The Sun Stood Still
- Thread starter bob b
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Seawater contains dissolved oxygen, but you (and perhaps your creationist source) are missing the point.
There are a large number of difficulties facing any abiogenesis hypothesis, many of which have been discovered only recently, which is why the field is in deep doo doo.
aharvey
New member
Strat,
Sorry, I forgot about this query. Well, let's see, I would say that targeting efforts towards a more appropriate audience would be a good alternative. But how?
We could have these discussions with creationists who actually know something about biology. However, I've sent queries to numerous biologists at private Christian colleges, to Coral Ridge, and to that institute (name escapes me) that Coral Ridge has hooked up with, and have not received a single response. Greg Brewer, after six months, did finally get back to me with a one-line reply directing me to a paper that someone else published on minimum genome size (sadly, having nothing whatsoever to do with the original topic, but at least it was a reply, no matter how belated). From this I'm guessing that creationist biologists are rather less inclined to engage in these discussions than the non-biologists who populate TOL, unfortunately. And of course the exclusionary nature of creationist publications would seem to eliminate that route as well.
Public debates? It's funny that as much as scientists decry this as a proper forum for discussing scientific issues, they've never noticed that creationists scrupulously avoid either debating creationism itself or comparing the two ideas in a debate format. Maybe there's something here. I also think it's worth exploring the likely consequences of publicly pressing the creationist/ID crowd for exactly what they want to include about their competing ideas in a science class that deals with evolution.
Our museum exhibit has been very well received. I think this is a promising approach, as it lets people spend as much time as they need to on whatever points they choose, and it eliminates the emotional superficiality and the "home crowd advantage" effect of the public debate. We are contemplating what it would take to make this a traveling exhibit. It has room for improvement, as do most of the organized arguments I've seen "in defense" of evolution. It's been my impression that most such efforts overlook the obvious examples and go for the gee-whiz cases, or else tend to fall back on the same set of stories. Perhaps it would be a worthwhile exercise to take a fresh look at our fact base and provide the explicit evolutionary explanations, while offering the creationist/ID crowd the opportunity to offer their own alternate explanations (you've seen how well this crowd, at least, responds to that!). I think we can use evolution to make sense of vast amounts of data that we no longer even notice, at least not in this context.
For example, everyone knows what a praying mantis looks like. But not everyone is aware of the very large number of species that show remarkable variations on the "praying mantis theme." Some species look and act like ants; some like tiger beetles; some look just like tree bark, some just like flowers (different species of flowers as they mature, no less!), some just like twigs, some just like blades of grass, some just like fresh green leaves, some just like green leaves with discoloration, some just like green leaves with some insect damage, some just like dead leaves, some just like shriveled dead leaves. And yet, once you realize they are in fact insects, you don't need to be a trained biologist to instantly recognize that they are mantids. It's easy to provide a detailed explanation of this in evolutionary terms; it's not at all obvious to me how, for example, bob b would explain this strictly in terms of "downhill" evolution (well, okay, I suppose he could claim that each mantid species was independently created, but I doubt many modern creationists would want to go that route!).
Now think about how many other insect taxa the above situation describes. How many other invertebrate taxa. Even how many vertebrate taxa. And we're only talking about crypsis and mimicry!
So how do we take the information we already have, and most effectively use it to demonstrate the effectiveness of the evolutionary perspective?
Stratnerd
New member
Alan,
I am at my wits end in my attempt to have normal conversations here. Things get turned around, ignored etc. You're absolutely right - being dishonest seems to be the creationist's MO.
I suspect that many of the creationists that know biology will not debate because they know that they cannot support their position (thus most of the online material written by "Ph.D.s" is either downright lies or just misinformation).
Unfortunately, I think most professional scientists, even in the heart of creationist activity like here in Alabama, see debating creationists as a "low brow" activity. But I think you're right on with the learn-as-you-want approach that a display provides.
When I teach undergrad biology I usually don't say a word on creationism because I too saw it as a low-brow exercise as if mentioning it gave it some legitimacy but I may do it now at the very beginning of class when I go over "science" [what it is, the goals, etc]. If there's one thing I've found is that students may go through four years of college - even as majors and never know the how's of discovery.
I don't think we'll ever convince those people that are hard-core Biblical literalists. Presenting evidence is futile.
I am at my wits end in my attempt to have normal conversations here. Things get turned around, ignored etc. You're absolutely right - being dishonest seems to be the creationist's MO.
I suspect that many of the creationists that know biology will not debate because they know that they cannot support their position (thus most of the online material written by "Ph.D.s" is either downright lies or just misinformation).
Unfortunately, I think most professional scientists, even in the heart of creationist activity like here in Alabama, see debating creationists as a "low brow" activity. But I think you're right on with the learn-as-you-want approach that a display provides.
When I teach undergrad biology I usually don't say a word on creationism because I too saw it as a low-brow exercise as if mentioning it gave it some legitimacy but I may do it now at the very beginning of class when I go over "science" [what it is, the goals, etc]. If there's one thing I've found is that students may go through four years of college - even as majors and never know the how's of discovery.
I don't think we'll ever convince those people that are hard-core Biblical literalists. Presenting evidence is futile.
Free-Agent Smith
New member
I understand your statement about mantids, as a kid I used to play with insects.
I can see where some species have adapted to their envirionment. But where is the data that shows where a mantid turned into ( as an example ) a beetle or a member of the any family evolved into a totally different species altogether.
If you can do this with insects, please do. It has always been my understadning that evolution can show new species evolving from totally different ones, macroevolution, not species adapting to their surrooundings, microevolution.
Honestly I don't expect a response because I'm not a scientist but this is where you lose people.
The reason most evolutionists cannot see the "obvious" holes in their theory is that they live in an environment where "everybody knows" and thus reject any ideas that would threaten their protected world view.
Ernst Mayr talks about this in his book, but unfortunately only applies his comments on "dogmatism" to others.
He had a totally distorted view of what the Bible teaches (he confused what some in the Church taught with what the Bible actually says) and hence rejected the Genesis account out-of-hand, thinking it taught that lifeforms are static and never change.
In fact, the Genesis account had it right, since natural variation can easily and quickly generate all the lifeforms we see today starting with only a relatively few original types.
The extreme form of evolution, i.e. all life has descended from a single hypothetical primitive protocell, can easily be seen by those with no prior bias to be rather silly and unscientific.
Ernst Mayr talks about this in his book, but unfortunately only applies his comments on "dogmatism" to others.
He had a totally distorted view of what the Bible teaches (he confused what some in the Church taught with what the Bible actually says) and hence rejected the Genesis account out-of-hand, thinking it taught that lifeforms are static and never change.
In fact, the Genesis account had it right, since natural variation can easily and quickly generate all the lifeforms we see today starting with only a relatively few original types.
The extreme form of evolution, i.e. all life has descended from a single hypothetical primitive protocell, can easily be seen by those with no prior bias to be rather silly and unscientific.
Stratnerd
New member
Your evaluation couldn't be more off...
science and scientists feed off of turning over dogma. i've never met a scientist (maybe you can point to one?) that feared researching/publishing anything that went against dogma.
Mayr rejects creationism for several reasons but I would bet my boots that he rejects Biblical literalism FIRST and creationism second. Since Mayr's a scientist - he must reject the notion that evidence is meaningless like Biblical literalism does. One day, perhaps, you'll figure this out.
science and scientists feed off of turning over dogma. i've never met a scientist (maybe you can point to one?) that feared researching/publishing anything that went against dogma.
Mayr rejects creationism for several reasons but I would bet my boots that he rejects Biblical literalism FIRST and creationism second. Since Mayr's a scientist - he must reject the notion that evidence is meaningless like Biblical literalism does. One day, perhaps, you'll figure this out.
Free-Agent Smith
New member
Show me the data/evidence or whatever it needs to be called that shows the completely different species that the praying mantis evolved from. Post pics or links with pics that help.
Stratnerd
New member
This isn't my area but this is what I did:
I googled Mantid phylogenetics to get:
http://www.eeb.uconn.edu/Courses/Eeb477/Svenson&Whiting_Mantids_04.pdf
in that article I saw that
1. cockroaches and termites are more basal
2. mantid are part of a group called the dictyoptera.
A phylogeny is necessary to see who evolved from who. That's the data that would tell me what you wanted. So it looks like it goes termites -> cockroaches -> praying mantises. Molecules do a much better job at inferring relationships than morphology.
For pictures see
http://tolweb.org/tree?group=Dictyoptera
Most any group you have questions about can be looked up just by googling "phylogenetics group1 group2"
Because evolution is assumed (because of a much larger body of data and there's no reason to think that any group is alien or supernaturally created) we don't need to see perfect gradations from one group into the next. The fossil record isn't complete enough to expect such a sequence to exist (although creationists miss this point - repeatedly).
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aharvey
New member
First things first. Do you consider inferential evidence to be evidence? For example, no one has ever actually seen an electron; we infer they exist through experiments that produce results predicted by atomic theory of the general sort "If electrons exist, then this experiment should produce this result." Do you consider that a legitimate type of evidence?
Have you ever been to Meteor Crater near Flagstaff, Arizona? Do you accept that this crater was caused by the impact of a meteor? No one saw this happen, and no one has found any such meteor. Nonetheless, to a scientist, the evidence is overwhelming (this was not always so!). Does it seem reasonable to you that inferential evidence could be so compelling in the absence of more direct evidence (like direct observation of the hypothesized event, or the crater itself)?
If you accept that inferential evidence is a legitimate form of evidence, then we may have something to talk about. If you insist on direct observation ("show me the actual intermediate forms," "show me someone who actually saw the meteor hitting the earth"), then I don't know what to tell you.
Second things second. Think for a moment about the nonevolutionary alternative. Were all 2000 mantid species "created" independently? If not, then some species had to have evolved from other species, right? And if that's possible, then at what point do you say, "okay, now those mantids could not have shared a common ancestor!", and why?
Stratnerd
New member
probably should have addressed this first...
Science cannot "show" such a type of evolution so your understanding is wrong. As AH points out, we infer that this type of evolution occurs. I asked what convincing evidence might look like because I can't imagine that we'd expect to see what takes millions of years in nature to occur in the human life time.
aharvey
New member
Strat, that paper doesn't show this. All they've shown is that mantids can be represented a monophyletic group that excludes cockroaches and termites. You need more outgroups to establish the mantid-termite-cockroach relationships. As it is, you can just as easily root their tree so that mantids and cockroaches are sisters, or mantids and termites.
I wouldn't say that! Molecules are probably easier to work with than morphology (you don't have to learn a new set of terms, techniques, and anatomy every time you switch taxonomic groups, because glycine in termites is the same as glycine in turnips!), but I would not say they are better! Cladistics hit the scene just before molecular biology hit the scene, and people abandoned morphology a bit prematurely, blaming some of their problems on the limitations of morphology rather than the limitations of their data sets or analytical techniques.
Stratnerd
New member
sorry, I thought blatteria was the outgroup! I was also looking at the first tree at the Tree of Life Page which shows (I, (B,M)). I should have looked at the other tree just an inch away.. boy am I lazy!
really? Logistically it seems the other way around - of course my friends weren't using automated sequences either.
But the objectivity and the sheer quantity of data seems to make molecular techniques superior. Of course, I'm getting this from my friends using molecular techniques (surprise surprise).
aharvey
New member
The last Evolution meetings I went to, in 1997 or so, were quite a shock. At least 75% of the talks were molecule-based. By the end of the meeting, it was quite clear that one of the most desirable attributes of molecules is that you didn't need to know anything about the organisms themselves to understand what the presenter did (but this led to the odd situation in which most questions from the audience were about details of the methods, not about the implications of the study itself!). And molecular systematists are far more likely to bounce around from one taxonomic group to the next than are morphological systematists, because once you learn one set of techniques, you can apply them almost across the board. That's a real, practical, advantage (although I definitely have some not-so-nice feelings for folks that claim expertise on an organism that they wouldn't recognize if it bit them on the butt!), but it's not the one that you hear touted.
Well, the sheer quantity can be somewhat of an illusion, and the unquestionable chemical identity of bases across the genomes of all taxa can be a bit of a double-edged sword (think saturation and long-branch attraction). It's been my experience that solid morphological data sets usually contain a stronger phylogenetic signal than much larger molecular data sets for the same taxa. Of course, the critters I've worked on have lots of discrete parts! I'm not sure how my duckweeds would fare in such a comparison!
Stratnerd
New member
I agree with you on this.. although I adore my friends I would tease them because their snakes were nothing more than a broth (the days before they had PCR). Frankly I think using both is the best way to go (how can you go wrong with more data?)
But I can see where you stand on this debate. Funny how polemic you guys are about this though (like debates on vicariance vs. dispersal, or, dare I say, species concepts).
Your error is in not recognizing that creationism and evolution are not in conflict EXCEPT on the subject of long term "uphill" evolution as illustrated by the alleged transformation of a hypothetical primitive protocell into a human being over billions of years.
I have stated numerous times that I agree with all five of Darwin's theories as stated by Ernst Mayr in "What Evolution Is" and also in his "What Is Biology".
The error was in thinking that mutations can operate"uphill", for example in transforming a hypothetical primitive protocell into a human being.
Other than that there are many truths contained in evolutionary theory.
But the one big "boo boo" tends to discredit the entire field and it would be good for the sake of the future of the field to weed out and discard this one huge error.
Free-Agent Smith
New member
Ok after reading your post and the ones that followed, it seems I should have picked something a bit bigger like cats or whales, maybe sharks.
I did look the 2nd link you gave with the three pics but that first one I shut down because it takes my comp. forever to open pdf.anything. I guess I was hoping to see something 'transitonal" like a cockroach with mantis arms on it, as an example.
I guess I was hoping to see gradations from one group to the next.
Would it be possible if we just changed the control to a cat instead of insects?
( I'll do my best to keep up with everyone's posts as well as I can.)