Intelligent Design banned...right or wrong?

[Apos]

[QUOTE=Blake]
Long your post may be Apos, but it still ducks the basic issues, which are who decides what is a fact if we accept that nothing is certain, and how healthy is such mangling of the language to the fight against ignorance.[/quoet]

The only one mangling languaeg here is you, and the only one here who doesn’t think so is: you. Especially since the question is language (where all that matters is common usage), that pretty strongly suggests that you are in error.

The first problem is simple enough to phrase, but damn difficult to answer it seems. Am I permitted to say that global warming is a fact for example?

Sure.

Who gets to tell me that it is not?

Anyone can contest your claim.

And why can’t I tell you that speciationis not a fact?

You can. You’d just be wrong, and the evidence is against you.

Who decides on your “extreme levels of certainty”? You are simply being an apologist for ignorance with this persistence that sloppy use of grammar is acceptable when your vocabulary is insufficient to produce the correct term.

Again, nonsense. People, including scientists, use the word fact all the time with the understanding that it is an empiricial, not religious, claim that is open to dispute.

The second problem can be easily demonstrated simply by looking at DtCs use of the word. Spingears claims that speciation is not supported by incontrovertible proof, which is of course true if we are discussing science.

But that is spingears problem, not DtC’s. Incontrovertible proof is, obviously a somewhat different idea depending on whether you are talking in some sort of religious vs. some sort of empirical way. We needn’t concern ourselves with which it should be to note that Spingears is equivocating between two different senses of the word. Spingears implication is that there are things that are supported by “inconvertible proof” that speciation does not live up to, thereby trying to give a false impression of it certainty by juggling different concepts of the words fact and truth. But if you wish to use the argument that nothing in science is ever “incontrovertible” (which is true in a rigorous philosophical sense) then you cannot very well use that argument to say that speciation is weakly supported by the evidence. You can’t have it both ways, let alone in the same utterance.

Diogenes counters with the claim that it is ‘fact’. Why would he bother if he simply meant that it is supported by a reasonable degree of evidence? Spingears never contended that it wasn’t supported by reasonable evidence, but that it wasn’t supported by incontrovertible evidence.

Because SG’s implication is that there is some standard in science above reasonable degree of evidence. There isn’t. It’s a scientific fact, if there are any. If you don’t want to call scientific facts facts, that’s nice, but not really a very interesting or useful objection. You’ve simply removed a word from the language entirely (along with truth). Should we remoev words like “disprove” “prove” and “evidence” from the scientific lexicon as well, since none of them can be, in empiricism, the absolutes they might otherwise be?

As for your assertion that one would need to toss out every other usage of the word, that is nonsense. There can be facts in many fields of discourse, but there are no facts in science. A fact means that something is known t be true. That’s not a problem in philosophy or even history.

Are you joking? History, at least, is exactly the same: it’s an empirical study, demanding evidence and always open to falsification by better evidence. And yet that seemingly prevents no one from using the word “fact” regularly.

But in science everything must be open to being proven false. Everything must admit to doubt. Thus the objection to facts WRT science clearly doesn’t require anyone to toss out the usage f the word fact outside of scientific discourse.

You are mistaken. ALL empiricial claims and disciplines must admit the possibility of disproof. And yet that seemingly prevents no one from using the word “fact” regularly. Popular usage seems to disagree with you. If language were a logical proposition, that would mean nothing. But since it is a tool of common usage meant to convey the proper ideas, it means nothing.

In the meantime it’s still perfectly legitimate to claim that this or that is a fact, just not within science. I don’t doubt that the, and the vast majority of the planet will not understand that, the vast majority of people don’t understand most things.

The point of language is to convey concepts. Saying that something like speciation is a fact is what instills the correct idea in most people’s heads. Saying that it is not a fact instills exactly the wrong idea in their heads.

[Apos]

Teh only one mangling TYPING, however, is me.

[Apos]

The dinosaurs allegedly getting smacked down by a giant meteor are a great example of a macroevolutionary change that simply cannot be coupled to microevolutionary processes. It’s got little to do with adaptation, or a lack thereof, and more to do with bad luck and timing. Similarly, one might conceivably argue that there are not more extant species of Homo, not because other lineages were poorly adapted, or our own better adapted, but because our own was simply more savage.

While I’m not trying to a push the point into the context of the discussion with Blake, I wonder really whether these statements have more to do with values and our “just-so” story and purpose oriented minds than they do with deep-divisions in nature itself. After all, savagery is simply yet another trait that may be more or less helpful to reproductive success. Evn in the case of meteors, true random luck is quite hard to establish. Yes, having a meteor fall on you in the midst of an environment to which you were otherwise very well suited might seem like an “unfair” blow from outside your niche, but in nature there is no fair and unfair, and there is no promise or guarantee that the environment will not radically change at the drop of the hat. If you aren’t well adapted to the change, you die. But that’s the same with microevolutionary history as well: the map of genetic changes are not straight line improvements to a constant environment. In fact, we can just as often track changes in the environment by looking at the story genes tell of microevolutionary history! Life in a microevolutionary context also deals with probability. Certain species have to balance all sorts of a traits that may or may not be helpful depending on whether certain outcomes (colder winters or warmer winters) occur, at all sorts of likihoods and rates. New traits are often unthought gambles on potential environmental outcomes rather than certain improvements.

Having a meteor fall on you is certainly a pretty major and extremely unlikely change, but there are many ways to avoid it (say, by being a bacteria deep in the Earth’s crust on the other side of the planet), and by taking a particular evolutionary pathway, you’ve reduced your fitness to some possibilities just as much as you may have increased it to other more common ones. Likewise, evolution rarely works by pure fitness in micro context anyway. The power of microevolution is not so much based on a single race of individuals with fair rules, but a statistical struggle. The creature best adapted to flight might well die of a freak accident. But evolution rarely requires single exceptional individuals: it is the long test of those traits over time, spread throughout the population that prove themselves.

[DrDeth]

@Diogenes the Cynic

The word “gravity” has two different meanings. There is a law of gravity and a theory of gravity. The law of gravity represents nothing more than the observed FACT that mass is attracted to mass. The theory (as formulated in General Relativity) explains WHY. The law does not have to be proven. It is undeniable. You are not floating from your chair right now. If you aren’t willing to say it’s a fact that you are physically pulled to the earth, then all you’re doing is retreating into such useless and childish semantic equivocating that will make any real discussion impossible. To make it simple for you, theories only explain why things happen. No observed phenomenon is a theory unto itself and observed phenomena do not need to be “proven,” save only in the most pointless and unhelpful epistemological sense of the word. Speciation is one such phenomenon. Speciation is the emergence of a new species from an antecedant. This emergence in itself is an event, not a mechanism and not a theory. A theory would explain WHY it happens. A mechanism is HOW it happens MECHANISTICALLY. It refers to the actual physical process. Speciation is a result of that process, it is not the process itself.

I agree here with DtC. There is a “Theory of Evolution” (Darwin’s is the best known). That theory gives a tested rational of how the observed fact of Evolution comes about. Evolution is a fact. How Evolution occurs- what is the mechanism- that’s the theory. A scientific Theory like Darwins is one that has been tested and has been shown to fit the observed facts. Even so, sometimes that Theory is either wrong or incomplete - Darwin’s theory is incomplete and has been refined by others since. Thus, one could say that “Darwins theory of Evolution is wrong” (that would be a rather large stretch, but it wouldn’t be a out&out lie). However, one can’t say “evolution is just a Theory” without having your nose get longer. Evolution is a fact. Of course, if one insists there are no facts as we can’t know anything for certain, then there’s no use wasting bandwidth.

As to this question from DtC- "Is it accurate to say that, at its most fundamental level, all evolution is a result of inherited mutations or do I have that wrong? I’m only asking whether every change can fairly be ascribed to inherited nutation. Are there any changes which are not the result of inherited mutation. Would it be fair to say that inherited mutation is responsible for both micro and macro events?"- the answer is “mostly” or “most think so”. I just read one of Richard Ellis’s new books, and in it he mentions that some think that in a *certain limited * way, a *certain limited * type of Lamarkism might actually be a rare mechanism. It’s a definate possibility.

[DrDeth]

Oh, and I know that someone is going to come in here and quote that famous experiment where some dude cut the tails of mice, and no mice evolved without a tail, thus it disproved Lamarkism. :rolleyes: That is likely the most bogus “experiment” in history, and all it shows is that the experimenter didn’t understand Lamarkism. It’d be like a experiment where you put some dudes from a gym on a jungle island, against some rather ratty looking natives- who happned to be survival “hunt & gather” experts for that terrain- and then the “fit dudes” didn’t survive, so 'suvival of the fittest" must be wrong.

Not that I am saying that Lamarkism is the mechanism, mind you- it clearly isn’t. But *that * silly-assed experiment didn’t prove anything about Lamarkism as a mechanism for evolution. All it proved is that some dude was into torturing mice.

[Tevildo]

Thinking about it, an experimental test of Lamarkism would be fairly easy to do.

Take a population of suitable experimental subjects (fruit flies, or whatever). Select a control group, which is allowed to reproduce in a normal environment. Put the treatment group in an environment that’s significantly different to their normal one, but not one that prevents them from breeding. Ensure that as many as possible of the females in the treatment group breed sucessfully, and that each female passes the same number of offspring on to the next generation - in other words, artificially minimize and, ideally, remove completely, the effect of Darwinian natural selection through differential reproductive success. Let the experiment run for as many generations as is feasible. Return the treatment group to their normal environment, and let them have one or two more generations of offspring. (This will make sure that any difference between the treatment and control group is entirely genetic, rather than environmental).

If there is any truth in the Lamarkian theory that environment can directly influence phylogeny, the final generation of the treatment group should differ significantly from the final generation of the control group.

[Valgard]

@Tevildo

Thinking about it, an experimental test of Lamarkism would be fairly easy to do.

Take a population of suitable experimental subjects (fruit flies, or whatever). Select a control group, which is allowed to reproduce in a normal environment. Put the treatment group in an environment that’s significantly different to their normal one, but not one that prevents them from breeding. Ensure that as many as possible of the females in the treatment group breed sucessfully, and that each female passes the same number of offspring on to the next generation - in other words, artificially minimize and, ideally, remove completely, the effect of Darwinian natural selection through differential reproductive success. Let the experiment run for as many generations as is feasible. Return the treatment group to their normal environment, and let them have one or two more generations of offspring. (This will make sure that any difference between the treatment and control group is entirely genetic, rather than environmental).

If there is any truth in the Lamarkian theory that environment can directly influence phylogeny, the final generation of the treatment group should differ significantly from the final generation of the control group.

I think it was Isaac Asimov who pointed out that generation after generation of Jewish boys continue to be born with foreskins. Does that count as a good test?

[John_Mace]

@Tevildo

Thinking about it, an experimental test of Lamarkism would be fairly easy to do.

Take a population of suitable experimental subjects (fruit flies, or whatever). Select a control group, which is allowed to reproduce in a normal environment. Put the treatment group in an environment that’s significantly different to their normal one, but not one that prevents them from breeding. Ensure that as many as possible of the females in the treatment group breed sucessfully, and that each female passes the same number of offspring on to the next generation - in other words, artificially minimize and, ideally, remove completely, the effect of Darwinian natural selection through differential reproductive success. Let the experiment run for as many generations as is feasible. Return the treatment group to their normal environment, and let them have one or two more generations of offspring. (This will make sure that any difference between the treatment and control group is entirely genetic, rather than environmental).

If there is any truth in the Lamarkian theory that environment can directly influence phylogeny, the final generation of the treatment group should differ significantly from the final generation of the control group.

How can you put one group in a signficantly different environement and then ensure that no natural selection happens? Besides, I think you misunderstand Lamarckian evolution. What you’re trying to create is genetic drift. Lamarckian evolution relies on stressing some particular part of the organism (like a stretched giraff neck) and then passing that “stress” on to the next generation in the form of a modification (like a longer neck).

[Tevildo]

@Valgard

I think it was Isaac Asimov who pointed out that generation after generation of Jewish boys continue to be born with foreskins. Does that count as a good test?

No, because it’s based on an incorrect, or, rather, too narrow, view of Lamark. Choosing my words carefully here, his theory was that environment directly influenced genetics. His mechanism was through “inheritance of acquired characteristics” that Asimov’s example and the mouse experiment disprove. We can safely say that his mechanism has been falsified, but not that his theory has been. Darwin’s theory (the currently-accepted one) is that genetic variation is basically random, and natural selection acts on traits that happen to improve reproductive success.

To take a concrete example - if the climate gets colder, mammals will develop thicker fur and more fat. The Lamarkian explanation for this is that the cold itself stimulates a genetic change to produce fatter and furrier animals - all the population becomes more adapted to the environment. The Darwinian explanation is that the original population will contain some individuals who are fatter than average, some who are thinner. The fatter ones will live longer, be more active, and therefore be more successful in reproduction; only the surviving population will be fatter than the original (and therefore more adapted to the environment), because the thin members have died off, not because of any global genetic change.

[DrDeth]

@Tevildo

No, because it’s based on an incorrect, or, rather, too narrow, view of Lamark. Choosing my words carefully here, his theory was that environment directly influenced genetics. His mechanism was through “inheritance of acquired characteristics” that Asimov’s example and the mouse experiment disprove. We can safely say that his mechanism has been falsified, but not that his theory has been.

Lamark also included a certain amount of “desire for change”- as in the Giraffe, who kept *striving * to reach higher branches, and thus a longer neck ensued. This would be very hard to test.

Asimov’s answer was either a joke (and he was legendary for his humor) or it showed a rather shallow knowledge of Lamarkism.

I am not saying that Lamarkism is correct mind you- it is just that the mouse-tail experiment proved very little about that Theory. Note that in Darwin’s early writings he also considers a type of Lamarkism.

I believe that it is the “desire” mechanism that has shown some possible results. I’ll re-read that section of Ellis.

[David_Simmons]

@DrDeth

I believe that it is the “desire” mechanism that has shown some possible results. I’ll re-read that section of Ellis.

Please do, and try to find independent corroboration of Ellis on this.

[Darwins_Finch]

@Apos

If you aren’t well adapted to the change, you die.

The point, however, is that there are some things you simply can’t adapt to. A meteor falling on your head is going to kill you, straight up, no matter what your adaptations. A large meteor is going to wipe out everything in the immediate vicinity, and if there happen to be specialized or restricted populations in that vicinity, they’re gone. Longer-lasting effects will still happen within a geological instant, making adaptation to those conditions difficult for all survivors. Pretty much, it becomes luck of the draw as to who among the survivors was already adapted to be able to survive the ensuing conditions.

The point is also that such major changes affect entire populations, and entire species. Large populations will adapt very slowly, and small populations will have a greater tendancy to be wiped out on one fell swoop. Thus, the subsequent survival or demise of such populations has more to do with principles of raw probability than principles of fitness or adaptation (that is, their survival is based on “luck of the draw”, not their genetic composition). The fundamental prinicipal of natural selection is that variance between individuals pays off more for one individual than another, and that individual is therefore more likely to contribute to the next generation’s gene pool. While selection does occur at the species level, it is not really a direct extension of natural selection. A species, as a whole, really does not vary in the same sense that individuals within a population do. Differential survival of species after a cataclysmic event is not entirely analogous to differential reproduction of individuals during hard times.

Or, to put it another way, species fitness is not the same as individual fitness within a population. Thus, there will likely be some discontinuity between an examination of evolutionary processes at the micro-level and at the macro-level. Again, this is not to say that microevolution and macroevolution are necessarily decoupled, only that there are instances where they are thought to be.

[Apos]

The point, however, is that there are some things you simply can’t adapt to. A meteor falling on your head is going to kill you, straight up, no matter what your adaptations.

One might say the same of having too small a beak when a famine rolls around. Lets say that there has never before been a famine in the history of the universe, and never will be again. Yet some slice (the smaller end of beak size) of a species of finches are wiped out. Is this macroevolution at work?

A large meteor is going to wipe out everything in the immediate vicinity, and if there appen to be specialized or restricted populations in that vicinity, they’re gone. Longer-lasting effects will still happen within a geological instant, making adaptation to those conditions difficult for all survivors. Pretty much, it becomes luck of the draw as to who among the survivors was already adapted to be able to survive the ensuing conditions.

But that way of looking at things seems like storytelling. Nature doesn’t tell stories, it just plays out the causal odds and results.

Living exposed out in the open has a tiny tiny chance of being killed off by meteors. Being a tiny fissure bacteria is a great way to avoid being susceptible to meteor strikes. We may here be talking about grand differences between species and even kingdoms, but in terms of microevolution I don’t see that the difference is much different between all the members OF the population. There two, all choices have tradeoffs, even if a danger is rare. Happenstance still abounds. The swiftest and strongest can get bumped off by chance just as easily as the dinos can get bumped off by meteors. The real logic of natural selection is not that the race goes always to the swiftest or the strongest, just that that’s a good way to bet most of the time. Freak accidents are not exactly absent in microevolutionary histories.

[Jotun]

@Diogenes the Cynic

There is lots and lots of evidence for macroevolution. You are misinformed. Speciation has been directly observed. You could also try googling for “retrogenes.” Speciation is a proven fact.

There is also no mechanistic difference between “micro” and “macro” evolution. Macro is just a whole bunch of micro.

I have been trying to explain that to people for years. This seems to be a difficult concept to grasp for some people.
“If I changed one tiny thing (micro evolution) about you every minute, every day. For, say, 10,000 days. Eventually you’ll be completely different (macro evolution).”

I know it’s sort of a weak way to explain it, but why is that so hard to believe?

[Mangetout]

Creationists who argue that microevolution occurs, but macro can’t usually do so from a flawed understanding of genetics and phylogeny.

For example, they may demand examples of ‘a split at a higher level than species’ - which just isn’t going to happen; the splits that we now regard as differentiating genera, families, even phyla, are the legacy of divergence events that we would have called speciation, had we been there at the time to witness them. Taxonomy is the description of a tree of life that is only living at the very tips of the branches; the branches themselves can’t split because the organisms representing that part of the picture aren’t even alive anymore.

Or they might argue that microevolution is nothing more than the rearrangement and activation/deactivation of a fixed set of genetic factors; as if the genome is really just a bunch of slider switches; sliding them about effects change on how the organism will turn out, but there’s a fixed range of movement and new slider functions are not ever added. Of course this description bears almost no resemblance to real-world genetics, but that makes little difference - it is still used as an effective argument to convince those who don’t know (or don’t want to know) better.

[Ca3799]

Intelligent Design banned…right or wrong?

ID may be a philosphy and it may be a religion but it certainly is not a science, so it should be banned from the science class. It simply has no place there.

What exactly is the ‘science’ behind ID? Not one person I’ve spoken to about it can tell me other than saying “life is too complex blah, blah, blah”.

I can’t understand why every time the word ‘evolution’ comes up, ID does, too. ID seems to be about where/when life arose. That doesn’t actually have very much to do with evolution. I keep hearing ID touted as an ‘alternative’ to evolution but the information just stops there.

That would be a long 9 weeks…“God musta did it, now please sit quietly at your desks…”

[spingears]

@Tevildo

A simple question. Do you hold these views for religious reasons? If so, do you accept that the Establishement Clause of the First Amendment prevents the US government from sponsoring them?

I hold ‘these’ views in the search for honest inquiry and a search for The Truth. Just as in the 1st. Amend. debate each party has their own personal vocabulary as to what it means to them and what was intended over 200 years ago.

The bottom line of post #41,
"A closed mind is difficult if not impossible to penetrate. “My mind is made up, I will not listen to ‘contray opinions.’ I will not engage in open debate with an opponet I conside being unworthy.”
seems to typify each and every discussion of many to the parties participating in the 'Evolution vs. ??? Debates on the SDMB’s and similar forums. Every participant appers to have their own ‘dictionary.’

Adios amigos!

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@spingears

I hold ‘these’ views in the search for honest inquiry and a search for The Truth. Just as in the 1st. Amend. debate each party has their own personal vocabulary as to what it means to them and what was intended over 200 years ago.

The bottom line of post #41,
"A closed mind is difficult if not impossible to penetrate. “My mind is made up, I will not listen to ‘contray opinions.’ I will not engage in open debate with an opponet I conside being unworthy.”
seems to typify each and every discussion of many to the parties participating in the 'Evolution vs. ??? Debates on the SDMB’s and similar forums. Every participant appers to have their own ‘dictionary.’

Adios amigos!

Translation: You believe it for religious reasons but you know you can’t possibly defend it in a fair debate. The facts…they burn.

[John_Mace]

@Ca3799

ID may be a philosphy and it may be a religion but it certainly is not a science, so it should be banned from the science class. It simply has no place there.

Once more, let me emphasize that the only way the court can ban it on constitutional grounds (which is what we’re talking about here) is if it is religion. Don’t dismiss that aspect so casually.

[Stratocaster]

@John Mace

Once more, let me emphasize that the only way the court can ban it on constitutional grounds (which is what we’re talking about here) is if it is religion. Don’t dismiss that aspect so casually.

True, but scientific methods seem to be enough of a filter to keep out most silly ideas. There doesn’t seem to be a strong lobby for non-religious junk science. That’s the difference.

The derision of the rest of the academic community is usually enough to keep school administrations operating sanely, unless there’s a strong lobby exerting pressure. IOW, it just doesn’t seem to come up unless there’s religious fanaticism behind the whole mess.