Foxnews says NS is random - Coyne begs to differ.
backspace
replies to http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184953,00.html
Foxnews priest Jonathan:
"..No reasonable person denies that life forms can evolve, but it's
quite different to say that through purely random natural selection
one species evolves into another to the point of reaching human
intelligence..."
Note that Jonathan uses "random natural Selection", but Coyne at
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070618&s=coyne061807
said:"...Humans, the product of non-random natural selection, are the
biological equivalent of a 747, and in some ways they are even more
complex....."
Who's pragmatics with natural selection must I refer to when talking
about the NS - the random or non-random intent?
Dave Scott replies:
"....Since we can observe in living tissue that random mutation +
natural selection is capable of causing descent with modification
today...."
What was Dave Scott's intent with natural selection in this quote:
random or non-random?
Jonathan states: "...They are being taught a very unscientific theory
called Neo-Darwinism, the belief that there is NO purpose or
intelligence behind life forms, that it's all random..."
But on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Modern_evolutionary_synthesis#Modern_synthesisis_is_not_defined
I quoted a journal stating that it is not defined:
"There is no canonical definition of neo-Darwinism, and surprisingly
few writers on the subject seem to consider it necessary to spell out
precisely what it is that they are discussing. This is especially
curious in view of the controversy which dogs the theory, for one
might have thought that a first step towards resolving the dispute
over its status would be to decide upon a generally acceptable
definition over it. ... Of course, the lack of firm definition does,
as we shall see, make the theory much easier to defend." P.T. Saunders
& M.W. Ho, "Is Neo-Darwinism Falsifiable? - And Does It Matter?",
Nature and System (1982) 4:179-196, p. 179.
If Neo-Darwinims or the "Modern synthesis" as it is called today is
not defined then according to who's belief is there no purpose behind
life forms?
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2006_06_24_archive.html
"....Taylor believed that evolution occurs, and he also believed that
random natural selection played a role in evolution. However, he came
to doubt Darwinism, the idea that random natural selection and a few
other naturalistic processes explain the life we see around us...."
Gordon Rattray Taylor was Chief Science Advisor to BBC Television. If
he talks about "Random Natural Selection", John Harshman and Dawkins
talks about "Non-random Natural Selection" but Darwin never "randomed"
anything in OriginSpecies then whos's intent with Natural Selection is
Taylor, Dawkins and Harshman communicating? Its obvious that we are
dealing here with
a structural ambiguity.
Cathy posts on:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/yet-another-feather-in-natural-selections-cap-what-hasnt-it-accomplished/#comment-29307
"...Creating a mutation to prove what random natural selection is
capable of doing is contradictory....
Dave Scott replies:
"...Sometimes it's difficult or impossible to do this and that's the
bane of the study of evolution in the distant past...."
We are told that Evolution = RM + NS. Who's version of evolution is
Scott referring to in his reply to Cathy?
At http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php?s=832502d3bf6727b0f00bf3b7277ba4fc&p=4793725&postcount=14
Espritch says:"...But evolution is an undirected process....." His
intent is that evolution is a random process.
What would Espritch intent be with Random(ev) = Random(mut) + NS ? It
could be Random(ev) = random + non-random or it could be Random(ev) =
random + random.
And the whole pragmatics surrounding this term Evolution = RM+NS is
what the linguists addressed here:
http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0210c&L=linguist&P=6328
"...Now it is considered as a result that while mutation is random,
natural selection is non-random. ?!...But what does this mean?.... The
issue of 'random evolution' is left untouched by this revised
terminology. You can't have you cake and eat it too....."
Noam Chomsky says that natural selection can't explain where language
came from. Of course it can't - natural selection doesn't exist.
backspace
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20051222-0727-science-evolution.html
"...The journal's editor in chief, Don Kennedy, acknowledged this was
a reference to the rise of the theory of intelligent design, which
holds that some aspects of nature are so complex that they must be the
work of an unnamed creator rather than the result of random natural
selection, as Darwin argued...."
Darwin never said natural selection is random.
"..Kennedy said Science picked evolution as the year's biggest
breakthrough in part because it was a "hot topic," but stressed there
was a wealth of research that justified the choice...."
Who's version of evolution was the biggest breakthrough - random or
non-random?
Rolf
"backspace" <sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1190533448....@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
You seem to be very confused WRT to the term "Natural Selection".
I, OTOH, believe that most scientists engaged in direct work on theoretical
evolution have, if not a clear and complete overview of what the term stands
for, they nevertheless have a clear understanding of what its implications
are. And as just an innocent bystander, I also have quite a lot of ideas
about what it is and what it is not. To the extent that the term doesn't
bother me at all; I find it a quite reasonable part of a complex theory that
cannot be put in a box and pointed at saying "lookee, there is the ToE."
Just as you cannot just say point at the periodic table and say ther it is,
take it or leave it. Unless you know how the periodic table looks, and why
it looks the way it looks, you have not understood the periodic table.
It is my experience that for most of the words and terms we use, we go
astray if we just take them at face value thinking we got them.
I suggest that if you really took the effort of with an open mind learning
something real, you'd be surprised at how little you really know. That is
want I experience every day. i keep reading and reading, and find that i
know only very little about most fields of science. And even worse, even
when I have it explained to me by some of the best people in the field, I
still come away with only a hazy idea about what it is all about.
I believe creationists are making a big mistake; they belive scientists are
at their own level. While in fact they are far ahead of them. If you want to
underatand the theory of evolution, you have to study the theory oef
evolution.
Now, if you would be kind and try to explain to us your personal
interpretation of the term Natural Selection? We are have the right to
understand - or refuse to understand all and everything under the sun. If
you still have to keep asking for a clear, unambigious scientific
definition, that shows that you haven't even tried to come to grips with the
ther; that you haven't sincerly attempted to udnerstand what the theory of
evolution is.
It is complex; it is nothing like the theory of gravity in being clear and
concise and easily observable and verifiable to all of us. If you got to ask
what it is, it shows you haven't even tried. Shame on you.
richardal...@googlemail.com
> On Sep 23, 8:34 am, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/science/20051222-0727-science-evol...
>
> "...The journal's editor in chief, Don Kennedy, acknowledged this was
> a reference to the rise of the theory of intelligent design, which
> holds that some aspects of nature are so complex that they must be the
> work of an unnamed creator rather than the result of random natural
> selection, as Darwin argued...."
>
> Darwin never said natural selection is random.
>
> "..Kennedy said Science picked evolution as the year's biggest
> breakthrough in part because it was a "hot topic," but stressed there
> was a wealth of research that justified the choice...."
>
> Who's version of evolution was the biggest breakthrough - random or
> non-random?
Why not ask an evolutionary biologist?
If you want to understand a medical matter, you don't ask the editor
of a newspaper, you ask a doctor.
If you want to understand quantum physics, you don't ask a medical
doctor, you ask a physicist.
If you want to understand the political situation in Korea, you don't
ask a physicist, you ask someone who has studied the political
situation in Korea.
If you want to understand evolutionary biology, you don't ask a
newspaper editor, or a medical practitioner, or a physicist, or
someone who has studied the politics of Korea.
You ask an evolutionary biologist.
What is it that you find so hard to understand about this concept,
which seems simple to me?
Or is the requirement of your religion (whatever that may be) to
remain ignorant so deeply ingrained that you can't see what an
absolute fool you are making of yourself and your religion?
Please feel free to carry on in this vein if you insist, but don't for
a moment imagine that you are doing anything other than cast yourself
and your religion in a very poor light.
RF
Kermit
> Dave Scott fromhttp://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-response-to-fathe...
> replies tohttp://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184953,00.html
> Foxnews priest Jonathan:
<snip>
> Who's pragmatics with natural selection must I refer to when talking
> about the NS - the random or non-random intent?
>
<snip>
> What was Dave Scott's intent with natural selection in this quote:
> random or non-random?
>
<snip>
>
> If Neo-Darwinims or the "Modern synthesis" as it is called today is
> not defined then according to who's belief is there no purpose behind
> life forms?
>
<snip>
> but Darwin never "randomed"
> anything in OriginSpecies then whos's intent
<snip>
> Its obvious that we are
> dealing here with
> a structural ambiguity.
>
>
> Athttp://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php?s=832502d3bf6727b0f00bf3b7277ba4...
> Espritch says:"...But evolution is an undirected process....." His
> intent is
<snip>
>
> And the whole pragmatics
<snip>
Is it your intent to provide evidence that Creationists are ignorant,
unteachable, loons? You've done quite well. Unfortunately, after a
while, you cannot drive that fact home any more firmly.
Pragmatics and intent are not the same as *meaning. That is, after
all, what you want when you ask for definition. There is no rule that
definitions are provided by some arch-founder, who then is quoted as
an authority forevermore. You have been provided with excellent
definitions in this newsgroup by numerous people, but *seem to resist
reading simple and plain English. Creationist ignorance is usually the
result of determined effort. I will give you the benefit of the doubt,
however, and assume that you really *are unteachable. In which case,
tough luck to you. I wish I could help.
A few notes: columnists and reporters are not good sources of
information about science.
The possessive "whose" is not the same as the contraction "who's".
Don't try to verb nouns or adjectives unless it it contributes to
understanding.
Learn to use English before you reject helpful responses to your
posts. Someone who arrogantly and ignorantly uses "intent" and
"pragmatics" instead of "meaning" or "definition" is in no position to
reject concise descriptions of a scientific theory by professionals in
the field.
Perhaps English as a Second Language course at your local community
college would help.
Kermit
backspace
> What is it that you find so hard to understand about this concept,
> which seems simple to me?
convey with natural selection I would have no idea what seems so
simple to you.
wf3h
>
> Noam Chomsky says that natural selection can't explain where language
> came from. Of course it can't - natural selection doesn't exist.
interesting...backspace has just said that no one dies before
reproducing.
such is the delusion of religion
Ernest Major
<wf...@vsswireless.net> writes
>On Sep 23, 1:34 am, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> Noam Chomsky says that natural selection can't explain where language
>> came from. Of course it can't - natural selection doesn't exist.
>
>interesting...backspace has just said that no one dies before
>reproducing.
And everybody has 2.2 children :-)
>
>such is the delusion of religion
>
--
Alias Ernest Major
backspace
> Now, if you would be kind and try to explain to us your personal
As I have pointed out there is no such thing as natural selection. The
phrase was coined by 1859. In contrast "common ancestor", love, rock,
bird is as old as mankind itself. The key insight is that an
individual by the name of Charles Darwin coined the phrase a 150 years
ago and this individual was trying to communicate some sort of intent.
He is dead and we can't ask him what was his intent. But whatever the
intent was you can't arbitrarily concatenate these two words "Natural"
and "selection" to form the phrase "natural selection" - it is
grammatical gargoyle. Especially if you look at the only definition
Darwin gave for the phrase:
"...I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if
useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark
its relation to man's power of selection...."
which as pointed out here
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/9dcb8542a766e33b/aafde145140fc70f#aafde145140fc70f
was fraudulently misquoted by the natural selection article on
Wikipedia.
So Darwin was referring to some "principle" which seems very close to
the ancient principle of pantheism and nature worship or invoking
nature as a cause in and of itself. The bible says there is nothing
new under the sun.
Berlinski notes that "... if natural selection as a concept is
destroyed then nothing at all remains of evolution..."
Because natural selection is the mechanism. But nothing got naturaled
and nobody did any selectings - there is no such thing as a "natural
selection". This is entirely a point of logic, you will simply have to
use your common sense and logic to try and reverse years of repetitive
brainwashing wether YEC, ID or atheist as the mass media and
universities chant like a zombie:"natural, natural we all got
naturaled.....". We are dealing here with the most unbelievable form
of mind control. Imagine a KGB torture chamber where the agent repeats
the same phrase over and over and over again: "You got naturaled".
This brainwashing starts out with young tots in the public schools,
destroying our society and the mental health of Ken Ham, Richard
Dawkins and Dembski.
Robert Carnegie
DNA, mutation is random, but mutation is a disruption of the process
of replication of DNA, and often consists of a duplication of DNA but
in the wrong place. So "Mary had lamb little a" is a more likely
mutation than "Mary had a qwerty uiop".
Selection is not random: it is selective. It is the compound effect
of many individual events - consider all of the dog vs. cat encounters
in the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons - in which one or the other may get
the upper hand on any given occasion, but overall there is a trend.
The movement of particles of gas is best treated as random, most of
the time. But the air movements that govern the weather are
predictable.
Ye Old One
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> enriched this group when s/he wrote:
>Rolf wrote:
>> Now, if you would be kind and try to explain to us your personal
>> interpretation of the term Natural Selection? .
>
>As I have pointed out there is no such thing as natural selection.
No. You "think" there is no such thing as natural selection, but that
does not mean it does not exist. What it shows is that you have a very
poor education.
[snip]
--
Bob.
John Harshman
> Rolf wrote:
>
>>Now, if you would be kind and try to explain to us your personal
>>interpretation of the term Natural Selection? .
>
>
> As I have pointed out there is no such thing as natural selection. The
> phrase was coined by 1859. In contrast "common ancestor", love, rock,
> bird is as old as mankind itself. The key insight is that an
> individual by the name of Charles Darwin coined the phrase a 150 years
> ago and this individual was trying to communicate some sort of intent.
> He is dead and we can't ask him what was his intent. But whatever the
> intent was you can't arbitrarily concatenate these two words "Natural"
> and "selection" to form the phrase "natural selection" - it is
> grammatical gargoyle. Especially if you look at the only definition
> Darwin gave for the phrase:
> "...I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if
> useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark
> its relation to man's power of selection...."
That's not a definition. That's the coining of a name. The definition
must come before, as implied by "this principle". Pronouns like that
have antecedents. Do you know what "antecedent" means?
You have also confused the term used to refer to a phenomenon with the
phenomenon itself. You don't like the term, but that has no relation to
the existence of the phenomenon.
> which as pointed out here
> http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/9dcb8542a766e33b/aafde145140fc70f#aafde145140fc70f
> was fraudulently misquoted by the natural selection article on
> Wikipedia.
Poor language. You said "pointed out" when you meant "claimed".
> So Darwin was referring to some "principle" which seems very close to
> the ancient principle of pantheism and nature worship or invoking
> nature as a cause in and of itself. The bible says there is nothing
> new under the sun.
Natural selection has nothing to do with pantheism, and if you could
read more than one sentence or keep more than a sound bite in your head
for any amount of time you would understand that.
> Berlinski notes that "... if natural selection as a concept is
> destroyed then nothing at all remains of evolution..."
Berlinski is wrong. This should be obvious.
> Because natural selection is the mechanism. But nothing got naturaled
> and nobody did any selectings - there is no such thing as a "natural
> selection".
This is your personal mangling of language.
> This is entirely a point of logic, you will simply have to
> use your common sense and logic to try and reverse years of repetitive
> brainwashing wether YEC, ID or atheist as the mass media and
> universities chant like a zombie:"natural, natural we all got
> naturaled.....".
Nobody says this except you.
> We are dealing here with the most unbelievable form
> of mind control. Imagine a KGB torture chamber where the agent repeats
> the same phrase over and over and over again: "You got naturaled".
That would be your own personal torture chamber, because you are the
only one here using "natural" as a verb.
> This brainwashing starts out with young tots in the public schools,
> destroying our society and the mental health of Ken Ham, Richard
> Dawkins and Dembski.
I will admit that I have concerns for the mental health of two out of
three of these people. But I can't believe that a simple choice of words
had anything to do with it. Nor have you demonstrated that there's
anything wrong with either the term or the concept (which, notice, are
not the same thing anyway).
backspace
> Broadly and for the purpose of practical argument, and in terms of
> DNA, mutation is random, but mutation is a disruption of the process
> of replication of DNA, and often consists of a duplication of DNA but
> in the wrong place.
Darwin's pragmatics with natural selection since
he coined the phrase and we are told what a genius this man was who
could do no calculus.
> Selection is not random: it is selective. It is the compound effect
> of many individual events - consider all of the dog vs. cat encounters
> in the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons - in which one or the other may get
> the upper hand on any given occasion, but overall there is a trend.
What has Tom and Jerry got to do with the Irreducibly interdependently
complex control algorithms that keeps the short beak and long beak
finch stable in flight?
> The movement of particles of gas is best treated as random, most of
> the time. But the air movements that govern the weather are predictable.
Is your intent with random "purposelessness"? Prof. Herrmann calls
randomness a "strong delusion" - http://www.serve.com/herrmann/random.htm
The Abuses of Randomness: My Almost Final Thoughts on this Subject
http://www.serve.com/herrmann/random1.htm
Kac, M. (1983) Marginalia. What is random?, American Scientist 71(4):
405-406
richardal...@googlemail.com
I've already answered the question, and did so in the parts of my post
you snipped without marking.
What do you think such blatant dishonesty tells us about your moral
standards and those of your religion?
To repeat:
Why not ask an evolutionary biologist?
If you want to understand a medical matter, you don't ask the editor
of a newspaper, you ask a doctor.
If you want to understand quantum physics, you don't ask a medical
doctor, you ask a physicist.
If you want to understand the political situation in Korea, you don't
ask a physicist, you ask someone who has studied the political
situation in Korea.
If you want to understand evolutionary biology, you don't ask a
newspaper editor, or a medical practitioner, or a physicist, or
someone who has studied the politics of Korea.
You ask an evolutionary biologist.
What is it that you find so hard to understand about this concept,
which seems simple to me?
Or is the requirement of your religion (whatever that may be) to
Bob T.
"You _are_ a loonie." - Monty Python
- Bob T.
John Wilkins
> In message <1190554714....@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com>, wf3h
> <wf...@vsswireless.net> writes
> >On Sep 23, 1:34 am, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Noam Chomsky says that natural selection can't explain where language
> >> came from. Of course it can't - natural selection doesn't exist.
> >
> >interesting...backspace has just said that no one dies before
> >reproducing.
>
> And everybody has 2.2 children :-)
I sold my .2 to a guy who had .8 collected already.
> >
> >such is the delusion of religion
> >
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
backspace
wrote:
> > He is dead and we can't ask him what was his intent. But whatever the
> > intent was you can't arbitrarily concatenate these two words "Natural"
> > and "selection" to form the phrase "natural selection" - it is
> > grammatical gargoyle. Especially if you look at the only definition
> > Darwin gave for the phrase:
> > "...I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if
> > useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark
> > its relation to man's power of selection...."
>
> That's not a definition. That's the coining of a name.
formal definition or theory of natural selection. or of evolution on
Wikipedia - this makes it difficult for everybody. I have said this
all along. But in this quote from Darwin we have the closest we will
ever get as to some form of formal definition. Try to understand my
intent with "definition" in the context of my quote.
> You have also confused the term used to refer to a phenomenon with the
> phenomenon itself. You don't like the term, but that has no relation to
> the existence of the phenomenon.
Until you define for me the phenomena you are not even wrong.
> Natural selection has nothing to do with pantheism .........
Until you define for me your intent with "Natural Selection" you are
not even wrong.
John Harshman
> On Sep 23, 4:23 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
> wrote:
>
>>>He is dead and we can't ask him what was his intent. But whatever the
>>>intent was you can't arbitrarily concatenate these two words "Natural"
>>>and "selection" to form the phrase "natural selection" - it is
>>>grammatical gargoyle. Especially if you look at the only definition
>>>Darwin gave for the phrase:
>>>"...I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if
>>>useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark
>>>its relation to man's power of selection...."
>>
>>That's not a definition. That's the coining of a name.
>
> Yes, we all know what is a formal definition. Of course there is no
> formal definition or theory of natural selection. or of evolution on
> Wikipedia - this makes it difficult for everybody. I have said this
> all along. But in this quote from Darwin we have the closest we will
> ever get as to some form of formal definition. Try to understand my
> intent with "definition" in the context of my quote.
Your "intent" seems to be dishonest, because Darwin defined the concept
just fine before introducing a term by which to label it. Pronouns have
antecedents.
>>You have also confused the term used to refer to a phenomenon with the
>>phenomenon itself. You don't like the term, but that has no relation to
>>the existence of the phenomenon.
>
> Until you define for me the phenomena you are not even wrong.
>>Natural selection has nothing to do with pantheism .........
>
> Until you define for me your intent with "Natural Selection" you are
> not even wrong.
Until you pay the slightest attention to what people have told you
repeatedly you will be reduced to endless repetition of empty phrases
like "you are not even wrong".
backspace
wrote:
> >>You have also confused the term used to refer to a phenomenon with the
> >>phenomenon itself. You don't like the term, but that has no relation to
> >>the existence of the phenomenon.
>
> > Until you define for me the phenomena you are not even wrong.
> >>Natural selection has nothing to do with pantheism .........
>
> > Until you define for me your intent with "Natural Selection" you are
> > not even wrong.
> Until you pay the slightest attention to what people have told you
> repeatedly...
Your intent is non-random natural selection from another thread. The
authors intent in my opening post are random. Which version do you
want me to believe random or non-random? You have also not motivated
your intent with "non-random NS" and neither has Dawkins and you
refuse to spell out why are you using the same phrase as Darwin if it
is not clear wether Darwin had a random or non-random intent with NS.
John Harshman
> On Sep 23, 5:10 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
> wrote:
>
>>>>You have also confused the term used to refer to a phenomenon with the
>>>>phenomenon itself. You don't like the term, but that has no relation to
>>>>the existence of the phenomenon.
>>
>>>Until you define for me the phenomena you are not even wrong.
>>>
>>>>Natural selection has nothing to do with pantheism .........
>>
>>>Until you define for me your intent with "Natural Selection" you are
>>>not even wrong.
>
>
>>Until you pay the slightest attention to what people have told you
>>repeatedly...
>
> Your intent is non-random natural selection from another thread. The
> authors intent in my opening post are random. Which version do you
> want me to believe random or non-random?
I have told you already. Why are you asking questions that have been
answered repeatedly? Please don't try to cite Fox News as an authority
on the meaning of natural selection.
> You have also not motivated
> your intent with "non-random NS" and neither has Dawkins and you
> refuse to spell out why are you using the same phrase as Darwin if it
> is not clear wether Darwin had a random or non-random intent with NS.
"Motivated"? It *is* clear that Darwin had a non-random intent. This
would be obvious to anyone who had read the Origin seeking comprehension
instead of, as you do, isolated phrases that could be used to perpetuate
confusion. It isn't that you are not even wrong; you are wrong, and
perversely so.
er...@swva.net
>
(snip)
> but Darwin never "randomed"
> anything in OriginSpecies
> dealing here with
> a structural ambiguity.
>
"random" is an adjective, and adjectives don't have past tenses, so
this sentence is nonsense. Likewise when you try to turn the
adjective "natural" in "natural selection," "nothing got naturaled" is
also nonsense.
(snip)
Eric Root
George
> On Sep 23, 4:01 pm, Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
>> Broadly and for the purpose of practical argument, and in terms of
>> DNA, mutation is random, but mutation is a disruption of the process
>> of replication of DNA, and often consists of a duplication of DNA but
>> in the wrong place.
> No, Darwin didn't know about DNA or genes, you need to discuss
> Darwin's pragmatics with natural selection since
> he coined the phrase and we are told what a genius this man was who
> could do no calculus.
Why should we do this? Do you honestly believe that no progress has been
made in the field since Darwin was alive? Science, unlike religion, is not
static. It is dynamic. It builds upon previous ideas and concepts,
elaborates on them, and is ever changing as new data becomes available. So
Darwin didn't know about genetics. Big deal. He understood that traits
are inherited and that they change over time. He explained those changes
with the concept of natural selection. Genetics has verified the validity
of that concept. By the way, Mcwireless, genius doesn't depend on one's
ability todo calculus. A genius is a person of great intelligence, who
shows an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, especially as shown in
creative and original work. Whether or not Darwin was a genuis is
debatable. He certainly was creative, though his work wasn't entirely
original - it was by and large an elaboration of previous ideas. Darwin
succeeded where others failed because his theory was more comprehensive; it
explained observations that previous explanations couldn't account for.
The theory today is even more comprehensive than it was in Darwin's day.
That's the way science works, Mcwireless. Now, when you can come up with
something that better explains the observations than the theory of
evolution does, I'm quite sure that you will have our undivided attention.
George
er...@swva.net
Actually, his behavior casts no light on his religion or lack
thereof; it only shows that he is some kind of nut who took an upper-
level linguistics course that he didn't understand, while on acid.
Eric Root
backspace
> Selection is not random: it is selective.
Of course it is not random. As I have posted this "random" nonsense
only surfaced in 1910 in the journals. Darwin never
said anything randomed. There never was any relationship between the
word "random' and "selection" just like there is no casual link
between a rock and fruit cake.
Bob T.
You _are_ a fruitcake.
- Bob T.
backspace
wrote:
> > You have also not motivated
> > your intent with "non-random NS" and neither has Dawkins and you
> > refuse to spell out why are you using the same phrase as Darwin if it
> > is not clear wether Darwin had a random or non-random intent with NS.
> "Motivated"? It *is* clear that Darwin had a non-random intent.
Quote me the passage in Origin Species.
backspace
> "backspace" <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1190557971.3...@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
>
> > On Sep 23, 4:01 pm, Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
> >> Broadly and for the purpose of practical argument, and in terms of
> >> DNA, mutation is random, but mutation is a disruption of the process
> >> of replication of DNA, and often consists of a duplication of DNA but
> >> in the wrong place.
> > No, Darwin didn't know about DNA or genes, you need to discuss
> > Darwin's pragmatics with natural selection since
> > he coined the phrase and we are told what a genius this man was who
> > could do no calculus.
> Why should we do this? Do you honestly believe that no progress has been
> made in the field since Darwin was alive?
Then why is everybody using Darwin's phrase implying that they are
communicating his intent?
> Now, when you can come up with
> something that better explains the observations than the theory of
> evolution does ...
Show me on Wikipedia where is the theory of evolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_evolution redirects to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution. There is a huge difference
between the pragmatics we convey with the word
"evolution" and an actual theory that will explain the control
algorithms in all creatures and bacteria. Show me on the
Wikipedia Evolution page where is this much vaunted theory of
evolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact doesn't give
an actual theory, it merely demonstrates the intellectual arrogance
and condescension of evolutionists talking to adults like their are 5-
year olds with phrases like
Gravity is a "fact". Evolution is a "fact".
Free Lunch
backspace <sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote in
<1190566849.2...@n39g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>:
Are you still trying to tell us that you are incapable of distinguishing
between a fact and a theory? You really need to quit telling us lies or
actually learn what the difference is. I doubt completely that you don't
understand the distinction. I think you are either completely dishonest
or a profoundly annoying Loki.
Kermit
> On Sep 23, 1:34 am, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > Noam Chomsky says that natural selection can't explain where language
> > came from. Of course it can't - natural selection doesn't exist.
>
> interesting...backspace has just said that no one dies before
> reproducing.
Well, none of *my ancestors did...
>
> such is the delusion of religion
Kermit
--
"We don't draw any chicken-shit lines," said Marlo Sutphen, recording
secretary for BALD. "Boundaries are for chumps. We think Britney
should go around naked in front of her kids no matter how old they are
if she wants to. Anyone can flash a little booty in front of a two-
year-old, but greeting your daughter's prom date in the raw, that
takes courage. My daughter still hasn't spoken to me since I did that,
and her goddamn prom was in May."
John Harshman
I suppose you want a sentence in which Darwin says "natural selection is
not random" in exactly those words. I don't know of one. But that's a
stupid requirement. Natural selection is not random because anything
that operates that way can't be random. You would have to be an idiot,
or perhaps willfully ignorant, not to realize that.
If you want to see a passage that makes clear that natural selection is
not random (and incidentally defines it for you) look at the rest of the
paragraph from which your usual quote mine ("This preservation...) comes
from.
Now all your problems are in your head only, but you have discovered one
difficulty with the word "random": some people seem to be using it to
mean "not intelligently directed". But a very little thought would seem
necessary to show that this is a meaning at odds with the usual one. If
you hold a rock in your hand and let it go, does it leave your hand in a
random direction? No, it goes down. Does any intelligent being make it
go down? Unless you believe in gravity fairies, no. So there must be
some phenomena that are neither random nor intelligently directed. And
natural selection is one of these.
Kermit
> On Sep 23, 4:01 pm, Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:> Broadly and for the purpose of practical argument, and in terms of
> > DNA, mutation is random, but mutation is a disruption of the process
> > of replication of DNA, and often consists of a duplication of DNA but
> > in the wrong place.
>
> No, Darwin didn't know about DNA or genes, you need to discuss
> Darwin's pragmatics with natural selection since
> he coined the phrase and we are told what a genius this man was who
> could do no calculus.
Darwin only knew that inheritable traits sometimes changed, providing
a pool of variability. Science marches on, despite whining from the
"must get permission from his holiness" crowd. It has been explained
to you that the researchers in all sciences learn as time goes on, and
pool their knowledge. Are physicists obligated to conform to
definitions by Galileo?
>
> > Selection is not random: it is selective. It is the compound effect
> > of many individual events - consider all of the dog vs. cat encounters
> > in the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons - in which one or the other may get
> > the upper hand on any given occasion, but overall there is a trend.
>
> What has Tom and Jerry got to do with the Irreducibly interdependently
> complex control algorithms that keeps the short beak and long beak
> finch stable in flight?
Biblical literalists do have troubles with metaphors and analogies,
yes.
>
> > The movement of particles of gas is best treated as random, most of
> > the time. But the air movements that govern the weather are predictable.
>
> Is your intent with random "purposelessness"?
Why are you asking about intent? What intent could anyone have with
randomness? If you mean what did he *mean, did you notice where he
said "Broadly and for the purpose of practical argument, and in terms
of DNA..."?
> Prof. Herrmann calls
> randomness a "strong delusion" -http://www.serve.com/herrmann/random.htm
> The Abuses of Randomness: My Almost Final Thoughts on this Subjecthttp://www.serve.com/herrmann/random1.htm
> Kac, M. (1983) Marginalia. What is random?, American Scientist 71(4):
> 405-406
>From the web page:
"If you ...believe that ...your theory contradicts such Scriptures as
Heb 1:3 which indicate that God always exercises complete control over
the behavior of all natural-system entities within the universe that
do not display those variations we describe as free-will, then, as
established in [points listed above] and discussed in the above
mentioned book, you have accepted a strong delusion."
So Hermann thinks that God moves every little electron, eh? Busy guy.
You'll pardon me if I yawn. Mainstream math and science work.
Hermann's religious fantasies do not. What, for instance, do they
predict, that is, how could they be falsified?
Loon.
Kermit
Kermit
> On Sep 23, 5:48 pm, "George" <geo...@yourservice.com> wrote:
>
> > "backspace" <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> >news:1190557971.3...@50g2000hsm.googlegroups.com...
>
> > > On Sep 23, 4:01 pm, Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
> > >> Broadly and for the purpose of practical argument, and in terms of
> > >> DNA, mutation is random, but mutation is a disruption of the process
> > >> of replication of DNA, and often consists of a duplication of DNA but
> > >> in the wrong place.
> > > No, Darwin didn't know about DNA or genes, you need to discuss
> > > Darwin's pragmatics with natural selection since
> > > he coined the phrase and we are told what a genius this man was who
> > > could do no calculus.
> > Why should we do this? Do you honestly believe that no progress has been
> > made in the field since Darwin was alive?
>
> Then why is everybody using Darwin's phrase implying that they are
> communicating his intent?
Nobody is communicating his intent. We are concerned with science,
with those hostile to science, and their misunderstandings or human
origins.
If you mean "why are we using the same words he did", it's because
sometimes we are talking about the same thing. Most folks have no
trouble with this idea; it's intuitive for young children.
>
> > Now, when you can come up with
> > something that better explains the observations than the theory of
> > evolution does ...
>
> Show me on Wikipedia where is the theory of
> evolution.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_evolutionredirects
> tohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution. There is a huge difference
> between the pragmatics we convey with the word
> "evolution"
Why are you concerned with pragmatics? You have not even learned to
read a dictionary yet. Also, pragmatics do not ordinarily affect the
content or validity of a scientific theory. Start with meaning, then
continue on to politics and psychology if you like.
> and an actual theory that will explain the control
> algorithms in all creatures and bacteria. Show me on the
> Wikipedia Evolution page where is this much vaunted theory of
> evolution.
Please show me where the bible lists all of the gas pedals for
tetrapods.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_factdoesn't give
> an actual theory, it merely demonstrates the intellectual arrogance
> and condescension of evolutionists talking to adults like their are 5-
> year olds with phrases like
> Gravity is a "fact". Evolution is a "fact".
And yet they have not simplified it enough for you :(
Kermit
Kermit
>
> > Selection is not random: it is selective.
>
> Of course it is not random. As I have posted this "random" nonsense
> only surfaced in 1910 in the journals. Darwin never
> said anything randomed.
Correct. Nobody who speaks proper English ever has.
> There never was any relationship between the
> word "random' and "selection" just like there is no casual link
> between a rock and fruit cake.
And yet Creationists keep insisting there is. They're wrong, or
course. With a pool of random variations in inheritable traits, and
natural selection (plus human selection, sexual selection, drift,
founder effect, etc ) then evolution is inevitable.
Kermit
Kent Paul Dolan
[thousandth posting of unvarying drivel]
How many more times are you going to ignore the
answer you always get to this idiocy by you?
How many more times are you going to pretend that
poorly stated claims in the popular media are
somehow arguments against the workings of the Theory
of Evolution, which is a theory of science, not a
theory of Fox News?
Would you go to kindergardeners for input to fill in
the blanks in your multiplication tables, too?
=====
_Variation_ is, in the part we care about for
evolution explaining speciation, "random" deviations
from perfect heritability of parental traits.
_Natural selection_ is, in the part that matters
most for evolution explaining speciation,
"non-random" fitness based reproductive success,
where "fitness" refers to the phenotype engendered
by that variation-inheriting genotype.
=====
The issues are much more complicated than that,
working via probabilities rather than certainties,
because the universe isn't the simple-minded place
your scriptures want you to believe it to be.
Some variation is non-random, some natural
selection is purely random, for example.
if you can ever get that tiny part delimited above
straight in your mind, your constant need to post
drooling idiocy here will drop dramatically.
xanthian.
backspace
> _Natural selection_ is, in the part that matters
> most for evolution explaining speciation,
> "non-random" fitness based reproductive success,
> where "fitness" refers to the phenotype engendered
> by that variation-inheriting genotype.
"...Reproductive success....." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_success
Question:
If cows were meant to produce beer instead of milk would they still be
a "success"?
"Reproductive success" means what? "You have a green light" means
what? In both sentences RS and "you have a green light" means
absolutely nothing without knowing the intent of the individual
formulating the sentence.
You have missed the Perry Marshall thread:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/3dce2afb3339cfc2/c5d0c7e1fa95611b#c5d0c7e1fa95611b
Marshall said: "....All languages contain grammar. If I say the "car
is red". Is the car red - that is syntax. Semantics would be "Did he
steal that car" but by changing the accent the semantics changes.
Intent: You have a green light. It could mean you are holding a green
light bulb. Or you have a green light to drive your car. Two
completely different meanings based on intent. Intent changed but
syntax and semantics, grammar didn't change...."
If you were to post "You have a green light" on this forum, you would
not even be wrong until I know your intent. It could be that your
intent is that somebody is holding a green light in his hand or
somebody has the Ok for a project.
In the same manner until I know your intent with "Reproductive
success" you are not even wrong.
On Wikipedia it states:"....Reproductive success is defined as the
passing of genes onto the next generation in a way that they too can
pass those genes on...."
And until Wikipedia and everybody using this phrase "reproductive
success" tells me who defined it and what was this person's intent -
nobody is even wrong. And I am not stating "... you are not even
wrong..." as some sort of mantra. This is literally the only position
one can take if you pick up a blank piece of paper on which somebody
wrote:"...You have a green light.." Without know who is this person
and what was his intent the sentence literally is not even wrong.
Intent Mr. Dolan - intent what is your intent with Reproductive
success?
Grandbank
> . This is literally the only position
> one can take if you pick up a blank piece of paper on which somebody
> wrote:"...You have a green light.."
Interesting. I'd heard of short term memory loss, but never seen
anyone admit to suffering it to this degree. Are you saying that
everything you read on this subject is like a fresh blank sheet of
paper? That you retain nothing from previous ( I almost said learning
but *that's* clearly not appropriate ) exposure to information? Yet
curiously your sentences are filled with other commonly understood
words that don't seem to cause you this problem or require such
explanation. One could take this as evidence that you are full of
horse shit. And one does.
KP
Robert Carnegie
> On Sep 23, 4:01 pm, Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
> > Broadly and for the purpose of practical argument, and in terms of
> > DNA, mutation is random, but mutation is a disruption of the process
> > of replication of DNA, and often consists of a duplication of DNA but
> > in the wrong place.
> No, Darwin didn't know about DNA or genes, you need to discuss
> Darwin's pragmatics with natural selection since
> he coined the phrase and we are told what a genius this man was who
> could do no calculus.
Very well. Substitute throughout for "DNA", "the mysterious medium of
heredity that substantially preserves the characteristics of a parent
organism in its offspring, but with such variations as may probably
lead to different reproductive success."
That such a medium exists was and is evident. And as we now know,
there is very little credible evidence of this being anything besides
DNA.
Curiously, I supposed that you would be interested in what "natural
selection" is considered to mean now, and not in the 19th century.
The precise meanings of technical terms may be revised - for instance
"oxidation". The fundamental specifications of metric systems also
may be substituted, such as the meter.
backspace
> Curiously, I supposed that you would be interested in what "natural
> selection" is considered to mean now, and not in the 19th century.
> The precise meanings of technical terms may be revised - for instance
> "oxidation". The fundamental specifications of metric systems also
> may be substituted, such as the meter.
The defintion of IC can change but intent Behe had of the
*interdependence* between algorithms and mechanical parts can't or his
theory would be unfalsifiable. Words and its definitions are used to
communicate intent. A word such as "selection" had a very specific
intent before Darwin muck-up the English language - the word has
become undefined and we are being robbed of a word that we have used
to communicate the intent of *always* conscious goal directed
*selection*. I even had to use the word *selection* in that sentence
because well mmmh that is what *selection* means.
We are essential dealing with materialists engaging in language
relativism. Because given their premises the very words
that they use are not available to them, they therefore can't even
begin to motivate why they believe there is no God.
So instead they are making language undefined.
Greg Guarino
<jharshman....@pacbell.net> wrote:
>If you want to see a passage that makes clear that natural selection is
>not random (and incidentally defines it for you) look at the rest of the
>paragraph from which your usual quote mine ("This preservation...) comes
>from.
I think he discovered that bit in this post of mine:
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/9df8cb3ccdb08956
He can't use the whole quote. Just that one paragraph makes Darwin's
meaning abundantly clear and entirely destroys backspace's argument.
Greg Guarino
George
If you really wanted to learn about evolution, I suspect you can do a bit
better than Wikipedia.
George
Kent Paul Dolan
> And until Wikipedia and everybody using this
> phrase "reproductive success" tells me who defined
> it and what was this person's intent - nobody is
> even wrong.
Sorry, but that is just you employing one of your
favorite tools in your invincible ignorance arsenal:
turning every defeat of you into an infinitely
recursable vocabulary exercise, in hopes your very
real defeats will go unnoticed in the noise you
create.
[I'm pretty sure you are violating UC's
intellectual property rights in that tool,
anyway.]
Persons of normal mental health will not choose to
let you play that game.
Nor will I.
[Though my mental state is "unusual" to put
it mildly. That part of the Bell curve is
_supposed_ to be unoccupied with a human
population this small.]
xanthian.
Nor is Wikipedia in any sense a source on which you
should rely for _authoritative_ guidance on
anything, except perhaps as an abundant source of
examples of the perversity of human nature.
peter
> A word such as "selection" had a very specific
> intent before Darwin muck-up the English language - the word has
> become undefined and we are being robbed of a word that we have used
> to communicate the intent of *always* conscious goal directed
> *selection*.
False. A sieve has always been deemed to "select" items based on
size, and that has been true whether the sieve is a manufactured one
or a natural river sieve created by tree branches in the flow that
lets water and small debris through but traps logs and kayakers.
Selection can be done by either conscious entities or unconscious ones
and that has been true long before Darwin made an appearance.
backspace
> On Sep 23, 6:27 pm, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > A word such as "selection" had a very specific
> > intent before Darwin muck-up the English language - the word has
> > become undefined and we are being robbed of a word that we have used
> > to communicate the intent of *always* conscious goal directed
> > *selection*.
> False. A sieve has always been deemed to "select" items based on
> size....
It depends on the sentence in which you use the words *sieve* and
"select*. For example: "The man used the sieve to select for the
larger stones and allow the smaller stones to pass through." There is
no confusion as to who did the selecting. You need to motivate what
you are saying by writing down sentences.
> or a natural river sieve created by tree branches in the flow that
Depends on you pragmatics with "sieve" in this context. Why would you
want to call branches in this context a sieve?
backspace
> and that has been true long before Darwin made an appearance.
I beg to differ. *selection* implies consciousness, what word would
you then propose I use to always communicate the intent of conscious
selection? But your statement proves what I have been saying all
along: English is become undefined. And allow me to motivate this by
quoting Prof. Hurd from Canada who replied to my post here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Reproductive_success
'Reproductive success is a technical term, and thus "success" does not
imply consciousness in the way you say it "always" does. Pete.Hurd
19:27, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Lets look at the word "success". Success in my language universe has
implied the reaching of some predetermined goal. And predetermining
something means you are conscious. And thus Dernavich and I want's to
know why is the evolutionists using a word not available to them
given their premises ?
Grandbank
> Success in my language universe...
And would that universe be brownish in color, have a slightly puckered
horizon, and be tightly wrapped around your head?
KP
John Harshman
Yes, I know it's futile to try to convince him of anything, or to show
him anything in hopes he will see it, but it's sometimes fun to rub his
face in it just to see how he will avoid any acknowledgment. Any time
you get him to retreat to "What are your pragmatics?" and "You are not
even wrong", you know you have scored a hit.
Kent Paul Dolan
> Depends on you(sic) pragmatics with "sieve" in
> this context.
This is just more "time wasting moron" behavior on
your part, evading discussing the issues by shifting
to endless recursions of vocabulary obfuscation
exercises.
Try not doing that. Behaving otherwise may [no
guarantees, you are pretty far removed from reality]
bring you closer to becoming a fully functional
human being.
> Why would you want to call branches in this
> context a sieve?
Because they sieve things, as was clearly explained,
with examples.
This again is simply "time wasting moron" behavior
on your part, challenging perfectly clear uses of
English to avoid confronting that you have, yet
again, been defeated in your support of your
theistic idiocy.
Since you _can't_ support your theism on its merits,
you descend into this endless recursion of stupidity
instead.
Do you fail to understand that others take this
behavior as direct evidence for just how bankrupt
your cause is, that your defense is constructed
entirely of intellectually dishonest behaviors?
Do you fail to understand that this behavior
_damages_, rather than improving, the reputation of
the viewpoint you attempt to espouse, in the mind of
your audience, associating it in their minds with
the actions of fools and buffoons?
You are therefore, measured honestly, one of your
own religion's worst enemies.
Is that your intention?
xanthian.
backspace
> > Why would you want to call branches in this
> > context a sieve?
> Because they sieve things, as was clearly explained,
> with examples.
No, tree branches on rivers don' t "sieve" kayakers. It all depends on
your intent with "sieve". His intent could have been to invoke the
tree branches with some sort of consciousness to "sieve" the kayakers.
I have never heard of anybody using "sieve" in such context in lets
say popular works, fiction, novels and such. You evolutionists have no
idea of what you are trying to say. All you know is that there is no
God. You can certainly state your case and argue as to why there is no
conscious being separate from its creation but then a word like
*selection* is not available to you when talking about rocks, frogs
and tigers because nobody *selected* for these objects of nature -
this is your premise.
Kent Paul Dolan
>> Selection can be done by either conscious
>> entities or unconscious ones and that has been
>> true long before Darwin made an appearance.
> I beg to differ.
Why do you think your disagreement is going to
modify reality?
> *selection* implies consciousness,
You are spewing falsehoods. No, it does not. A
titration tube selects chemicals by their propensity
to adhere to the titration medium, for another
example, whether there is an experimenter present or
not.
> what word would you then propose I use to always
> communicate the intent of conscious selection?
The English language does not come with a guarantee
that every meme can be conveyed by a single word,
the famous example being that English does not have
a word for "the chalk under the index fingernail of
a sixth form teacher".
If you want to say "conscious selection", try using
"conscious selection" as an _excellent_ way to
convey it.
Since, by your writing above, you were already
perfectly aware of this being the proper usage, you
are simply behaving as a "time wasting moron", yet
again, yet again.
> But your statement proves what I have been saying
> all along: English is become undefined.
Your incapacities and stuttering obfuscations are
_your_ problem, not a problem of the English
language.
> And allow me to motivate this by quoting Prof.
> Hurd from Canada who replied to my post
> herehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Reproductive_success
>
> 'Reproductive success is a technical term, and
> thus "success" does not imply consciousness in the
> way you say it "always" does. Pete.Hurd 19:27, 20
> July 2007 (UTC)
Which is exactly correct.
> Lets look at the word "success". Success in my
> language universe has implied the reaching of some
> predetermined goal.
Perhaps your problem is that you do not
understand what language _is_. To be part of
a "language", a usage must convey a SHARED,
AGREED, CONSENSUS meme. Your attempts to
have a "personal language", whose mapping
from words to memes is known only to you, is
doomed to failure _by definition_: if your
usage isn't shared, it isn't language, it is
just noise shaped like the noises language
users employ, but not satisfying the action
of being noises conveying a shared meaning.
No, it doesn't. "The rain succeeded in drowning the
onion planting" doesn't imply that "drowning the
onion planting" was a predetermined goal of the
rain, nor does it imbue rain with consciousness.
Once again you are defending your invincible
ignorance with bankrupt, intellectually dishonest,
"time wasting moron" behaviors, arguing vocabulary
by trying to force others to abandon English in
favor of your private "language constructed for the
purposes of this one argument" never to be seen
again.
Stop doing that, it annoys your audience.
> And predetermining something means you are
> conscious.
Really?
So if a rock falls off a cliff, blown off by the
wind, its predetermined destiny to hit the ground
implies that the rock, or maybe the wind, is
conscious?
I can see why you are accused of being envious of
the intelligence of a sack of hammers: you think
they are conscious, and they are, obviously to any
observer, nail poundingly smarter than you are. They
can hit the nail on the head, while you repeatedly
demonstrate the ability to take a huge swing at a
rock on the ground and miss the whole planet.
> And thus Dernavich and I want's to know
> why is the evolutionists using a word not
> available to them given their premises ?
English is obviously not your native
language.
Do you have one?
The above is the muddle your less
intelligent third shift flying saucer driver
might make out of English, the first week
after arriving on Earth from Aldeberan.
What decree do you think gives you the right or
obligation to tell scientists what vocabulary they
may or may not use in discussing evolution, aside
just from your conscious predetermination to be an
annoying twit?
xanthian.
UC
> Dave Scott fromhttp://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-response-to-fathe...
> replies tohttp://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,184953,00.html
> Foxnews priest Jonathan:
> "..No reasonable person denies that life forms can evolve, but it's
> quite different to say that through purely random natural selection
> one species evolves into another to the point of reaching human
> intelligence..."
>
> Note that Jonathan uses "random natural Selection", but Coyne athttp://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20070618&s=coyne061807
> said:"...Humans, the product of non-random natural selection, are the
> biological equivalent of a 747, and in some ways they are even more
> complex....."
> Who's pragmatics with natural selection must I refer to when talking
> about the NS - the random or non-random intent?
>
> Dave Scott replies:
> "....Since we can observe in living tissue that random mutation +
> natural selection is capable of causing descent with modification
> today...."
> What was Dave Scott's intent with natural selection in this quote:
> random or non-random?
>
> Jonathan states: "...They are being taught a very unscientific theory
> called Neo-Darwinism, the belief that there is NO purpose or
> intelligence behind life forms, that it's all random..."
> But onhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Modern_evolutionary_synthesis#Moder...
> I quoted a journal stating that it is not defined:
> "There is no canonical definition of neo-Darwinism, and surprisingly
> few writers on the subject seem to consider it necessary to spell out
> precisely what it is that they are discussing. This is especially
> curious in view of the controversy which dogs the theory, for one
> might have thought that a first step towards resolving the dispute
> over its status would be to decide upon a generally acceptable
> definition over it. ... Of course, the lack of firm definition does,
> as we shall see, make the theory much easier to defend." P.T. Saunders
> & M.W. Ho, "Is Neo-Darwinism Falsifiable? - And Does It Matter?",
> Nature and System (1982) 4:179-196, p. 179.
>
> If Neo-Darwinims or the "Modern synthesis" as it is called today is
> not defined then according to who's belief is there no purpose behind
> life forms?
>
> http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2006_06_24_archive.html
> "....Taylor believed that evolution occurs, and he also believed that
> random natural selection played a role in evolution. However, he came
> to doubt Darwinism, the idea that random natural selection and a few
> other naturalistic processes explain the life we see around us...."
> Gordon Rattray Taylor was Chief Science Advisor to BBC Television. If
> he talks about "Random Natural Selection", John Harshman and Dawkins
> talks about "Non-random Natural Selection" but Darwin never "randomed"
> anything in OriginSpecies then whos's intent with Natural Selection is
> Taylor, Dawkins and Harshman communicating? Its obvious that we are
> dealing here with
> a structural ambiguity.
>
> Cathy posts on:http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/yet-another-feather...
> "...Creating a mutation to prove what random natural selection is
> capable of doing is contradictory....
>
> Dave Scott replies:
> "...Sometimes it's difficult or impossible to do this and that's the
> bane of the study of evolution in the distant past...."
> We are told that Evolution = RM + NS. Who's version of evolution is
> Scott referring to in his reply to Cathy?
>
> Athttp://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php?s=832502d3bf6727b0f00bf3b7277ba4...
> Espritch says:"...But evolution is an undirected process....." His
> intent is that evolution is a random process.
> What would Espritch intent be with Random(ev) = Random(mut) + NS ? It
> could be Random(ev) = random + non-random or it could be Random(ev) =
> random + random.
>
> And the whole pragmatics surrounding this term Evolution = RM+NS is
> what the linguists addressed here:http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0210c&L=linguist&P=...
> "...Now it is considered as a result that while mutation is random,
> natural selection is non-random. ?!...But what does this mean?.... The
> issue of 'random evolution' is left untouched by this revised
> terminology. You can't have you cake and eat it too....."
>
> Noam Chomsky says that natural selection can't explain where language
> came from. Of course it can't - natural selection doesn't exist.
Extinction is in some respects random, and mutations are caused by
random errors in DNA duplication during mitosis. Natural selection
works with what materials exists. It has no 'purpose'; there is no
teleological guidance to evolution, but it does indeed produce some
organisms that are in some ways 'superior' to those of ancient times.
No-one looking at a panther can help but hold it in awe; by
comparison, Phthinosuchsus is clumsy and primitive; it could not live
in today's world.
Kent Paul Dolan
>> Success in my language universe...
> And would that universe be brownish in color, have
> a slightly puckered horizon, and be tightly
> wrapped around your head?
Oh, yeah, it would.
xanthian.
Greg Guarino
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> in my language universe
Anyone else get a chuckle out of that?
Greg Guarino
Bob T.
> On Sep 24, 6:04 pm, Kent Paul Dolan <xanth...@well.com> wrote:
>
> > > Why would you want to call branches in this
> > > context a sieve?
> > Because they sieve things, as was clearly explained,
> > with examples.
>
> No, tree branches on rivers don' t "sieve" kayakers. It all depends on
> your intent with "sieve". His intent could have been to invoke the
> tree branches with some sort of consciousness to "sieve" the kayakers.
> I have never heard of anybody using "sieve" in such context in lets
> say popular works, fiction, novels and such. You evolutionists have no
> idea of what you are trying to say.
In honor of backspace:
My Brain is like a Sieve, by Thomas Dolby
My brain is like a sieve
sometimes it's easier to forget
all the bad things you did to me,
you did to me.
my brain is like sieve
but it knows when it's being messed with
if you wanted you could come in,
so come in.
When you said you loved me
when you told me you cared
that you would be a part of me,
that you would always be there
did you really mean to hurt me?
no, I think you only meant to tease.
But it's hard to remember,
I lost my memory. See,
my brain is like a sieve
sometimes it's easier to forget
all the bad things you did to me,
you did to me.
my brain is like sieve
but it knows when it's being messed with
if you wanted you could come in,
so come in.
You ought to be ashamed of your behaviour
when you're treating me this way
as if I had deserved to be a place to vent your ire
some day I'm gonna douse that bonfire
we make a crucial team for a dying world
and style is a word I never even heard
in your vocabulary, victim of a murder mystery
...murder!
My brain is like a sieve
sometimes it's easier to forget
all the bad things you did to me,
you did to me.
my brain is like sieve
but it's a place where we both could live
if you wanted you could come in,
so come in.
> All you know is that there is no God. You can certainly state your case and argue as to why there is no
> conscious being separate from its creation but then a word like
> *selection* is not available to you when talking about rocks, frogs
> and tigers because nobody *selected* for these objects of nature -
> this is your premise.
Backspace, your brain is like a sieve.
- Bob T.
Kent Paul Dolan
>>> Why would you want to call branches in this
>>> context a sieve?
>> Because they sieve things, as was clearly explained,
>> with examples.
> No, tree branches on rivers don' t "sieve" kayakers.
Perhaps someone should introduce you to the concept
of a "dictionary"???
:- sieve
:- * verb (used with object), verb (used
:- without object)
:- 3. to put or force through a sieve; sift.
:- http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sieve
> It all depends on your intent with "sieve".
No, it doesn't. If words changed their defined
meanings based on the _intent of the user_, we'd be
living in a universe with Humpty Dumpty vocabulary
rules, and communication would be impossible.
Words can only convey meaning effectively if their
meaning is fixed (at least for the nonce), by
agreement between user and recipient.
Your version of what language _is_, is a false one,
and one impossible to make work.
More to the point, it is the version employed by
time wasting morons.
Stop being one.
> His intent could have been to invoke the tree
> branches with some sort of consciousness to
> "sieve" the kayakers.
Not on this planet, it wasn't. You are trying to put
words in his mouth that were instead pulled from
your fundament. That is to say, you are being a time
wasting moron, yet again, yet again.
> I have never heard of anybody using "sieve" in
> such context in lets(sic) say popular works,
> fiction, novels and such.
Your ignorance, however, as demonstrated by the
dictionary out-take above, is not the ruling law of
nature you pretend it to be. Arguing from ignorance,
or from incredulity, is just more time wasting moron
tactics from your arsenal of invincible ignorance.
> You evolutionists have no idea of what you are
> trying to say.
Your disagreement with our ideas, like your
ignorance, is not a ruling law of the universe.
We are quite clueful of the intent of our utterings.
That you are incapable of catching a clue in a two
micron sieve is _your comprehension problem_, not
_our utterance problems_.
> All you know is that there is no God.
Right, and so would you if you were honest with
yourself.
One of the clues you have failed to catch most
profoundly and tragically for your viability as a
functioning human being is that roughly forty
millennia of abject failure by theists to produce
(any credible evidence of) a god or gods on demand
by skeptics _is_ evidence, evidence that theism
proponents' claims to have gods at their beck and
call (read the ranting threats of any old testament
prophet against unbelievers) are purest mendacity,
coloring all discussions of such gods, and the
deities themselves, with the indelible patina of
"falsehood".
> You can certainly state your case and argue as to
> why there is no conscious being separate from its
> creation but then a word like *selection* is not
> available to you when talking about rocks, frogs
> and tigers because nobody *selected* for these
> objects of nature - this is your premise.
That you cannot comprehend selection separately from
"conscious selection" is your ignorance, not any
problem we atheists are having, nor any difficulty the
Theory of Evolution is having.
A radioactive atom, by mechanisms impreceptible to
mere humans, selects the moment of its own decay.
Does that make every carbon 14 atom "conscious" in
your model of reality?
A prism selects the path light will follow through
it based on the wavelength of that light. If you
think that makes a prism "conscious", I'll put a
handle on one and add it to that sack of hammers of
whose intelligence you are so rightly envious.
Snowflakes and raindrops also act as prisms.
Do you intend to claim that their ability to perform
selection makes every snowflake and raindrop
conscious?
If so, consciousness is a worthless thing indeed as
perceived by you, with so little of your own to
bring to bear on the task.
Why you think so worthless a thing as you insist
consciousness to be is needed to produce speciation,
or capable of doing so, is beyond comprehension.
Be happy with your snowflake gods, and don't mind me
giggling at you over here in the corner.
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
> Phthinosuchsus
Google claims that's slightly misspelled, wants
"Phthinosuchus". A nice image, if you don't mind
that the page is in Dutch and so a bit more
challenging to read, is here:
http://www.bertsgeschiedenissite.nl/geschiedenis%20aarde/therapsida.htm
I'm _really_ impressed by the four athwartships set
nose horns of the fellow at the top of that page.
Rip your guts out with a nod of his head, he could.
Don't be too sure on the maladaption of some of
those dinosaurs for today's world. The ones that
lived with much lower oxygen levels might function
like greyhounds on steroids in our current
planetary atmosphere.
xanthian.
Robert Carnegie
Footnote on the etymology of "natural selection" and whether a
conscious mind's choice is implied by the word "selection":
I found a note at http://dictionary.reference.com/ that indicates that
Charles Darwin found that the term "selection" was used to describe
that aspect of the work of animal breeders, and modified it as
"natural selection" to refer to an equivalent process occurring
without intent, in the natural course of events. I haven't verified
this (I expect it comes up in his book) and it seems extremely
convenient, but for now I'll take it. It seems equivalent to
referring to an aeroplane "autopilot" mechanism, which, of course,
operates without a pilot.
For an analogy
backspace
> > what word would you then propose I use to always
> > communicate the intent of conscious selection?
> The English language does not come with a guarantee
> that every meme can be conveyed by a single word,
> the famous example being that English does not have
> a word for "the chalk under the index fingernail of
> a sixth form teacher".
Depends on your intent with "meme" a word langauge terrorist Dawkins
has introduced to convey nobody knows what intent.
backspace
> > Noam Chomsky says that natural selection can't explain where language
> > came from. Of course it can't - natural selection doesn't exist.
>
> Extinction is in some respects random, and mutations are caused by
> random errors in DNA duplication during mitosis. Natural selection
> works with what materials exists. It has no 'purpose'; there is no
> teleological guidance to evolution
Says who?
backspace
> > The defintion of IC can change but intent Behe had of the
> > *interdependence* between algorithms and mechanical parts can't or his
> > theory would be unfalsifiable. Words and its definitions are used to
> > communicate intent. A word such as "selection" had a very specific
> > intent before Darwin muck-up the English language - the word has
> > become undefined and we are being robbed of a word that we have used
> > to communicate the intent of *always* conscious goal directed
> > *selection*. I even had to use the word *selection* in that sentence
> > because well mmmh that is what *selection* means.
> > We are essential dealing with materialists engaging in language
> > relativism. Because given their premises the very words
> > that they use are not available to them, they therefore can't even
> > begin to motivate why they believe there is no God.
> > So instead they are making language undefined.
>
> Footnote on the etymology of "natural selection" and whether a
> conscious mind's choice is implied by the word "selection":
>
> Charles Darwin found that the term "selection" was used to describe
> that aspect of the work of animal breeders, and modified it as
> "natural selection" to refer to an equivalent process occurring
> without intent, in the natural course of events.
This is precisely the point under dispute. Darwin did not communicate
his intent clearly natural selection. We don't know what was his
intent and every person is just basically inventing their own
pragmatics with the phrase. As evidence for this go to the talk page
of Wikipedia natural selection where each persons simply makes a
statement that natural selection means such and such but doesn't tell
us who says so. I can 't just simply invent my own concept of an
eigenvector - no I quote from a book, I credit the author. Nobody
there discussing NS credits anybody.
Why I should I believe Harshman's version of non-random or directed NS
and not the random(non-directed) NS version. ?
Free Lunch
backspace <sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote in
<1190685673.5...@g4g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>:
Null, of course. If you can't prove null wrong, you're wasting your
time.
John Harshman
Yes he did. Everyone except you agrees on this point.
> We don't know what was his
> intent and every person is just basically inventing their own
> pragmatics with the phrase.
Yes we do know his intent. The chapter on natural selection is quite
clear on this point, and in fact what was written above is just a
paraphrase of what Darwin actually said.
> As evidence for this go to the talk page
> of Wikipedia natural selection where each persons simply makes a
> statement that natural selection means such and such but doesn't tell
> us who says so. I can 't just simply invent my own concept of an
> eigenvector - no I quote from a book, I credit the author. Nobody
> there discussing NS credits anybody.
So what? It doesn't matter who said it first, or whether anyone is
credited, as long as we all agree on the meaning. That's why you can't
invent your own eigenvector; but as long as you use the standard meaning
you don't have to explain who you got it from.
> Why I should I believe Harshman's version of non-random or directed NS
> and not the random(non-directed) NS version. ?
Because there is no such thing as a random version of natural selection.
What would that even mean? But I'm not sure what you mean by "directed"
here. What are your pragmatics?
backspace
wrote:
> Because there is no such thing as a random version of natural selection.
> What would that even mean?
Since NS doesn't exist by logic neither would random and non-random NS
exist.
> But I'm not sure what you mean by "directed"
> here. What are your pragmatics?
No, you use the word "Non-random" which in my language universe
conveys the intent of "directed" - directed by whom the nature
selection force? I don't know, the person who uses the phrase must
clarify his intent, it is not for me to sit and guess what you are
trying to say.
Kent Paul Dolan
> Depends on your intent with "meme" a word langauge
> terrorist Dawkins has introduced to convey nobody
> knows what intent.
Which part of "stop being an annoying twit" did I
type too fast for you to read?
xanthian.
And that word isn't blamable on Dawkins, only its
slightly shortened (from "mimeme") modern spelling.
Nor is its meaning any big mystery except to
"vocabulary-terrorist" time wasting moron you.
It goes back to ancient Greek "mimeisthai", "to
imitate", as a quick look at any reputable
dictionary will confirm, so your idiocy is as usual
palpable and obvious, your abject intellectual
dishonesty manifest to the whole t.o readership
world.
You pretend to espouse a religion which expressly
prohibits this behavior by you as one among its ten
most important rules for living (among thousands of
such rules written rules in scriptures and in the
authoritative interpretations of those scriptures).
Based on this behavior of yours we can only conclude
that in reality you hold that religion in uttermost
contempt.
Why, then, should we regard that religion _any_ more
highly than does one of its noisiest "supporters",
one more time for the record, please?
Why should our contempt for it be any less, or any
less obvious, than yours, once again?
"I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other
gods before Me" pretty much seems to rule out your
very evident worship of lying in public.
John Wilkins
> backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Depends on your intent with "meme" a word langauge
> > terrorist Dawkins has introduced to convey nobody
> > knows what intent.
>
> Which part of "stop being an annoying twit" did I
> type too fast for you to read?
>
> xanthian.
>
> And that word isn't blamable on Dawkins, only its
> slightly shortened (from "mimeme") modern spelling.
>
> Nor is its meaning any big mystery except to
> "vocabulary-terrorist" time wasting moron you.
>
> It goes back to ancient Greek "mimeisthai", "to
> imitate", as a quick look at any reputable
> dictionary will confirm, so your idiocy is as usual
> palpable and obvious, your abject intellectual
> dishonesty manifest to the whole t.o readership
> world.
In fact the term was very nearly introduced by the marine researcher
Richard Semon in 1911, when he coined "mneme" for memory units. Semon
thought that a specific memory had a particular configuration in the
brain he called (another coinage) an "engram". We don't now think that
engrams are real objects, as memory seems to be fairly distributed and
also not at all a simple recollection but more of a recontruction of
events and knowledge items, but the mneme is like a cultural transmit
similar to memes.
<http://books.google.com/books?id=mNk72sgcgsUC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=richa
rd+semons&source=web&ots=JUlLQ7J3-F&sig=lZvIyjJ9IF9Uc1LVmGQl8s4Qna4#PPA5
9,M1>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Semon>
>
> You pretend to espouse a religion which expressly
> prohibits this behavior by you as one among its ten
> most important rules for living (among thousands of
> such rules written rules in scriptures and in the
> authoritative interpretations of those scriptures).
>
> Based on this behavior of yours we can only conclude
> that in reality you hold that religion in uttermost
> contempt.
>
> Why, then, should we regard that religion _any_ more
> highly than does one of its noisiest "supporters",
> one more time for the record, please?
>
> Why should our contempt for it be any less, or any
> less obvious, than yours, once again?
>
> "I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other
> gods before Me" pretty much seems to rule out your
> very evident worship of lying in public.
--
John S. Wilkins, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Philosophy
University of Queensland - Blog: scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts
"He used... sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and... satire. He was vicious."
backspace
> backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Depends on your intent with "meme" a word langauge
> > terrorist Dawkins has introduced to convey nobody
> > knows what intent.
> And that word isn't blamable on Dawkins, only its
> slightly shortened (from "mimeme") modern spelling.
> Nor is its meaning any big mystery except to
> "vocabulary-terrorist" time wasting moron you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme
"...Meme theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection
similarly to Darwinian biological evolution through the processes of
variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an
organism's reproductive success...."
Notice that wonderful nonsense phrase "reproductive success". Tell me
Paul if a cow were meant to produce beer instead of milk would it
still be a success in your personal opinion? The article is flagged
by Wikipedia as original research and unverified claims. What is the
authors intent with "variation" - variation what? Competition - what
is the intent with competition. You see what is going on here a
sentence with no intent, nobody knows what pragmatics the
author is trying to convey. The syntax and grammar fine, but there is
no pragmatics.
> It goes back to ancient Greek "mimeisthai", "to
> imitate", as a quick look at any reputable
> dictionary will confirm, so your idiocy is as usual
> palpable and obvious, your abject intellectual
> dishonesty manifest to the whole t.o readership
> world.
Paul you should calm down I seem have traumatized you. The definitions
are there to help us understand the intent
a person is trying to convey. This is why we define *selection* and
*success* as being associated with consciousness.
Mike L
[...meme and mneme...]
>
> In fact the term was very nearly introduced by the marine researcher
> Richard Semon in 1911, when he coined "mneme" for memory units. Semon
> thought that a specific memory had a particular configuration in the
> brain he called (another coinage) an "engram". We don't now think that
> engrams are real objects, as memory seems to be fairly distributed and
> also not at all a simple recollection but more of a recontruction of
> events and knowledge items, but the mneme is like a cultural transmit
> similar to memes.
>
> <http://books.google.com/books?id=mNk72sgcgsUC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=richa
> rd+semons&source=web&ots=JUlLQ7J3-F&sig=lZvIyjJ9IF9Uc1LVmGQl8s4Qna4#PPA5
> 9,M1>
>
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Semon>
Perhaps that was the French translation: Semon's book appeared in
German in 1904 and in English in 1921. But /mnemic/ appears in English
print, without explanation, in 1908. There's a suggestion in OED that
Ewald Hering may have used /mneme/ earlier than Semon.
--
Mike.
John Harshman
> On Sep 25, 4:38 am, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
> wrote:
>
>>Because there is no such thing as a random version of natural selection.
>
> Thus says you but the authors I quoted beg to differ.
The authors you quoted were, as far as I can recall, Fox News and
William Dembski, both of whom have reasons similar to yours to obfuscate
the meaning of natural selection.
>>What would that even mean?
>
> Since NS doesn't exist by logic neither would random and non-random NS
> exist.
That was helpful.
>>But I'm not sure what you mean by "directed"
>>here. What are your pragmatics?
>
> No, you use the word "Non-random" which in my language universe
> conveys the intent of "directed" - directed by whom the nature
> selection force? I don't know, the person who uses the phrase must
> clarify his intent, it is not for me to sit and guess what you are
> trying to say.
This is not the usual meaning of "non-random". I ask again a question
you never answered. If you hold a marble in your hand and let it go,
does it move in a random direction? If not, is some intelligence
"directing" it?
Kent Paul Dolan
> Paul
What conclusion jumping fool decides that if he
is told someone's full legal name, he should call
that person by the middle part?
xanthian.
[vocabulary terrorist idiocy and smarmy faux
"concern" expressing snipped]
And once more, what part of "stop being an
Kent Paul Dolan
> Thus says you but the authors I quoted beg to
> differ.
Your success at finding fellow-traveling idiots is
supposed to impress us, why again, exactly?
Two things are infinite, the universe and human
stupidity, but, I'm not too sure about the
universe. -- Albert Einstein.
[What he really said, in the original:
"Zwei Dinge sind unendlich, das Universum und die
menschliche Dummheit, aber bei dem Universum bin
ich mir noch nicht ganz sicher." - Albert
Einstein]
> Since NS doesn't exist
Your contention that "natural selection" "doesn't
exist" is pure highly refined oil of stupidity.
As natural selection is defined, it is impossible
for it _not_ to exist.
> by logic neither would random and non-random NS
> exist.
But you see, we _do_ know what your pragmatics for
"by logic" are: "dishonest, baseless, and incorrect
opinions backspace pulled out of his fundament but
that he wants to lend an air of undeserved
authority, are labeled 'by logic'".
The problem with that intent is, you think you're
fooling someone, but the only fool involved in that
exercise is, no surprise, _you_.
> in my language universe
Sorry, that's just more "oil of stupidity" squeezed
by you from those anal glands you evolved for that
exact purpose in a stunning display of Lamarkianism
at work.
_Personal_ "language universe"s are an oxymoron.
Language, by definition and by intent _must_ be
shared to exist at all.
While you insist on using words to convey private
memes no one else associates with those words, you
are just a device for prolific production of random
meaningless noises. Such devices are most often
found in intimate association with time wasting
morons, ones very much exactly like you yourself,
surprise, surprise.
xanthian.
Greg Guarino
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>Notice that wonderful nonsense phrase "reproductive success". Tell me
>Paul if a cow were meant to produce beer instead of milk would it
>still be a success in your personal opinion?
You ask about "reproductive success", which would seem to have
something to do with reproduction, but then add some nonsense about
producing beer instead of milk, and ask about "success" without the
modifier.
You see, "reproductive success" is a certain kind of success,
unrelated to say, running speed or horn length or "Champion Largest
Cow at the State Fair" status. Reproductive success is, not
surprisingly, sucess at reproduction, i.e. how many progeny an
organism produces, and by extension, how many of those progeny live to
reproduce etc.
So while producing beer instead of milk was a silly example, and
unrelated to th topic at hand, I'm guessing that a cow with that trait
would be unable to feed its young. The cow's young would likely die,
and leave the beer trait as a dead end.
The progeny of the milk-producing cows would likely fare much better.
Some of them would live to produce new generations of bovine young,
carrying the milk-producing trait.
Natural Selection at work.
Greg Guarino
Max
> On Sep 23, 4:23 pm, John Harshman <jharshman.diespam...@pacbell.net>
> wrote:> > He is dead and we can't ask him what was his intent. But whatever the
> > > intent was you can't arbitrarily concatenate these two words "Natural"
> > > and "selection" to form the phrase "natural selection" - it is
> > > grammatical gargoyle. Especially if you look at the only definition
> > > Darwin gave for the phrase:
> > > "...I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if
> > > useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark
> > > its relation to man's power of selection...."
>
> > That's not a definition. That's the coining of a name.
>
> Yes, we all know what is a formal definition. Of course there is no
> formal definition or theory of natural selection. or of evolution on
> Wikipedia - this makes it difficult for everybody. I have said this
> all along. But in this quote from Darwin we have the closest we will
> ever get as to some form of formal definition. Try to understand my
> intent with "definition" in the context of my quote.
>
> > You have also confused the term used to refer to a phenomenon with the
> > phenomenon itself. You don't like the term, but that has no relation to
> > the existence of the phenomenon.
>
> Until you define for me the phenomena you are not even wrong.
>
> > Natural selection has nothing to do with pantheism .........
>
> Until you define for me your intent with "Natural Selection" you are
> not even wrong.
Until you define intent and random you are not actually worthy of
reply. Perhaps not even then.
John Wilkins
I went looking for the date, and the only one I could find was 1911, but
I suspected it might be earlier. Thanks.
backspace
> >>> Why would you want to call branches in this
> >>> context a sieve?
> >> Because they sieve things, as was clearly explained,
> >> with examples.
No, they don't "sieve" things. The branches have no intent, motive or
will to sieve. The branches is a pattern not a design. And calling it
a "sieve" is an entirely arbitrary invention which flows from your
confused mind. I say your mind is confused because to you state that
selection, choice, preference and making a decision need not imply
consciousness. For me to see to Ham, Dawkins, Dembski suffer from this
mental health problem over the meaning of the word "decision" is
actually terrifying. It is like imagine I am in some sort of giant
Scientology mind control experiment where everybody is now in a sense
"crazy" because their language is not the same language as my
language. I am sane , rational and normal and anybody who thinks that
"decision, selection,preference and choice" can be concatenated with
the word "natural" is delusional.
http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2007/10/further-thoughts-from-outspoken.html
"...Huxley in his presentation of Darwin makes a very critical point.
He says that "random" means a mutation in the offspring that we
observers could not have predicted from looking at the parents. In
short, it means "unexpected" and "surprising," and it is defined
purely and strictly in respect of human observers. Huxley's
definition, in other words, has zero metaphysical or theological
implications. From the mere fact that we human observers cannot
predict an event, it is absurd to conclude that the event does not
follow a regular pattern. Early human beings could not predict
eclipses--so they appeared to happen at random. Yet this did not mean
that eclipses did not follow a regular and predictable pattern. For
Huxley, "random" simply referred to the limits of our knowledge; it
did not mean that the course of evolution was itself random. The
course of evolution could be the unfolding of an intelligent design or
it could the result of a cosmic law of progress. It is simply bad
logic to jump from the Darwin/Huxley concept of random to conclusion
that the process of evolution is itself random. People today forget
the fact that those who embraced Darwin's theory in the 19th century
saw it as scientific proof that progress was built into the universe--
after all, if evolution led from microbes to Michelangelo, then who
could possibly fail to see that the universe was constantly
progressing, and not simply drifting randomly and without
direction....."
"..Darwin/Huxley concept of random..." or in other words the intent
Darwin/Huxley had with "random". Note that Darwin didn't use the word
"random" in OoS. What the author is trying to say below was that
Huxley's intent differed from what some people's intent is with
"random" today. He motivates that the intent Huxley had with "random"
was "unexpected" and "surprising". Wether his conclusion is valid or
not doesn't really bother me, just that we should really try and get
these words intent, motive, will and pragmatics into the lexicon of
these debates or we will still be confusing the semantics with the
intent a 100 years from now.
> Perhaps someone should introduce you to the concept
> of a "dictionary"???
A dictionary gives us the semantics of the word. The intent though
depends on what your motive or will is with the word in the sentence
that only you as a free agent can generate. In order to understand
your intent we agree that the dictionary definition of "selection" is
a choice, preference and goal directed decision. Frogs don't have
goals thus they are not a "success" or an "achievement" not even a
"differential reproductive achievement" and neither does nature have
any goals hence "natural" can't make decisions or implement choices
making the correct "selections". I am right and anybody else who
differs needs mental help.
hersheyh
> On Sep 24, 7:19 pm, Kent Paul Dolan
>
> > >>> Why would you want to call branches in this
> > >>> context a sieve?
> > >> Because they sieve things, as was clearly explained,
> > >> with examples.
>
> No, they don't "sieve" things.
Actually it is the local conditions or environment that "sieves" the
'relative success' of organisms. The branching is a consequence of
the fact that not all local environments are identical and that, in
some cases, optimization of the local environment involves a mini-max
solution that requires two populations each optimized to different
aspects of the environment.
> The branches have no intent, motive or
> will to sieve.
Neither does the environment nor any other mechanical device that
sieves or discriminates between objects.
> The branches is a pattern not a design.
The branches are, indeed, a pattern and specifically not a designed
pattern. For it to be a designed pattern, there must be *independent*
evidence of a designer.
> And calling it
> a "sieve" is an entirely arbitrary invention which flows from your
> confused mind. I say your mind is confused because to you state that
> selection, choice, preference and making a decision need not imply
> consciousness.
Does water freeze below a certain temperature because the environment
consciously chooses, selects, or exhibits a preference and makes a
conscious decision that it freeze? Is temperature a conscious agent
because it is the environmental factor that determines that water will
be ice rather than liquid or gas? I ask because temperature also is
the relevant environmental factor in some examples of relative
selection between variants.
> For me to see to Ham, Dawkins, Dembski suffer from this
> mental health problem over the meaning of the word "decision" is
> actually terrifying. It is like imagine I am in some sort of giant
> Scientology mind control experiment where everybody is now in a sense
> "crazy" because their language is not the same language as my
> language. I am sane , rational and normal and anybody who thinks that
> "decision, selection,preference and choice" can be concatenated with
> the word "natural" is delusional.
OTOH, it may not be the case that everybody else is crazy and you are
the only sane one because you attribute consciousness to dumb,
unintelligent environmental factors that affect the relative
reproductive success of different phenotypes (in the same sense that
temperature affects the physical state of water) and most people
don't.
> http://post-darwinist.blogspot.com/2007/10/further-thoughts-from-outs...
> "...Huxley in his presentation of Darwin makes a very critical point.
> He says that "random" means a mutation in the offspring that we
> observers could not have predicted from looking at the parents. In
> short, it means "unexpected" and "surprising," and it is defined
> purely and strictly in respect of human observers.
Actually random in this context is specifically a mathematical absence
of correlation between two variables, the rate at which the mutational
event occurs and the need for that mutation.
> Huxley's
> definition, in other words, has zero metaphysical or theological
> implications. From the mere fact that we human observers cannot
> predict an event, it is absurd to conclude that the event does not
> follow a regular pattern.
Well, actually specific mutations do follow a regular pattern.
Mutations occur in a stochastic fashion at a particular mean rate for
that specific change, producing a Poisson distribution (which is
indistinguishable from a bell-curve when the mean is large enough).
That rate does not correlate (with a few minor exceptions) with need
for the mutation.
> Early human beings could not predict
> eclipses--so they appeared to happen at random. Yet this did not mean
> that eclipses did not follow a regular and predictable pattern. For
> Huxley, "random" simply referred to the limits of our knowledge; it
> did not mean that the course of evolution was itself random. The
> course of evolution could be the unfolding of an intelligent design or
> it could the result of a cosmic law of progress. It is simply bad
> logic to jump from the Darwin/Huxley concept of random to conclusion
> that the process of evolution is itself random.
It is certainly true that the "selection" part of NS is non-random.
Different phenotypes do, sometimes, exhibit different levels of
reproductive success that are causally related to some environmental
factor.
> People today forget
> the fact that those who embraced Darwin's theory in the 19th century
> saw it as scientific proof that progress was built into the universe--
> after all, if evolution led from microbes to Michelangelo, then who
> could possibly fail to see that the universe was constantly
> progressing, and not simply drifting randomly and without
> direction....."
That, of course, is anthropocentric thinking of the worst sort.
> "..Darwin/Huxley concept of random..." or in other words the intent
> Darwin/Huxley had with "random". Note that Darwin didn't use the word
> "random" in OoS. What the author is trying to say below was that
> Huxley's intent differed from what some people's intent is with
> "random" today. He motivates that the intent Huxley had with "random"
> was "unexpected" and "surprising". Wether his conclusion is valid or
> not doesn't really bother me, just that we should really try and get
> these words intent, motive, will and pragmatics into the lexicon of
> these debates or we will still be confusing the semantics with the
> intent a 100 years from now.
I do believe that you are the only one confused by semantic trivia.
Perhaps that is because you want to be confused?
> > Perhaps someone should introduce you to the concept
> > of a "dictionary"???
>
> A dictionary gives us the semantics of the word. The intent though
> depends on what your motive or will is with the word in the sentence
> that only you as a free agent can generate.
How very postmodern of you.
> In order to understand
> your intent we agree that the dictionary definition of "selection" is
> a choice, preference and goal directed decision.
No. That is not the relevant dictionary definition. My dictionary
describes, for example, selective absorption as meaning that a
substance *selectively* absorbs some wavelengths rather than others.
You would claim that this means that substances *consciously* choose
which wavelengths to absorb. Clearly this is an example, unless you
are an animist who thinks everything has consciousness, of "selection"
without consciousness, choice, preference, or goal-directedness. It
is an example of "sieving" by a dumb, unintelligent "substance" that
means merely that some wavelengths are absorbed by the substance and
others are not. It does not mean that all substances ("The hills are
alive...") have consciousness.
> Frogs don't have
> goals thus they are not a "success" or an "achievement" not even a
> "differential reproductive achievement" and neither does nature have
> any goals hence "natural" can't make decisions or implement choices
> making the correct "selections".
And substances do selectively absorb some wavelengths and not others.
They do not, by this act of discrimination between wavelengths, gain
consciousness.
> I am right and anybody else who
> differs needs mental help.
Well, I think that someone who thinks that any substance that
differentially absorbs or, in perfectly valid English, selectively
absorbs wavelengths has consciousness or thinks that temperature has
consciousness because it causally affects the physical state of water
needs some mental help. The fact is that English speakers can and do
use the term "selection" in ways that do not require conscious action
by anything. They mean it to say that some conditon or feature of the
environment discriminatively affects some feature of a different
feature of the environment. Be that the idea that different
temperatures selectively determine the physical state of water, that
different substances discriminatively absorb wavelengths, or that
temperature can discriminatively affect the reproductive success of
organisms with different phenotypes. It is obvious that you don't
*want* to accept this merely so that you can have some semantic
quibble that will allow you to think that something must be wrong with
the idea of natural selection.
Glenn
wrote:
> backspace wrote:
> > On Sep 25, 12:26 am, Robert Carnegie <rja.carne...@excite.com> wrote:
>
> >>>The defintion of IC can change but intent Behe had of the
> >>>*interdependence* between algorithms and mechanical parts can't or his
> >>>theory would be unfalsifiable. Words and its definitions are used to
> >>>communicate intent. A word such as "selection" had a very specific
> >>>intent before Darwin muck-up the English language - the word has
> >>>become undefined and we are being robbed of a word that we have used
> >>>to communicate the intent of *always* conscious goal directed
> >>>*selection*. I even had to use the word *selection* in that sentence
> >>>because well mmmh that is what *selection* means.
> >>>We are essential dealing with materialists engaging in language
> >>>relativism. Because given their premises the very words
> >>>that they use are not available to them, they therefore can't even
> >>>begin to motivate why they believe there is no God.
> >>>So instead they are making language undefined.
>
> >>Footnote on the etymology of "natural selection" and whether a
> >>conscious mind's choice is implied by the word "selection":
>
> >>Charles Darwin found that the term "selection" was used to describe
> >>that aspect of the work of animal breeders, and modified it as
> >>"natural selection" to refer to an equivalent process occurring
> >>without intent, in the natural course of events.
>
> > This is precisely the point under dispute. Darwin did not communicate
> > his intent clearly natural selection.
>
> Yes he did. Everyone except you agrees on this point.
How did Darwin modify artificial selection to explain adaptation
through natural selection?
>
> > We don't know what was his
> > intent and every person is just basically inventing their own
> > pragmatics with the phrase.
>
> Yes we do know his intent. The chapter on natural selection is quite
> clear on this point, and in fact what was written above is just a
> paraphrase of what Darwin actually said.
>
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n20/fodo01_.html
"It's a commonplace that Darwin constructed the theory of natural
selection with an eye to what breeders do when they choose which
creatures to encourage to reproduce. This reading of Darwin is by no
means idiosyncratic. Darwin 'argues by example, not analogy,' Adam
Gopnik wrote in the New Yorker in October last year. 'The point of the
opening of "The Origin" isn't that something similar happens with
domesticated breeds and natural species; the point is that the very
same thing happens, albeit unplanned and over a much longer period.'
It's true, of course, that breeding, like evolution, can alter
phenotypes over time, with consequent effects on phylogenetic
relations. But, on the face of it, the mechanisms by which breeding
and evolution operate could hardly be more different. How could a
studied decision to breed for one trait or another be 'the very same
thing' as the adventitious culling of a population? Gopnik doesn't
say.
The present worry is that the explication of natural selection by
appeal to selective breeding is seriously misleading, and that it
thoroughly misled Darwin. Because breeders have minds, there's a fact
of the matter about what traits they breed for; if you want to know,
just ask them. Natural selection, by contrast, is mindless; it acts
without malice aforethought. That strains the analogy between natural
selection and breeding, perhaps to the breaking point. What, then, is
the intended interpretation when one speaks of natural selection? The
question is wide open as of this writing."
John Harshman
I don't understand the question.
I don't agree with Fodor about any of this. Do you agree with him? Would
you care to discuss it?
David Hare-Scott
"backspace" <sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1192901410.3...@i13g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> On Sep 24, 7:19 pm, Kent Paul Dolan
> > >>> Why would you want to call branches in this
> > >>> context a sieve?
> > >> Because they sieve things, as was clearly explained,
> > >> with examples.
>
> No, they don't "sieve" things. The branches have no intent,
...snip ....
You keep bringing up these pointless quibbles about the meaning and use of
words as if such contribute anything of substance to the matter being
discussed.
It's just another variant of the pathology that says "ah-hah there is a
spelling mistake in your work which clearly proves that my position is
unassailable and perfect".
David
Kent Paul Dolan
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote
>>> xanthian wrote:
>>>> backspace wrote:
>>>>> Why would you want to call branches in this
>>>>> context a sieve?
>>>> Because they sieve things, as was clearly explained,
>>>> with examples.
> No, they don't "sieve" things. The branches have
> no intent, motive or will to sieve.
None of intent, motive, or will are requirements
for an inert mechanical device to behave as its
physical configuration demands. A broken reed blown
across by the wind can act as a whistle without any
of your faux requirements.
> The branches is a pattern not a design.
Nothing about an inert mechanical device operating
as its physical configuration demands requires that
said physical configuration be the result of any
form of design. Pure hapstance can make a reed a
whistle, or a log-jam a sieve.
> And calling it a "sieve" is an entirely arbitrary
> invention which flows from your confused mind.
Yours is the only confused mind in evidence, as it
has you still trying to replace your abject failure
to say anything meaningful about the theory of
evolution here with your endless off topic moron
vocabulary quibbling. That your mind is of tiny
capability is proved by the tiny matters that
distract you from any useful contributions here.
Your ability to deny reality continues to operate at
its apex. Your ability to convince anyone but
yourself of the correctness of your idiot's
contentions remains at zero. Do you continue this
moron's agenda of yours for some reason besides love
of typing or a life empty of any meaningful form of
attention paid to you?
xanthian.
backspace
> > The branches is a pattern not a design.
>
> Nothing about an inert mechanical device operating
> as its physical configuration demands requires that
> said physical configuration be the result of any
> form of design. Pure hapstance can make a reed a
> whistle, or a log-jam a sieve.
Mechanical devices are "designs" not a pattern. The mechanical device
has no "demands" and doesn't
*require" anything - only the designer of the device has demands and
requirements. Your language sir is confused, it is just terrible what
is going on. This confusion between patterns and designs, between
cause and effect is a direct result believing that you have been
naturaled. Is there such a thing as being "naturaled" ? Of course not
and neither is there such a thing as a natural decision.
> Yours is the only confused mind in evidence, as it
> has you still trying to replace your abject failure
> to say anything meaningful about the theory of
> evolution here with your endless off topic moron
Show me on Wikipedia where is the theory of evolution, if you would
stop telling me about the theory and
tell me what exactly is the theory! Please I am all for theories , but
you have to tell what exactly it is and who is the individual that
formulated the theory.
backspace
> How did Darwin modify artificial selection to explain adaptation
> through natural selection?
Darwin actually coined the term "artificial selection" in 1859. For
thousands of years mankind was oblivious to the fact that they were
"artificialing" cows. You will note that the AS quote from Origins is
missing on Wikipedia. I have picked up two instances of quote fraud
and omission fraud on Wikipedia:
Artificial Selection is not quoted on Wikipedia:
"....Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do
much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of
change, to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all
organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of
life, which may have been effected in the long course of time through
nature's power of selection, that is by the survival of the
fittest...."
Natural Selection a crucial part is left out:
"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if
useful, is preserved, by the term natural selection, in order to mark
its relation to man's power of selection...." Wikipedia left out
"... man's power of selection..."
There is no such thing as an "artificial decision". One can make a
hasty decision or a careless decision but one can never ever make an
"artificial" decision. It is just some fool angry with God because his
child died a 150 years ago who decided that he ad-hoc arbitrarily is
going to concatenate artificial with selection to create a semantic
mistake - artificial selection - a linguistic impossibility.
Cheezits
> Your language sir is confused, it is just terrible what
> is going on.
Followed by:
> Is there such a thing as being "naturaled" ?
There is no such word anywhere in evolutionary writing. Please update
your bot so that it can use verbs and adjectives properly. Your language
is confused.
Sue
--
"It's not smart or correct, but it's one of the things that
make us what we are." - Red Green
David Hare-Scott
"backspace" <sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote in message > There is no such
thing as an "artificial decision". One can make a
> hasty decision or a careless decision but one can never ever make an
> "artificial" decision. It is just some fool angry with God because his
> child died a 150 years ago who decided that he ad-hoc arbitrarily is
> going to concatenate artificial with selection to create a semantic
> mistake - artificial selection - a linguistic impossibility.
>
Might I suggest that happenings in the world do not depend on whether you
like the words that are used to describe them.
Why do you continue to reinforce the weakness of your position by
reiterating such sillyness? If this the best that you can do you are
confirming in the minds of the spectators that you have nothing.
David
backspace
> Artificial Selection is not quoted on Wikipedia:
> "....Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do
> much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of
> change, to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all
> organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of
> life, which may have been effected in the long course of time through
> nature's power of selection, that is by the survival of the
> fittest...."
Notice how Darwin was begging the question with AS: He merely assumes
that there is such a thing as AS and then says that because of this
"feeble man" (where did he get that from?) can do much by Artificial
Selection. It is no wonder that Wikipedia is refusing to quote the
only passage in the entire OoS where Darwin uses "artificial
selection" only once. And notice how he drags "Survival of the
Fittest" into the passage. So when one talks about Darwin's intent
with "Natural Selection" you must always discuss it in relation to
a) Artificial Selection
b) Survival of the Fittest , Strongest , Biggest or Scariest or what
ever you want to survive.
Greg Guarino
wrote:
> How could a
>studied decision to breed for one trait or another be 'the very same
>thing' as the adventitious culling of a population?
By contrast, I wonder how it could be different. All that matters is
which organisms reproduce and in what proportions. If human beings
skew the reproduction of sheep to favor thicker wool, or if cold
winters accomplish the same thing, should we not expect more
thick-wooled sheep as a result?
Note that humans have not historically been able to produce a thicker
wooled sheep directly. Perhaps that has very recently become possible
with gene-splicing, but the humans that domesticated sheep and other
animals had absolutely no idea how their varied traits were produced.
Their only method of producing the traits they desired in their crops
and livestock was to recognize the individuals that posessed those
characteristics and make sure that those were the individuals that
bred.
Thus their method was not akin to design or invention. They didn't
build sheep like wheels or spears. They merely steered a natural
phenomenon, becoming part of the "environment" that determined what
traits would result in the greatest reproduction.
Greg Guarino
Greg Guarino
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> He merely assumes
>that there is such a thing as AS
People involved in agriculture and animal husbandry have been breeding
for various traits for many thousands of years. Do you disagree?
Greg Guarino
Woland
Doesn't matter. Things exist apart from the labels we place on them.
People have been breeding plants and animals together based on desired
traits for thousands of years. Feel free to call it what you like.
backspace
I don't know what your intent is with the question but let me venture
an answer as to where this is going:
Darwin
"...Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do
much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of
change, to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all
organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of
life, which may have been effected in the long course of time through
nature's power of selection, that is by the survival of the
fittest....."
Notice that Darwin ad-hoc coined a term "artificial selection". He
simply says so and now its so so. Concepts and theories don't get
established by decreeing it as such, you must communicate your intent
and motivate the usage of a term and not violate the laws of language
in the process. Would you tell me what was his intent with
"artificial"
Notice his intent not your intent, I want to know what was his intent.
We don't know really, there are hints like
"feeble man" or whatever. It is exactly the same situation as if
Darwin would have said:".... You have a green light...." You have a
green light what? Artificial Selection what? On a point of logic and
from a linguistic angle there is no such thing as an "artificial
selection" no matter what he said. Saying so doesn't make it so.
Greg Guarino
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> > He merely assumes
>> >that there is such a thing as AS
>>
>> People involved in agriculture and animal husbandry have been breeding
>> for various traits for many thousands of years. Do you disagree?
>
>I don't know what your intent is with the question
Read it again. What else could I mean? Have humans used selective
breeding of animals and plants to increase the characteristics they
found desirable, or not?
Greg Guarino
(Next you'll be asking me what my "intent" was with adding my name to
the end of every post. )
Woland
Every one but you understands. Anyway, it doesn't matter what he
called it. The process and practice still exists, even if I decided to
call it "loretta."
backspace
No, they don't: Nothing exists apart from Language that spoke it into
existence. I believe Language created matter, you believe matter
created language. This is fundamental difference in our world views
that influences everything we say and think.
> People have been breeding plants and animals together based on desired
> traits for thousands of years. Feel free to call it what you like.
No, we label something or describe something because we communicate
our intent. What would be your intent with "artificial". What about
selecting for certain dog traits by allowing only certain dogs to mate
with other dogs is "artificial" - what are you really trying to say?
What is your agenda, world view and metaphysical beliefs concerning
this. You know what mine is but what is yours?
Kermit
> backspace wrote:
> > Artificial Selection is not quoted on Wikipedia:
> > "....Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do
> > much by artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of
> > change, to the beauty and complexity of the coadaptations between all
> > organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of
> > life, which may have been effected in the long course of time through
> > nature's power of selection, that is by the survival of the
> > fittest...."
>
> Notice how Darwin was begging the question with AS: He merely assumes
> that there is such a thing as AS
I'm sorry - did you not know that humans have been breeding animals
and crops for thousands of years?
Your grasp of basic facts of so profoundly deficient that it might be
best for you simply watch and learn for a few years. Without enough
commonly known material under your belt, you will simply be
foundering, lost in a sea of ignorance.
> and then says that because of this
> "feeble man" (where did he get that from?)
He was trying to maintain a little humility. Scientists typically
stand in awe of nature. If they are theists, they see it as the work
of God. Creationists are typically arrogant - despising nature,
holding hard work in contempt, failing to admit the possibility that
they are wrong. You and your peers could learn a little about this
from science (He's the kindly-looking man standing over in the corner,
smoking a pie, with unkempt hair).
> can do much by Artificial
> Selection. It is no wonder that Wikipedia is refusing to quote the
> only passage in the entire OoS where Darwin uses "artificial
> selection" only once.
Wikipedia must "refuse" to quote most of Darwin's book, or they would
simply be reprinting it.
> And notice how he drags "Survival of the
> Fittest" into the passage.
Most normal human beings drag a subject into a paragraph when that is
what is being discussed. Relax, take a deep breath; it's how we do
things in the world.
> So when one talks about Darwin's intent
> with "Natural Selection" you must always discuss it in relation to
> a) Artificial Selection
Why? Once we understand the difference, the compound noun "natural +
selection" differentiates it from the compound noun "artificial +
selection". See how that works?
> b) Survival of the Fittest , Strongest , Biggest or Scariest or what
> ever you want to survive.
Depends on what's needed for that species, in the current
circumstances. This confusion of yours - whether thru genuine
stupidity or feigned foolishness - is exactly why Darwin and many of
us are not comfortable with that term. We're not talking gym fitness
here; we're talking about what's needed to have lots of babies.
< Psst - guys! Should I mention "sexual selection" to him? >
Kermit
Woland
If all humans vanished this Friday all of these things that we have
words for would still exist. It doesn't matter if Allah, Brahma or
baby Jesus originally created them. The labels ( wordy soundy noises)
we place on things ( by things I mean physical obejects and processes,
I do not mean abstract concepts like 'patriotism,' which exist but not
outside of the human brain) are not the thing. See:http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao#Characteristics_of_Tao
> > People have been breeding plants and animals together based on desired
> > traits for thousands of years. Feel free to call it what you like.
>
> No, we label something or describe something because we communicate
> our intent. What would be your intent with "artificial". What about
> selecting for certain dog traits by allowing only certain dogs to mate
> with other dogs is "artificial" - what are you really trying to say?
> What is your agenda, world view and metaphysical beliefs concerning
> this. You know what mine is but what is yours?
It's "artificial" ( Stuff that just doesn't happen in the world
without human intervention,you know, as opposed to natural) in that a
person is deciding which dogs will reproduce based on traits that
specific dogs exhibit, for example; I want a big of a dog as possible.
I then go about only breeding the biggest dogs. I am preventing The
dogs from just running around and reproducing with anything they can
get there paws on. Thats what it means. Thats what everyone who has
ever used it means. You disagreeing about the word choice does not
change its existence.
I don't have an agenda that I'm aware of. I have no idea what my world
view is. If you need to pigeon-hole people you could put me as a
satellite orbiting eastern Buddhism (not Zen, but certainly not
western either). Whats weird to me and many many many many others is
the idea of letting your "metaphysical beliefs" drive you to create
pseudo-complicated word game to try and disprove easily observed
phenomena that occur, regardless of what one likes to call it. That
probably makes me a G_D hating, satan-smooching-atheist, same-sex
marrying, communist, puppy-eater.
Kermit
Ah. So if you called a knife a kiss, you wouldn't mind if a pretty
girl offered to plant a kiss on your ear?
Are you really claiming that English is God's language?
> I believe Language created matter, you believe matter
> created language. This is fundamental difference in our world views
> that influences everything we say and think.
It explains much about why you are such a goofball.
>
> > People have been breeding plants and animals together based on desired
> > traits for thousands of years. Feel free to call it what you like.
>
> No, we label something or describe something because we communicate
> our intent.
No we don't. We generally attempt to communicate meaning.
> What would be your intent with "artificial".
To differentiate it from a very similar process done by nature.
Nature, which you don't seem to realize, is mindless, and not a human
activity. So when selective pressure from humans produces a change in
a species over time, and environmental conditions shape a change in a
species over time, we have words which allow us to discuss them
intelligently without getting confused.
> What about
> selecting for certain dog traits by allowing only certain dogs to mate
> with other dogs is "artificial" - what are you really trying to say?
Humans do it. If you prefer another name for it, that's fine. Call it
"Fred"; that works for me. And instead of "natural selection", we can
call it Martha. Does that help? While Fred is more directed, Martha
can sometimes find surprising methods, and has been doing this for far
longer. Better?
> What is your agenda, world view and metaphysical beliefs concerning
> this. You know what mine is but what is yours?
Reality bites, whether you have a name for it or not.
I can expand on that if you like.
I'd like to ask you a question: English didn't exist two thousand
years ago. Did your god?
Kermit
hersheyh
> Woland wrote:
> > On Oct 21, 6:11 am, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Glenn wrote:
[snip]
> > Doesn't matter. Things exist apart from the labels we place on them.
>
> No, they don't: Nothing exists apart from Language that spoke it into
> existence.
Scratch a creationist and we find a post-modernist. A person in
complete denial of any reality outside of their outsized ego...until
they get tossed off a carriage onto their pointy little heads and it
kills them. Or until he walks out of the 23rd story window and
discovers that gravity doesn't give a shit what language he uses or
what his intent was.
> I believe Language created matter, you believe matter
> created language.
I believe language is created to describe matter (and energy and
thought). You believe language is created to deny matter's existence
if you choose to deny it. That is, you are both arrogant and
ignorant, a decidedly dangerous combination to its possesor.
backspace
> To differentiate it from a very similar process done by nature.
> Nature, which you don't seem to realize, is mindless, and not a human
> activity. So when selective pressure from humans produces a change in
> a species over time, and environmental conditions shape a change in a
> species over time, we have words which allow us to discuss them
> intelligently without getting confused.
You are confusing the cause with the effect. Rain doesn't cause corn
to grow, it is but an element needed for the
corn gene to give the grow instruction. The organism responds to the
environment, the environment causes nothing.
backspace
> If all humans vanished this Friday all of these things that we have
> words for would still exist. It doesn't matter if Allah, Brahma or
> baby Jesus originally created them. The labels ( wordy soundy noises)
> we place on things ( by things I mean physical obejects and processes,
> I do not mean abstract concepts like 'patriotism,' which exist but not
> outside of the human brain) are not the thing.
Patriotism existed from before time began in the mind of God himself,
since he is language. When Christ confused the languages at the tower
of babel he supernaturally made certain that the intent and semantics
with "humility", "choice", decision and selection was the exact same
concept in every person's mind. Since God gave us the concept of
"Selection" no man can change the semantics and intent of the word.
> > > People have been breeding plants and animals together based on desired
> > > traits for thousands of years. Feel free to call it what you like.
> > What is your agenda, world view and metaphysical beliefs concerning
> > this. You know what mine is but what is yours?
> It's "artificial" ( Stuff that just doesn't happen in the world
> without human intervention,you know, as opposed to natural) in that a
> person is deciding which dogs will reproduce based on traits that
> specific dogs exhibit, for example; I want a big of a dog as possible.
> I then go about only breeding the biggest dogs. I am preventing The
> dogs from just running around and reproducing with anything they can
> get there paws on. Thats what it means. Thats what everyone who has
> ever used it means. You disagreeing about the word choice does not
> change its existence.
"Artificial Selection" is a single unmotivated term that Darwin
plucked out of thin air a 150 years ago. Nobody artificialed anything
before 1859. There is nothing new under the sun, man selecting for
traits of cows has been going on for thousands of years - there is
nothing "artificial" or "bad" or "inferior" about this. Even
Dr.Wilkins didn't know this. He told me that "... the concept was in
play before Darwin's time...." after I pointed this out to him. What
he fails to understand is that I want to know the INTENT with the
term, only then can we talk about "concepts". And Darwin didn't tell
us his intent! And thus everybody is inventing their own intent and
attributing it to Darwin. I am saying that you can't do this without
motivating from his book exactly how you derived Darwin's intent with
artificial selection.
> I don't have an agenda that I'm aware of. I have no idea what my world
> view is. If you need to pigeon-hole people you could put me as a
> satellite orbiting eastern Buddhism (not Zen, but certainly not
> western either).
Wolan this is exactly my point: You are into Buddism which means
Wilkins and Harshman views you as delusional. Yet you Ken Ham,
Harshman, Wilkins all "believe" in artificial and natural selection!
This is impossible!
How could everybody believe in the same thing yet interpret it
differently or derive different metaphysical conclusions from it?
Because it doesn't exist. This is the option that Ken Ham, Harshman,
Wolan and the bunny kissers aren't willing to consider.
And an atheist like Prof.Fodor has come to the same conclusion: How
could everybody believe in NS yet their conclusions differ ? Each camp
is so busy fighting for his world view that nobody seems to notice
that Linguistics takes precedent over your world view, religious
beliefs or science. Everything is subject unto language - our language
and anything which contradicts the rules of language must be rejected
no matter how catchy and pleasing to the ear AS and NS sounds.
Woland
> Woland wrote:
> > If all humans vanished this Friday all of these things that we have
> > words for would still exist. It doesn't matter if Allah, Brahma or
> > baby Jesus originally created them. The labels ( wordy soundy noises)
> > I do not mean abstract concepts like 'patriotism,' which exist but not
> > outside of the human brain) are not the thing.
>
> Patriotism existed from before time began in the mind of God himself,
> since he is language. When Christ confused the languages at the tower
> of babel he supernaturally made certain that the intent and semantics
> with "humility", "choice", decision and selection was the exact same
> concept in every person's mind. Since God gave us the concept of
> "Selection" no man can change the semantics and intent of the word.
I have no idea why you would think that God is language. Perhaps its
derived from your inability to understand metaphor coupled with the
fact that the bible you read from is a translated text which means if
you're reading something like "Christ is the word," it doesn't mean he
is literally a sound produced by the larynx coupled with the mouth,
tongue, lips, etc. For someone who seems to take a literalist stance
on the bible you sure do make up stuff that has no scriptural basis.
I don't know if you're aware of this but English has not been around
forever.
Oh, and it wasn't Jesus who messed up the languages it was that Hebrew
God. If he and Jesus are the same guy then how would that make
Christ's sacrifice relevant? Sacrificing yourself when you're
immortal, all powerful and all knowing really isn't a sacrifice if
you're not going to actually give anything up. Why did Jesus ask if
God had forsaken him? Would it make sense for me to say, "Self, Why
have you forsaken me?" No, no it would not. This is the problem with
literal interpretations, you miss the point of the story and any
lesson it held.
> > > > People have been breeding plants and animals together based on desired
> > > > traits for thousands of years. Feel free to call it what you like.
> > > What is your agenda, world view and metaphysical beliefs concerning
> > > this. You know what mine is but what is yours?
> > It's "artificial" ( Stuff that just doesn't happen in the world
> > without human intervention, you know, as opposed to natural) in that a
> > person is deciding which dogs will reproduce based on traits that
> > specific dogs exhibit, for example; I want a big of a dog as possible.
> > I then go about only breeding the biggest dogs. I am preventing The
> > dogs from just running around and reproducing with anything they can
> > get there paws on. That's what it means. That's what everyone who has
> > ever used it means. You disagreeing about the word choice do not
> > change its existence.
>
> "Artificial Selection" is a single unmotivated term that Darwin
> plucked out of thin air a 150 years ago. Nobody artificialed anything
> before 1859. There is nothing new under the sun, man selecting for
> traits of cows has been going on for thousands of years - there is
> nothing "artificial" or "bad" or "inferior" about this. Even
> Dr.Wilkins didn't know this. He told me that "... the concept was in
> play before Darwin's time...." after I pointed this out to him. What
> he fails to understand is that I want to know the INTENT with the
> term, only then can we talk about "concepts". And Darwin didn't tell
> us his intent! And thus everybody is inventing their own intent and
> attributing it to Darwin. I am saying that you can't do this without
> motivating from his book exactly how you derived Darwin's intent with
> artificial selection.
Artificial in this context doesn't have any sort of 'bad' or
'inferior' conotation. It is simply an arbitrary term coined to
differentiate to related but differing processes. We make up words all
of the time.
All languages have not existed for all time. Now it appears to be your
belief that there exist some higher "form" for all languages that
posses all meanings or something (gross, you sound like a Platonist).
If you want to argue this then that's fine, however you actually seem
to know very little about what you're trying to talk about.
> > I don't have an agenda that I'm aware of. I have no idea what my world
> > view is. If you need to pigeon-hole people you could put me as a
> > satellite orbiting eastern Buddhism (not Zen, but certainly not
> > western either).
>
> Wolan this is exactly my point: You are into Buddhism which means
> Wilkins and Harshman views you as delusional. Yet you Ken Ham,
> Harshman, Wilkins all "believe" in artificial and natural selection!
> This is impossible!
> How could everybody believe in the same thing yet interpret it
> differently or derive different metaphysical conclusions from it?
> Because it doesn't exist. This is the option that Ken Ham, Harshman,
> Wolan and the bunny kissers aren't willing to consider.
If Wilkins and Harshman view me as delusional, I can assure you it's
not because I think that some Indian guy from thousand of years ago
had some really neat, relevant things to say about the human
condition. I don't know why you assume this. It's not nice to put
ideas in other people's heads. You project quite a bit.
It's not impossible for people to agree on some things and disagree
about others. I really don't know why you think it is. I actually
don't interpret (put your word for artificial selection here, call it
"breeding" if you like) based on "metaphysical stuff" no one does.
That's where you're confused.
We all don't go around looking at the world and interpreting
everything we see and hear based on religion. That's you, not
everybody. When doing science I don't think about various Buddhist
concepts. Just as one of my Christian friends doesn't think about
religious concepts when building a house. It's the same thing.
My conclusions about scientific concepts are not filtered through my
personal, spiritual beliefs. That's is your huge assumption about
others that you should probably get rid of. Just because you think in
a certain way, doesn't mean that others do.
>
> And an atheist like Prof.Fodor has come to the same conclusion: How
> could everybody believe in NS yet their conclusions differ ? Each camp
> is so busy fighting for his world view that nobody seems to notice
> that Linguistics takes precedent over your world view, religious
> beliefs or science. Everything is subject unto language - our language
> and anything which contradicts the rules of language must be rejected
> no matter how catchy and pleasing to the ear AS and NS sounds.
That's fine for you to believe. That's why we keep telling you that
you can personally call these things whatever you want. We'll call it
what we want. It won't change its existence. People will still breed
animals together to get the desired trait. We have created a
linguistic short-hand for that concept. It makes communication
easier. If you want to believe in that entire tower of babel stuff
that's fine. It doesn't mean that people haven't been making up new
words, new uses for of words and that new languages haven't evolved in
the past several hundred years. We have solid evidence that these
things have happened. Your belief system does not change that.
In conclusion. For some reason you think peoples metaphysical beliefs
somehow changes their intent with common everyday words. This is
simply not the case with the vast majority of people. I have no idea
what twisted up bringing brought you to believe things like this.
Woland
Yes the organism responds to the environment. This also works with
populations of organisms. Populations of organisms respond to the
environment, sometimes this means that certain individuals within a
population have traits that allow them to pass on their genes with
greater frequency than other members of the population without this
trait. Guess what we call this? I'll give you three tries.
hersheyh
> > If all humans vanished this Friday all of these things that we have
> > words for would still exist. It doesn't matter if Allah, Brahma or
> > baby Jesus originally created them. The labels ( wordy soundy noises)
> > we place on things ( by things I mean physical obejects and processes,
> > I do not mean abstract concepts like 'patriotism,' which exist but not
> > outside of the human brain) are not the thing.
>
> Patriotism existed from before time began in the mind of God himself,
> since he is language. When Christ confused the languages at the tower
> of babel he supernaturally made certain that the intent and semantics
> with "humility", "choice", decision and selection was the exact same
> concept in every person's mind. Since God gave us the concept of
> "Selection" no man can change the semantics and intent of the word.
English was spoken prior to the Tower of Babel? Was the Bible written
in good King James English? And does that mean that when physicists
talk about the selective absorption of different wavelengths of light
by substances that they think the substances consciously choose which
wavelengths to absorb? So when I give you a "gift" of some
chocolates, speaking German, you will happily ingest it?
> > > > People have been breeding plants and animals together based on desired
> > > > traits for thousands of years. Feel free to call it what you like.
> > > What is your agenda, world view and metaphysical beliefs concerning
> > > this. You know what mine is but what is yours?
> > It's "artificial" ( Stuff that just doesn't happen in the world
> > without human intervention,you know, as opposed to natural) in that a
> > person is deciding which dogs will reproduce based on traits that
> > specific dogs exhibit, for example; I want a big of a dog as possible.
> > I then go about only breeding the biggest dogs. I am preventing The
> > dogs from just running around and reproducing with anything they can
> > get there paws on. Thats what it means. Thats what everyone who has
> > ever used it means. You disagreeing about the word choice does not
> > change its existence.
>
> "Artificial Selection" is a single unmotivated term that Darwin
> plucked out of thin air a 150 years ago. Nobody artificialed anything
> before 1859. There is nothing new under the sun, man selecting for
> traits of cows has been going on for thousands of years - there is
> nothing "artificial" or "bad" or "inferior" about this.
For someone who thinks he knows something about words (and apparently
only about words and not reality; you think words *are* reality), you
clearly are not aware of the etyomological background of the word
'artificial'. It refers to "artifice" or "man-made" and has no
necessary implication of "bad" or "inferior" or "second-rate" at all
(unless you consider anything man-made to be second-rate). However,
the word has acquired an occasional secondary meaning of second-rate
by people comparing crude "man-made" attempts to copy natural flavors,
say, to those that occur nature.
In the context of "artificial selection" and "natural selection", it
is quite clear (to everyone but you) that the meaning of the qualifing
adjective or descriptive is the distinction between "man-made
selection" and "not man-made selection". Selection, the process, is
the same in both cases -- the relative level of discrimination between
phenotypes.
Adjectives, moreover, are not verbs, so saying that someone using the
term "artificial" as a descriptive means that somebody has to
"artificial" something is verbal nonsense akin to saying that someone
has to red a red cherry and brown a brown nose. What it does mean is
that someone has to *observe* a property or distinction associated
with something and communicate that qualifying property to another
person. It is quite true that observation can sometimes be faulty,
either because of the conditions of observation or conditions of the
observer (the room was dark, so the color of the cherry was not
obvious; the observer was color-blind). But, in general, there is
agreement upon the words used as descriptives and most observers can
make the distinction. Thus, most people can determine visible
wavelengths and identify the colors we call "red". Similarly, most
people have no problem distinguishing between the relative degree of
selection or discrimination between alternative phenotypes that has
been performed by humans and the relative degree of selection or
discrimination between alternative phenotypes that occurs due to
environmental factors as measured by the level of reproductive
success.
That you, personally, are blind to these distinctions merely means
that, as an observer, you are effectively color-blind. That is, the
problem is not in the use of the adjectives "artificial" and "natural"
or in the empical outside reality that determines which to use. The
problem is you. You are incompetent as an observer.
[snip]
>Everything is subject unto language - our language
> and anything which contradicts the rules of language must be rejected
> no matter how catchy and pleasing to the ear AS and NS sounds.
You mean like some moron who does not understand that adjectival
qualifiers are not verbs?