UPDATE: So far NO IDEAS as to how the theory of evolution can be falsified have been proposed…To make things worst, nobody so far picked up any of MY SUGGESTED IDEAS how to falsify evolution – now clearly numbered from 1-4.
It makes one wonder what the bases are for believing in the theory of evolution if no one seems to even want to at least try to falsify it…
Please keep in mind that by falsifying evolution you can refute many claims by the proponents of ID!!! Isn’t it what Darwin’s faithful want to do?
This OP is just a prelude to hopefully many future ones, where I would like to focus on the specific examples of how to falsify the theory of evolution…
This OP gives everyone an opportunity for the input on no doubt the many available ways how to experimentally falsify evolution…
As most of you know, Darwinists and post-Darwinists, for unknown reasons, are reluctant to experimentally prove their beliefs, so by the series of the OPs on the many possible ways of falsifying evolution, we can hopefully encourage Darwinists and the like, to do so for their own good… I could definitely help with that…
Here are some ideas on how to falsify evolution that I have come across so far:
How a walking mammal can evolve into an aquatic one?
1. Just as an example, let’s say I would like to evolve some aquatic functions…
How long would it take for me to see some evolutionary changes, if I spend most of the day in the water and what would they be? How about several generations of water-lovers? Can someone make a prediction, as evolutionists often do?
2. How about growing a bacterium without a flagellum, knockout the genes for the flagellum, or make the flagellum not fully functional and see whether the bacterium will evolve anything at least resembling a flagellum or evolves a better functionality of it…
3. How to evolve a function of an existing appendage that is no longer in full use to fully function again? How to make emus and ostriches to fly again?
4. How about finches? Since their beak size seems to change within one generation, could they evolve into another species within short period of time if put under selective pressure or something?
Let’s come up with ideas and put some organisms under selective pressure or whatever makes the organism evolve, and see if we can falsify evolution, so that we can end the speculations, once and for all, about who is right and who is wrong; Darwinists or Intelligent Design proponents…
Let us not hear any excuses anymore!
Let experimental science speak the truth!
I don’t think anybody in the right frame of mind would object to what I propose here… unless…. one doesn’t have the confidence in his or her preconceived ideas that could potentially be exposed…
Let’s begin!
Please try to keep this OP as clean as possible, so that as many new commentators as possible can get involved…
I will not respond to comments that are motivated by anger, hate, discrimination or false accusations etc…
Thank you in advance! 🙂
Why should anyone respond to an OP motivated by hate and ignorance? Other than to note how hypocritical your OP + comment are, anyway.
Go look up some of the selection experiments and observations that are done. Your ignorance isn’t any compulsion for anyone better.
Glen Davidson
Why should anyone not? Are you familiar with the genetic fallacy? Of course you are! It’s a favorite of the fake skeptics here. The ones who claim to be rational, but are in fact far from rational.
I don’t think “evolution” can be tested. I’ve previously cited at least one philosopher of biology who agrees with that. As such, we cannot directly “falsify evolution.”
Also, there are a number of different meanings for the word “evolution.” So one needs to say specifically what they are talking about. What they have in mind.
For example, does anyone doubt that gene frequencies change, or that populations change over time? Even Young Earth Creationists agree that they do.
Did the vertebrate eye start out as nothing at all resembling an eye, then a light sensitive spot appeared, then a lens formed, then a retina, all over vast period of time with slow accumulation, with each “random mutation” being favored by natural selection? I suppose of someone wanted to set out the steps they think happened and the order in which they happened we might be able to subject that to some sort of “test.” But whether natural selection favored each step of the process? I’ve no idea how you would test that claim.
There is a distinct possibility that your line would go extinct. And that might not take many generations.
ID is not anti-evolution.
Interesting…On what do you base this claim?
What is ID against then? Darwinian evolution?
An iquana floated from the south american mainland to the galapagos islands. Magically, at the same time, more arrived, so that there was an interbreeding population.
They began to swim. And then eat underwater. And then changed so that they could stay under longer. And changed so they could deal with the cold water. etc. etc.
So I wouldn’t rule out that J-Mac could be the start of something that in the future will be featured on National Geographic as a miracle of evolution.
If there are different meanings of the word evolution as you claim, how do you know that at least one or more of those meanings what evolution stands for cannot be tested?
I have given some examples as to what I meant by what I mean by the word evolution Isn’t it clear enough?
Yes. But no one here knows what that means, lol. I guess that explains a lot.
Maybe…How about you and I change the understanding or the lack of what ID stands for?
This is exactly my point! I just need more ideas to do it…
Joe Felsenstein claims there are 10 billion species on this planet and all of them evolving…in transition state…There is got to be a way of proving that claim….
What beliefs? Be specific and give examples.
What are “Darwinists” and “post-Darwinists”? Be specific, and give concrete real-world examples where both were “reluctant to experimentally prove” these beliefs.
Then already now your post has become an incoherent mess that has nothing to do with evolution. Individuals don’t evolve, populations of organisms and species do.
You will never see evolutionary change in yourself.
Yeah, you’ll drown if you’re as competent a swimmer as you are a thinker.
Nobody says a flagellum-less bacterium once evolved through intermediate stages of assemblages of proteins that had no function. So that “test” wouldn’t say anything about whether flagellums could or did evolve.
Like your brain? Get your kids adopted by parents that send them to school, that’d put the “head appendage” back into use in your family.
The fact of evolutionary change, or the accuracy of the inferred history of life, is not contingent on this particular transformation taking place.
My dick size can change in a matter of seconds, and my belly can in months.
Anyway, you’ve already now conceded that evolutionary change happens.
What is a short period of time in your opinion? What counts as another species to you? Is the fact of evolution contingent on a specific time-to-speciation for finches that you find personally satisfying or compelling? No.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_evolution
So now it’s your turn to prove your alternative. Let’s see the IDcreationism experiments, right? How much life have you created? The totality of creationist history has succeeded in creating and/or intelligently designing how many new life forms? None? Really? So by your own standards (which I don’t accept because they’re stupid) creationism is then falsified, right?
J-Mac,
What would falsify Darwinian evolution is if the measured variation during several generations of reproduction were deemed to be inadequate to explain how a transition occurred. We know variation comes from genetic recombination but how much really comes from mutations?
Maybe if it were discovered to be inadequate.
Making it up like IDists do doesn’t actually count.
Glen Davidson
I think next J Mac should do a post about how Alan and Neils evolved the ability to read without seeing.
Surely that is a biological wonder.
So, which part of my claim, which you quoted, do you think this video disproves? lol
Wouldn’t you need an original species that transitioned since all species are not claimed to transition?
What would falsify design?
Rumraket,
This is the first and the last time I’m telling you that I WILL NOT RESPOND TO THIS KIND OF COMMENTS…
I try to have a civilized discussion about something one would think you would appreciated and for some reason you feel threatened by it…
I wonder why?
Goodbye!
How do you know variation comes from recombination? What about the way you know that is different from the way other people claim to know how much variation comes from mutations? Really, it’s very simple, especially in the age of genomic sequencing. You can actually see the germ line mutation rate. You can tell what comes from the father, what comes from the mother, and what is new.
I’m actually reading a book now on people who are doing evolution experiments in the field.
Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution
Of course, this means that Darwin and a century of biologists who followed him were wrong. So in at least one case Darwinism has been falsified. Not that it will matter.
Good point! Thanks.
I’ll think about that… lol
He said how a transition occurred, past tense. Historical. But if you know what animals will transition into say 100,000 years from now you certainly could use present day organisms.
Sorry to bring in the topic of design, just thought maybe what falsifies design could falsify evolution.
Sounds interesting…I will order it …thanks.
BTW: Reg. Endosymbiosis, just to be clear: I don’t claim that symbionts don’t happen…I have seen more than once,with my own eyes, one cell organism engulfed by another …
What evolutionists claim symbionts can do, or have done, I doubt very much though…
Oh dear, you won’t insult us more than you already did with your baseless BS in the OP?
We are so sad.
Glen Davidson
John Harshman,
You have made this claim before but not supported it well. I think the accuracy of these direct measurements are highly suspect and indeed hard to control.
colewd,
You can tell what comes from the father, what comes from the mother, and what is new.
I think the new is what everyone would be interested in…especially what evolutionary effect it has on the evolved organism… if any and how to measure it…
newton,
You need to show that the mutation rate is too little to generate what we see from the DNA evidence.
A big step is falsifying design in biology is to show the sequence of an irreducibly complex system generated by random mutation natural selection or other natural mechanisms.
The next step is tougher, showing that life can generate itself on earth.
Actually, it’s much easier to falsify design. Just look for the results of the limits of evolutionary processes in life, which an intelligent designer could easily overcome.
As it happens, that’s exactly what we see. That’s why you’re busily moving the goalposts.
Glen Davidson
And the crowd gasps in amazement. 🙂 🙂 🙂
I guess I read my mind too
J-Mac,
You’d get less crap from people if you dialled down the arrogance. Thanks in advance!
Mung,
How does a book falsify ‘Darwinism’ (whatever you might mean by that)? Don’t you actually have to do something a bit stronger in falsification?
colewd,
How have you supported the claim that most variation comes from recombination and not mutation? Missed that.
What is the original source of the variation that is being recombined? If you just reshuffle without change, everything would eventually become identical – the inbreeding coefficient of the population would increase, even if there is nothing one would conventionally call inbreeding.
Confidence one must have..
What makes you think the accuracy is suspect and hard to control? How am I supposed to support my claim? And I ask again how you know how much variation arises from recombination.
J-Mac,
Thanks, Yoda.
I’m suspecting that the claims that Darwin was wrong are so much press release hype. Losos has done a lot of work showing that similar species subjected to similar environments will tend to evolve in similar ways. I don’t see that as upsetting too many people. If he draws the lesson that every step in evolution is inevitable (which I doubt he would), then he’s way overinterpreting. I would be interested in knowing exactly what the book overturns about “Darwinism”.
Confidence is one thing, but that’s not what comes across. You sneer. Then whine when people are crappy back. If you want to communicate, winding people up is not the way to do it.
John Harshman,
Sounds like a version of the line pursued by Conway Morris in Life’s Solution.
That has been calculated for the human genome, how did it turn out?
That might falsify the necessity for design but it would not falsify design.
As hard as showing it can’t?
Is Yoda your nickname? 😉
J-Mac,
Character in Star Wars. Little bloke, pointy ears. Distinctive sentence construction he had.
You can sense all those subtle emotions just from my OPs and comments?
Maybe. But Losos has better data, and I’m supposing his claims are not nearly as extreme — at least they haven’t been when I’ve heard him talk or read his papers — and that his explanation doesn’t resemble Conway Morris’s.
J-Mac,
Neither sneering nor whining are emotions, and you don’t do either subtly.