The Darwin Spin Off

[Rowan Amore]

After touting herd immunity, I've discounted most everything.  

[Nalates Urriah]

7 hours ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

In this whole "God debate" thread, like all the other similar threads I remember, nobody is bothering to provide a definition of what God is. There seems to be a default assumption of the Judeo-Christian God as would seem to be described from a simplistic reading of those scriptures; however, this is by no means the only way of thinking about "God."

If we define God as "the organizing force of the Universe" there has to be a God if we assume the Universe exists and has some form of organization. However, nothing about that statement requires that "God" be separate from the Universe, much less being a God that "has to be answered to" as Natales was maintaining before that line mysteriously disappeared from the original post.

This isn't a god-debate thread. It is a Royal Society debate and whether they have acknowledged problems with Darwin's hypothesis. Much easier debate.

Admittedly people keep going there... I suppose that God thing is important for many.

Since I don't see a Natales in this thread prior to your post I assume you mean me, Nalates. No line or any text was removed from the OP. The edit was because a Superscript forced a new line making it difficult to read. I didn't remove anything other than a single line feed character.

And whether anyone has to answer to God would be an interesting debate, if you care to start a thread and take a side.

[Sequoia Sojourner]

 

[Sequoia Sojourner]

[Profaitchikenz Haiku]

55 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

The rest is just fluff.

Actually, I could believe in fluff drifting together in chance encounters of the furred kind and the rest is just the way things go...

[Theresa Tennyson]

18 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

This isn't a god-debate thread. It is a Royal Society debate and whether they have acknowledged problems with Darwin's hypothesis. Much easier debate.

Admittedly people keep going there... I suppose that God thing is important for many.

Since I don't see a Natales in this thread prior to your post I assume you mean me, Nalates. No line or any text was removed from the OP. The edit was because a Superscript forced a new line making it difficult to read. I didn't remove anything other than a single line feed character.

And whether anyone has to answer to God would be an interesting debate, if you care to start a thread and take a side.

Sorry, I went looking for that line because Luna quoted it and I didn't see it so I thought it was removed.

And you haven't been posting about God at all. Despite mentioning the "need" for an uncreated conscious creator of information and the purpose of life.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Theresa Tennyson

[JanuarySwan]

33 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

After touting herd immunity, I've discounted most everything.  

If I may ask and if you want to speak about it, could you further elaborate on your thought here about herd immunity? 

 

13 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

the purpose of life

I do not know the purpose of life, but I do hate to think of myself as a walking, talking, thinking, seeing piece of meat.  Myself - just a piece of a protein food chain as it's/my purpose.  The earth seems to have a purpose in wanting to support the younger and stronger in favor of the older and weaker, probably in order for the earth itself to continue.   My last line here is a bit about herd immunity.  

Edited March 11, 2021 by JanuarySwan

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

1 hour ago, Nalates Urriah said:

You can start your research here.

That's ok. Rather than doing 'my own research online', I studied biology at a university, and then did about 30 years of grad-student, Post-Doc (2 years of which at the Institut Pasteur in Paris) and tenured research into various molecular biological subjects that all relied heavily on the theory of evolution. I think that qualifies me into judging that those sources of yours are all BS, lies and misinformation.

Edited March 11, 2021 by Arduenn Schwartzman

[Ted McGregor]

22 minutes ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

... those sources of yours are all BS, lies and misinformation.

That list indeed seems very void of unprejudiced info. Godreports.com? Foxnews.com ? Research ? Seriously ?

 

Edited March 11, 2021 by TDD123

[Rowan Amore]

41 minutes ago, JanuarySwan said:

If I may ask and if you want to speak about it, could you further elaborate on your thought here about herd immunity? 

 

I do not know the purpose of life, but I do hate to think of myself as a walking, talking, thinking, seeing piece of meat.  Myself - just a piece of a protein food chain as it's/my purpose.  The earth seems to have a purpose in wanting to support the younger and stronger in favor of the older and weaker, probably in order for the earth itself to continue.   My last line here is a bit about herd immunity.  

Let's just say it wasn't me touting it and leave it at that.

[Madelaine McMasters]

If you're concerned about Darwin getting some things wrong, how about the fairly recent discovery of epigenetic changes through methylation that exonerate Lamarck maybe just a little? Darwin's Pangenesis contains elements of Lamarckism. I don't think anyone believes in Darwin's gemmules today.

As Theresa notes, you're unlikely to find a scientist who gets everything right.

[JanuarySwan]

34 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Let's just say it wasn't me touting it and leave it at that.

Oh, I see what you were saying.  I thought you were saying we couldn't achieve herd immunity.  I misunderstood you.  Thanks for clarifying this.  We can still achieve herd immunity through vaccination, this is why I did not understand and thought you may have heard herd immunity was never going to happen or something like that but that isn't what you were saying.  

Edited March 11, 2021 by JanuarySwan

[Aquila Kytori]

@Nalates Urriah In the opening post of this thread you use the quote from the Richard Nelson's article titled Royal Society as a base for your argument :

 

On 3/10/2021 at 9:37 PM, Nalates Urriah said:

A good article on the 2015 issue is by Richard William Nelson (Jul 28, 2016) titled: Royal Society. I'll quote from it...

Quote

Pigliucci and Müller find the evidence for the standard theory to be “either inaccurate or incomplete.”  Since they see that the scientific evidence “clearly demolish[es] the alleged central dogma [the standard theory],” they convened sixteen leading evolution advocates to develop a framework for a new evolutionary consensus.

I think that makes it clear what is going on with the RS as they try to come up with a new hypothesis. While this is about 2010 time frame, the doubts and challenges have only gotten worse for Darwin.

It is probably worth mentioning what it is they think destroys the central dogma of the standard theory for those that can't be bothered to read the article.

The article is about 16 scientists getting together to talk about the latest evolutionary theories.

A quote from the article :

" The conference summit, dubbed The Altenberg-16, met locked in secrecy behind-closed-doors barred from any news media coverage. Eventually, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published an essay from each attendee in the book Evolution, the Extended Synthesis (2010) "

 

A summary of the book, Elements of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis  by Pigliucci and Müller can be found here  https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Gerd-Mueller-4/publication/258235989_Elements_of_an_Extended_Evolutionary_Synthesis/links/0f31753a54d20a66c4000000/Elements-of-an-Extended-Evolutionary-Synthesis.pdf

They are not challenging Darwinism.  They are adding to and filling in details !

The Illustration below, is from Elements of an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis by  Pigliucci and Müller, (page 11) clearly shows Darwins theory is still at the core of evolutionary science.

Red text added by me :

 

 

 

Edited March 12, 2021 by Aquila Kytori

[Nalates Urriah]

10 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Kids get told there is a Santa until they are old enough to know better, a tooth fairy until they are old enough to know better.. Jack frost, the pumpkin guy and all these others..

After being lied to about all those others,  it's a wonder religion is really doing so well.. hehehe

LOL… that is an excellent point and very understandable.

My question why people after being lied to so often aren’t skeptical of everything they hear? Why aren’t the questioning everything?

[Theresa Tennyson]

10 minutes ago, Nalates Urriah said:

LOL… that is an excellent point and very understandable.

 

My question why people after being lied to so often aren’t skeptical of everything they hear? Why aren’t the questioning everything?

 

Because they hear what they want to hear.

[Nalates Urriah]

10 hours ago, Orwar said:

   The burden of evidence is on the one who makes the claim. God does not exist, because there's no proof; none has been produced in millennia. What proof has been produced in that time is that having an imaginary friend after whom you can create a cult with the express purpose of accumulating wealth and power through prosecution is profitable. 

I agree. The claimant carries the burden of proof.

The no proof idea is questionable and obviously highly debatable. If you want to take that side and start a thread, I’ll join on the other side.

Here, this thread is about what the RS is saying and doing with Darwin’s hypothesis.

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Aquila Kytori said:

@Nalates Urriah In the opening post of this thread you use the quote from the Richard Nelson's article titled Royal Society as a base for your argument :

They are not challenging Darwinism.  They are adding to and filling in details !

When I read that paper, the author quite clearly states the intention to pull a sleight of hand that will allow Darwinism, Neo Darwinism and even the Modern Synthesis to stand unrejected while allowing new research and ideas to supersede them.

As we will see in the rest of this volume, several of these tenets are being challenged as either inaccurate or incomplete. It is important, however, to understand the kind of challenge being posed here, in order to avoid wasting time on unproductive discussions that miss the point of an extended evolutionary synthesis. Perhaps a parallel with another branch of biology will be helpful.

Insert a lengthy analogy from Molecular Biology setting a precedent that leaves the reputations of Watson and Crick untarnished.

All of these molecular processes clearly demolish the alleged central dogma, and yet do not call for the rejection of any of the empirical discoveries or conceptual advances made in molecular biology since the 1950s. Similarly, we argue, individual tenets of the Modern Synthesis can be modified, or even rejected, without generating a fundamental crisis in the structure of evolutionary theory–just as the Modern Synthesis itself improved upon but did not cause the rejection of either Darwinism or neo-Darwinism. ( Start at pg 9 )

It is basically showing Darwinism to be unfalsifiable as critics have been stating for years because the Royal Society won't allow it to be. Mainstream Science at its best.

[Theresa Tennyson]

42 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

It is basically showing Darwinism to be unfalsifiable as critics have been stating for years because the Royal Society won't allow it to be. Mainstream Science at its best.

What exactly is "Darwinism"? Is gravity "Newtonism" and does the fact that scientists are finding some of Newton's theories incorrect in certain situations mean that gravity doesn't exist?

[Ceka Cianci]

2 hours ago, Nalates Urriah said:

LOL… that is an excellent point and very understandable.

 

My question why people after being lied to so often aren’t skeptical of everything they hear? Why aren’t the questioning everything?

 

I think with some things,  many don't really want to unbelieve.

It leaves you feeling very lost. For me it did anyways. 

[Luna Bliss]

Hell arrived in America when the alt-right and Biblical literalists gained access to the internet.

[Janet Voxel]

5 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

That's ok. Rather than doing 'my own research online', I studied biology at a university, and then did about 30 years of grad-student, Post-Doc (2 years of which at the Institut Pasteur in Paris) and tenured research into various molecular biological subjects that all relied heavily on the theory of evolution. I think that qualifies me into judging that those sources of yours are all BS, lies and misinformation.

[FairreLilette]

2 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Biblical literalists

The problem is much of the Bible is Hebrew poetry and not scripture.  (Look up Hebrew Poetry.)  However, literalists believe every word in the Bible is scripture even though we know the Torah (the first 5 books of the OT) are the books of Moses.   Much of the Bible is not scripture, it's prophecy also, and lineage as well as other accounts of war, etc. 

 

2 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Hell arrived in America when the alt-right and Biblical literalists gained access to the internet.

That might have happened before.  Just going over events that happened here in America in the 20th Century due to Black Lives Matter has made me re-think some things about this country.  

 

2 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

I think with some things,  many don't really want to unbelieve.

Evolution does and cannot completely disprove an existence of a God creator.   And, if it can, how so?   What Darwin (and others before him btw) showed is that natural selection selects the survival of the fittest not artificial selection such as "good breeding" as was believed in England for quite a long time.   Artifical selection is breeding and breeding pure breeds and breeding was thought to be the only way to bring about survival of the fittest.  

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

the continued existence of organisms which are best adapted to their environment, with the extinction of others, as a concept in the Darwinian theory of evolution.

Edited March 12, 2021 by FairreLilette

[Gabriele Graves]

I would hope that any creator(s) are not like any Gods humankind have thus far described.  For a start I would hope they have mastered their egos to a sufficient degree to have transcended any need to be constantly worshipped by their creation and are not angry, jealous, vengeful and petty.

I suspect that there is a design to existence and for there to be a design there must be designer(s) and creator(s) beyond that, at our level of "enlightenment", I truly doubt we could ever understand or even recognise those beings as lifeforms.  At best we can relate to aspects of the system designed to interact with us.  For more I expect we would have to find a way to significantly level-up somehow.
 

[FairreLilette]

7 minutes ago, Gabriele Graves said:

any need to be constantly worshipped by their creation and are not angry, jealous, vengeful and petty.

Jesus wasn't like the God in the O.T. too much.  Jesus, as his last instruction said, love one another.  Also, Jesus said love the Lord and people and be like little children.  Little children can open their heart more I think and not have to analyze everything to death.  

But, I'd have to say, I agree with you.  

 

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

7 hours ago, Aquila Kytori said:

They are not challenging Darwinism.  They are adding to and filling in details

This is a good example of the many 'arguments' that are put forward by the OP: to spout their unprofessional opinions by misrepresenting scientific data to fit their own claims. But it's really a waste of energy to call them out on these missteps on each specific point, because while you waste your time on debunking them, they've moved on to the next level of BS.

It's really no point arguing with someone who will just Google for their next misinterpreted counter-argument.