RE: Confronting Friends and Family
November 5, 2012 at 7:18 am
(This post was last modified: November 5, 2012 at 7:38 am by Kirbmarc.)
I will answer to your other claims later, but for now let me just answer to this.
This is the infamous anthropic principle, and it's a fallacy. This universe is not built for life to happen, life is built to happen in this universe. Without Earth, life would have started somewhere else. With different laws of phyisics (assuming that different laws of physics are even possible), there wouldn't probably be a place for carbon-based life, but there will probably be something else.
And even the fine-tuning part is really questionable. Victor Stenger and fred Adams, for example, have shown that changing some of the parameters still allows for stars to exist, and therefore for organic material to exist. Read this.
Survival of the individuals. Natural selection applies only to the individuals.
Penguins don't die because of this. If a behavior doesn't kill the individual, it is not against the evolutionary interests of the individual. Feeling cold for a while doesn't prevent the penguins from reproducing.
On the other hand, if a few penguins were always left in the cold, there'd probably be more fights, and more penguins will die, including the ones on the inside, and less penguins would reproduce. Penguin societies who never rotate probably faced a quick extinction.
Not at all. Reductionism isn't just based on the analysis of the individual components, it's also based on the analysis of how these components interact.
Good. And it is observed. But there's no need to include a design into the theory to explain it.
You don't even need genetics to produce testable predictions of the theory of evolution. See here.
Correction: We know how evolution works at the level of the individuals. We still have to fully explain how genetics works.
The environment can inhibit the expression of the genotype. How is that evidence of a design?
You are looking for an "overarching law" that doesn't exist. Biology is a kind of chemistry, which is of course of kind of physics. Thereis no need for "overarching laws" of biology, because natural selectionis the result of the laws of physics.
Quote:We're given a universe with the correct laws of chemistry to support life. Not just chemistry either, we have the correct laws of physics - whatever they are - that allow life to self-start as well; as impossible as it seems. We were given an Earth at exactly the right time for life to begin. And then add to that, we have a universe that has the correct laws of physics that give rise to the law of evolution that allows complexity to be downhill - the path of least resistance - a universe that not just allows, but demands (requires) diversity in life, and great complexity as well.
This is the infamous anthropic principle, and it's a fallacy. This universe is not built for life to happen, life is built to happen in this universe. Without Earth, life would have started somewhere else. With different laws of phyisics (assuming that different laws of physics are even possible), there wouldn't probably be a place for carbon-based life, but there will probably be something else.
And even the fine-tuning part is really questionable. Victor Stenger and fred Adams, for example, have shown that changing some of the parameters still allows for stars to exist, and therefore for organic material to exist. Read this.
Quote:Survival of what? The species?
Survival of the individuals. Natural selection applies only to the individuals.
Quote:Penguins are known for their ability to huddle together to keep warm, yet the individual penguins rotate their position and all, selflessly, spend exactly the same amount of time on the outside as each other.
Penguins don't die because of this. If a behavior doesn't kill the individual, it is not against the evolutionary interests of the individual. Feeling cold for a while doesn't prevent the penguins from reproducing.
On the other hand, if a few penguins were always left in the cold, there'd probably be more fights, and more penguins will die, including the ones on the inside, and less penguins would reproduce. Penguin societies who never rotate probably faced a quick extinction.
Quote:Thus you can't find all the answers you're looking for in the components only of the system; the functions run through the larger system but are not found in the individual components. It's the reductionist's nightmare.
Not at all. Reductionism isn't just based on the analysis of the individual components, it's also based on the analysis of how these components interact.
Quote:You've understated convergence. In fact convergence is a requirement of Evolution, if you couldn't observe convergence then you wouldn't be able to prove, at all, that complex structures can develop from simple rules in the world of biology. Convergence is in a sense predicted by the theory of Evolution, just as Einstein's theory of General Relativity "predicts" the existence of Black Holes.
Good. And it is observed. But there's no need to include a design into the theory to explain it.
Quote:Then explain to me specifically how Evolution works in such a manner that will be produce predictions that I can test. You can't.
You don't even need genetics to produce testable predictions of the theory of evolution. See here.
Quote:That's because you don't know how evolution works - you don't even know the exact relationship between "creature" and "dna".
Correction: We know how evolution works at the level of the individuals. We still have to fully explain how genetics works.
Quote:Let me explain this another way. If you were to blindfold a child from birth for the first three years of their life, they would never, ever, be able to see anything - they would be permanently blind, forever.
The environment can inhibit the expression of the genotype. How is that evidence of a design?
Quote:"Natural selection" is just a function, it is not the overarching law that governs how evolution behaves.
You are looking for an "overarching law" that doesn't exist. Biology is a kind of chemistry, which is of course of kind of physics. Thereis no need for "overarching laws" of biology, because natural selectionis the result of the laws of physics.
