Evidence For And Against Evolution

[Miles]

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Came across this little gem a bit ago and thought I'd share.




Thoughts?

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[bluegreenearth]

[Replying to Miles in post #1]

I've indicated this nuance in another similar thread, but it is worth repeating here for clarity:

It is an unfortunate byproduct of colloquial language that many people who support the Theory of Evolution describe the evidence for it in such a way as to suggest it has been proven true. This is not how professional science operates. The justifiable reason to accept the Theory of Evolution is that it had and has the potential to be falsified but continues to pass every test designed to try and disprove it. For this reason, it is distinguishable from special creation myths and intelligent design propaganda by having been rigorously tested under the presumption of being false before it was accepted as the most reasonable explanation. By mitigating for confirmation bias in this way, science succeeds where theism fails as a reliable method for acquiring a functional knowledge base through a critical evaluation of falsifiable claims.

Furthermore, despite the respect and admiration it receives, the Theory of Evolution will never demand dogmatic loyalty. In fact, every new experiment that is relevant to the Theory of Evolution is an invitation to try and disconfirm it. Therefore, if the Theory of Evolution is actually incorrect, science has the reliable methods and intellectual honesty to identify where it may have been previously mistaken. Meanwhile, there is no experiment anyone could conduct that would demonstrate where any special creation myth or intelligent design claim could have been falsified yet survives every test designed to try and disprove it. As such, it is impossible for anyone to ever discover if they are mistaken in believing a special creation myth or intelligent design claim during their lifetime.

[Miles]

[Replying to Miles in post #1]

I've indicated this nuance in another similar thread, but it is worth repeating here for clarity:

It is an unfortunate byproduct of colloquial language that many people who support the Theory of Evolution describe the evidence for it in such a way as to suggest it has been proven true. This is not how professional science operates. The justifiable reason to accept the Theory of Evolution is that it had and has the potential to be falsified but continues to pass every test designed to try and disprove it. For this reason, it is distinguishable from special creation myths and intelligent design propaganda by having been rigorously tested under the presumption of being false before it was accepted as the most reasonable explanation. By mitigating for confirmation bias in this way, science succeeds where theism fails as a reliable method for acquiring a functional knowledge base through a critical evaluation of falsifiable claims.

Furthermore, despite the respect and admiration it receives, the Theory of Evolution will never demand dogmatic loyalty. In fact, every new experiment that is relevant to the Theory of Evolution is an invitation to try and disconfirm it. Therefore, if the Theory of Evolution is actually incorrect, science has the reliable methods and intellectual honesty to identify where it may have been previously mistaken. Meanwhile, there is no experiment anyone could conduct that would demonstrate where any special creation myth or intelligent design claim could have been falsified yet survives every test designed to try and disprove it. Therefore, it is impossible for anyone to ever discover if they are mistaken in believing a special creation myth or intelligent design claim during their lifetime.

Talkin' to the choir here. But nice post.

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[Aetixintro]

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The name of the serious opposition is Baraminology and this discussion can well include this former discussion,
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=34727.

Baraminology, Created Kinds, Wikipedia, here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Created_kind

For now, I just follow you. This discussion should bring something new. Yes?

[Difflugia]

The name of the serious opposition is Baraminology and this discussion can well include this former discussion, viewtopic.php?f=17&t=34727.

For varying values of "serious," perhaps.

Baraminology assumes without demonstration that there is some sort of arbitrary cutoff point in how far phylogenetic relationships can be inferred. What passes for research starts with a list of the biblical "kinds" and then does some sort of measurement to determine which "kind" some species belongs to. No research, such as even they call it, has ever demonstrated that discontinuities exist in a pattern that would even cast suspicion on evolutionary theory, let alone imply that anything creationist might actually be right.

[Miles]

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The name of the serious opposition is Baraminology and this discussion can well include this former discussion,
viewtopic.php?f=17&t=34727.

Baraminology, Created Kinds, Wikipedia, here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Created_kind

For now, I just follow you. This discussion should bring something new. Yes?

Note that in trying to distance themselves from the unscientific onus of the Biblical "kind" some creationist created the word "baramin" to take its place. Hence we get:

"Baramin is commonly believed to be at the level of family and possibly order for some plants/animals (according to the common classification scheme of kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species). On rare occasions, a kind may be equivalent to the genus or species levels."

So a "kind" may be equivalent to an organism at the species, genus, family, and even order level. Now which rank creationism uses seems to depend on how stressed they are in fitting various forms into a single category. After all, with 8,700,000 species on earth, and pretty much having to double this number in order to save them all from the flood does make for one very bursting-at-the-seams ark.


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[Aetixintro]

Rather than the misrepresentation of Difflugia, here are some sources for research:

Out of curiosity, what exactly falls under the heading of "creationist sources"? Care to give us a few examples?

I would hazard a guess that they may include such sources which the author refers to at the end of the article -

In general, it's good to read both sides of the story. So I continue to recommend the creation web sites, including the following:

http://www.rae.org (This has a good selection of links to other sites)

[Link deleted - Invalid]

http://www.ldolphin.org/URLres.shtml (More links than you can ever visit.)

David Plaisted's (the author's) Home Page

Have a good day!
Still small

[bluegreenearth]

Rather than the misrepresentation of Difflugia, here are some sources for research:

Out of curiosity, what exactly falls under the heading of "creationist sources"? Care to give us a few examples?

I would hazard a guess that they may include such sources which the author refers to at the end of the article -

In general, it's good to read both sides of the story. So I continue to recommend the creation web sites, including the following:

http://www.rae.org (This has a good selection of links to other sites)

[Link deleted - Invalid]

http://www.ldolphin.org/URLres.shtml (More links than you can ever visit.)

David Plaisted's (the author's) Home Page

Have a good day!
Still small

None of those sources attempt to falsify their own claims as way to mitigate for confirmation bias. As such, they are inherently unreliable.

[Difflugia]

Rather than the misrepresentation of Difflugia, here are some sources for research:

My description there's pretty short. If it's a misrepresentation, it should be really easy for you to explain what I got wrong.

[Difflugia]

Let's check the "primary literature."

Here's the Creation Research Society Quarterly paper about the baraminology of snakes. Apparently the CRSQ has fallen on some hard times and they can't afford a web guy, because links to all the images are broken. Someone uploaded a PDF to academia.edu, though. I subscribed a number of years ago for the lulz and this was my favorite paper out of all of them. Because of the lulz.

The first thing the author did was check the Bible. The paper actually says that.

The first step was to find out what the Bible says about snakes.

The author then asserted discontinuity of the snake kind. He presents a "discontinuity matrix" that is a list of ten questions, two of which are about what the Bible says. Most of the answers are "yes," so snakes are discontinuous, I guess. Discontinuity, by the way, is defined by the author as "major unrelatedness" without any sort of quantification.

The second part of the author's analysis is a list of snakes that have been successfully hybridized. No data are presented about which snakes can't hybridize, nor is there any sort of analysis. I'm not sure why the author thinks this list has value.

The author's conclusion is this:

The current evidence suggests that certain organisms are discontinuous with other organisms. For example, snakes have unique characteristics that set them apart as a taxon, making them discontinuous with other organisms and classified as an apobaramin. This initial investigation also indicates that many snakes have the ability to hybridize, even when they are geographically isolated, and are capable of a great degree of variation within a “species.”

Since then, creationists have learned how to use fancier graphing software, but their methodology is still the same. Recentt baraminology "research papers" are here, here, and here. They each follow the same method:

• List a number of related species
• Pick something quantifiable, measure it, and build a matrix
• Interpret possible clades within the limited sample space as evidence of separate "baramin."