But many of us have, in fact, read Gish’s books. We reject them, but we can also document why. It is, in fact, terribly easy to expose the faulty scholarship in Gish’s books. He misquotes Darwin upon a grave many instances.
Seeing only what you expect to see is not a strong indication of open inquiry and dedication to reason.
It certainly was a problem back when Lord Kelvin’s calculations showed the earth could only be 100,000 years old. But with the better measurements of the earth’s age, it would seem that there was time for evolution to function. There are several working measurements of time, from “genetic clocks” to simple observation of the changes in animals under directed breeding. It is no coincidence that Darwin raised pigeons. The fossil record has also shown the pace of evolution, giving us fairly thorough family trees of several major lineages, including humans.
I was wondering that myself. This doesn’t even strike me as a mutation thing, where one monkey gets randomly born with the “fear alligators” gene, a response that did not previously exist in monkeys. More likely, there’s a natural variation in reflexes among the monkey group. The ones that can more quickly spot an alligator as a potential threat (one among the many that monkeys in the wild might deal with regularly) and avoid it is more likely to survive and reproduce than its less-alligator-fearing brethren, and thus alligator fear gets reinforced. There may come a time when alligators go extinct, and this fear becomes useless and vestigial (and possibly even harmful), but I don’t see a magic switch mechanism in which alligators are ignored until one monkey gets a mutation.
The alligator in Jon55’s version operates more like the antagonist in a slasher movie - quietly taking out victims one at a time, otherwise remaining hidden from view, while the survivors remain utterly unaware of what exactly is causing their numbers to shrink until the dramatic final scene where the last survivor goes running through the abandoned summer camp and find impaled, beheaded and bisected corpses everywhere she looks. His view of evolution is cartoonish, at best.
I mostly work deep inside chips. I haven’t done board level stuff for over 15 years. In fact I just got invited on a panel about board test today and turned it down, in no small part because I wouldn’t say much of interest. But good luck.
Why design bad stuff if you don’t have to? As for your second question, my answer would be yes, in order to get a totally different perspective on problems. An AI would really think different.
It is similar to the second law argument, that no complex thing grows from something less complex. Gee, happens every summer in my garden. And my squash grow so fast you can practically see them move!
I’ve actually looked at a few creationist books in the library. I don’t reject them out of hand - I reject them because I found several logical error, downright lies and clever but vacuous debating points on each page. The Selfish Gene is actually very little about creationism (maybe not at all) and is more about Dawkin’s selfish gene concept. The interesting stuff is his computer models of how mutations spread. Climbing Mt. Improbable is more a direct answer to creationist claims that we are too improbable to have evolved.
Well, why would a deity who wanted to produce intelligent worshipers wait 4 billion years? And 13 billion from the beginning of the universe. It appears that favorable mutations spread very quickly, when the environment changes. Dawkins grudgingly bought into punctuated equilibrium with the very common change from “it’s garbage” to “it’s obvious.”
But we’d expect that. If a strategy works, it will work over and over again.
Not all generations of monkeys get attacked, and not all who sound the alarm die, and not all who would sound the alarm get the chance to. So there is plenty of chance for it to spread randomly. And the models show that even small advantages spread quickly. As for lucky selection, it is a lucky mutation. There is nothing lucky about selection in the large, Each spin of a slot machine produces a lucky result, but all the spins are not random at all.
Seriously ? You’re going to bring Gish into the mix, a debater so dishonest and so tirelessly putting forward the same tired, debunked shit over and over no matter how many times he’s been demonstrated wrong, people outright refuse to talk to him at all any more ? ThatGish ?
This presumes there is a specifically “altruist scream” instinct embedded in there to warn the rest of the pack.
I would on the contrary posit that when one goes about one’s monkey business in the jungle, and one sees a tiger in the bush, one screams one’s monkey ass off, pack or no pack.
That is to say, the pack would have learnt to treat the problem of one monkey as an urgency for everyone, rather than the other way around. Because those who don’t learn get tigered.
More to the point, most posters here have been arguing against the arguments provided, not the source. So if someone posted an argument here originating from Gish, it’d probably be debunked relatively quickly, with no mention of the fact that it came from Gish.
I’d expect the same treatment for a fallacious argument from Dawkins. If you can find a fallacious argument from Dawkins and quote it in context, feel free to do so.
Same reason that we can’t conclude that someone was killed unless we personally witnessed the murder. Not only that, but we can’t say for sure that the person was ever alive and wasn’t just a corpse all along.
I can’t seem to get the hang of nested quotes. Sorry.
Salt and sugar superficially resemble each other, and even share the ecological niche of “diner counter.” However, they are dissimilar is every other measure.
It is a fact that the lungs of terrestrial vertebrates develop in the embryo in a parallel manner to the swim bladders of bony fishes, and both seem to be analogous structures to the lungs of lungfish, which are to all intents and purposes, a pouch on the lungfish’s throat that holds a bubble of air. So your comment seemed to be a disingenuous non sequitur intended to divert the discussion to trivialities, or an attempt to set up a false argument ab absurdum.
“The school told him not to wear the T-shirt - and the boy’s
parents sued the school. The parents might have had a conscionable
case if they had based it on the First Amendment’s guarantee of
freedom of speech. But they didn’t: indeed, they couldn’t, because
free speech is deemed not to include ‘hate speech’. But hate only has
to prove it is religious, and it no longer counts as hate. So, instead
of freedom of speech, the Nixons’ lawyers appealed to the constitutional
right to freedom of religion.”
In his opinion Judge George Smith quotes the supreme court:
“It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional
rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been
the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years.”
Smith notes the Nixons contention that their freedom of speech had been abridged:
“Plaintiffs assert that defendants’ actions prohibiting James from wearing the T-shirt constitute an unconstitutional violation of James’ free speech rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
Then he notes that:
“James’ conduct in wearing his T-shirt clearly constitutes expression under the First Amendment”
Towards the end Judge Smith writes:
“As previously noted, other students’ mere disagreement with the message on James’ T-shirt is not enough to outweigh James’ constitutional right to free expression. Finally, protection of constitutional rights, and particularly First Amendment rights, is always in the public interest.”
Now may we please not use Dawkins as a reference?
Particularly in light of the fact that Darwinian evolution is such a slam dunk case on par with the law of gravity and repuatable source should be in plentifull aboundance.
And no Kobal2 I am not bringing Gish into the mix I was only using him as an example that I thought some might understand…'pears I was correct on that one.
I assure you I have the same amount of respect for Gish as I do for Dawkins and much more dislike as he has been far more effective at muddying the waters than Dawkins could ever hope to be.
That’s largely because there is no such thing as “universal common sense.” There can’t be! For any given situation, there may be several right answers…or none. And any given answer will be wrong in at least some situations.
Evolution has been quite good at hard-coding answers for some organisms – insects, for instance – and at providing a more sophisticated decision-making process for others – the mammals, most notably.
Where evolution is indicated is in the graduated process, and especially in the heritage of similar structures. The human brain retains “primitive” structures, such as are found in reptilian brains. (This was the point of the title of Carl Sagan’s book “The Dragons of Eden.”)
The creation model fails in explaining things like this, or the hip bones in whales, or the leg bones in some snakes, etc. The evolution model succeeds in explaining – and demonstrating – things like the migration of the three bones at the ends of the reptilian jaw into the bones of the mammals’ inner ear. The creation idea has no meaningful explanation for such things.
I hope you dont mind me making your question more specific and yes changing it a bit.
Why would a creator design us in a less than perfect way so that we dont last forever (or even very long) in a way that we feel much pain both physical and mental, in a way that we must take risks to get rewards, that we must make both hard gut wrenching decisions that we can see many possible consequences and split second decisions that carry far reaching consequence that we might not realize at the time?
My personal opinion is simple enough. It is training for a higher purpose. Maybe if the creator had designed the things he seeks in us from the get-go we would be but clones of him.
You are willing to design an AI that might find its own path. Aside from any possible consequence like in the movie Terminator what will you do if it splits and becomes different entities and the entities dont always play nice would you shut it down?
Its just food for thought Voyager but progams like this hypothetical AI might one day provide some of the best subjective evidence either for or against a creator.
You are a better person than I because once I see deliberate deception I find other authors.
Very good question and I wish I had a good answer for it but I dont at the moment to be honest I have never thought about it in that way.
What strategy I thought the mutations were random? You think, perhaps, I am being semantical?
I think that it favors my argument that it is hard to discuss this subject without using words that denote forethought.
Is plain natural selection not more likely than kin or group selection and if so why would we so much teamwork?
By models you mean computer simulations?
Are they not bound by the laws that the programmer gives them and thus subject to the programmers assumptions?
How much fine tuning goes into these models?
Does the amount of luck needed to hit on a specific slot machine depend on how that machine was designed?
I agree that is what the theory says and is consistent with much of what we observe.
It seems I get misunderstood alot so let me say it again I am looking for the most reasonable explanation of what we see and I accept alot of what Darwin had to say and the refinements that followed.
I think there is much evidence to support the standard model of evolution but I do not think that it is the slam dunk that many hold it out as and I might add that I consider myself pretty weak on this subject but several of those who are most vocal about Darwins theory being as pr oven as gravity. Not that gravity is the slam dunk that some seems to think it is either while there is no debate that bodies of mass are drawn to each other the method and the why is the least understood of all the forces.
What?
I thought I had read all of Sagans books I will check this out…thanks.
Well yes of course you are correct and if the God of the Bible is the creator there will never be a complete creation model or anything close to it.