Why should evolutionary biology be called science rather than history?

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May 8, 2014

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From ScienceDaily:

A study that has ‘weighed’ hundreds of dinosaurs suggests that shrinking their bodies may have helped the group that became birds to continue exploiting new ecological niches throughout their evolution, and become hugely successful today.

…

Dinosaurs aren’t extinct; there are about 10,000 species alive today in the form of birds. We wanted to understand the evolutionary links between this exceptional living group, and their Mesozoic relatives, including well-known extinct species like T. rex, Triceratops, and Stegosaurus,’ said Dr Roger Benson of Oxford University’s Department of Earth Sciences, who led the study. ‘We found exceptional body mass variation in the dinosaur line leading to birds, especially in the feathered dinosaurs called maniraptorans. These include Jurassic Park’s Velociraptor, birds, and a huge range of other forms, weighing anything from 15 grams to 3 tonnes, and eating meat, plants, and more omnivorous diets.’

The team believes that small body size might have been key to maintaining evolutionary potential in birds, which broke the lower body size limit of around 1 kilogram seen in other dinosaurs.

Well, a brick can’t fly; that’s uncontroversial. But there is, of course, way more to becoming a bird.

This sort of analysis is interesting. It is a reasonable interpretation of the past. That’s conventionally called history. Why, in the absence of an ability to predict anything in the present, should it be called science?

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Comments

DaRook, And now you're equivocating between historical and history. Because a science deals with historical events that doesn't make it history and not science. Is intelligent design theory history and not science?
Empirical sciences deal with the five senses; sight, touch, hearing feeling and smell.
And forensics doesn't involve any of this so forensics is not empirical science. Is that your argument? Taking into consideration what can be observed of current facts and processes and using these to make inferences, including making inferences about past events does not turn a science history. The whole argument is just absurd. It does nothing to further intelligent design theory. And that's my last post in this thread. cheersMung_{May 10, 2014
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Mung, It's historical because "the events in question have already occurred and are in the past". Empirical sciences deal with the five senses; sight, touch, hearing feeling and smell. No one observed these evolutionary changes in the past (in fact, they are not observed in the present either), so we have only the evidence those events left behind and those need to be interpreted somehow. Evolutionist tries to interpret the evidence using only known natural processes, ID thinks that some Intelligent Designer(s) best explains the evidence. Creationism also believes in an Intelligent Designer, but that Designer is the God of the Bible. They all deal with past events, therefore, they are all forensic sciences. With no observation and indirect testing, they all try to interpret the evidence that best conforms to the best explanation. The one that explains the preponderance of evidence will be favored, but, without a time machine, we will never know if they are correct.DaRook_{May 10, 2014
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Many sciences, such as geology, astronomy, archaeology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology, work in the same way: No data are seen as they are created, but only the remnants, or proxy data, of those events are left behind.
So what? That does not make them history and not science. Is ID also history rather than science?
they assist the investigation through the analysis of the physical remains of the criminal activity.
And the physical remains are present, not past. The DNA, for example, is actually there. One doesn't have to study the past to find it.Mung_{May 9, 2014
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My bad. "Forensic Science is History" is a chapter in the book "Fundamentals of Forensic Science". It is not a book in and of itself.DaRook_{May 9, 2014
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Mung, Dr. Max M. Houck is an internationally-recognized forensic expert with research interests in forensic science, education, and the forensic enterprise and its industries. He wrote a book entitled,"Forensic Science is History",which contained the following passage: "Forensic science is a historical science: The events in question have already occurred and are in the past. Forensic scientists do not view the crime as it occurs (unless they’re witnesses); they assist the investigation through the analysis of the physical remains of the criminal activity. Many sciences, such as geology, astronomy, archaeology, paleontology, and evolutionary biology, work in the same way: No data are seen as they are created, but only the remnants, or proxy data, of those events are left behind. Archaeologists, for example, analyze cultural artifacts of past civilizations to interpret their activities and practices." There may be aspects of all these disciplines that may be empirical. Take, for instance, paleontology. A fossil can be weighed and measured and maybe even articulated into a skeletal structure, but to say that it is ancestral to another fossil is purely conjectural.DaRook_{May 9, 2014
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VunderGuy, Here's a link that discusses the comparisons done by scholars: http://www.doxa.ws/Messiah/Lxx_mt.html Here's a link to a modern translation of the Septuagint into English (you can download the first edition for free): http://septuagint-interlinear-greek-bible.com/ Here's a link for a translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls: http://www.amazon.com/The-Complete-Dead-Scrolls-English/dp/0141197315 The academic scandal about how their publication was suppressed for 40 years (60 years after their discovery) is described here: http://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-artifacts/dead-sea-scrolls/introduction-to-the-dead-sea-scrolls/ -QQuerius_{May 9, 2014
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@Querius Speaking on the subject, where can I find the closest dead sea scroll hebrew and greek to English translation?VunderGuy_{May 8, 2014
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wd400, this might interest you if you are ever ready to admit you were mistaken in swallowing Darwinian evolution hook, line, and sinker: The Unknown Origin of Pterosaurs - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP6htc371fMbornagain77_{May 8, 2014
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@Moose Dr "On the question of history, one thing has puzzled me — many of the pterosaurs had unbelievably huge wingspans. My understanding is that they had wingspans of, like, 30 feet. My puzzle is how these creatures, at the dawn of vertebrate flight could have pulled off this task which is unfathomable for modern birds." I don't know. I once heard that the oxygen levels at that time were greater and thus allowed for large creatures requiring large lung capacity to live, I think.VunderGuy_{May 8, 2014
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The large pterasaurs are mostly azhdarchids, which where not at the dawn of reptile flight but some 100 million years older than the first pterosaurs. Some birds got pretty big (Argentavis was ~70kg) but seem to be limited from getting super-huge by the way they take-off. Some of the mechanics are described herewd400_{May 8, 2014
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On the question of history, one thing has puzzled me -- many of the pterosaurs had unbelievably huge wingspans. My understanding is that they had wingspans of, like, 30 feet. My puzzle is how these creatures, at the dawn of vertebrate flight could have pulled off this task which is unfathomable for modern birds.Moose Dr_{May 8, 2014
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AMEN to this thread. Bulls eye. Its not science in these speculations. its not doing the scientific method before drawing or suggesting conclusions. Its doing the methodology of history. Its weighing the scant information and then speculating. This is why evolution slipped through. It never was a scientific study. it was a historical study wearing white lab coats. They are just guessing. Birds are not dinos. Its stupid. iN fact dinos are not dinos. tHey are kist kinds with some trivial like traits. its asll flaws in classification.Robert Byers_{May 8, 2014
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How ironic. The Greek Septuagint, unlike the modern Masoretic Tanakh/Old Testament, is very close to the Dead Sea Scroll translations and is the version used by Greek-speaking Jews during the time of Jesus and his talmidim and a couple hundred years before and after. Here's a literal reading (only changing the word order used in Greek) of how the first part of Genesis describes the first animal life on Earth without transliteration:
And God said, "Let the waters bring forth reptiles of living souls, and flying winged creatures upon the earth below the firmament." And it was so. And God made the great sea monsters and every soul of living creatures of reptiles which the waters brought forth according to their types, and every feathered winged creature according to type. And God beheld that good. - The Apostolic Bible Polyglot, Greek-English Interlinear, Second Edition (c) 1996, 2013 by Charles Van der Pool
Reptiles ... flying winged creatures ... great sea monsters ... feathered winged creatures. :o -QQuerius_{May 8, 2014
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DaRook:
Macro-evolution is more of a forensic science than empirical.
Why should forensic science be called science rather than history? Forensic science is not empirical? History is not empirical?Mung_{May 8, 2014
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Here is, what a Darwinist termed, a ‘horrendously complex’ metabolic pathway (which operates as if it were ’4-Dimensional):
ExPASy - Biochemical Pathways - interactive schematic http://web.expasy.org/cgi-bin/pathways/show_thumbnails.pl
And remember, Darwinian evolution has yet to explain a single gene of those ‘horrendously complex’ metabolic pathways.
"Charles Darwin said (paraphrase), 'If anyone could find anything that could not be had through a number of slight, successive, modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.' Well that condition has been met time and time again. Basically every gene, every protein fold. There is nothing of significance that we can show that can be had in a gradualist way. It's a mirage. None of it happens that way. - Doug Axe PhD. - Nothing In Molecular Biology Is Gradual - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5347797/
The reason why a ‘higher dimensional’ 4-Dimensional structure, such as a ‘horrendously complex metabolic pathway, would be, for all intents and purposes, completely invisible to a 3-Dimensional process, such as Natural Selection, is best illustrated by ‘flatland’:
Flatland – 3D to 4D shift – Carl Sagan – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnURElCzGc0
I personally hold that the reason why internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional instead of three dimensional is because of exactly what Darwinian evolution has consistently failed to explain the origination of. i.e. functional information. ‘Higher dimensional’ information, which is bursting at the seams in life, simply cannot be reduced to any 3-dimensional energy-matter basis:
John Lennox – Is There Evidence of Something Beyond Nature? (Semiotic Information) – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6rd4HEdffw “One of the things I do in my classes, to get this idea across to students, is I hold up two computer disks. One is loaded with software, and the other one is blank. And I ask them, ‘what is the difference in mass between these two computer disks, as a result of the difference in the information content that they posses’? And of course the answer is, ‘Zero! None! There is no difference as a result of the information. And that’s because information is a mass-less quantity. Now, if information is not a material entity, then how can any materialistic explanation account for its origin? How can any material cause explain it’s origin? And this is the real and fundamental problem that the presence of information in biology has posed. It creates a fundamental challenge to the materialistic, evolutionary scenarios because information is a different kind of entity that matter and energy cannot produce. In the nineteenth century we thought that there were two fundamental entities in science; matter, and energy. At the beginning of the twenty first century, we now recognize that there’s a third fundamental entity; and its ‘information’. It’s not reducible to matter. It’s not reducible to energy. But it’s still a very important thing that is real; we buy it, we sell it, we send it down wires. Now, what do we make of the fact, that information is present at the very root of all biological function? In biology, we have matter, we have energy, but we also have this third, very important entity; information. I think the biology of the information age, poses a fundamental challenge to any materialistic approach to the origin of life.” -Dr. Stephen C. Meyer earned his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of science from Cambridge University for a dissertation on the history of origin-of-life biology and the methodology of the historical sciences. Information and entropy – top-down or bottom-up development in living systems? Excerpt: This paper highlights the distinctive and non-material nature of information and its relationship with matter, energy and natural forces. It is proposed in conclusion that it is the non-material information (transcendent to the matter and energy) that is actually itself constraining the local thermodynamics to be in ordered disequilibrium and with specified raised free energy levels necessary for the molecular and cellular machinery to operate. A.C. McINTOSH - Dr Andy C. McIntosh is the Professor of Thermodynamics Combustion Theory at the University of Leeds. (the highest teaching/research rank in U.K. university hierarchy) Information and Thermodynamics in Living Systems - Andy C. McIntosh - May 2013 Excerpt: The third view then that we have proposed in this paper is the top down approach. In this paradigm, the information is non-material and constrains the local thermodynamics to be in a non-equilibrium state of raised free energy. It is the information which is the active ingredient, and the matter and energy are passive to the laws of thermodynamics within the system. As a consequence of this approach, we have developed in this paper some suggested principles of information exchange which have some parallels with the laws of thermodynamics which undergird this approach.,,, http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0008 Storing information in DNA – Test-tube data – Jan 26th 2013 Excerpt: Dr Goldman’s new scheme is significant in several ways. He and his team have managed to set a record (739.3 kilobytes) for the amount of unique information encoded. But it has been designed to do far more than that. It should, think the researchers, be easily capable of swallowing the roughly 3 zettabytes (a zettabyte is one billion trillion or 10^21 bytes) of digital data thought presently to exist in the world and still have room for plenty more. http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21570671-archives-could-last-thousands-years-when-stored-dna-instead-magnetic Quantum entanglement between the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA – Elisabeth Rieper, Janet Anders and Vlatko Vedral – February 2011 http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1006/1006.4053v2.pdf
Moreover, matter and energy are now both shown to reduce to ‘quantum information/entanglement’. In fact an entire human can now, theoretically, be reduced to quantum information and teleported to another location in the universe:
Quantum Teleportation Of A Human? – video https://vimeo.com/75163272
Thus not only is Information not reducible to a 3-Dimensional energy-matter basis, as is presupposed in Darwinism, but in actuality energy and matter both reduce to a information theoretic basis as is presupposed in Christian Theism:
Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe? Excerpt: In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word.” Anton Zeilinger – a leading expert in quantum teleportation:
Verse and Music:
John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. Redeemed – Big Daddy Weave http://myktis.com/songs/redeemed/
bornagain77_{May 8, 2014
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Moreover, for the vast majority of times that changes do happen to DNA, they are now known to be ‘directed mutations’ by sophisticated molecular machines, not unguided ‘random mutations’ from a cosmic ray, chemical imbalance, or some such entropy driven event as that:
How life changes itself: the Read-Write (RW) genome. – 2013 Excerpt: Research dating back to the 1930s has shown that genetic change is the result of cell-mediated processes, not simply accidents or damage to the DNA. This cell-active view of genome change applies to all scales of DNA sequence variation, from point mutations to large-scale genome rearrangements and whole genome duplications (WGDs). This conceptual change to active cell inscriptions controlling RW genome functions has profound implications for all areas of the life sciences. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23876611 Shapiro on Random Mutation: “What I ask others interested in evolution to give up is the notion of random accidental mutation.” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-a-shapiro/jerry-coyne-fails-to-unde_b_1411144.html
What should be needless to say, having ‘cell-mediated processes’ direct changes to DNA is in direct contradiction to the ‘unguided randomness’ which is held to be foundational to neo-Darwinian thought. Moreover, Natural Selection, that other great pillar upon which Darwinian evolution rests, has also been undermined as having the causal adequacy that neo-Darwinists have attributed to it. First off, to the extent that Natural Selection does do anything, Natural Selection is found to be a eliminative force not a generative force:
"Natural selection does not act on anything, nor does it select (for or against), force, maximize, create, modify, shape, operate, drive, favor, maintain, push, or adjust. Natural selection does nothing…. Having natural selection select is nifty because it excuses the necessity of talking about the actual causation of natural selection. Such talk was excusable for Charles Darwin, but inexcusable for evolutionists now. Creationists have discovered our empty “natural selection” language, and the “actions” of natural selection make huge, vulnerable targets." The Origin of Theoretical Population Genetics, 2001 (pp. 199-200) William Provine - Professor of Evolutionary Biology - Cornell University "...but Natural Selection reduces genetic information and we know this from all the Genetic Population studies that we have..." Maciej Marian Giertych - Population Geneticist - member of the European Parliament - EXPELLED - Natural Selection And Genetic Mutations - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z5-15wk1Zk From a Frog to a Prince - video (17:00 minute mark Natural Selection Reduces Genetic Information) - No Beneficial Mutations - Gitt - Spetner - Denton - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClleN8ysimg&feature=player_detailpage#t=1031 "A Dutch zoologist, J.J. Duyvene de Wit, clearly demonstrated that the process of speciation (such as the appearance of many varieties of dogs and cats) is inevitably bound up with genetic depletion as a result of natural selection. When this scientifically established fact is applied to the question of whether man could have evolved from ape-like animals,'.. the transformist concept of progressive evolution is pierced in its very vitals.' The reason for this, J.J. Duyvene de Wit went on to explain, is that the whole process of evolution from animal to man " ' . . would have to run against the gradient of genetic depletion. That is to say, . . man )should possess] a smaller gene-potential than his animal ancestors! [I] Here, the impressive absurdity becomes clear in which the transformist doctrine [the theory of evolution] entangles itself when, in flat contradiction to the factual scientific evidence, it dogmatically asserts that man has evolved from the animal kingdom!" —Op. cit., pp. 129-130. [Italics his; quotations from *J.J. Duyvene de Wit, A New Critique of the Transformist Principle in Evolutionary Biology (1965), p. 56,57.] "We found an enormous amount of diversity within and between the African populations, and we found much less diversity in non-African populations," Tishkoff told attendees today (Jan. 22) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Anaheim. "Only a small subset of the diversity in Africa is found in Europe and the Middle East, and an even narrower set is found in American Indians." Tishkoff; Andrew Clark, Penn State; Kenneth Kidd, Yale University; Giovanni Destro-Bisol, University "La Sapienza," Rome, and Himla Soodyall and Trefor Jenkins, WITS University, South Africa, looked at three locations on DNA samples from 13 to 18 populations in Africa and 30 to 45 populations in the remainder of the world.-
As well, Natural Selection is grossly inadequate to do the work required of it because of what is termed ‘the princess and the pea’ paradox. The devastating ‘princess and the pea’ paradox is clearly elucidated by Dr. John Sanford, at the 8:14 minute mark, of this following video,,,
Genetic Entropy – Dr. John Sanford – Evolution vs. Reality – video http://vimeo.com/35088933
Dr. Sanford points out, in the preceding video, that Natural Selection acts at the coarse level of the entire organism (phenotype) and yet the vast majority of mutations have effects that are only ‘slightly detrimental’, and have no noticeable effect on phenotypes, and are thus far below the power of Natural Selection to remove from genomes before they spread throughout the population.
“Selection Threshold Severely Constrains Capture of Beneficial Mutations” - John Sanford - September 6, 2013 Excerpt of concluding comments: Our findings raise a very interesting theoretical problem — in a large genome, how do the millions of low-impact (yet functional) nucleotides arise? It is universally agreed that selection works very well for high-impact mutations. However, unless some new and as yet undiscovered process is operating in nature, there should be selection breakdown for the great majority of mutations that have small impact on fitness.,,, We show that selection breakdown is not just a simple function of population size, but is seriously impacted by other factors, especially selection interference. We are convinced that our formulation and methodology (i.e., genetic accounting) provide the most biologically-realistic analysis of selection breakdown to date. http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814508728_0011
Here are a few more notes on this insurmountable ‘princess and the pea’ problem for natural selection:
Evolution vs. Genetic Entropy - Andy McIntosh - video https://vimeo.com/91162565 The GS Principle (The Genetic Selection Principle) – Abel – 2009 Excerpt: The GS Principle, sometimes called “The 2nd Law of Biology,” states that selection must occur at the molecular/genetic level, not just at the fittest phenotypic/organismic level, to produce and explain life.,,, Natural selection cannot operate at the genetic level. http://www.bioscience.org/2009/v14/af/3426/fulltext.htm
Moreover, as if that were not devastating enough as to undermining any credibility Natural Selection might have had as to having the causal adequacy to explain the highly integrated levels of overlapping functional information found in organisms, dimensionally speaking, Natural Selection is now known to not even be on the right playing field in the first place:
The predominance of quarter-power (4-D) scaling in biology Excerpt: Many fundamental characteristics of organisms scale with body size as power laws of the form: Y = Yo M^b, where Y is some characteristic such as metabolic rate, stride length or life span, Yo is a normalization constant, M is body mass and b is the allometric scaling exponent. A longstanding puzzle in biology is why the exponent b is usually some simple multiple of 1/4 (4-Dimensional scaling) rather than a multiple of 1/3, as would be expected from Euclidean (3-Dimensional) scaling. http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/~drewa/pubs/savage_v_2004_f18_257.pdf “Although living things occupy a three-dimensional space, their internal physiology and anatomy operate as if they were four-dimensional. Quarter-power scaling laws are perhaps as universal and as uniquely biological as the biochemical pathways of metabolism, the structure and function of the genetic code and the process of natural selection.,,, The conclusion here is inescapable, that the driving force for these invariant scaling laws cannot have been natural selection.” Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (London: Profile Books, 2010), p. 78-79
bornagain77_{May 8, 2014
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Actually, neo-Darwinism should be considered a full fledged pseudo-science rather than a science, a history, or even forensic science:
“nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin(ism) can be described as scientific” - Imre Lakatos (November 9, 1922 – February 2, 1974) a philosopher of mathematics and science, quote was as stated in 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture
What the vast majority of Darwinists fail to realize (or ever honestly admit to) is that Darwinian evolution is not even a 'real' physical science in any proper sense but that Darwinian evolution is more realistically thought of as a pseudo-science. Even Jerry Coyne himself, the self-appointed Grand Inquisitor of Darwinian evolution, admits that Darwinian evolution lacks the rigor of a proper physical science:
“In science’s pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history’s inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike “harder” scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture.” - Jerry A. Coyne – Of Vice and Men, The New Republic April 3, 2000 p.27 - professor of Darwinian evolution at the University of Chicago
The main reason why Darwinian evolution is more properly thought of as a pseudo-science instead of a proper science is because Darwinian evolution has no rigid mathematical basis, like other overarching physical theories of science do. A rigid mathematical basis in order to potentially falsify it (in fact math, in so far as math can be applied to Darwinian claims, constantly shows us the Darwinian evolution is astronomically unlikely),,
“On the other hand, I disagree that Darwin’s theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?” (Berlinski, D., “A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics,” Commentary, July 8, 2003) Oxford University Seeks Mathemagician — May 5th, 2011 by Douglas Axe Excerpt: “Grand theories in physics are usually expressed in mathematics. Newton’s mechanics and Einstein’s theory of special relativity are essentially equations. Words are needed only to interpret the terms. Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has obstinately remained in words since 1859.”… http://biologicinstitute.org/2011/05/05/oxford-university-seeks-mathemagician/ Active Information in Metabiology – Winston Ewert, William A. Dembski, Robert J. Marks II – 2013 Except page 9: Chaitin states [3], “For many years I have thought that it is a mathematical scandal that we do not have proof that Darwinian evolution works.” In fact, mathematics has consistently demonstrated that undirected Darwinian evolution does not work. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/view/BIO-C.2013.4/BIO-C.2013.4 HISTORY OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY – WISTAR DESTROYS EVOLUTION Excerpt: A number of mathematicians, familiar with the biological problems, spoke at that 1966 Wistar Institute,, For example, Murray Eden showed that it would be impossible for even a single ordered pair of genes to be produced by DNA mutations in the bacteria, E. coli,—with 5 billion years in which to produce it! His estimate was based on 5 trillion tons of the bacteria covering the planet to a depth of nearly an inch during that 5 billion years. He then explained that the genes of E. coli contain over a trillion (10^12) bits of data. That is the number 10 followed by 12 zeros. *Eden then showed the mathematical impossibility of protein forming by chance. http://www.pathlights.com/ce_encyclopedia/Encyclopedia/20hist12.htm Darwin's Doubt - Chapter 12 - Complex Adaptations and the Neo-Darwinian Math - Dr. Paul Giem - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFY7oKc34qs&list=SPHDSWJBW3DNUaMy2xdaup5ROw3u0_mK8t&index=7 See also Mendel's Accountant and Haldane's Ratchet: John Sanford and company
Another primary reason why Darwinian evolution is more realistically thought of as a pseudo-science rather than a proper physical science is that Darwinian evolution does not have a demonstrated empirical basis to support its claims (in fact empirical evidence also consistently shows us that Darwinian evolution is astronomically unlikely),,
“The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain – Michael Behe – December 2010 Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it “The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain. http://behe.uncommondescent.com/2010/12/the-first-rule-of-adaptive-evolution/ Where’s the substantiating evidence for neo-Darwinism? https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q-PBeQELzT4pkgxB2ZOxGxwv6ynOixfzqzsFlCJ9jrw/edit Waiting Longer for Two Mutations – Michael J. Behe Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that ‘for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years’ (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number ‘is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given’ using their model (which nonetheless “using their model” gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model. http://www.discovery.org/a/9461 Don’t Mess With ID (Overview of Behe’s ‘Edge of Evolution’ and Durrett and Schmidt’s paper at the 20:00 minute mark) – Paul Giem – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JeYJ29-I7o
Another reason why Darwinian evolution is more realistically thought of as a pseudo-science rather than a proper physical science is that the two foundational pillars of Darwinian evolution, Random Mutation/Variation and Natural Selection, are both now shown to be severely compromised as to having the causal adequacy that Darwinists have ascribed to them. For instance, although Darwinian evolution appeals to unguided ‘random mutations/variations’ to DNA as the main creative source for all evolutionary novelty, there are now known to be extensive layers of error correction in the cell to protect against any unguided “random” changes happening to DNA in the first place:
The Evolutionary Dynamics of Digital and Nucleotide Codes: A Mutation Protection Perspective – February 2011 Excerpt: “Unbounded random change of nucleotide codes through the accumulation of irreparable, advantageous, code-expanding, inheritable mutations at the level of individual nucleotides, as proposed by evolutionary theory, requires the mutation protection at the level of the individual nucleotides and at the higher levels of the code to be switched off or at least to dysfunction. Dysfunctioning mutation protection, however, is the origin of cancer and hereditary diseases, which reduce the capacity to live and to reproduce. Our mutation protection perspective of the evolutionary dynamics of digital and nucleotide codes thus reveals the presence of a paradox in evolutionary theory between the necessity and the disadvantage of dysfunctioning mutation protection. This mutation protection paradox, which is closely related with the paradox between evolvability and mutational robustness, needs further investigation.” http://benthamscience.com/open/toevolj/articles/V005/1TOEVOLJ.pdf
bornagain77_{May 8, 2014
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It's dogma so call it dogma. Or perhaps it's just a fairy tale for grown ups...Joe_{May 8, 2014
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Mung, Macro-evolution is more of a forensic science than empirical. We only have evidence of events that have occurred in the past. We have to interpret and make sense of the evidence we find. Like the modern day CSI, we must determine what evidence is pertinent and which is not. This evidence originated, supposedly, millions of years in the past, and not just the night before or two weeks ago. It is indeed history.DaRook_{May 8, 2014
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Seeing the extensive use that cladistics played in this supposed study for seeing if dinosaurs can or did evolve into birds, this study is about useless for seeing what really happened.
A One-Man Clade – David Berlinski – July 18, 2013 Excerpt: The relationship between cladistics and Darwin's theory of evolution is thus one of independent origin but convergent confusion. "Phylogenetic systematics," the entomologist Michael Schmitt remarks, "relies on the theory of evolution." To the extent that the theory of evolution relies on phylogenetic systematics, the disciplines resemble two biologists dropped from a great height and clutching at one another in mid-air. Tight fit, major fail.7 No wonder that Schmidt is eager to affirm that "phylogenetics does not claim to prove or explain evolution whatsoever."8 If this is so, a skeptic might be excused for asking what it does prove or might explain? http://www.evolutionnews.org/2013/07/a_one_man_clade074601.html "We all know now that birds are dinosaurs, right? The clade Maniraptora (which is defined as containing all dinosaurs closer to birds than to ornithomimids ) is the group of theropod dinosaurs that many paleontologists believe birds were derived from some 150 or so million years ago, in the Jurassic period. Hence, according to phylogenetic taxonomy, birds are by definition maniraptorans, and the other maniraptorans are their closest relatives. The exact membership of this clade is highly disputed; any coelurosaur could be quite convincingly argued to be a member of Maniraptora. There is much convergent evolution apparent in Maniraptora, which makes the resolution of their phylogeny difficult; a problem compounded by their poor fossil record. Even without considering birds, Maniraptora is a diverse and interesting group, with many specimens that outwardly look dissimilar, but have enough structures in common (synapomorphies) to unite them as a group." https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/turtles-closer-to-birds-and-crocodilians-than-to-lizards-and-snakes/#comment-499495
Whereas the actual evidence, as opposed to imaginary lines drawn on a sheet of paper, reveals a very different story than the one Darwinists tell the public:
“The whole notion of feathered dinosaurs is a myth that has been created by ideologues bent on perpetuating the birds-are-dinosaurs theory in the face of all contrary evidence” Storrs Olson - curator of birds at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History Bird Evolution vs. The Actual Fossil Evidence - video and notes http://vimeo.com/30926629 When Dinosaurs Flew - February 4, 2014 Excerpt: Hongshanornis longicresta, which flapped throughout what is now China roughly 125 million years ago during the early Cretaceous Period.,,, The flying style is far closer to that found in modern birds than what was supposed of ancient flyers — which have been thought to rely more on gliding due to a lack of enough muscle mass in flying appendages to achieve flapping bursts. “This isn’t a mode of flight we expected from Cretaceous birds,” Habib said, adding that its small size and overall shape are comparable to that of modern birds. “It was pretty much a Cretaceous starling with a larger tail like a mockingbird.” Transported to the modern world, it wouldn’t look like anything special to the casual observer, until a closer examination revealed claws at the end of the bird’s wings and tiny teeth in its beak.,,, http://dornsife.usc.edu/news/stories/1622/when-dinosaurs-flew/ Darwin’s Legacy - Donald R. Prothero - February 2012 Excerpt: In four of the biggest climatic-vegetational events of the last 50 million years, the mammals and birds show no noticeable change in response to changing climates. No matter how many presentations I give where I show these data, no one (including myself) has a good explanation yet for such widespread stasis despite the obvious selective pressures of changing climate. http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/12-02-15/#feature
Moreover, birds have shown Darwin to be wrong in one of his fundamental predictions:
Darwin 'Wrong': Species Living Together Does Not Encourage Evolution - December 20, 2013 Excerpt: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution set out in the Origin of Species has been proven wrong by scientists studying ovenbirds. Researchers at Oxford University found that species living together do not evolve differently to avoid competing with one another for food and habitats – a theory put forward by Darwin 150 years ago. The ovenbird is one of the most diverse bird families in the world and researchers were looking to establish the processes causing them to evolve. Published in Nature, the research compared the beaks, legs and songs of 90% of ovenbird species. Findings showed that while the birds living together were consistently more different than those living apart, this was the result of age differences. Once the variation of age was accounted for, birds that live together were more similar than those living separately – directly contradicting Darwin's view. The species that lived together had beaks and legs no more different than those living apart,,, ,,,there is no shortage of evidence for competition driving divergent evolution in some very young lineages. But we found no evidence that this process explains differences across a much larger sample of species.,,, He said that the reasons why birds living together appear to evolve less are "difficult to explain",, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/darwin-wrong-species-living-together-does-not-encourage-evolution-1429927
Even the famed Darwin finches fail to give support to Darwinian evolution. The Grants (who extensively studied Darwin's finches) made a long presentation at Stanford in 2009 on their work. In it they give the game away. All the so called Darwin finches can inner breed. Doesn’t happen much but it does happen and they have viable offspring that reproduce. Here is the link:
Darwin's Legacy | Lecture 5 - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMcVY__T3Ho
To save you some time. Start at about 109:00 and follow Rosemary for a few minutes till at least 112:00. Then go to 146:30 and listen to Peter. Before this is the inane prattle by two of Stanford’s finest who do not understand that the Grants are saying that the whole evolution thing is a crock. Supplemental note, this following video clip comes recommended by none other than Mr. Grand Inquisitor Jerry Coyne himself:
FLIGHT: The Genius of Birds - Starling murmurations - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GR9zFgOzyw
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Jim Al-Khalili and the Quantum Robin - video According to Quantum Physicist Jim Al-Khalili, the phenomenon Quantum Entanglement in Robins is "nothing short of miraculous." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jepgOQEvWT0
bornagain77_{May 8, 2014
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Well, the best reason I can think of is because it isn't history.Mung_{May 8, 2014
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