Irreducible complexity and Evolution

originally posted by: Noinden
a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

You are not playing the qualifications game yet you are questioning something that requires a modicum of training to talk about with any level of authority.

Evolution is no religion. I speak as a religious person. It is based on pure scientific data. Debate the data, that is what it is there for neighbor.

Pull the data apart. Or admit you can not.

Post the data, and we can debate it. Not looking this stuff up right now; too busy with other issues that are taking up a lot of my thoughts these days. Appreciate your civility, at any rate, but bowing out of this for now.

originally posted by: Phantom423
a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

The answer to that has been posted many times. You just don't read it. Like Coop, you ignore the scientific evidence in favor of your own view. This is a mind-set - you can't read and interpret the data, so you default to a view that satisfies your ego and pride. If you had any curiosity about evolution, you would find that the data supports the current view. If you can come up with hard evidence that the data is incorrect, then it's your responsibility to do so. That's how science works. I don't expect that you'll understand that, but that's okay. We have enough brains in science that you don't matter. And that's the truth.

So, no actual data? Nothing to do with any ego or pride on my part; I have no dog in this fight.

originally posted by: mOjOm
a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

No way it would go for this long with so many various branches and people working and expanding on it if it was all just assumptions. That would have been noticed by now.

Just like the lie that is man-made global warming?

Hmmm.....

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

Dont think you understand a scientific theory and what it means. So lets look at the definition first.


A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world.

So a theory can only become a theory when scientists document observations and produce scientific evidence to back it up. Notice this is exactly opposite of what you claim. Now to disprove a theory you would need to find an observation or scientific evidence that can disprove the theory. So in say the case for evolution you need to find an animal that popped in to existence. Then you would have to show its repeatable so other scientist can verify the results. So unless you can provide evidence of something just popping in to existence evolution wins. Now if you want to argue how life started we can evolution doesnt cover it, and all we have is hypothesises which for you would be a guess, no observation and no proof.

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

If you honestly believe that humans with everything we do from pollution to deforestation to nuclear testing and over fishing and carbon production and weather manipulation and so on and so on doesn't or hasn't had some affect on this planet then I don't think you realize the extent to which we are able to effect the world we live in.

Obviously natural changes are happening as well and it's probably difficult to measure the extent to which we've added or taken away from other natural systems already in action. But clearly there is going to be a degree of human caused deviations that are going to alter the natural changes. There is literally no way we wouldn't have some effect.

We know for a fact just how much can change by simply introducing a different species to an area which is not prepared for it. Natural systems are all linked together and we are constantly making what we think are minor changes only to find out in time how they ended up having major results we didn't account for. Those are just small things too.

When you get 7 billion people and approx. a couple hundred years of massive industrial production and resource usage and everything else across the globe I don't think you've stopped to give any thought to what so much activity can have upon all those systems as well.

I mean do you really think we've had no effect at all on this planet that would be influencing some changes within the already changing climate??

a reply to: cooperton

If you can't answer that question, it simply proves my point. You know nothing about how science works. The protocol for sample preparation - and that's any sample - not just your dinosaur bone - is very strict. The results must be repeated by an independent source and tested using a variety of methods which verifies the results within a standard deviation/standard error. This includes calculating the chi or "p" value. These results would then be tested against other samples of dinosaur bones from various sources which have been analyzed using the same techniques.

A dinosaur bone is a 3 dimensional object. Samples can be extracted from several positions. Even the extraction method itself has to be tested against other methods of extraction.

You're way behind the learning curve. Believe what you want - but don't perpetrate fraud.

You proved my point very graphically. Thanks.

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

You seem to have a reading comprehension problem. The data has been posted previously. If you're so interested in data, dig it out. The biggest part of the problem with people like you is that you're lazy. You want everyone else to do the work for you. And then, after the work is done, you wipe it off the map as though it never existed.

You're a phony. I caught you before, remember? Short term memory might be another problem. There are pills for that today.

Do your own work. You might even learn something.

originally posted by: cooperton

Oxygen + biomolecules -----car engine------> carbon dioxide + water + energy
Oxygen + biomolecules ---mitochondrion---> carbon dioxide + water + energy

They are both combustion reactions used to create energy. It's funny how serious you take theoretical science, yet you laugh at empirical science.

How simplistic can you get? That has to be the worst argument I've ever heard. Did you think for even a minute that the reason it works in a car is because it also works in nature? No of course you didn't. Millions of other things fit that same category. Humans design lots of technology based on nature. It makes sense. What doesn't make sense is to assume nature was designed for that illogical reason. There is no evidence of that. Analogies are not evidence, especially faulty ones like the one above.

originally posted by: LadyGreenEyes
Dozens of threads wherein people who support evolution behave as though it's a religion to them. Way to totally miss (or dodge) the point.

You had a point? I sure didn't see it. This is a conspiracy theory website. Of course people are going to post things like that. It doesn't justify your claim that evolution is doubted. It's only doubted by scientifically illiterate religious fundamentalists, not actual scientists and experts on the subject. That's the root of the problem. None of you guys ever can debate the science. Instead, you look for excuses to ignore it.

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

As people have pointed out. It has been posted. The onus is on YOU.

a reply to: Noinden

I think it's time for a real debate. Let them lock and load their weapons. We'll bring ours (the real weapons). It will be like the gunfight at OK Corral.

Just remember - don't bring a knife to a gunfight.

a reply to: Phantom423

But they're going to bring nerf guns to the fight

originally posted by: cooperton

originally posted by: Cogito, Ergo Sum
To Cooperton.

There are good scientists who are also creationists. They never let their belief bias their work. Whatever they find they simply prefer to believe there is a god behind it all, originally. Evolution says nothing about whether a god exists. Why aren't you at least open to the idea that species evolve?

This is continual chauvinism. You act as if everyone who doesnt agree with the theory of evolution must be some blindfolded fundamentalist christian who has not addressed empirical evidence. This is so narrow-minded and is the fuel for mostly all posts I see that are ridiculing anyone who dismisses the religion of evolution.

Right, so you're not a creationist and you don't believe in god...you just think we were "intelligently designed" by someone/ something (lol).

Have a bit of a closer look at nature. If it was "designed" we can drop the "intelligent" part. No one with a few functioning neurons would have designed a system with such crappy outcomes as ours. Scientists are continually trying to fix many of this "designers" cock ups.

About the only way this creator could be called intelligent is in the way he made himself indistinguishable from something that doesn't exist, while also creating a biosphere inhabited by forms that are indistinguishable from something that evolved naturally. That was intelligent for sure lol.

Just like the rest of you zealous self-proclaimed mutant apes I at one time fully bought into the idea of evolution.

Good thing you would never resort to (attempted) ridicule yourself up there on that moral high ground you think you own.

"'The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.'" -Werner Heisenberg

A somewhat boring philosophical musing that has nothing to do with evolution.

yet experiments in Quantum physics clearly demonstrated matter is naught without the observer - indicating that matter, therefore, could not have been the generator of consciousness. Matter only exists in a probabilistic waveform until the observer substantiates it into matter Copenhagen Interpretation

Do they really...? So is the moon really there when we're not observing it? I imagine that must play havoc with our tides, what with billions of people bringing the moon in and out of existence every time the look at it.

Got to make you wonder why so many scientists (including physicists) are atheists.

I think you are overlooking the fact that every repeatable scientific observation ever made has found that consciousness arises out of a functioning brain/ nervous system. Which itself is a product of biological evolution. No brain function = no consciousness.

The real narrow mindedness is the inability of many (even in some areas of academia) to realise that consciousness is not a "thing" in and of itself. It is an "effect". The likelihood that in the not too distant future we could have conscious machines will probably be about the only thing that will convince many (perhaps not even then).

Consciousness is not a discreet energy or substance in itself. It arises out of the same physical matter and fundamental forces as everything else. If not, it would have been detected. If it is too weakly interacting to be detected, it is also to weak to have the effects on the nervous system that it does.

You are simply giving an "appeal to quantum physics" that is very popular amongst new age philosophy (aka bulls-it) as espoused by charlatans. Instead of vague claims, can you give genuine explanation for your claims?

The universe is much more amazing than the sterile story of meaninglessness that was spoon-fed to us by the state.

Undoubtedly. Human knowledge regarding our universe has a way to go for sure. The problem here is that you are arguing against the little bit that we do have (evolution) lol.

Well, darn. It looks like there really is a conspiracy by the brainwashing cult of mainstream science to shut down those poor harried, real geniuses of creation science. It starts at 10.32 in this presentation, it's terrifying.

originally posted by: Phantom423
a reply to: cooperton

If you can't answer that question, it simply proves my point. You know nothing about how science works. The protocol for sample preparation - and that's any sample - not just your dinosaur bone - is very strict. The results must be repeated by an independent source and tested using a variety of methods which verifies the results within a standard deviation/standard error. This includes calculating the chi or "p" value. These results would then be tested against other samples of dinosaur bones from various sources which have been analyzed using the same techniques.

A dinosaur bone is a 3 dimensional object. Samples can be extracted from several positions. Even the extraction method itself has to be tested against other methods of extraction.

You're way behind the learning curve. Believe what you want - but don't perpetrate fraud.

You proved my point very graphically. Thanks.

Is this semantic merry-go-round supposed to cover up that you thought that people touching bones permanently contaminates them from C-14 testing?

originally posted by: Barcs
Did you think for even a minute that the reason it works in a car is because it also works in nature? Humans design lots of technology based on nature. It makes sense.

Yes, humans design things based on nature's design

What doesn't make sense is to assume nature was designed for that illogical reason.

So you admit human designs mimic nature's design, but then say nature was not designed ? Quite the brick wall you are.

originally posted by: Cogito, Ergo Sum
If it was "designed" we can drop the "intelligent" part. No one with a few functioning neurons would have designed a system with such crappy outcomes as ours.

If used properly, the human body is truly amazing. It is a replicating, regenerating, homeostatic, adaptable, encephalized, emotional, logical (or persistently illogical), self-aware, artistic, bipedal wonder of the universe. Things go wrong when people use their body incorrectly, many have defied their nature and are paying the consequences. We also have this convenient solar system that is so meticulously geared that it has not strayed from its orbit in the past known history, which allows us the perfect goldilocks zone of habitability... You have to be persistently pessimistic to believe this is some accident. Yet the realms of human imagination are so limitless that we can even convince ourselves we are meaningless mutant monkeys

originally posted by: cooperton
Yes, humans design things based on nature's design

So you admit human designs mimic nature's design, but then say nature was not designed ? Quite the brick wall you are.

This is why you get nowhere with your arguments and why nobody takes you seriously. I never used the word design in reference to nature, that was YOU. You assume design and speak in generalizing catch phrases and vague descriptions of things. It's just your opinion, which has nothing to do with the merit of evolution. You are welcome to that opinion, but it's not fact and certainly doesn't prove anything about design.

This is continual chauvinism. You act as if everyone who doesnt agree with the theory of evolution must be some blindfolded fundamentalist christian who has not addressed empirical evidence.

99.99% of the time that is the case, and you have promoted young earth creationism on numerous occasions. I've heard of people denying evolution who aren't theist, but I've never seen a non christian argue for YEC. Even fundamentalist Muslims aren't that stupid. Yes, blindfolded fundamentalist christian who doesn't address evidence is the PERFECT description.

a reply to: cooperton

Is this semantic merry-go-round supposed to cover up that you thought that people touching bones permanently contaminates them from C-14 testing?

When and where did I ever say that? You're such a con artist.

a reply to: LadyGreenEyes

There is evidence that some interpret as supporting it, and much that does not. That which is used is often ambiguous, too. But, hey, feel free to list the best you think is around.

Please post citations for the "and much that does not" and "That which is used is often ambiguous, too." part.

Bet you can't produce one citation from a recognized journal.

a reply to: cooperton

Yet the realms of human imagination are so limitless that we can even convince ourselves we are meaningless mutant monkeys

Hey, speak for yourself. Most of us are not the monkey-see, monkey-do types like Creationists. Ken Ham must be proud of you.

a reply to: Phantom423

LMAO!!