Sharkith wrote:This point I am going to nail once and for all.
You often cite Darwin in this thread and claim it is 'fact' because it is observable. What is a fact Xest?
I am going to answer this question myself because I don't have time for further speculation. A fact is only observable with reference to an 'idea'. Natural selection is not observable without the 'idea' that somehow the selection that was made 'naturally' was superior to other selections that did not survive. This means that Darwin's whole theory has behind it reason and rationality. In other words the natural selections were somehow better than other selections.
Now how is it possible for 'nature' to have 'rationality' and reason? Is it possible that Darwin and all his followers are admitting to some form of design in nature? If so who designed the selections? God? Or Darwin himself?
This is frankly pure sophistry (though i appreciate your wordcraft as always Shark). Reason and rationality have nothing to do with it, it is completely flawed logic. The other point to make here is regards you use of language - 'Darwin and all his followers'. Its a misuse and a misrepresentation, people who dont believe in creationism are no more followers of Darwin, than people who use computers are followers of Turing.
Lets take this a step at a time.
Explain:
Why a fact is observable only with an idea? Without recourse to the old existentialism again (no tables here!)
Secondly you misunderstand (deliberately i think) the mechanism of natural selection, finally to arrive at a conclusion that nature has rationality and reason. Natural selection has absolutely nothing to do with rationality and reason. The key phrase that allows you to jump to this is here:
Sharl wrote:
Natural selection is not observable without the 'idea' that somehow the selection that was made 'naturally' was superior to other selections that did not survive.
Firstly you make a completely false link that natural selection needs to be observed. This is false, because it is observable, doesnt mean that it requires observation to be an idea.
Secondly, 'the idea that somehow the selection was made naturally'. Here the suggestion is that there is a force called nature that makes selections, almost in a god like way. Really thats a false representation. Environmental changes resulting in members of populations having advantages within that environment means that the population over time aquires higher proportions of the genes that produce phenotypes with the more competitive features. There is no intelligence to that, its simply a result of molecular genetics and the environment. The environment wasnt changed by some Gaia nature entity, it did change by chance events, by plate tectonics though, and amoung the by chance random phenotypic differences, some of those died less and bred more than others because of accidental benefits within the changed environment from their phenotype as dictated by their genotype. It is infact a corner stone of evolution that it is completely blind. Its nothing but the accumulation of random chance events.
Here is a simple experiment to demonstrate selection through environmental pressure. Take billions and billions of streptoccocus, grow them up. Stick them all on a penicillin pad. Eventually, after repeating many many times you will get a streptoccocus that is penicillin resistant - and guess what, it will go on to thrive, well at least survive and reproduce, in environments where penicillin is in use. Now did god perform a miracle in that little petri dish, spontaneously creating new streps until he hit on the right one, or did we see a resistant strain being selected for because of its environment through genetic variation?
As an aside, its worthy of note that a problem that Darwin struggled with was how the mechanism of herdity didnt lead to the dilution of beneficial phenoytpic differences, at the time of his theory, I believe that Mendel was doing some work with sweetpeas and maize that provided his answer to this.
Also, its a common misconception that proliferation of species is a steady process. It's when environmental pressure are strong that bursts in the rates of phenotypic changes occur. Global climate change, mass extinctions, land masses joining through continental drift, landmasses being cut off from continents, cross species pathogen translocation all have caused spurts in the speed of evolutionary change. I wonder if god will create new species to replace the ones that we have lost in the middle of this mass extinction event.
Now we need to pin you down Shark, as gandelf and others have refused to answer, though I suspect this is more a process of enjoying the argument from yourside rather than a refusal to accept natural selection (and all its other related mechanism for species proliferation and variation) over creationism. Anyway, here are the questions cut from earlier
Crom wrote:
Please let us know how you theorise that the current species alive today got here, and perhaps we can try and analyse why it may fall down as a theory in its own right.
A few pointers as to why you dont believe in evolution as a theory:
Do you not believe that mutations occur across generations which are selected for by environmental and sexual pressures?
Do you simply disbelieve in the evolution of homo sapiens from ancesteral primates?
Do you not believe in the age of the planet, hence assuming that there hasnt been enough time for the development of the fossil record and the occurenece of the current species we see on the planent today?
Anything else?
As to the what has religion done for us subthread. Its a pointless argument as it cant be unpicked.
you adding biatches!
