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!
Aha…
sneer- (verb)
gerund or present participle: sneering
smile or speak in a contemptuous or mocking manner.
“she had sneered at their bad taste”
synonyms: smirk, curl one’s lip, smile disparagingly, smile contemptuously, smile cruelly”
I guess you can see me doing all that somehow…
Oh… you call me Yoda??? 😉
The theory of evolution is based on millions of observations over hundreds of years. No single experiment would falsify the entire theory. You will need to be more specific. Most of your suggestions would be very hard to test in experiments. The events you doubt can be explained by evolution took place over millions of years, in populations of unknown size in unknown environments.That is difficult to simulate in the lab.
There are many observations that would show that evolution as it is understood was not the only process occurring. If we were to observe some new species of animal suddenly appearing in large numbers in a puff of smoke, that would be something other than evolution. If we saw winged insects whose wings developed in the egg in the same way that bats’ wings develop in utero, rather than in a way similar to other insects’, that would not be explained by evolution. But none of those observations have occurred.
There are plenty of observations which had they been made would have falsified evolution. Having the phylogenetic tree made from the fossil record be wildly discordant with the one made from extant genomes would falsify evolution. Discovering the concept of “kinds” was real and identifying the barrier which makes it impossible for one “kind” to evolve into another “kind” would do it too. But those ToE killers weren’t made.
It’s hard to think of any one observation now which would falsify evolutionary theory since it wasn’t founded on one piece of evidence. It’s the consilience of evidence from dozens of different scientific disciplines and millions of data points gathered over 150+ years which give ToE its strength. It would take something drastic like the space aliens showing up and confirming we are just characters in their big computer simulation.
From the genetic record as well as the fossil record. The genetic evidence is particularly strong.
Molecular evolution tracks macroevolutionary transitions in Cetacea
Unless you have some other magic ID-Creationist explanation for the genetic evidence.
John Harshman,
Looking at the error rates in current measurement equipment.
J Biomol Tech. 2016 Dec; 27(4): 125–128.
Published online 2016 Sep 16. doi: 10.7171/jbt.16-2704-002
PMCID: PMC5026502
Monitoring Error Rates In Illumina Sequencing
Leigh J. Manley,* Duanduan Ma,* and Stuart S. Levine†
Author information ► Copyright and License information ►
By your criterion Intelligent Design has been falsified.
The reducible complexity of a mitochondrial molecular machine
Clements et al
PNAS vol. 106 no. 37 September 15, 2009
Abstract: Molecular machines drive essential biological processes, with the component parts of these machines each contributing a partial function or structural element. Mitochondria are organelles of eukaryotic cells, and depend for their biogenesis on a set of molecular machines for protein transport. How these molecular machines evolved is a fundamental question. Mitochondria were derived from an á-proteobacterial endosymbiont, and we identified in á-proteobacteria the component parts of a mitochondrial protein transport machine. In bacteria, the components are found in the inner membrane, topologically equivalent to the mitochondrial proteins. Although the bacterial proteins function in simple assemblies, relatively little mutation would be required to convert them to function as a protein transport machine. This analysis of protein transport provides a blueprint for the evolution of cellular machinery in general.
A theory of non-evolution has even more observations. Look at all the stasis and extinction over the last hundred years. Same could be said for the lack of any sort of abiogenesis and/or spontaneous generation.
The actual observed evidence cuts both ways.
I respect that view. On the other hand, if a poof was the origin of many species, your insistence on seeing such a miracle with your own eyes would prevent you from seeing the truth. So, I take it, no gap of inference short of a miracle before your eyes would convince you of creation and/or intelligent design.
That’s a respectable position in some ways, but what do you have to gain if you are right and what do you have to lose if you are wrong.
If you feel you neither gain nor lose by being right or wrong, then why should you care about these questions? For example, there is the question of the size of Alexander the Great’s armies when he fought the Persians. There is an objective answer, but no one will probably ever know the exact figure. I have nothing much at stake by being right or wrong on the question.
In contrast, for some here, the question of creation does create a personal stake for them.
Evolutionism is a hypothesis/claimed theory of biological processes.
To falsify a “theory” of biology one must be able to address the evidence of the theory.
A biology theory must be, above all else, based on biological evidences.
So its up to evolutionists to provide the biology processes evidence for THOSE who would attempt to falsify it.
Yet they don’t and can’t.
This because , say 90% , of evolutionism is based on geology, comparaitive anatomy(itself a after the fact result from bio processes), genetics(after the fact also),biogeography, etc.
So falsifying evolutionism is a not doable thing since one is not falsifying the actual ‘theory”.
One can’t falsify these bio processes and its not about timlines.
Unless your friendly neighbourhood evolutionist can present a list or item!!!
No Bill.
If the claim is that intelligent design really did take place in the history of life on Earth (which I presume is the claim that ID proponents make), then showing that some entity could evolve wouldn’t demonstrate that the entity found in life was not designed.
Intelligent Design needs to make very specific predictions that follow from the hypothesis that ID happened in the history of life. Such that if we don’t find these predicted features of design, then design is falsified. “Evolution can’t produce irreducibly complex structures” is not a prediction of design. It is not something that would follow logically if ID happened in the history of life.
You and J-mac really don’t understand how this falsification thing even works. Your thoughts about it are too vague and messy.
This would ALSO not falsify design in biology. Even if it could be shown that life CAN originate without intelligent design, it wouldn’t show that life was not intelligently designed.
You need to spend more time thinking about how to separate and identify what CAN happen from what DID happen.
Evolution CAN happen =/= ID did not happen.
ID did happen =/= evolution can’t happen.
It really is a lot more complicated than this. Imagine for example that all of the entire history of life happened without any guiding hand, or ID, or foresight, except that, at some point 3.812.443.099 years ago, aliens came to Earth and implanted a fully formed and functional bacterial flagellum and the genes to make one, in a single bacterium. Then in parallel, the archaeal flagellum evolved.
In this situation, all other irreducibly complex structures and functions in life evolved, except the bacterial flagellum, which was designed. So even if we could show with an experiment in real time, that a bacterial flagellum could evolve, it would not thereby falsify the claim that the bacterial flagellum found in the wildtype organisms also evolved. Right?
So a design hypothesis has to make predictions that follow if design is true. Something that uniquely would have to be the case if intelligent design took place in the past. “You can’t evolve a flagellum in an experiment” isn’t a prediction that follows from the claim “ID took place in the history of life”.
Stasis and exinction isn’t evidence against evolution. At all. Besides, saying the word “stasis” is too simplistic. In fact it commits the fallacy of exclusion by ignoring the genetic evidence that mutation and recombination happens and allele frequencies change in populations.
You might say that superficially extant species have changed relatively little over the last few hundred years, and then you might call that “stasis”. But how much evolution should have happened over a few centuries at most, if evolution was true? If the level of change we see is within the expected range, sticking the label “stasis” on it isn’t actually evidence against the reality of evolutionary change.
Nor is the lack of observed cases of abiogenesis evidence against the hypothesis that abiogenesis happened. The hypothesis isn’t “life originated by a physical and chemical process, and it will continue to do so all the time in all environments“.
J-Mac,
You aren’t getting anywhere with this OP because it is all over the place. I have no idea what you want from us: Most of your ideas seem to propose tests of transmutation of species by some sort of Lamarckian mechanism. If you are interested in that kind of experiments, better get your library card ready, because you need to read some very OLD books. Not very relevant to modern evolutionary theory I am afraid.
Word to the wise: Stick to some concrete examples because they help focus the discussion. I actually liked some of the topics you brought up. Be REALLY clear about what the topic is, so we don’t get another semantic discusion like the one about eukaryogenesis versus origin of organelles. And let us in on your own ideas; I know you feel more comfortable criticising others, but I’d like to learn what makes you tick.
I am thinking about formulating a new internet law:
“Any discussion between creationists and evolutionists on the internet, regardless of the topic it starts out with, will at some point default to the origin of life or the big bang”
Perhaps it already exists?
J-Mac,
Bloody hell, it’s like pulling teeth. I was teasing you over the sentence construction “Confidence one must have..”. I’m guessing English isn’t your first language? In which case you might be unaware that the word ‘sneer’ can apply to written work too – Merriam-Webster: “to speak or write in a scornfully jeering manner”. You do that. Of course we do too, by the bucketload. But the point remains, if you have a point to put across, antagonising the people you want to make that point to is counter-productive. Fun, but counter-productive.
How long did this “explosion” take J-Mac? Be as precise as you can.
It certainly seems that way. I suspect the problem is insurmountable. Science only addresses “how” questions. It might tell us one day how the universe came to be. I don’t think we’ll ever hear scientists explaining why there is a universe.
Those of a religious persuasion appear to want “why” answers.
stcordova,
Sure it does, but that does not justify any and all methods used to support the conclusion. Particularly the cherry-picking. Sure you want creation to be true. In which case, why not just say ‘it’s true’ and get on with life? If you want to engage with evidence, though, you have to be open to the possibility that it points against your hopes. But, that part of the world of evidence seems to be swept under your lumpy carpet.
1 instance of special creation would not invalidate evolution, any more than 1 J-Mac-satisfying example of evolution in the lab would invalidate special creation. Either, both or neither could be present in the history of life. What people are doing, badly, is trying to falsify something in a rather peculiar way, and then saying that, having eliminated A, all that’s left is B. Yet the B in your case is Creation; in J-Mac’s some kind of Force, in others occasional tinkering … well, whatever, first, eliminate your A, for which you need to prove the negative.
J-Mac,
The irony here is of course your attitude to such experimental science.
Here, let me remind you. You said:
I responded:
You then said no, you won’t be doing that:
So it seems you are happy to claim from one side of your mouth that lab experiments are not being done that should be done and from the other that such an experiment is not even possible. And even if it were you don’t believe it happened so you’d not do that experiment anyway.
And you do know you don’t have to believe something happened in order to determine if it did or did not happen, right?
So it seems you are happy to dig at people who are not doing the work you claim they should be doing despite the fact that you yourself admit that such work cannot be done.
Your understanding of the scientific process is unmatched. You deserve to be sneered at.
stcordova,
Further to this: it matters to me in quite a fundamental way that I understand the world as best I can while I’m here. Nonetheless, if I saddle up the wrong horse, it’s simply an honest mistake. Not-having-a-stake in the answer is actually liberating, because you can try and be objective. Whether you succeed or not is another matter, but I am disinterested in an approach that hunts around for a desired conclusion. If Created, we were given brains. If we are to be punished for using them, but coming to the ‘wrong’ conclusion – stupid game, IMO. That God is a petty idiot.
The comment this is in reply to is a detailed response to each of your points then a request for evidence to support your version of events. There was nothing uncivilised in it, or you’d have quoted the offending passage. It seems that simply having your claims questioned is insufferable to you.
I can see why in your mind that is uncivilised. Tell me, brother, in your church are the women allowed to speak? Or do they know their place.
What does Sal have to gain anyway? An infinity of sitting at the feet of god in heaven? Why would anyone want that? That sounds distinctly like hell to me.
That’s what a sound empirical approach to the matter exists to answer.
You only get to know what’s at stake if you let the answer come from the evidence, rather than from wishful thinking.
You’re making your bets according to highly dubious claims in ancient texts, while science is discovering real answers regarding origins.
Glen Davidson
This shouldn’t even enter into the equation if you’re primarily interested in what is true. It shouldn’t be about what you can gain or lose, it should just be about what the facts are, what they indicate and how we find out.
And somehow are very sure of not how.
And then maybe build a big shining tower where lots of great scientists who neither read nor do experiments can live and plan other great things.
Perhaps you’ve forgotten. J-Mac doesn’t read books (or long articles) in any language: he’s far beyond that.
Really far.
Maybe he can get some audiobooks?
If I’m understanding you correctly, this would imply you would need to see several instances of creation to establish there is a Creator.
But as Darwin wrote in Origin of Species, the Creator could still use evolution. Let’s suppose for the sake of argument, as Darwin at least hypothetically suggested, there is a Creator. How severe of a gap, as in orphan features, would persuade you the Creator used miracle vs. an ordinary process to create the features of life?
For me, the structures would have to be violations of physical and/or chemical expectation. Darwin essentially claims physical and chemical expectation is toward machine like systems, he called such physical and chemical expectation collectively “natural selection”. To my mind, what Darwin regarded as natural is actually un-nautral, more akin to a miracle. This is like expecting I could take a potato and evolve it into a rabbit in geological time (to paraphrase Fred Hoyle).
Under the hypothesis there is a Creator, it seems far more reasonable to assert special creation than evolution.
Now if you don’t believe in a Creator when in fact there is a Creator, then one is stuck with an epistemology that guarantees you’ll get the wrong answer. If there is no cost of you being wrong, then no harm no foul. Spend your time learning truth where you have high certainty of arriving at truth, like say chemistry and applied physics. Now if you want a little drama (aka uncertainty) mixed with truth, one can watch sporting events or the options on futures financial markets.
If I have no personal stake in a question, and there are so many unknowns, then I simply find it a poor investment of time to debate such questions.
For a few hours I was fascinated with the question of the size Alexander the Great’s army when he fought the Persians. But once it was apparent an accurate answer to my question was infeasible, I moved on.
stcordova,
No, you are not understanding me correctly. I’m not trying to establish if there’s a creator. It simply wouldn’t invalidate evolution to make that observation, be it once or several times.
It doesn’t sound like hell to me.
That said, what’s in it for you if evolution is right? What do you have to gain personally by proving to yourself you and a monkey shared the same great great….grand ma?
Aren’t there other interesting scientific questions that are much more accessible, like say in biochemistry?
stcordova,
I would wish to take the combination of ‘orphan’ and shared features as a whole. If there is (say) 95% sequence commonality, that cannot be swept under the carpet as irrelevant. Like looking just at the gaps between trees and concluding there is no wood.
There is a process that would create the pattern without involving a miracle. So I would be asking why that has been dismissed, simply because there are differences. At a fine scale, every SNP is an inexplicable ‘gap’ that could (if you were perverse enough) only be bridged by the Divine, because all intermediates are ‘lost’ (non-existent, in the case of a single mutation). Using supposed ‘orphan’ genes to prove a miracle is not far from equally dense.
Thank you for your response and clarifying my misunderstandings.
So what would persuade you there is a Creator (aka God the Creator) if not a miracle or several miracles before your eyes? If no amount of miracles would persuade you, then no amount gaps which I demonstrate in the biological world would persuade you.
I respect that, but I’m only point out, you’ve then adopted an epistemology that will give you the wrong answer about truth if indeed there is a Creator.
I’ve effectively said, there is really no epistemology without some degree of faith, the only certainty is pain, beyond our personal pain we make inferences and faith statements about the structure of reality. There is no formal way to demonstrate the right answer even if there is a right answer, and we see this in Gödel’s insights to mathematics.
Ergo, I’ve adopted a policy of accepting epistemologies that minimize my perceived exposure to painful outcomes — i.e. Pascal’s Wager.
J-Mac,
Another tip: try and use the ‘blockquote’ tag for things other people say, rather than ‘strong’ for the things you say. It would make for greater readability.
Sorry Sal, there could both be a God and you and monkeys could be cousins.
stcordova,
I wince, therefore I am?
That’s because creationists are always arguing “god of the gaps”. And those two are the best gaps that they can find.
TFW your experiment lasts much longer than you…
stcordova,
That doesn’t explain why you spend so much time on this. Just believe, and everything will (hopefully) be OK. No need to trouble yourself with evidence.
Or do you buy into the idea that Heaven is like a pyramid selling scheme – you get extra credits if you can recruit more?
The test is still in progress, we certainly know more hows than we used to.
Practical but occasionally results in things like Salem
stcordova,
The gaps you see don’t look out of the ordinary to me, is the thing.
That doesn’t follow. It could easily be the case, logically, that I am wrong about the Creator and you are wrong about the ‘gaps’.
Ah, but if you have a stake in something, you adjust your wager, or at least your eagerness to make a wager based on the evidence available. It was like counting cards in the casino. One time the dealer had not dealt out an ace from the deck (shoe), and it made me want to sit there at the card table a little longer. He kept dealing and still no ace, and it made me even more eager to stay and play! The when there were hardly any cards left for him to deal out, ergo, the deck was loaded with aces. I could hardly contain my excitement. I started moving some heavy money into the betting circle. 🙂
Too bad I couldn’t keep up this style of playing, the casinos around the USA kicked me out and started circulating my photos as among the most UN-wanted…
Like a lot of people, I’m curious to test the limits of what evidence is available. It’s like watching a sporting event. A recent example is my exploration of nylonases. I wanted to see if Ohno was right. It was satisfying to find out he was wrong, Ken Miller was wrong, the NCSE was wrong, Dennis Venema was wrong.
I want to see how many gaps of improbability (the better phrase is “violations of natural expectation”) can be demonstrated. I demonstrated one such violation with Chromatin architecture. There are more gaps.
I also find the question of C14 and other YLC/YEC friendly anomalies compelling. They become more compelling every day.
Why? What is being discovered every day that makes the evidence for YEC more compelling?
Perhaps you can give a list of the past say, 10, discoveries that are making the case for YEC?
Shame to not publish a paper then, eh? Or are you satisfied with TSZ as an outlet for this “work”?
OOH! I know this one. The correct answer is:
“I would rather be the offspring of two apes than be a man and afraid to face the truth.”
or to be fair, perhaps it was:
“If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence & yet who employs these faculties & that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.”
Educator William J. Bennetta already made a most astute observation about Creationists:
“In all of these efforts, [to promote creationism in schools] the creationists make abundant use of a simple tactic: They lie. They lie continually, they lie prodigiously, and they lie because they must.” — WJB
The satisfaction of knowing you were intellectually honest and used your scientific knowledge to help better understand life’s history on the planet.
What is “in it” for any scientists in any scientific field?
It is interesting that Sal thinks scientific understanding should be based on “what’s in it for Sal”.
What makes you think I won’t try? 🙂
That said, a public draft will be available soon for you all to provide free-of-charge editorial improvements which I can use to write a paper that might end up somewhere.