For those who don't understand, or believe evolution takes place, i would be interested in hearing your arguments against the theory. And to hear exactly where you believe there are faults.

We know that micro evolution is a real thing, from such things as antibiotic resistance and genetic alteration of crops and cross breeding.

But there is no evidence that macro evolution happens. You're connecting the dots between pieces of the puzzle that resemble correlation more than causation.

It doesn't make sense to me. Therefore, I remain very skeptical.

Also, the geologic narrative that scientists have come up is full of holes. Here's one, a hammer that was found made of 96% iron. It's far more pure than anything nature could have achieved without assistance from relatively modern smelting methods And, yet, the hammer is nearly 500,000 years old. Explain that, Mr. Scientist!

http://www.maltanow.com.mt/?p=2927

When considering unguided evolution what is the law that determined life should have followed any course at all, particularly a "darwinian evo" course?

I know you are a smiling disciple from the church of richard dawkins but he himself essentially admits I believe that the process of life is actually guided (in a naturalistic sense of course) by two forces:

the forces of nature

and the programming of dna to help respond to those forces

So there actually is some order that arises from a chaotic material environment.

Darwinian evolution is the mechanism that tries to understand how the two interact in order to produce complex life. Does it explain the evolution of the information that IS dna?

Id like the scientific answer that includes evidence.
Please do not add your personal philosophy here.

Hey guys. Please go add some non-fiction suggestions to the new thread I just created. You should see it at the top of every forum as a sticky topic.

I'd definitely appreciate if you looked at the handful of books I have already suggested and say whether you would like to read any of them.

Interbane
We know that micro evolution is a real thing, from such things as antibiotic resistance and genetic alteration of crops and cross breeding.

But there is no evidence that macro evolution happens. You're connecting the dots between pieces of the puzzle that resemble correlation more than causation.

Well, son of a Baptist minister who just got done telling Interbane that there was plenty of room on the Arc, macro evolution as in the origination of a new species has been observed in both the laboratory and in the wild.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciation

There are four geographic modes of speciation in nature, based on the extent to which speciating populations are isolated from one another: allopatric, peripatric, parapatric, and sympatric. Speciation may also be induced artificially, through animal husbandry, agriculture, or laboratory experiments. Observed examples of each kind of speciation are provided throughout.[4]

In other words, not only have we observed speciation occur, we’ve seen so much speciation occur that we are classifying different kinds of speciation.

The Wikipedia article lists the several different kinds with speciation events listed for each example.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sci ... ervations/

For example, there were the two new species of American goatsbeards (or salsifies, genus Tragopogon) that sprung into existence in the past century. In the early 1900s, three species of these wildflowers – the western salsify (T. dubius), the meadow salsify (T. pratensis), and the oyster plant (T. porrifolius) – were introduced to the United States from Europe. As their populations expanded, the species interacted, often producing sterile hybrids. But by the 1950s, scientists realized that there were two new variations of goatsbeard growing. While they looked like hybrids, they weren’t sterile. They were perfectly capable of reproducing with their own kind but not with any of the original three species – the classic definition of a new species…..

But just because we can’t see all speciation events from start to finish doesn’t mean we can’t see species splitting. If the theory of evolution is true, we would expect to find species in various stages of separation all over the globe. There would be ones that have just begun to split, showing reproductive isolation, and those that might still look like one species but haven’t interbred for thousands of years. Indeed, that is exactly what we find.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragopogon


Speciation in the works:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrar ... speciation

http://phylointelligence.com/observed.html#speciation
Observed speciation.
http://www.oeb.harvard.edu/faculty/loso ... netica.pdf
http://ecosystems.psu.edu/research/labs ... f-cichlids
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oenothera
http://pleiotropy.fieldofscience.com/20 ... efore.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 0080.x/pdf

GEO:
Also, the geologic narrative that scientists have come up is full of holes. Here's one, a hammer that was found made of 96% iron. It's far more pure than anything nature could have achieved without assistance from relatively modern smelting methods And, yet, the hammer is nearly 500,000 years old. Explain that, Mr. Scientist!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Hammer
http://paleo.cc/paluxy/hammer.htm

Well, old lady who yelled this at Geo one time during a wheel of fortune commercial break, the hammer was never radiometricly dated. It looks exactly like the kind of hammer that was made in the 1800s because it is a hammer made in the 1800s which somebody put down or lost in a crack of old limestone where it was encased in a concretion.

Ant:

When considering unguided evolution what is the law that determined life should have followed any course at all, particularly a "darwinian evo" course?

There is no law saying evolution SHOULD follow any individual course. If there were, then there would be the same animals in every location that allowed them.

In other words, you need evolution and natural selection to explain why there AREN’T elephants on the plains of the united states, nor octopi in the great lakes.

Evolution is not steering toward any goal. Instead, whatever accident works… WORKS. The guiding element is the test of whether the new accidental change is successful. But that doesn’t mean it has to look like anything specific.

Apex predators don’t all have to be lions.

I know you are a smiling disciple from the church of richard dawkins but he himself essentially admits I believe that the process of life is actually guided (in a naturalistic sense of course) by two forces:

the forces of nature

and the programming of dna to help respond to those forces
So there actually is some order that arises from a chaotic material environment.

This is phrased like some kinda gotcha moment.
Did I miss the part where it was ever shown that Dawkins was demonstrated to be wrong about how evolution works? And besides which, where am I referencing Dawkins? Just what are you trying to say here?

You hate Dawkins?
Ok. So what?
Does you hating him have any bearing at all on him being right?


Yes, evolution is random mutation guided by natural selection.

So, random things happen. (random mutations)
They happen again if they helped the animal survive and reproduce. (guidance: an inherited mutation)
They don’t happen again if they ended up getting that animal killed. (guidance: mutation is culled from breeding stock)

Darwinian evolution is the mechanism that tries to understand how the two interact in order to produce complex life. Does it explain the evolution of the information that IS dna?

Id like the scientific answer that includes evidence.

Darwin is way out of the loop on modern evolutionary theory. He didn’t know what we know, and science is not limited to what he first articulated. So if you want to do battle with science, you need to discuss the most current understanding. Unless you are still in the habit of addressing Lamarkian evolution in your posts, it isn’t Darwinian evolution. Its evolution.

Yes, evolution is about the change of the structure of DNA. DNA is where morphology comes from, which is pretty much just a result of how the actual physical DNA molecule is changing from generation to generation. That’s mutation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation

In genetics, a mutation is a change of the nucleotide sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal genetic element. Mutations result from unrepaired damage to DNA or to RNA genomes (typically caused by radiation or chemical mutagens), errors in the process of replication, or from the insertion or deletion of segments of DNA by mobile genetic elements.[1][2][3] Mutations may or may not produce discernible changes in the observable characteristics (phenotype) of an organism. Mutations play a part in both normal and abnormal biological processes including: evolution, cancer, and the development of the immune system.
Mutation can result in several different types of change in sequences. Mutations in genes can either have no effect, alter the product of a gene, or prevent the gene from functioning properly or completely. Mutations can also occur in nongenic regions. One study on genetic variations between different species of Drosophila suggests that, if a mutation changes a protein produced by a gene, the result is likely to be harmful, with an estimated 70 percent of amino acid polymorphisms that have damaging effects, and the remainder being either neutral or weakly beneficial.[4] Due to the damaging effects that mutations can have on genes, organisms have mechanisms such as DNA repair to prevent or correct (revert the mutated sequence back to its original state) mutations.[1]

Keep em comin!

Where is the evidence for the claim there is no law and nature is directionliss.

These are judgements based on zero empirical justification.
Implying that a vision of how evolution has unfolded to date has verified purposelessness is a philosophical conclusion

Wtf?

You dont know what youre actually saying here. You cant make the distinction between science and a personal philosophy.

Oh! And Johnson has said Dawkins isnt up to date on current theory!

Is this Johnson guy a piece of work or what?

Nice. Thanks for pretending here. Loved it.

Wait. Sorry. I just now caught your primary contention

"Things happen"

Youre such the scientist, Johnson!

This is really it. Johnson's philosophy:
Random things happen over the course of eons. Except god of course.
Johnson points directly back at himself to confirm his rationale as being rational.
Forget the circular reasoning!

Ant:
Where is the evidence for the claim there is no law and nature is directionliss.

speaking specifically to evolution, there is lots of evidence that evolution is not being directed toward any particular animal.

Whales, aquatic animals which cannot survive on land, have lungs. Their flukes have clear evidence of having been derived from load-bearing mammalian limbs. Mammals can trace their lineage to lobe-finned pre-cursors of modern day fish. If this lineage was "destined" or being designed to be aquatic animals, ultimately, then why would their ancestors have gained land adaptations which were no use to aquatic animals?

cladistics and the fossil record are both full of these kinds of inconsistent morphologies which contest your claim that evolution is being directed toward any goal. Especially by any kind of superior designer.

Ant enthused:
Oh! And Johnson has said Dawkins isnt up to date on current theory!

Darwin is way out of the loop on modern evolutionary theory.

bwa wa waaaaaahhhh.

Ant:
Is this Johnson guy a piece of work or what?

Hey Yo, is dis johnson guy over here for serious er what? Can you believe dis fuggin guy?

Ant:
Youre such the scientist, Johnson!

I have only ever said that i was not a scientist, but only an interested enthusiast. I would yield to anyone who demonstrated they had a better understanding of the concepts.

What about you, Ant?

This is really it. Johnson's philosophy:
Random things happen over the course of eons. Except god of course.
Johnson points directly back at himself to confirm his rationale as being rational.
Forget the circular reasoning!

Clearly, you have made no attempt to unpack my post, or understand the content.
You probably remember a big long thread we were involved with about entropy?

Yes, random things happen. In this case, random mutation. These events happen through mechanical faults in the duplication process, duplications, additions and deletions. Not to mention outside factors like free radical collision and deterioration of DNA. These are some of the many causes of DNA random mutations that do indeed happen. All of these can and do happen right in front of our eyes with billions of examples actually seen, or traced through their evidence.

So what are you complaining about?

Pointing back at myself? You mean when i referenced all those other papers, articles, and wikipedia pages? Circular reasoning? Can you show me a quote? Or are you saying that i was responsible for authoring all those references under different pseudonyms?

if you weren't floundering so hard, you might find that your feet would touch bottom if you just took hold of yourself.

My post disappeared into cyberspace.

Anyway,

According to Johnson's philosophy of scientism, evolutionary developments are evidence of randomness, which is also evidence for purposelessnes in Nature. At least thats what I am understanding here in a nutshell.

As a product of nature , Johnson's reasoning must itself be considered a product of random purposelessness. Johnson's rationale is a pre determined random process, therefore his reasoning here must me called into question. There is no certainty whatsoever that what Johnson has asserted is true of evolution, since he is a product of randomness as well

Why is Johnson seeking truth in a purposeless universe? How have random and purposeless occurrences enabled Johnson to do such a thing? Could it be that that is Johnson's PURPOSE here? Or is that just an illusion of Johnson's?

Even Darwin would have doubted Johnson's rationale here:

"“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind" Charles Darwin.

What actually is guiding Johnson's rationale here, if his brain is a product of unguided evolution? Is it the evidence that Johnson says exists for purposelessness in nature?

How would Johnson present himself as an exemplar of a type evolutionary species to test his hypothesis that products of evolution are purposeless design illusions of blind natural forces?
Or is Johnson the exception here?
Where is the evidence that he is?

I take with a grain of salt anything said from a man who's brain is 98 percent identical to a monkey.
Darwin would too.