A charge has been made that evolution seems to be a popular religion here at TSZ and that it is difficult to separate the ideology from the science.
No specific example was given to support that claim. But as it’s an interesting claim in and of itself I thought it deserved it’s own OP, and perhaps some specific examples can be provided and then discussed.
The reason I think it’s interesting is that I don’t think that’s the case at all, I can’t see any examples of where evolution is treated like a religion at TSZ so I’m unable to provide any examples of such.
I’m hoping that those that do can provide examples.
Rumraket, to colewd:
Agreed, and his goofy rejection of common descent illustrates the problem. If evidence had any power to influence colewd, he would have accepted common descent long ago.
He is a perfect storm of religious bias and scientific incomprehension.
Poor Billy, forever struggling with simple concepts
keiths,
Solid ad hominem Keith’s. Reinforcing Mung’s claim that evolution supports ideology.
colewd,
Here’s a not-so-subtle distinction that will probably elude you:
If I were to say “I know that colewd is wrong about common descent, because I know that he is scientifically incompetent and religiously biased,” then I would be committing the ad hominem fallacy. That would be an error — it does not follow from your incompetence and bias that you must be wrong about common descent.
However, what I am actually saying is that you’re wrong about common descent because the scientific evidence shows overwhelmingly that common descent is true. Your error illustrates your scientific incomprehension and religious bias.
Yes, your mangling of the common descent question is evidence of your bias and incompetence, but no, that does not mean that I’ve reasoned from your bias and incompetence to the conclusion that you must be wrong about common descent.
Please ponder that until it sinks in. Your reflexive invocation of the ad hominem fallacy is annoyingly, and ironically, fallacious.
So it’s the “were you there”-argument.
You didn’t observe the designer design the spliceosome, so why believe it was designed?
You have a double standard Bill.
Well, no. What he has is a different default. For colewd, we simply ASSUME magic (uh, supernatural guidance) unless we have incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. And there’s no such thing as incontrovertible evidence, so the default always wins. Similarly, if we require NO magic as a given, then materialist explanations always win, and therefore ANY observation supports the preconvictions of both sides.
If at OJ Simpson’s trial they had produced a videotape of the killing, it might have been doctored or re-enacted. If there were 50 eyewitnesses, it COULD have been a mass hallucination. If Simpson confessed on the stand, it could have been a forced confession. For his jury, just as with colewd, there simply CANNOT BE “so-called evidence” against a position arrived at not by evidence, but by the Will To Believe.
Rumraket,
As usual this is a fair comment.
If I start from the cause of the universe I am on the side that believes it was created. Some of the evidence that supports this is the predictability of the forces of nature and the capability and universality of the atom. When I look at the remarkable capability of the spliceosome and the amount of sequential information to build one I fall on the side of design vs a series of accidents and fixation due to some selective advantage, or genetic drift.
The claim of universal common descent must explain the origin of the spliceosome through some mechanism.
This claim seems unlikely to me. I’d like to see your source.
And I thought we had agreed that design and common descent were not mutually exclusive. What exactly do you mean by “design”? Once more: the evidence for common descent is not the same as the evidence for the processes that cause evolutionary transitions.
John Harshman,
This is not the paper that supports the number but it supports wide expression of micro ran’s in mammals.
I will continue to search for the paper that mentions the number 700.
Well, the problem is that he has a default, something that requires no real evidence to be accepted.
I would hope that none of those on the science side has a default conclusion.
Besides the unwarranted default, colewd plays the familiar creationist game of coming up with the showstopper that obviates all other evidence. Reach into the dim past and claim that eukaryotes couldn’t evolve, or what-not, then ignore the vast amounts of evidence that everything did evolve, including the specific evidence that eukaryotes did. Fallacious to the hilt, but if one doesn’t wish to confront the evidence that is one of the ways of doing it (I suspect that creationists have found them all).
There is a simple logic to it, of course. You assume that it’s either evolution or design, then “prove” that it couldn’t be evolution. Not bad logic, just bad premises and the easy “conclusion” that evolution couldn’t do it sans understanding. When one of those premises is what is non-negotiable, however (that god is the default cause), it’s very hard to get the person who believes it to do anything but to constantly return to that bad premise.
Glen Davidson
John Harshman,
So common descent is simply a claim of genetic and phylogenetic similarity?
Oh boy
colewd:
Bill,
Who do you think is right, Brad or Jenny?
colewd,
Thanks. Are all the miRNAs present in all mammals, or do they vary from mammal to mammal? Are any of them present in monotremes? How about marsupials? Can you in fact rule out gradual evolution of regulation?
No. Where do you get this stuff? Common descent is common descent. Surely those words, separately or in combination, are not in any way unclear. If you can’t figure out what we’re talking about here, we really can’t have any sensible discussion. And I don’t know what you mean by “phylogenetic similarity”; I suspect you don’t either.
Flint,
There was a consensus, OJ was innocent. Your side loves the idea of a consensus.
prefer it to a dictatorship
Does that not concern you, that you cannot name an achievement but rather acknowledge my point? If I’ve made a good point, why are you still a creationist? In what way is my point “good”? Define what sense you are using “good”!
At 118 comments, and no one has yet explained what is meant by an ideology and in what sense evolution is an ideology.
Just thought I’d point that out.
Kantian Naturalist,
In what sense is religion an ideology?
My understanding is that ideology was used in it’s usual sense, a system of ideas, but with the quality that even if the data regarding life and it’s evolution diverges (i.e. as per the claims of intelligent design) from that system of ideas the system of ideas won’t change in response. We just stick with “evolution” regardless, hence evolution is an ideology rather then a science.
Perhaps I can be corrected. Any takers? It’s you I’m interpreting here Mung, so care to share?
It isn’t, so “none.”
John Harshman,
All good questions. Is it reasonable that this complex arose from animals prior to mammals simply from reproduction and variation? The placenta is complex and must operate precisely to deliver nutrition so the embryo can develop properly.
per wiki
I think we have another complex system here that may fit Behe’s irreducible complexity argument.
OMagain,
My reply said more than good point it said.
.
I am agreeing with you that the design argument has limitations but also showing how the evolution argument shares this weakness.
This sentence right here encapsulates everything that’s wrong about Intelligent Design.
First, there’s a basic category mistake: evolution is not an argument but an explanation. Arguments and explanations are quite different ways of understanding. Generally speaking, an argument is a series of inferences (whether formal or not) that lead from premises to a conclusion. The goal of an argument is to show that an assertion is warranted.
Explanations are different, because they aim at showing how something happened, not that it happened. How explanations do this is somewhat controversial, but one compelling approach is to think about explanations as models. A model is a simplified, deliberately constructed map or picture of a domain or phenomena, with manipulable variables, such that by observing what data are generated based on how variables are manipulated, we come to understand why we observe the regularities and irregularities that we do.
That’s very different from how arguments work, and it’s central to all modern scientific procedure.
Secondly, the optimal epistemic conditions for replacing one explanation (call it A) with a competing and incompatible explanation (call it B) are when B explains everything that A explained and also explains what A did not explain. (What Kuhn called “anomalies”.)
No one here will maintain that evolutionary theory has no anomalies or explains everything that we want to explain. Sure, there are gaps and problems with it. (For one thing, we’re still in the early days of understanding how modifications in the timing of developmental events can generate novel phenotypes.)
The difference is this: while evolutionary theory doesn’t explain everything, design “theory” explains nothing. To every question in biology, ID has only one answer: “that’s how it was designed.” There’s no model of how the designing took place, or of the causal mechanisms whereby design was implemented, or how we can empirically verify how those mechanisms operated.
There is no explanation to ID. It’s nowhere close to being anything like a scientific theory. It’s just a con. And ID supporters are the marks.
“Limitations” there is a euphemism for nothing.
You aren’t showing that evolutionary theory shares anything with ID, what you’re doing is trying to make the substance in evolutionary theory into a liability, by criticizing it for being limited in explanation. ID has no limits to its explanations, for it has no explanations.
You can’t cover up the vacuousness of ID by pointing out that evolutionary theory isn’t a complete explanation for every change.. You’ve never explained anything at all with ID, nor has anybody.
Glen Davidson
Kantian Naturalist,
First, thank you for your well articulated position. A couple of questions and responses.
What specifically does evolution explain? How is the validity of that explanation supported?
Why do you think it explains nothing? How would you support taking that extreme position?
I agree that it is being pushed by some to support religion. There are legitimate scientists like Michael Behe who have come up with some interesting explanations for why a biochemical mechanism appears designed. Also an experimental scientists like Scott Minich that have supported Behe’s claims with knock out experiments.
When you say it is not close to a scientific theory what is your criteria for an explanation qualifying as a scientific theory?
First, evolution explains the diversity of life on earth. And if there’s a lack of diversity it explains that too.
Second, evolution explains why organisms are well-adapted to their environment. And if organisms are not well-adapted, well, it explains that too.
colewd:
Evolutionary theory explains why species are not optimally adapted to their environments, because of the various mechanisms that generate novel phenotypes and select against them. The warrant or justification for that claim is a matter of ‘inference to the best explanation’ — it’s the best explanation we currently have for the consilience (overlapping, converging lines of evidence) between biogeography, anatomy, genetics, embryology, and paleontology.
Because “therefore, it was probably designed” does not tell us how it was designed, or how the design was implemented.
(Did the designer grow the Cambrian fauna in a lab and then release them into the wild? Do the designers nudge the molecules at a quantum mechanical level to generate the mutations that will result in better-adapted phenotypes?)
I don’t care about the religion angle.
Behe’s argument hinges on calculating the probability of two distinct point mutations occurring simultaneously. That’s fine and good, but all that tells us the astonishingly low probability of evolution happening in that way. It tells us nothing about the probability of evolution happening in any other way.
”
There has to be a model that gives insight into why observable regularities obtain, to the extent that they do, and if that model involves unobserved entities — theoretical posits — then those posits have to be specified carefully enough that we can determine what is and what is not entailed by the existence of those posits, such that we can then inquire into whether those entailments tell us what to look for.
If the observations we get from the world are consistent with what is predicted to occur — and also what is predicted to not occur — then the model is good enough. And of course it never is, because the models are always simplifications (they must be!), and we then have to make the models more complex in order for them to generate predictions that accord with what we observe.
And sometimes the models are just not workable at all and we have to jettison them and start all over. That’s roughly what a scientific revolution is.
My point is that there’s no model to “and therefore it was probably designed”. There’s no understanding, there’s no explanation, there are no testable predictions. You’ve got bupkus, baby.
Well, to be fair, it also explains the rate of change of organisms.
Slow, or fast, or both.
Do you understand that some mammals (monotremes) don’t have placentas at all while others (marsupials) have much simpler ones than eutherians have? Already we’re getting gradual evolution of characteristics without even resorting to molecules or fossils.
per wiki
Then you failed to read the part of your own quote where it says “Placentas are a defining characteristic of placental mammals, but are also found in some non-mammals with varying levels of development.” True, as they say the placentas they’re talking about aren’t homologous to mammalian placentas, but it shows there is a gradual pathway to evolution of such organs.
Except it does not share that weakness. Here’s my choice of paper from 2016: https://www.nature.com/articles/nmicrobiol20153
The problem you have is there is no paper for any year you can link to that relates to Intelligent Design. So now I have demonstrated that the evolution “argument” does not share the weakness you admit is present in Intelligent Design.
The origin of species illustrated by laboratory experiments. Now, your turn to admit that evolution does not share that weakness you admit ID has or discover your own levels of honor are lacking.
phoodoo,
Yes, that’s right. Your description of evolution and what it explains is spot on. And nonsensical. And that’s why your alternative that explains all the data will be accepted immediately once you get around to saying what it actually is. When are you planning to do that, out of interest? Or do you have a sniping quota to meet first?
HAHA, this is your favorite paper! Its an abstract and you just quoted essentially the ENTIRE abstract, which tells us absolutely nothing about the mechanisms of evolution. Just that somethings happen. And its your favorite paper.
You are nothing if not absurdly funny Omagain.
I guess phoodoo has not read it because it is behind a paywall. Here is a PDF of the entire paper, phoodoo.
The point is not whether I have read it, it is has Omagain even read it, and can he explain what it is supposed to be saying. He claims it is a paper on the origin of species illustrated by laboratory experiments.
Do tell.
phoodoo,
Shrug.
Still waiting for your favourite ID supporting paper of 2016.
phoodoo,
We kinda know a bit about those already. Not every paper has to have everything we know in it.
I assumed he’d have access via his university or similar. Phoodoo, if getting access is a problem there are solutions.
Mung,
You said that at one point. Ironic huh?
OMagain,
Show may a paper that experimentally supports the claim one specie can transition into another?
Richard Lenski’s LTEE!
Why did you bother to quote me, your response had nothing to do with the question asked in the quote.
I’m not here to defend or explain evolution to you. If you want to understand it there are routes you can take. Whereas there is nowhere I can go to learn about your particular version of ID except asking you about it.
The problem you have is there is no paper for any year you can link to that relates to Intelligent Design. So now I have demonstrated that the evolution “argument” does not share the weakness you admit is present in Intelligent Design. Do you agree?
What is the equivalent paper I should be demanding from you regarding Intelligent Design?
Is homoploid hybrid speciation not one species transitioning into another? It’s not a plant in this case, interesting no?
Kantian Naturalist,
I agree that evolution relies on inference to the best explanation. I would argue that even though it is the best material explanation the conflicting data or lack of explanation of how new complex features are formed open the door for other explanations like design. I grant you the point that it is limited but given the current standard of inference to the best explanation it is a way to explain the data.
I agree. The inference that life shares a common ancestor does not tell us how the diversity of life occurred it just says it happened. I think the design inference is telling us the answer is outside space time as is the origin of matter.
This is his edge of evolution argument which was very important in showing how difficult it is for random genetic change to deliver a complex function. He also introduced the irreducible complexity argument.
Kantian Naturalist,
I agree with your first point that a theory needs a testable and predictive model. The theory of general relativity or Newtons theory of gravity are examples. Neither intelligent design or evolution can produce a testable model. An interesting discussion is why.
That’s not very interesting unless and until you actually provide that design based explanation.
Can you do so? If not, how do you even know there is one?
Are you saying that your alternative is non-material?
That’s simply not true and you know it.
Well there we have it folks. An unknown unknowable explanation is prefered over what we’ve scraped together with our own hands.
Inference to the most meaningless “explanation.”
Glen Davidson
Whatever is outside of space-time cannot be empirically verified. On your version, “the design inference” can’t be tested by any scientific practices. Hence it can’t be part of any scientific explanation.
I also suspect that you’re assuming that intelligence — the ‘source’ of ‘design’ — isn’t “material”. There’s no good reason to believe that.
Kantian Naturalist,
I agree.
If it is outside space time that explains why we a struggling to explain life’s diversity with only material cause. It can be a scientific discussion depending on how you define science. If you define science as limited to empirical and testable methods then evolution and design explaining life’s diversity are both outside of science.
So far some ID’s experiments have been to rule out Darwin’s claim of natural selection explaining life’s diversity. They have been reasonably effective in creating doubt but proving a negative is a challenge. The others have been to try and detect design but this again ended up trying to prove that natural selection was no more powerful then a random search. So far they have not made it past Joe and Tom’s criticisms but again have raised doubt especially when function or a selection step requires a complex system like the flagellar motor. A complex system like this requires the organization of greater than 100k nucleotides which has 4^100k possible sequences.
I really don’t know if the source is material or non material but this is an interesting discussion on its own.
Are you making the claim that the source is material? How would you support that claim?