Why the religious will never admit you won the argument (and why they don't care)

[ohreally]

Are you a poe?  Every time you reply you make the title of this thread become more on point.

The tree of life is a metaphor about diversity among species.    How specific can a metaphor be and and still be a metaphor?  How can there be a gap of knowledge in a metaphor?  Perhaps it's you who is interpreting it incorrectly.

No I mean a Phylogenetic Tree. Not a metaphor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_tree

It turns out that genetically, you cannot trace genes backwards (down the tree) because some tell contradictory genetic histories. So, new theories like "networks" and "webs" are used in an attempt to map these genes backwards (no tree). Some genes come from way the hell on the other side of the old tree. How? Don't know.

You previously mentioned Darwin, by name, so I was assuming you were talking in regards to that time period in which it would surely be just a metaphor.  

I'm glad you are atleast now addressing some modern science.   Just because you don't understand how it works doesn't mean that other people do not.

[Mister Agenda]

So how does not being able to resolve evolutionary history to a 'nice, neat little tree' falsify evolution again?

I don't think that it does.   But it does question some of the claims, when you look at all the evidence.

Which claims?

Bearing in mind that a claim by a scientist does not equal a 'claim made by evolution'. The central claim of evolution is that speciation is due to natural selection acting on hereditary variations between organisms. Some zoologist thinking the scarlet toe nibbler being more closely related to the blooming onion gorger than to the soft-bellied seersucker and turning out to be wrong would not be an example of a problem with the theory of evolution.

[Mister Agenda]

Sigh. The Bible isn't the data, it's the model. For instance, it's unreasonable to believe the Exodus occurred as written, the archaeological evidence is firmly against it (the data). It is a story from the Babylonian Captivity, likely a sort of a 'God beat Pharaoh for us and gave us a homeland, he'll get us out of this' tale.

What evidence is firmly against it?

All the archeology in the region for the last century. The Israelis in particular looked very hard for evidence of the Exodus. Absence of evidence is evidence of absence within a bounded region, particularly a small region like the Sinai. Evidence of other nomadic encampments by much smaller groups have been found, but nothing to indicate hundreds of thousands of people (conservatively, 2 million based on the Biblical account) and their animals ever walked across the Sinai desert once, let alone wandered around it for 40 years. There's no record of the Israelites or the events supposedly surrounding their departure in Egyptian records. Many of the places mentioned in Exodus did not exist at the same time as each other. The archaeological consensus is that as a people, the Israelites were never in Egypt. The story is a legend made in the 7th century BCE.

[Mister Agenda]

So are you claiming that if there are limits to what can be determined concerning evolutionary history through the protein record, evolution is probably false?

There seems to be some confusion about the point I am making. I am not trying to disprove evolution.

I'm am claiming that if there are gaps in our knowledge (especially in the subject of the mechanism of evolution), one has to be more careful about using 'evolution' and 'fact' in the same sentence (as you did above regarding billions of theists). It simply is not true that biological evolution (defined as the end-to-end theory) is a fact because how can we say that if there are gaps in our knowledge? These gaps in our knowledge are not simply missing dinosaur puppy fossils, these gaps have to do with mechanisms and systems and relationships--extremely necessary components to the theory. It is more accurate to say "parts of the theory of evolution are fact", "decent with modification is a fact", "natural selection is a fact", etc.

The gaps in our knowledge are particularly NOT on the subject of the mechanism of evolution. Here's what would make evolution 'not a fact': descent with modification not resulting in new species.

When we say evolution is a fact, and by we I mean anyone you've talked to on this forum who has said it is a fact, we are talking about it being a fact that species evolve. When we say gravity is a fact, we are not claiming that the theory of gravity, end-to-end, is perfect. We're claiming that the thing the theory is supposed to be an explanation for is actually a real thing. When we say it's a fact that germs cause diseases, it does not mean that there is no such thing as a disease not caused by germs or that the germ theory of disease is perfect, end-to-end. The only person interpreting 'evolution is a fact' as 'there's nothing about evolution left to learn' is you.

What a waste of time if that's all you've been on about all along. You accept evolution, welcome to the club, even though it was like pulling teeth to get you to admit it.

[Mister Agenda]

Since hundred of millions, if not billions of theists accept biological evolution as a fact, your poor showing as a follower of the ID sub-branch of Creationism (which has never been able to propose an unsolvable instance of 'irreducible complexity') hardly demonstrates that theists are ignorant.

I find that anything with the word system in it is largely irreducibly complex.  The cardiovascular system for instance.   Which came first, the pump, the plumbing, the fluid in the system.   Not to mention, that this is a transport system for other systems (just pumping blood through the body isn't sufficient).  It even comes with it's own repair system, so when a feed or return line breaks, it is automatically patched (within reason)  It is a closed loop system, with feedback, and control modification for when demands change. 

As an engineer, I wonder how many trials unguided evolution had to go through, before the return lines made it back to the heart (or all the lines connected at all)?  How many times did a version appear, where the system became bypassed?   Which came first, the heart, or the control systems, that power and regulate it? 

I agree with this post at uncommon descent http://www.uncommondescent.com/intellige...o-a-whale/

Let's start putting some numbers to the claims, and see if they make sense!

Have you considered researching the evolution of the cardiovascular system? I mean seriously, if it is actually irreducibly complex, that's a major scientific discovery. I'm looking forward to hearing about it in the journals.

[Mister Agenda]

Okay thanks. I'm afraid I can't understand that at all though.

The science is extremely clear that we did evolve from another species. Where are you getting this information to the contrary? Do you have sources? Peer reviewed scientific papers, I would hope.

Again, what is the alternative? We were created fully formed?

Evolution requires no direction either, so that's incompatible.

I'll leave you alone after this. I appreciate you trying, but I have no idea what you think happened.

Even though it doesn't require direction, it isn't necessarily so that there was no direction involved. Humans can direct evolution, for instance.

[GoHalos1993]

Because they want to dominate everyone

[dom.donald]

How?  Inheritance, that we -do- know. How did we get it wrong with our previous assessments?  Is that the question you mean to ask?  Perhaps some examples would shed light on that?

For those that want to know more about this subject, they should read about it from a scientist and not the interpretation of a non-scientist (me). 

Antonis Rokas , Sean B Carroll
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/art...io.0040352

I don't see any support in this document for the claims made by SteveII. THe document seems (to my untrained eye) to raise some questions on the details of the TOL and the ability of certain kinds of statistical analysis to resolve clear lineages / branches. This may turn out to be an issue with the datasets, or the limitations of the statistical analysis itself. That the TOL can't be resolved into a perfect tree (rather, some areas are more cloudy) doesn't have to be a problem or a 'gap' in the theory itself. It certainly doesn't provide anything that contradicts the theory of evolution. I don't think anyone ever claimed to have completed the TOL - in fact Dawkins says this won't happen for another 10 years.

If the analysis had shown that the TOL simply didn't exist, and that there were just distinct species with no apparent lineage or organised relationships, then the analysis would have suddenly become a subject of huge interest and would have been pulled apart by scientists eager to verify (or reject) the findings.

[SteveII]

For those that want to know more about this subject, they should read about it from a scientist and not the interpretation of a non-scientist (me). 

Antonis Rokas , Sean B Carroll
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/art...io.0040352

I don't see any support in this document for the claims made by SteveII. THe document seems (to my untrained eye) to raise some questions on the details of the TOL and the ability of certain kinds of statistical analysis to resolve clear lineages / branches. This may turn out to be an issue with the datasets, or the limitations of the statistical analysis itself. That the TOL can't be resolved into a perfect tree (rather, some areas are more cloudy) doesn't have to be a problem or a 'gap' in the theory itself. It certainly doesn't provide anything that contradicts the theory of evolution. I don't think anyone ever claimed to have completed the TOL - in fact Dawkins says this won't happen for another 10 years.

If the analysis had shown that the TOL simply didn't exist, and that there were just distinct species with no apparent lineage or organised relationships, then the analysis would have suddenly become a subject of huge interest and would have been pulled apart by scientists eager to verify (or reject) the findings.

I didn't read it quite the same as you. They quoted Dawkins at the beginning to point out the current viewpoint and then ended the intro with:

Here we discuss how and why certain critical parts of the TOL may be difficult to resolve, regardless of the quantity of conventional data available. We do not mean this essay to be a comprehensive review of molecular systematics. Rather, we have focused on the emerging evidence from genome-scale studies on several branches of the TOL that sharply contrasts with viewpoints—such as that in the opening quotation—which imply that the assembly of all branches of the TOL will simply be a matter of data collection. We view this difficulty in obtaining full resolution of particular clades—when given substantial data—as both biologically informative and a pressing methodological challenge. The recurring discovery of persistently unresolved clades (bushes) should force a re-evaluation of several widely held assumptions of molecular systematics. [emphasis added]

And then they ended with:

The identification of clades is of fundamental importance to molecular systematics [63]. It is perhaps for this reason that over the years, systematists have emphasized reconstructing the topology of trees, while placing much less emphasis on the temporal information conveyed by unresolved stems. Currently, phylogenetic bushes are considered experimental failures. But that is seeing the glass as half empty. A bush in which series of cladogenetic events lie crammed and unresolved within a small section of a larger tree does harbour historical information [33,56]. Although it may be heresy to say so, it could be argued that knowing that strikingly different groups form a clade and that the time spans between the branching of these groups must have been very short, makes the knowledge of the branching order among groups potentially a secondary concern.

[Whateverist]

Haven't been keeping up on the thread but here's an idea: perhaps the religious never will admit you've won an argument because, in their mind, they can't be wrong? You know, god on your side and all that. Check mate atheists.