be something to it. [GOOD GRIEF] If not rational, Berlinski argues that astrology is at least""rationalistic,"" in that""the peculiar nature of astrological thought has returned in all the sciences, in disguised form."" Unfortunately, this provocative point is made through facile comparisons--medieval notions of heavenly""influences"" anticipate Newtonian mechanics, electromagnetism and sociobiology, for example, while 15th-century medical astrological charts are""the forerunner of such diagnostic devices as CAT scans""--that illuminate neither ancient nor modern thought. Physicists will object to Berlinski's contention that they account for""action at a distance"" no better than astrologers do, while philosophers will blanch at his superficial take on the conundrums of causality and determinism. No more edifying are the self-consciously literary vignettes (the dying Copernicus""took his breath in long, slow, wet, ragged gasps, a bubble of pale phlegm forming on his lips"") [Now that's funny] with which Berlinski""humanizes"" this intellectual history. Readers looking for real intellectual meat behind the author's ostentatious erudition and metaphysical pseudo-profundities will go hungry."
source

Sounds like a real keeper, Sherlock.

Faced with serious problems nagging away at evolution "theory", your (like so many others) strategy is to create a diversion.

Considering there are no serious problems nagging away at evolution "theory", it might be well to remember that it was you who brought Berlinski into the discussion as some kind of, what. . . Expert? When he's little more than an academic who lacks expertise in any of the fields relating to evolution, and who went off the deep end promoting astrology, a "finely geared tool for the resolution of practical problems." C'mon Sherlock, even you can't believe that. Or do you?
Moreover, Berlinski actually seems proud of being a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, an organization dedicated to promulgating the pseudoscience of intelligent design.

So, if there's any diverting going on, you brought it upon yourself. I suggest that the next time you bring in someone you believe is worth listening to it isn't some yahoo with no competence in the subject at hand.


.

I referred to a short clip in which Berlinski nicely summarizes the serious issues in evolution "theory", I share his assessment. This is a strawman though. The thread is not about astrology so why bring that into it?

Because it shows a true lack of an understanding of science and its methods. Science and pseudoscience are one-and-the-same to Berlinski. Something that carries over into his assessment of evolution, which he characterizes with lie after lie and baseless exaggerations. Honestly, he's worse than Kent Hovind, which I never thought possible.

we both know that the reason is the usual one adopted by the desperate, cornered evolutionist, attack people by any means possible when one lacks the means to attack their arguments.

Actually, attacking Berlinski is like shooting ducks in a pond. And just what arguments has he put forth? Nary a one. All his statements are claims, never any argument.

So many here seem utterly incapable of decoupling a person from their arguments, what should be obvious, the norms of intellectual discourse, is simply alien to most here.

As I've pointed out, lacking any argument to respond to, all that's left to attack is the person and his claims. As to Berlinski's "argument": "We're dealing with a collection of anecdotes" "to a series of hunches" and " I would say the most salient points are first of all the fossil record, which is simply mystifying. We can't make much sense of the fossil record. It does not sustain any kind of Darwinian prediction that can be intelligently derived from Darwinian theory, and it doesn't seem to sustain anything else as far as I can see. It's a perfectly mystifying record." Other than the lies that "We're dealing with a collection of anecdotes" "to a series of hunches", his comment that the fossil record is mystifying seems spot on. I have no doubt he's incapable of understanding it. And that he fails to grasp the science that has gone into understanding it all comes as no surprise as well You have picked one loose screw to summarizes your existential problems, Sherlock.


.

Can we please get back to the subject, any takers for this, are these hard questions?

viewtopic.php?p=1068046#p1068046

and

viewtopic.php?p=1068045#p1068045