Peppered moth - pattern or design?
backspace
point. Even if the moths were staged and the research a fraud - it
doesn't matter. The confusion is one of semantics and intent,
specifically the difference between the words "detection, pattern" and
"selection,design".
Lets say I walk past a black floor with white marbles on it but I had
no original intent of selecting for marbles and just casually walk
past, filing the image somewhere in my subconscious mind. Tomorrow
somebody looking for marbles wanting to "select" for marbles asks me
about marbles and I remember about the visual contrast the previous
day that I *detected*. The other person implementing his goal directed
decision to select for marbles would have stopped to pick them up had
he seen them.
A bird goes out looking for moths to eat. The bird *detects* the white
moths, since birds don't have teleological goals towards their higher
destiny the correct term to use for the the black moths being eaten is
in the (detection, pattern) not (selection, design) sense.
Lets paint a room black and release white and black moths and put a
bird inside. In the same way that I would have *detected* the white
marbles a bird would *detect* the white moths first. One can say the
bird *selected* for the white moths, but only if we understand that
the word *selection* is used to convey the intent in the detection,
pattern sense. Of course I as a free agent implemented my design to
have the white moths reduced by using a bird for the purpose in a
closed environment. But since nature has no designs nor consciousness
nature didn't *direct* the bird to reduce the white moth population.
Darwin tried to extrapolate the selection,design intent of domestic
breeding to nature, he confused the patterns in nature with designs.
A free roaming cow meeting another cow in a point of space and time
making baby cows is a pattern not a design - nobody willed for cows to
meet.
What has the bird *detecting* white moths inside the room got to do
with the word *natural*? What naturaled in this process of
*detection*. If this process of detecting a color contrast means
something got naturaled then every time my dog sees a white cat on the
lawn and goes ballistic he is also getting naturaled.
Lets presume soot was white and thus all the black moths would have
been eaten leaving behind the white ones. We would be told that this
is also
natural selection making the whole story unfalsifiable because no
matter what happens it would always be the same universal mechanism
that explains everything - natural selection.
All that happened with the moths is that we had a *pattern* - and
event took place: White moths got eaten first because the birds
*detected* them due to the color contrast. Nobody implemented any goal
directed decisions to eliminate the white moth variety. The birds
original intent was to get grub , it did not have the intent of
eliminating the white moths - hence nothing got *selected* or
naturaled. Lets drop the word "natural" from the peppered moth story
remaining only with the word "selection". If the white moths being
eaten is *selection* our question would be "selection by whom?" but
because everybody has accepted a semantic impossibility - NS nobody
is asking who did the selecting. The Perry Marshall http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com
pattern, design distinction was debated at http://iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=135497&page=11
The public is caught in an iron triangle between YEC, Materialists and
ID'sts and all three of these suffer from confusion between a pattern
and a design. And who is going to crash the Darwinian paradigm? Ham
or Humphreys no, Fodor, Skell and Chomsky! Fodor, Skell and Chomsky
are in the atheist camp and they are busy destroying the single pillar
on which the Darwinian paradigm pivots: The gargoyle term Natural
Selection.
Wether you believe you are a boiled egg or the Devil himself - the
truth is independent of your metaphysical beliefs or who you are. The
truth stands on its own two feet and Fodor, Skell and Chomsky have
seen the truth - the linguistic and semantic truth, but are to afraid
to come out of the closet.
This pepper moth debate has been raging for years, a debate in
irrelevance since everybody used a term that can't exist - NS. And
because of this fundamental mistake in language itself a simple
"pattern" vs. "design" explanation was missed by YEC, Materialist and
ID'sts
Lou Dobbs for example had Morris, Ruse and Wells on CNN. And from
within this iron triangle the poor man was pleading with them
literally saying ".. sort of help me out with this..." as Dobbs
searched for words to express his doubts about evolution. Take a long
hard look at YEC, Materialist and ID'st explanations and ask yourself
what is it that all three of these world views are missing. What
fundamental "truth" about language itself are they violating, that
undercuts any attempt at utilizing logic from either of them.
Inez
> The Peppered moth story: http://www.icr.organd Wells misses the
> point. Even if the moths were staged and the research a fraud - it
> doesn't matter. The confusion is one of semantics and intent,
> specifically the difference between the words "detection, pattern" and
> "selection,design".
I suspect you to be a pony, due to your restriction to one trick.
Steven J.
> The Peppered moth story: http://www.icr.organd Wells misses the
> point. Even if the moths were staged and the research a fraud - it
> doesn't matter. The confusion is one of semantics and intent,
> specifically the difference between the words "detection, pattern" and
> "selection,design".
>
> Lets say I walk past a black floor with white marbles on it but I had
> no original intent of selecting for marbles and just casually walk
> past, filing the image somewhere in my subconscious mind. Tomorrow
> somebody looking for marbles wanting to "select" for marbles asks me
> about marbles and I remember about the visual contrast the previous
> day that I *detected*. The other person implementing his goal directed
> decision to select for marbles would have stopped to pick them up had
> he seen them.
>
> A bird goes out looking for moths to eat. The bird *detects* the white
> moths, since birds don't have teleological goals towards their higher
> destiny the correct term to use for the the black moths being eaten is
> in the (detection, pattern) not (selection, design) sense.
>
theory is that it doesn't deal in "teleology," "destiny," or concepts
of "higher" life forms. Peppered moths don't have a destiny, and a
fortiori having more black moths or more gray moths cannot be a
"higher destiny." Nor does natural selection depend on any agent
actually choosing or selecting anything, as has been explained to you
over and over and over and over again. Rather, the point is, that if,
in the environment described above, birds detect and eat grey moths
often and black moths rarely, black moths will live to reproduce much
more often than grey moths, and the next generation will contain a
higher percentage of grey moths, and so on for succeeding generations
as long as the environment remains the same. The effect on the moth
population is exactly the same as if the birds had been consciously
and teleologically choosing to breed black moths, even though that is
not what they are doing at all. Note that one doesn't even need a
selection pressure as conscious as birds: antibiotic-resistant
bacteria flourish and replace less-resistant bacteria in an
environment rich in antibiotics, even though the antibiotics are
utterly mindless and intentionless, and the bacteria themselves are
scarcely smarter or more goal-oriented.
Again, "natural selection" is an effect, not an action. I'm sorry if
the name confuses you, but apparently a great many things confuse you,
and there doesn't appear to be any way to help that.
>
> Lets paint a room black and release white and black moths and put a
> bird inside. In the same way that I would have *detected* the white
> marbles a bird would *detect* the white moths first. One can say the
> bird *selected* for the white moths, but only if we understand that
> the word *selection* is used to convey the intent in the detection,
> pattern sense. Of course I as a free agent implemented my design to
> have the white moths reduced by using a bird for the purpose in a
> closed environment. But since nature has no designs nor consciousness
> nature didn't *direct* the bird to reduce the white moth population.
>
Nature doesn't need to direct the bird. The bird has an effect on the
present and future frequency of various inheritable traits whether
"nature" or the bird has any intentions or goals at all. For that
matter, human designers can have "selective" effects that they did not
actually select: take, for example, the growing number of tuskless
elephants in Africa. This is an example of selection caused by
hunters seeking elephants with large, impressive, ivory-laden tusks to
harvest for the ivory market. The hunters certainly didn't *want* the
percentage of elephants with large tusks to diminish over time, and
surely if their intent had mattered -- if they had been able to choose
what happened as a result of their earlier choice to hunt elephants,
elephants would have grown larger and more impressive tusks in
response to hunting. But of course, their selective effect was not
caused by their choice, but by the effects their hunting had on which
elephants survived to reproduce.
>
> Darwin tried to extrapolate the selection,design intent of domestic
> breeding to nature, he confused the patterns in nature with designs.
> A free roaming cow meeting another cow in a point of space and time
> making baby cows is a pattern not a design - nobody willed for cows to
> meet.
>
And, as noted, "will" is often unnecessary, and occasionally the
result of selective pressures is directly opposite the will of any
conscious agents involved. Darwin noted this with King Charles
Spaniels: he pointed out that the modern breed differs from the dogs
depicted in paintings of King Charles II, yet the whole point of the
breed, originally, was to keep producing dogs that looked like the
ones in the paintings. And physicians who over-prescribe antibiotics
surely do not "will" for antibiotic strains of bacteria to emerge, yet
that is the result of their (and their patients') choices.
>
> What has the bird *detecting* white moths inside the room got to do
> with the word *natural*? What naturaled in this process of
> *detection*. If this process of detecting a color contrast means
> something got naturaled then every time my dog sees a white cat on the
> lawn and goes ballistic he is also getting naturaled.
>
No one except you uses "natural" as a verb. Therefore, you will need
to tell us what it means (or what God told you it means) before we can
even attempt to answer your question. "Natural," the adjective,
refers to things having a discoverable nature according to which they
normally act. It is natural for some birds to eat moths, and it is
natural for them to prey most readily on the moths they can most
easily detect. I doubt you dog has a sufficient effect on the
breeding opportunities of cats to have an effect on cat colors in your
neighborhood, but I could be wrong about that.
>
> Lets presume soot was white and thus all the black moths would have
> been eaten leaving behind the white ones. We would be told that this
> is also
> natural selection making the whole story unfalsifiable because no
> matter what happens it would always be the same universal mechanism
> that explains everything - natural selection.
>
So it falsifies natural selection to suppose that different
environments can favor different adaptions? What, then, could count
as confirmation of natural selection: if the only life forms on Earth,
now or ever, were _carbonaria_ morph peppered moths? There are
outcomes that could falsify natural selection: if there were no traits
at all that made survival in any given environment more likely than
other traits, for example. Of course, there might be, as noted below,
traits that affected survival that you just weren't noticing ....
I should point out that if you were in the habit of actually thinking,
you might have noted that an even more disturbing scenario could be
discovered: take your black room, moths and birds, and make the walls
of the room speckled pale grey. Now assume that even in this room,
the number of black moths increased. Our first impression would be
that this was hopelessly contrary to expectations based on natural
selection: the better-camoflaged moths were dying more often before
breeding, and the worse-camoflaged moths were thriving. But one might
suggest that perhaps the moths were being selected for something other
than camoflage, something that happened to be linked to the gene for
black coloration. One would have to investigate this possibility
rather than rejecting it outright.
But then, that is a problem with any scientific hypothesis: as Quine
and Duhem pointed out, no scientific hypothesis can be simplistically
falsified, because no scientific hypothesis can be tested in
isolation. Our hypothetical white room example is actually testing at
least two hypotheses: that moth traits are subject to natural
selection, and that camoflage is the only thing being selected for or
against in the experiment. By the same token, when deviations from
the orbit predicted by Newtonian physics were detected in the orbit of
Saturn, this was not merely a test of Newton's law of gravity, but of
the implicit hypothesis that there were no undetected planets beyond
the orbit of Saturn, and it was this latter hypothesis that was
ultimately falsified.
>
> All that happened with the moths is that we had a *pattern* - and
> event took place: White moths got eaten first because the birds
> *detected* them due to the color contrast. Nobody implemented any goal
> directed decisions to eliminate the white moth variety. The birds
> original intent was to get grub , it did not have the intent of
> eliminating the white moths - hence nothing got *selected* or
> naturaled. Lets drop the word "natural" from the peppered moth story
> remaining only with the word "selection". If the white moths being
> eaten is *selection* our question would be "selection by whom?" but
> because everybody has accepted a semantic impossibility - NS nobody
> is asking who did the selecting. The Perry Marshallhttp://www.cosmicfingerprints.com
> pattern, design distinction was debated athttp://iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=135497&page=11
>
"Natural selection" is a metaphor of sorts; it is the use of an
established word to describe a somewhat similar or analogous
phenomenon. You might as well complain that the "eye" of a hurricane
cannot actually see anything, or that the "legs" of a chair are
useless for walking about, or that you can't plant corn in a magnetic
"field."
>
-- [snip of proof that backspace should stop listening to the voices
in his head]
>
-- Steven J.
Woland
> The Peppered moth story: http://www.icr.organd Wells misses the
> pattern, design distinction was debated athttp://iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=135497&page=11
You have had this explained to you on a number of threads. When we
talk of some individuals having a reproductive advantage in a
population we are not implying design of any kind. Do you think that
running from one thread to another makes all of the things you've been
told go away?
Do you deny that some individuals in a population have a reproductive
advantage? Is it possible for you to extrapolate the consequences of
this? Again, it doesn't matter if you think you know the "immutable
form" of certain words (you're wrong anyway because the words you
claim that always have certain connotations do not always, which is
obvious to everyone but you), it doesn't change the fact that without
the intervention of people certain traits are more favorable i.e.
individuals with that trait have more offspring. It also doesn't
change the fact that humans often mimic environmental pressures in
order to weed out traits they don't like (e.g. small kernel size on
corn) to increase the frequency of traits they do like(e.g. bigger
kernel size).
The traits we like are often at odds with what survives better in
nature (i.e. organisms that live outside of human intervention). An
easy example is wheat. Non-domesticated wheat has a brittle shell
around the grain. This allows the shell to break so that the grain
can be easily dispersed on the ground. This, however, is no good for
farmers. You don't want your crop to fall on the ground, you want to
be able to harvest it, maybe store some, maybe make some beer. Guess
what people did thousands of years ago? They started to breed grains
that had a harder shell so it would survive intact until harvest. It
was perhaps unintentional at first. And guess what? There are actual
archaeological sites where we see this happening! We even see animals
that are somewhere between the wild and domestic version!
Did you know that wild almonds are poisonous? Well, how come we eat
them you might ask? Poison production is controlled by a single gene!
Occasionally there is a mutation in that gene which renders it non-
toxic. Thousands of years ago people in the levant took advantage of
this and today we have domesticated almond trees!
Woland
> On Oct 24, 1:06 pm, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
And you still can't hug with nuclear arms.
Cheezits
[absolutely endless harping about semantics deleted]
> What naturaled in this process of
> *detection*.
There is no such word as "naturaled", you pathetic spew-bot.
> And
> because of this fundamental mistake in language itself
The only mistake is the one that you keep making.
Sue
--
"It's not smart or correct, but it's one of the things that
make us what we are." - Red Green
Ymir
backspace <sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
<stuff>
There is an old Vogon proverb which states that "he who find his muse in
the spittoon of Dulgor will speak with the voice of Relgor".
Think about it.
André
--
use rot thirteen to email
ntv...@tznvy.pbz
Greg Guarino
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>A bird goes out looking for moths to eat. The bird *detects* the white
>moths, since birds don't have teleological goals towards their higher
>destiny the correct term to use for the the black moths being eaten is
>in the (detection, pattern) not (selection, design) sense.
>
>Lets paint a room black and release white and black moths and put a
>bird inside. In the same way that I would have *detected* the white
>marbles a bird would *detect* the white moths first. One can say the
>bird *selected* for the white moths, but only if we understand that
>the word *selection* is used to convey the intent in the detection,
>pattern sense. Of course I as a free agent implemented my design to
>have the white moths reduced by using a bird for the purpose in a
>closed environment. But since nature has no designs nor consciousness
>nature didn't *direct* the bird to reduce the white moth population.
Which is utterly irrelevant. The white moths (in your example) were
reduced. Subsequent generations would be darker on average, right? I
also note that you have described evolution perfectly: it happens
without direction.
>Darwin tried to extrapolate the selection,design intent of domestic
>breeding to nature, he confused the patterns in nature with designs.
>A free roaming cow meeting another cow in a point of space and time
>making baby cows is a pattern not a design - nobody willed for cows to
>meet.
All that matters is that they do, and that certain traits tend to
allow some of them to breed more often than others. That no one willed
it again puts you in agreement with evolutionary theory.
>What has the bird *detecting* white moths inside the room got to do
>with the word *natural*? What naturaled in this process of
>*detection*. If this process of detecting a color contrast means
>something got naturaled then every time my dog sees a white cat on the
>lawn and goes ballistic he is also getting naturaled.
>
>Lets presume soot was white and thus all the black moths would have
>been eaten leaving behind the white ones. We would be told that this
>is also
>natural selection making the whole story unfalsifiable because no
>matter what happens it would always be the same universal mechanism
>that explains everything - natural selection.
Nope. The birds could eat the moths in equal numbers, regardless of
color. That would falsify the hypothesis that bird predation was
correlated with color, and that selective pressure from bird predation
drives the color change in subsequent generations.
Nope (2). If fewer white moths lived to reproduce (for whatever
reason) yet future generations kept the same color proportions, that
would falsify natural selection as a factor in moth coloration.
The more astute creationist might now complain that that would be
impossible; genetics prohibits that outcome. Quite so. That does not
make Natural Selection unfalsifiable, only *unfalsified*, as any true
scientific concept must be.
>All that happened with the moths is that we had a *pattern* - and
>event took place: White moths got eaten first because the birds
>*detected* them due to the color contrast. Nobody implemented any goal
>directed decisions to eliminate the white moth variety. The birds
>original intent was to get grub , it did not have the intent of
>eliminating the white moths - hence nothing got *selected* or
>naturaled. Lets drop the word "natural" from the peppered moth story
>remaining only with the word "selection". If the white moths being
>eaten is *selection* our question would be "selection by whom?" but
>because everybody has accepted a semantic impossibility - NS nobody
>is asking who did the selecting. The Perry Marshall http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com
>pattern, design distinction was debated at http://iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=135497&page=11
You're repeating yourself, as you have been all along. Yet in trying
desperately to argue against Natural Selection, you have actually
described it reasonably accurately. The birds just need to eat. They
didn't have in mind to change the coloration of the moths, especially
not to the less-visible shade. Yet that's what happens, without anyone
anting it. No amount of complaining about the words we use can change
what is simply an inevitable consequence of the rules of genetics.
<snip>
>Wether you believe you are a boiled egg or the Devil himself - the
>truth is independent of your metaphysical beliefs or who you are.
And similarly, the nature of the processes of life are independent of
the words we use to describe them.
>This pepper moth debate has been raging for years, a debate in
>irrelevance since everybody used a term that can't exist - NS.
It does exist. We use it and even you seem to know what it stands for,
but you can't mount a succesful argument against the actual process,
so you complain about the words.
>And
>because of this fundamental mistake in language itself a simple
>"pattern" vs. "design" explanation was missed by YEC, Materialist and
>ID'sts
"Pattern" is perhaps not such a bad word. The interactions among
organisms and the environment form patterns which influence the traits
of future generations.
Greg Guarino
Kent Paul Dolan
xanthian.
"Steven J." <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
> backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> The Peppered moth story:
>> http://www.icr.organdWells misses the point.
Mark VandeWettering
> The Peppered moth story: http://www.icr.org and Wells misses the
> point. Even if the moths were staged and the research a fraud - it
> doesn't matter. The confusion is one of semantics and intent,
> specifically the difference between the words "detection, pattern" and
> "selection,design".
No, that's not the confusion.
Mark
David Hare-Scott
"backspace" <sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1193249196.2...@v29g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> The Peppered moth story: http://www.icr.org and Wells misses the
> point. Even if the moths were staged and the research a fraud - it
> doesn't matter. The confusion is one of semantics and intent,
> specifically
that you keep burbling on with same meaningless twaddle. Get it through
your head that your use of words, or understanding of common usage or lack
of it, has no connection whatsover to the colouration of a moth or any other
phenomenon in the world. Excepting the phenomenon of your perpetual
dullness.
David
David Hare-Scott
"Kent Paul Dolan" <xant...@well.com> wrote in message
news:1193278762.6...@v29g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
> Another worthy candidate, nominated:
>
> xanthian.
>
Agreed.
D
backspace
>One of the recurrent complaints creationists have about evolutionary
>theory is that it doesn't deal in "teleology," "destiny," or concepts
>of "higher" life forms.
There is no theory of evolution: Go to Wikipedia and show me the
theory of evolution. Darwin had a conjecture not a theory, he called
his conjecture a theory but calling something a theory doesn't make it
a theory. He didn't know about a genes so how could he have had a
theory if he couldn't even specify the problem.
>Nor does natural selection depend on any agent
>actually choosing or selecting anything, as has been explained to you
>over and over and over and over again.
This is begging the question: NS is the term under dispute.
>Rather, the point is, that if, in the environment described above, birds detect and eat grey moths
>often and black moths rarely, black moths will live to reproduce much
>more often than grey moths, and the next generation will contain a
>higher percentage of grey moths, and so on for succeeding generations
>was long as the environment remains the same. The effect on the moth
>population is exactly the same as if the birds had been consciously
>and teleologically choosing to breed black moths, even though that is
>not what they are doing at all. Note that one doesn't even need a
>selection pressure as conscious as birds: antibiotic-resistant
>bacteria flourish and replace less-resistant bacteria in an
>environment rich in antibiotics, even though the antibiotics are
>utterly mindless and intentionless, and the bacteria themselves are
>scarcely smarter or more goal-oriented.
Some moths die, some live - this is a pattern, nobody did any
*selectings* and there is no such thing as a *selection pressure* in
nature. Nature has patterns not designs.
>Again, "natural selection" is an effect, not an action.
Again, you are begging the question: NS is the term under dispute, you
have assumed there is such a thing as a NS and then stated that
therefore it is an effect not a cause. Chris Colby makes the same
mistake on talkorigins.org: If NS is an effect what then is the cause?
He never tells us and neither do you. Harshman says NS is "non-
random" or thus *directed* by the nature force and thus he is saying
that NS is a cause. This is the confusion you get when the rules of
Language are violated and concepts that don't exist are created out of
thin air by the arbitrary concatenation of two words by the authority
of the materialist priests. And the siege mentality materialists have,
it is seemingly impossible for evolutionists to calmly motivate NS.
And how could they since it is an axiomatic fact that there is no such
thing as a NS on linguistic grounds alone.I believe 1+1 = 2 ,
materialists believe that they can make 1 + 1 mean whatever they want
to make it mean by decreeing it so by their authority as the rulers or
our universities. Motivating for NS in the end boils down to argument
from authority - you either believe it or MIT kicks you out.
>> Lets paint a room black and release white and black moths and put a
>> bird inside. In the same way that I would have *detected* the white
>> marbles a bird would *detect* the white moths first. One can say the
>> bird *selected* for the white moths, but only if we understand that
>> the word *selection* is used to convey the intent in the detection,
>> pattern sense. Of course I as a free agent implemented my design to
>> have the white moths reduced by using a bird for the purpose in a
>> closed environment. But since nature has no designs nor consciousness
>> nature didn't *direct* the bird to reduce the white moth population.
>Nature doesn't need to direct the bird.
Nobody said nature "needed" anything nor implied it - what are you
talking about?
>The bird has an effect on the present and future frequency of various inheritable traits whether
>"nature" or the bird has any intentions or goals at all.
Yes, this would be a pattern not a design.
>For that matter, human designers can have "selective" effects that they did not
>actually select:
As opposed to what now - "nature designers" such as the nature
selection force that naturled frogs?
>> Darwin tried to extrapolate the selection,design intent of domestic
>> breeding to nature, he confused the patterns in nature with designs.
>> A free roaming cow meeting another cow in a point of space and time
>> making baby cows is a pattern not a design - nobody willed for cows to
>> meet.
>And, as noted, "will" is often unnecessary, and occasionally the
>result of selective pressures is directly opposite the will of any
>conscious agents involved.
There is no such thing as a "selective pressure" in nature, nobody did
any selectings, you are confusing a pattern with a design.
>> What has the bird *detecting* white moths inside the room got to do
>> with the word *natural*? What naturaled in this process of
>> *detection*. If this process of detecting a color contrast means
>> something got naturaled then every time my dog sees a white cat on the
>> lawn and goes ballistic he is also getting naturaled.
>"Natural," the adjective, refers to things having a discoverable nature according to which they
>normally act.
"Natural" has only a meaning as conveyed by the speaker as he
communicates his intent. "Natural" as a word on its own means nothing
without intent. "Natural Selection" as a term is a semantic
impossibility on linguistic grounds alone. You can't as a materialist
priest make language itself undefined by creating impossible terms
such as "triangular circles" or "natural selection". And notice what
we are talking about: birds, bacteria and moths - what has this got
to do in and of itself with anything getting naturaled?
>It is natural for some birds to eat moths, and it is
>natural for them to prey most readily on the moths they can most
>easily detect. I doubt you dog has a sufficient effect on the
>breeding opportunities of cats to have an effect on cat colors in your
>neighborhood, but I could be wrong about that.
You see what I mean with intent: It is natural for birds to eat moths
and not for humans to eat them. Now "natural" is used to convey
meaningful intent. But just the term "natural selection" on its own
conveys no intent and it can't because it is a semantic impossibility
- there is no such thing. A selection is a decision and decisions are
never "natural",they might be hasty, thoughtful, sudden or
contemplated but they are never "natural".
A person telling me he implemented a "natural selection" by picking up
a stone is not communicating his intent. If he had told me that he
"quickly" or "carefully" selected for the stone then we understand his
intent. But natural ? What would be a natural selection. How would
one "naturally" select for stones.
>> Lets presume soot was white and thus all the black moths would have
>> been eaten leaving behind the white ones. We would be told that this
>> is also
>> natural selection making the whole story unfalsifiable because no
>> matter what happens it would always be the same universal mechanism
>> that explains everything - natural selection.
>So it falsifies natural selection to suppose that different
>environments can favor different adaptions?
This is begging the question again - the third time now. Who did the
"favoring"? All we observe is the pattern of animals in the
environment. This has got nothing to do with anything getting
naturaled or *selected*.
>What, then, could count as confirmation of natural selection: if the only life forms on Earth,
>now or ever, were _carbonaria_ morph peppered moths?
Begging the question for the forth time now. What has a fruitcake and
moon dust got to do with one another? What has *selections* got to do
with moths. Who did the selecting - the nature selection force? A
salamander going of existence is an event not a *selection*.
>There are outcomes that could falsify natural selection: if there were no traits
>at all that made survival in any given environment more likely than
>other traits, for example. Of course, there might be, as noted below,
>traits that affected survival that you just weren't noticing ....
Begging the question now for the fith time. You can't falsify a
linguistic impossibility such as triangular circles or natural
selection. Something which can't exist on language grounds alone can't
be falsified.
>"Natural selection" is a metaphor of sorts; it is the use of an established word to describe a somewhat similar or analogous
>phenomenon.
And this is the problem: Natural Selection is the only term used in
science that is a "metaphor" - metaphor for what?
Steven J.
> Steven J. wrote:
> >One of the recurrent complaints creationists have about evolutionary
> >theory is that it doesn't deal in "teleology," "destiny," or concepts
> >of "higher" life forms.
>
> There is no theory of evolution: Go to Wikipedia and show me the
> theory of evolution.
>
Never let it be said that I never did anything for you.
>
> Darwin had a conjecture not a theory, he called
> his conjecture a theory but calling something a theory doesn't make it
> a theory. He didn't know about a genes so how could he have had a
> theory if he couldn't even specify the problem.
>
Kepler didn't even know about gravity. Does that mean that he didn't
have a theory of elliptical planetary orbits? Dalton didn't even know
about electrons and protons; does that mean he didn't have a theory of
atoms? Are you insisting that if a scientist doesn't know everything,
he can't know anything? Darwin knew about inheritance; that he did
not know the mechanisms underlying inheritance did not mean that he
could not have a theory of how inheritable traits could become more or
less common as the result of how they fitted organisms to the
environment. Indeed, that Darwin did not know about mutations does
not mean that he could not reliably infer than new inheritable
variation could arise in a population through some means.
>
> >Nor does natural selection depend on any agent
> >actually choosing or selecting anything, as has been explained to you
> >over and over and over and over again.
>
> This is begging the question: NS is the term under dispute.
>
I shall repeat the remarks from my earlier post that you so
dishonestly snipped rather than confront: you might as well complain
that the "eye" of a hurricane cannot actually see anything, or that
the "legs" of a chair are useless for walking about, or that you can't
plant corn in a magnetic "field." Or, as Woland noted, natural
selection doesn't actually imply anything or anyone "naturalling" or
"selecting" any more than "nuclear arms" implies "nuclear fingers."
There is no point to disputing the term; it is simply what people have
chosen to call the phenomenon, which demonstrably exists.
>
> >Rather, the point is, that if, in the environment described above, birds detect and eat grey moths
> >often and black moths rarely, black moths will live to reproduce much
> >more often than grey moths, and the next generation will contain a
> >higher percentage of grey moths, and so on for succeeding generations
> >was long as the environment remains the same. The effect on the moth
> >population is exactly the same as if the birds had been consciously
> >and teleologically choosing to breed black moths, even though that is
> >not what they are doing at all. Note that one doesn't even need a
> >selection pressure as conscious as birds: antibiotic-resistant
> >bacteria flourish and replace less-resistant bacteria in an
> >environment rich in antibiotics, even though the antibiotics are
> >utterly mindless and intentionless, and the bacteria themselves are
> >scarcely smarter or more goal-oriented.
>
> Some moths die, some live - this is a pattern, nobody did any
> *selectings* and there is no such thing as a *selection pressure* in
> nature. Nature has patterns not designs.
>
You seem to feel that reality can be altered by quibbling over words.
Of course, you have explicitly asserted that God has endowed words
with specific, unalterable meanings, and that He has kept these
meanings constant and present in all languages. Please note that this
implies that every word in English has an exact translation in every
other language. I have run across this idea before, but I do not see
how it could have survived anyone's first encounter with the
prepositions table of a language with cases. Words have ranges of
meanings. These meanings are dependent on context and they can change
across time. Therefore, there can be "selection pressure" which
exists without anyone making choices, or even which is directly
contrary to the choices of the persons exercising the pressure.
>
> >Again, "natural selection" is an effect, not an action.
>
> Again, you are begging the question: NS is the term under dispute, you
> have assumed there is such a thing as a NS and then stated that
> therefore it is an effect not a cause. Chris Colby makes the same
> mistake on talkorigins.org: If NS is an effect what then is the cause?
>
There are many causes. If you want to reduce it to a single class of
causes, the cause is "over-reproduction." Living things can reproduce
faster than they can find new resources in their environment. Given
enough time (and enough time is not much time), any population can
breed to the point that not all offspring born can find enough food
and shelter to survive and support offspring of their own. Some will
die without offspring, and these will not be a random sampling of the
population, since in any environment some individuals will have traits
that, in that particular environment, make them more likely to find
food, avoid becoming food, attract a mate, resist parasites and
infections, and so forth, than do other individuals.
>
> He never tells us and neither do you. Harshman says NS is "non-
> random" or thus *directed* by the nature force and thus he is saying
> that NS is a cause. This is the confusion you get when the rules of
> Language are violated and concepts that don't exist are created out of
> thin air by the arbitrary concatenation of two words by the authority
> of the materialist priests. And the siege mentality materialists have,
> it is seemingly impossible for evolutionists to calmly motivate NS.
> And how could they since it is an axiomatic fact that there is no such
> thing as a NS on linguistic grounds alone.I believe 1+1 = 2 ,
> materialists believe that they can make 1 + 1 mean whatever they want
> to make it mean by decreeing it so by their authority as the rulers or
> our universities. Motivating for NS in the end boils down to argument
> from authority - you either believe it or MIT kicks you out.
>
"Non-random" does not mean "directed." It means that the causes of
survival are not uncorrelated with or unrelated to the nature of the
environment or the traits possessed by individuals in the species.
>
> >> Lets paint a room black and release white and black moths and put a
> >> bird inside. In the same way that I would have *detected* the white
> >> marbles a bird would *detect* the white moths first. One can say the
> >> bird *selected* for the white moths, but only if we understand that
> >> the word *selection* is used to convey the intent in the detection,
> >> pattern sense. Of course I as a free agent implemented my design to
> >> have the white moths reduced by using a bird for the purpose in a
> >> closed environment. But since nature has no designs nor consciousness
> >> nature didn't *direct* the bird to reduce the white moth population.
> >Nature doesn't need to direct the bird.
>
> Nobody said nature "needed" anything nor implied it - what are you
> talking about?
>
I implore you, try to be less stupid. If not for your own sake, do it
in the spirit of being good to your enemies.
>
> >The bird has an effect on the present and future frequency of various inheritable traits whether
> >"nature" or the bird has any intentions or goals at all.
>
> Yes, this would be a pattern not a design.
>
So what? Even evolutionists who speak of the results of natural
selection as "biological design" do not speak of natural selection
itself as a "designer" or as "designing."
>
> >For that matter, human designers can have "selective" effects that they did not
> >actually select:
>
> As opposed to what now - "nature designers" such as the nature
> selection force that naturled frogs?
>
Are you trying to wear me down by the sheer accumulated force of your
own stupidity and dishonesty? Is that what Jesus would have done?
>
> >> Darwin tried to extrapolate the selection,design intent of domestic
> >> breeding to nature, he confused the patterns in nature with designs.
> >> A free roaming cow meeting another cow in a point of space and time
> >> making baby cows is a pattern not a design - nobody willed for cows to
> >> meet.
>
> >And, as noted, "will" is often unnecessary, and occasionally the
> >result of selective pressures is directly opposite the will of any
> >conscious agents involved.
>
> There is no such thing as a "selective pressure" in nature, nobody did
> any selectings, you are confusing a pattern with a design.
>
With equal merit, you might as well assert that there is no such thing
as a gravitational field, since you cannot fence it off and build a
house on it. One more time: God did not fix the meanings of words for
all time at creation, words acquire their meaning from context and
convention, and there are selection pressures in nature.
>
-- [snip further proof that I can lead a creationist to water but I
can't make him think]
>
-- Steven J.
Woland
Actually, metaphors are used all over the place, including all over
scince. They are one of the most common forms of communication we
have!
Try reading this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor
Make sure you read about Dead metaphors especially!
I know, these things pretty much make your argument moot so you will
ignore them! You do realize that this is dishonest don't you? How does
Jesus feel about you being so dishonest?
backspace
> On Oct 25, 1:41 am, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_evolution>
> Never let it be said that I never did anything for you.
Which redirects to "Evolution". "evolution" as a word only has meaning
as a free agent communicates his intent. We for example say "society
evolves" with the intent that prosperity and 'culture' increases for
example. Sapolsky though has different intent with "evolution" -
intent, sir intent. Everything revolves around your intent. A theory
is a mechanistic description of something and this description you
won't find on Wikipedia since there is no theory of evolution.
> > Darwin had a conjecture not a theory, he called
> > his conjecture a theory but calling something a theory doesn't make it
> > a theory. He didn't know about a genes so how could he have had a
> > theory if he couldn't even specify the problem.
> Darwin knew about inheritance; that he did not know the mechanisms underlying inheritance did not mean that he
> could not have a theory of how inheritable traits could become more or
> less common as the result of how they fitted organisms to the
> environment.
The first man Adam knew that cows make cows, it wasn't Darwin who
discovered this. How did traits fit organisms to the environment -
clarify this for me please.
> > >Nor does natural selection depend on any agent
> > >actually choosing or selecting anything, as has been explained to you
> > >over and over and over and over again.
> >
> > This is begging the question: NS is the term under dispute.
> Or, as Woland noted, natural
> selection doesn't actually imply anything or anyone "naturalling" or
> "selecting" any more than "nuclear arms" implies "nuclear fingers."
Then why are you using the word "selection" then ? Because a selection
is a goal directed decision. Do you wish to dispute this fact about
language itself.
> There is no point to disputing the term; it is simply what people have
> chosen to call the phenomenon, which demonstrably exists.
What phenomena? Spell out what exactly is this phenomena and don't
confuse the cause with the effect.
> > Some moths die, some live - this is a pattern, nobody did any
> > *selectings* and there is no such thing as a *selection pressure* in
> > nature. Nature has patterns not designs.
> You seem to feel that reality can be altered by quibbling over words.
What reality is this now?
> Of course, you have explicitly asserted that God has endowed words
> with specific, unalterable meanings, and that He has kept these
> meanings constant and present in all languages.
God has kept the intent that he gave Adam with choice, decision and
selection the same in whatever language you are versed.
The intent is the issue and thus there must be concepts such as
choice, decision, selection, love, hate, hope than can in eternity not
change their
semantics or nobody would be able to communicate their intent
anymore.
> Words have ranges of meanings. These meanings are dependent on context and they can change
> across time.
The intent God and Adam had with "... In the beginning...." can never
change. A "beginning" is a beginning nobody can change the intent with
the word. What the language terrorists have done is to make
"selection" undefined by concatenating if with natural the last 150
years. AS and NS have only existed as terms from 1858(1859 Darwin
published). All this confusion because one man who understood no
calculus hated God for the death his child.
> > >Again, "natural selection" is an effect, not an action.
> > Again, you are begging the question: NS is the term under dispute, you
> > have assumed there is such a thing as a NS and then stated that
> > therefore it is an effect not a cause. Chris Colby makes the same
> > mistake on talkorigins.org: If NS is an effect what then is the cause?
> There are many causes. If you want to reduce it to a single class of
> causes, the cause is "over-reproduction."
What has reproduction got to do with a goal directed "decision" -
because that is what "selection" means , it is a goal directed
choice.? Do you agree on this or not, because this is where is the
confusion is.
> Living things can reproduce
> faster than they can find new resources in their environment.
What has this got to do with a goal directed choice ?
> Given
> enough time (and enough time is not much time), any population can
> breed to the point that not all offspring born can find enough food
> and shelter to survive and support offspring of their own. Some will
> die without offspring, and these will not be a random sampling of the
> population, since in any environment some individuals will have traits
> that, in that particular environment, make them more likely to find
> food, avoid becoming food, attract a mate, resist parasites and
> infections, and so forth, than do other individuals.
This would be a pattern not a design there was no teleological goals.
Nobody willed for anything to be more likely to find food or not.
Animals finding food, getting babies, dying, having traits is a
pattern in nature.
> > He never tells us and neither do you. Harshman says NS is "non-
> > random" or thus *directed* by the nature force and thus he is saying
> > that NS is a cause. This is the confusion you get when the rules of
> > Language are violated and concepts that don't exist are created out of
> > thin air by the arbitrary concatenation of two words by the authority
> > of the materialist priests. And the siege mentality materialists have,
> > it is seemingly impossible for evolutionists to calmly motivate NS.
> > And how could they since it is an axiomatic fact that there is no such
> > thing as a NS on linguistic grounds alone.I believe 1+1 = 2 ,
> > materialists believe that they can make 1 + 1 mean whatever they want
> > to make it mean by decreeing it so by their authority as the rulers or
> > our universities. Motivating for NS in the end boils down to argument
> > from authority - you either believe it or MIT kicks you out.
> "Non-random" does not mean "directed."
Yes, it does from a language perspective that is what it means.
Materialist views are subject unto language not the other way around.
Since materialists believe that matter created itself and language,
they think they can redefine the meaning of words anyway they want.
> It means that the causes of
> survival are not uncorrelated with or unrelated to the nature of the
> environment or the traits possessed by individuals in the species.
Did non-random have such meaning in 1750?
> > >The bird has an effect on the present and future frequency of various inheritable traits whether
> > >"nature" or the bird has any intentions or goals at all.
> >
> > Yes, this would be a pattern not a design.
> So what? Even evolutionists who speak of the results of natural
> selection as "biological design" do not speak of natural selection
> itself as a "designer" or as "designing."
You just told us that NS is an effect and now we are told about the
"results" of NS, meaning that NS is a cause.
Do you see how you invent your own language fantasy world. Anything
can become a cause or an effect because you believe that the universe
created itself and that your language are generated by atoms bouncing
around inside your head.
> > There is no such thing as a "selective pressure" in nature, nobody did
> > any selectings, you are confusing a pattern with a design.
> With equal merit, you might as well assert that there is no such thing
> as a gravitational field, since you cannot fence it off and build a
> house on it.
Because the intent with "field" is clear. What is the intent with
"selection" and "pressure" when talking about cows surviving, what has
the pattern of frogs making frogs got to do with anybody implementing
a goal directed decision?
>One more time: God did not fix the meanings of words for
> all time at creation, words acquire their meaning from context and
> convention, and there are selection pressures in nature.
When God confused the languages at the tower of Babel he made certain
that each person who spoke in a new language had the same intent/
semantics as everybody else had with "selection", choice, decision and
preference. There is no way that you can change the semantics of
selection, decision, choice and preference the last 150 years simply
by decreeing as the materialist overlords over society that
"selection" doesn't mean anymore what it meant in 1750. The last 150
years the language terrorists have taken over society, the only thing
you can't hijack is the truth and Language itself - because God is
Language.
hersheyh
[snip]
>
> When God confused the languages at the tower of Babel he made certain
> that each person who spoke in a new language had the same intent/
> semantics as everybody else had with "selection", choice, decision and
> preference.
Then how come you haven't gotten the "word" yet?
[snip]
Cheezits
[babblebabblebabble]
> And notice what
> we are talking about: birds, bacteria and moths - what has this got
> to do in and of itself with anything getting naturaled?
There is no such word as "naturaled". As long as your bot keeps
outputting that string of letters, it has no right even to discuss the
subject of language.
John Vreeland
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> opined:
>Then why are you using the word "selection" then ? Because a selection
>is a goal directed decision. Do you wish to dispute this fact about
>language itself.
Yes.
You are incorrect. Selection may be predicated by a goal but it need
not be. When things sink in water because they are selected for lack
of buoyancy is there a goal? Natural Selection works in the same way.
That more fit organisms survive is an automatic outcome of natural
laws at work, not a goal-driven process, but it is no less a
selection.
--
Two Creation Scientists can hold an intelligent conversation, if one of them is a sock puppet.
---John Vreeland(IEEE.org) http://rtmabc.blogspot.com
Woland
Please provide the scriptural basis for this. Oh, thats right there
isn't any. You can't even be consistent in taking everything
literally. Just because you take the Bible literally doesn't mean you
can add meanings to it that aren't there. In fact, that would seem to
be completely against what you seem to stand for, imagine that. I'm
not sure why you can't understand this.
[oh, and 'understand' is what is called a 'dead metaphor' it's not to
be taken literally. Originally it meant to literally get beneath, or
stand under something. Through time the meaning changed, in fact it
lost all of it's original meaning, isn't that curious...]
Inez
> Steven J. wrote:
> >One of the recurrent complaints creationists have about evolutionary
> >theory is that it doesn't deal in "teleology," "destiny," or concepts
> >of "higher" life forms.
>
> There is no theory of evolution: Go to Wikipedia and show me the
> theory of evolution.
Then what are you here arguing about? You don't even believe your own
nonsense.
> This is begging the question: NS is the term under dispute.
Only by you, and you're not exactly important to the field of science.
johnetho...@yahoo.com
> "backspace" <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1193249196.2...@v29g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
>
> > The Peppered moth story: http://www.icr.organd Wells misses the
> > point. Even if the moths were staged and the research a fraud - it
> > doesn't matter. The confusion is one of semantics and intent,
> > specifically
>
> that you keep burbling on with same meaningless twaddle. Get it through
> your head that your use of words, or understanding of common usage or lack
> of it, has no connection whatsover to the colouration of a moth or any other
> phenomenon in the world. Excepting the phenomenon of your perpetual
> dullness.
>
> David
I don't think backspace is even trying to engage in a rational
discussion of anything - if so he has certainly failed - but simply
engaging in mental masturbation. It doesn't matter to him if he
actually communicates anything or is even coherent - he gets his kicks
just by doing it and will probably continue no matter how people
respond. Perhaps he would give up if he got no response at all, but
IMO trying to have any sort of rational discussion with him is
impossible as he has absolutely no interest in doing that.
killerlimpet
> Lets paint a room black and release white and black moths and put a
> bird inside.
Have you been listening to The Cure?
[snip]
> Lets presume soot was white and thus all the black moths would have
> been eaten leaving behind the white ones. We would be told that this
> is also
> natural selection making the whole story unfalsifiable because no
> matter what happens it would always be the same universal mechanism
> that explains everything - natural selection.
>
Suppose, all other factors being held equal, birds preferrentially
hunted black moths, and black pigmentation began to increase in the
population. How would you use natural selection to explain this?
[snip]
> Wether you believe you are a boiled egg or the Devil himself - the
> truth is independent of your metaphysical beliefs or who you are.
As well as the words used to describe it, which, from my reading of
this thread, is what one of your beefs seem to be with natural
selection.
[snip]
Woland
> [snip]
>
> > Lets paint a room black and release white and black moths and put a
> > bird inside.
>
> Have you been listening to The Cure?
I think he's more into Bauhaus.
David Hare-Scott
<johnetho...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1193347522.0...@q5g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
>
> I don't think backspace is even trying to engage in a rational
> discussion of anything - if so he has certainly failed - but simply
> engaging in mental masturbation. It doesn't matter to him if he
> actually communicates anything or is even coherent - he gets his kicks
> just by doing it and will probably continue no matter how people
> respond. Perhaps he would give up if he got no response at all, but
> IMO trying to have any sort of rational discussion with him is
> impossible as he has absolutely no interest in doing that.
>
You are right, I am wasting my time. I will join those who ignore him.
David
Steven J.
> Steven J. wrote:
> > On Oct 25, 1:41 am, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_evolution>
> > Never let it be said that I never did anything for you.
>
> Which redirects to "Evolution". "evolution" as a word only has meaning
> as a free agent communicates his intent. We for example say "society
> evolves" with the intent that prosperity and 'culture' increases for
> example. Sapolsky though has different intent with "evolution" -
> intent, sir intent. Everything revolves around your intent. A theory
> is a mechanistic description of something and this description you
> won't find on Wikipedia since there is no theory of evolution.
>
include clear thinking. Are you saying that there cannot be words
that describe processes that are not guided by intent? Will you next
be complaining that "radioactive decay" has no semantics because no
one intends for a given atom to decay at any particular time? If you
are not going to insist on that, then surely there can a word,
"evolution," to describe a process which is neither entirely random
nor, on the other hand, much guided by anyone's intent or will.
As for the Wikipedia article, are you saying that a Wikipedia article
doesn't exist because you don't want it to exist? You have a rather
inflated impression of your own importance, I would say.
>
> > > Darwin had a conjecture not a theory, he called
> > > his conjecture a theory but calling something a theory doesn't make it
> > > a theory. He didn't know about a genes so how could he have had a
> > > theory if he couldn't even specify the problem.
>
> > Darwin knew about inheritance; that he did not know the mechanisms underlying inheritance did not mean that
> > he could not have a theory of how inheritable traits could become more or
> > less common as the result of how they fitted organisms to the
> > environment.
>
> The first man Adam knew that cows make cows, it wasn't Darwin who
> discovered this. How did traits fit organisms to the environment -
> clarify this for me please.
>
You cannot possibly be that stupid. Thick fur, for example, fits a
mammal to a cold, snowy environment better than does thin fur; the
same is true of other heat-conserving anatomical features such as
stocky legs and small ears. Black coloration fits a peppered moth to
soot-covered tree limbs. Metabolic pathways that don't depend on
enzymes crippled by penicillin fit bacteria to penicillin-laced
environments. And so forth and on.
Let us stipulate that Adam knew that cows make cows; Jacob, a couple
of dozen chapters later, did not know that spotted cows are more
likely to make spotted cows than are solid-colored cows (he thought
that such variations among livestock could be caused by mating them in
front of striped or spotted rods). So the Old Testament patriarchs
did not know about *inheritance* in the sense that Darwin did: that
differences between individuals within a given kind are partly
inherited from the parents, rather than being imposed by the
environment or arbitrary divine fiat.
>
> > > >Nor does natural selection depend on any agent
> > > >actually choosing or selecting anything, as has been explained to you
> > > >over and over and over and over again.
>
> > > This is begging the question: NS is the term under dispute.
> > Or, as Woland noted, natural
> > selection doesn't actually imply anything or anyone "naturalling" or
> > "selecting" any more than "nuclear arms" implies "nuclear fingers."
>
> Then why are you using the word "selection" then ? Because a selection
> is a goal directed decision. Do you wish to dispute this fact about
> language itself.
>
No, this is a fact about how words are used in English. English
speakers cause words to have their meanings by convention rather than
by obedience to divine law; if some subcommunity of English speakers
decides to give a new meaning to a word, it acquires, at least within
that subcommunity and later, sometimes, among English-speakers at
large, that new meaning. "Selection" has referred to nonrandom
differential reproductive success, whether due to anyone's goals or
intentions or not, since the late 19th century.
>
> > There is no point to disputing the term; it is simply what people have
> > chosen to call the phenomenon, which demonstrably exists.
>
> What phenomena? Spell out what exactly is this phenomena and don't
> confuse the cause with the effect.
>
I have done so. Please pay attention.
>
> > > Some moths die, some live - this is a pattern, nobody did any
> > > *selectings* and there is no such thing as a *selection pressure* in
> > > nature. Nature has patterns not designs.
> > You seem to feel that reality can be altered by quibbling over words.
>
> What reality is this now?
>
The same one it was before you started playing your dishonest word
games.
>
> > Of course, you have explicitly asserted that God has endowed words
> > with specific, unalterable meanings, and that He has kept these
> > meanings constant and present in all languages.
>
> God has kept the intent that he gave Adam with choice, decision and
> selection the same in whatever language you are versed.
> The intent is the issue and thus there must be concepts such as
> choice, decision, selection, love, hate, hope than can in eternity not
> change their
> semantics or nobody would be able to communicate their intent
> anymore.
>
This is manifestly false. Indeed, there are many cases where words
have demonstrably changed their meaning over time (in English, "silly"
used to mean "blessed," "resent" used to mean "feel any strong emotion
towards," and othre examples can be adduced till the cows come home).
The exact same word can have different meanings in different
subcultures or age groups: one writer noted a hypothetical example:
two old ladies come out of a theater and one remarks of the play they
just saw, "that was wicked!" Two teenage girls follow them out, and
one of them makes the exact same comment. We have no particular
difficulty figuring out that they had opposite reactions to the play,
even though they describe it in the same words. So it is perfectly
possible to communicate intent even while words have multiple or
changing meanings within the same language.
>
> > Words have ranges of meanings. These meanings are dependent on context and they can change
> > across time.
>
> The intent God and Adam had with "... In the beginning...." can never
> change. A "beginning" is a beginning nobody can change the intent with
> the word. What the language terrorists have done is to make
> "selection" undefined by concatenating if with natural the last 150
> years. AS and NS have only existed as terms from 1858(1859 Darwin
> published). All this confusion because one man who understood no
> calculus hated God for the death his child.
>
The only person in this thread who seems confused is you. That seems
to me a rather small price to pay for a theory that explains so many
features of biology.
>
> > > >Again, "natural selection" is an effect, not an action.
> > > Again, you are begging the question: NS is the term under dispute, you
> > > have assumed there is such a thing as a NS and then stated that
> > > therefore it is an effect not a cause. Chris Colby makes the same
> > > mistake on talkorigins.org: If NS is an effect what then is the cause?
> > There are many causes. If you want to reduce it to a single class of
> > causes, the cause is "over-reproduction."
>
> What has reproduction got to do with a goal directed "decision" -
> because that is what "selection" means , it is a goal directed
> choice.? Do you agree on this or not, because this is where is the
> confusion is.
>
Why don't you go buy a horseshoe magnet (which cannot be used to shoe
a horse), and plant some tomatoes in its magetic field. Please note
that this is a metaphor in a field of science other than biology.
>
> > Living things can reproduce
> > faster than they can find new resources in their environment.
>
> What has this got to do with a goal directed choice ?
>
Frequently, nothing whatsoever. "Selection" does not automatically
imply "goal-directed choice." I am not going to accept your own word
that this is not so; given the number and prominence of the scientists
who use "selection" in the way I do, and to which you so object, if
you want to insist that "selection" always implies "choice," I will
require a signed statement by God Himself to that effect. Don't
bother doing anything yourself; I'm sure He knows my e-mail address.
>
> > Given
> > enough time (and enough time is not much time), any population can
> > breed to the point that not all offspring born can find enough food
> > and shelter to survive and support offspring of their own. Some will
> > die without offspring, and these will not be a random sampling of the
> > population, since in any environment some individuals will have traits
> > that, in that particular environment, make them more likely to find
> > food, avoid becoming food, attract a mate, resist parasites and
> > infections, and so forth, than do other individuals.
>
> This would be a pattern not a design there was no teleological goals.
> Nobody willed for anything to be more likely to find food or not.
> Animals finding food, getting babies, dying, having traits is a
> pattern in nature.
>
Fine. This is a pattern, not a design. Ken Miller and Francis
Collins will be so disappointed to hear that, according to you,
natural selection is not designed (but perhaps they can console
themselves with the thought that you're an idiot who doesn't know what
he's talking about). I never described natural selection as a design,
or as a designer, so you are not really addressing any point I made.
>
> > > He never tells us and neither do you. Harshman says NS is "non-
> > > random" or thus *directed* by the nature force and thus he is saying
> > > that NS is a cause. This is the confusion you get when the rules of
> > > Language are violated and concepts that don't exist are created out of
> > > thin air by the arbitrary concatenation of two words by the authority
> > > of the materialist priests. And the siege mentality materialists have,
> > > it is seemingly impossible for evolutionists to calmly motivate NS.
> > > And how could they since it is an axiomatic fact that there is no such
> > > thing as a NS on linguistic grounds alone.I believe 1+1 = 2 ,
> > > materialists believe that they can make 1 + 1 mean whatever they want
> > > to make it mean by decreeing it so by their authority as the rulers or
> > > our universities. Motivating for NS in the end boils down to argument
> > > from authority - you either believe it or MIT kicks you out.
> > "Non-random" does not mean "directed."
>
> Yes, it does from a language perspective that is what it means.
> Materialist views are subject unto language not the other way around.
> Since materialists believe that matter created itself and language,
> they think they can redefine the meaning of words anyway they want.
>
People routinely do redefine the meanings of words. If this were not
the case, I would be complimenting you when I described you as a silly
brat.
>
> > It means that the causes of
> > survival are not uncorrelated with or unrelated to the nature of the
> > environment or the traits possessed by individuals in the species.
>
> Did non-random have such meaning in 1750?
>
I really do not know. "Compact disk" and "computer" did not have the
meanings in 1750 that they have now, if that matters to you.
>
> > > >The bird has an effect on the present and future frequency of various inheritable traits whether
> > > >"nature" or the bird has any intentions or goals at all.
>
> > > Yes, this would be a pattern not a design.
> > So what? Even evolutionists who speak of the results of natural
> > selection as "biological design" do not speak of natural selection
> > itself as a "designer" or as "designing."
>
> You just told us that NS is an effect and now we are told about the
> "results" of NS, meaning that NS is a cause.
> Do you see how you invent your own language fantasy world. Anything
> can become a cause or an effect because you believe that the universe
> created itself and that your language are generated by atoms bouncing
> around inside your head.
>
No, I really don't see how coining new terms or using old words to
convey newly discovered meanings causes us to "invent a fantasy
world."
>
> > > There is no such thing as a "selective pressure" in nature, nobody did
> > > any selectings, you are confusing a pattern with a design.
>
> > With equal merit, you might as well assert that there is no such thing
> > as a gravitational field, since you cannot fence it off and build a
> > house on it.
>
> Because the intent with "field" is clear. What is the intent with
> "selection" and "pressure" when talking about cows surviving, what has
> the pattern of frogs making frogs got to do with anybody implementing
> a goal directed decision?
>
This has been explained to you. I am weary of attempting to cram
knowledge into a head which does not want it.
>
> >One more time: God did not fix the meanings of words for
> > all time at creation, words acquire their meaning from context and
> > convention, and there are selection pressures in nature.
>
> When God confused the languages at the tower of Babel he made certain
> that each person who spoke in a new language had the same intent/
> semantics as everybody else had with "selection", choice, decision and
> preference. There is no way that you can change the semantics of
> selection, decision, choice and preference the last 150 years simply
> by decreeing as the materialist overlords over society that
> "selection" doesn't mean anymore what it meant in 1750. The last 150
> years the language terrorists have taken over society, the only thing
> you can't hijack is the truth and Language itself - because God is
> Language.
>
Heretic buffoon.
-- Steven J.
backspace
> > Which redirects to "Evolution". "evolution" as a word only has meaning
> > as a free agent communicates his intent. We for example say "society
> > evolves" with the intent that prosperity and 'culture' increases for
> > example. Sapolsky though has different intent with "evolution" -
> > intent, sir intent. Everything revolves around your intent. A theory
> > is a mechanistic description of something and this description you
> > won't find on Wikipedia since there is no theory of evolution.
> I don't quite take your point; I suspect that YOUR intent does not
> include clear thinking. Are you saying that there cannot be words
> that describe processes that are not guided by intent?
Which depends on entirely on your intent: What are these processes not
guided by intent?
> > Then why are you using the word "selection" then ? Because a selection
> > is a goal directed decision. Do you wish to dispute this fact about
> > language itself.
> No, this is a fact about how words are used in English. English
> speakers cause words to have their meanings by convention rather than
> by obedience to divine law; if some subcommunity of English speakers
> decides to give a new meaning to a word, it acquires, at least within
> that subcommunity
Exactly and this subcommunity are the materialist overlords who
believe that matter created language and that
their thoughts are just illusions created by bouncing atoms and thus
they can make "selection" mean whatever they want to make it mean
depending on how the atoms are bouncing in their heads.
> "Selection" has referred to nonrandom
> differential reproductive success, whether due to anyone's goals or
> intentions or not, since the late 19th century.
A goal directed decision has got nothing to do with reproduction,
achievements and being non-similar. Because that is what "selection"
means - a decision, choice and preference. And you can't by your
authority change the meaning and the intent we have had from Adam till
1859 with whatever word was used to communicate the intent of
making a decision. And the result of this language confusion over the
word "selection" is responsible for Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot who
all were atheists and attributed it to Darwin and this non-existent
term NS. Atheists have killed more people in numbers alone than any
previous religious war including our friends from the "religion of
piece"
> The only person in this thread who seems confused is you. That seems
> to me a rather small price to pay for a theory that explains so many
> features of biology.
What exactly does it explain? How does it explain the interdependence
relationship between the control algorithms of a human and it's nerve
signals and contracting muscles. Where is your theory that explains
the feed forward control loop in the human body. Where did Darwin
predict that such a control loop would be found?
> > What has this got to do with a goal directed choice ?
> Frequently, nothing whatsoever. "Selection" does not automatically
> imply "goal-directed choice."
Yes,it does - that is what it means and you can't redefine God's
language for HIm.
> I am not going to accept your own word
> that this is not so; given the number and prominence of the scientists
> who use "selection" in the way
They use selection but what is their intent with it?
> People routinely do redefine the meanings of words.
The meaning of a word can change but not the original intent. And the
original intent with "Selection" was a goal directed decision. And
since materialists tell us there are no "goals" in nature then they
can't use the word "selection". Materialists have no theory - there is
no theory of evolution so instead they have made the word "selection"
undefined.
backspace
killerlimpet wrote:
> > Lets presume soot was white and thus all the black moths would have
> > been eaten leaving behind the white ones. We would be told that this
> > is also
> > natural selection making the whole story unfalsifiable because no
> > matter what happens it would always be the same universal mechanism
> > that explains everything - natural selection.
> Suppose, all other factors being held equal, birds preferrentially
> hunted black moths, and black pigmentation began to increase in the
> population. How would you use natural selection to explain this?
You are begging the question natural selection is the term under
dispute. Do bird have "preferences"?
What is your intent with preference. If birds hunted black moths it
would also be a pattern, there was no choices made or decisions. And I
have addressed your question in my reply to Steven.You think the
traditional moth story is brilliant because no matter what happens
either the white moths get eaten or the black moths - would be NS. But
this makes NS unfalsifiable because theories that explain everything
explain nothing their control of the facts is an illusion.
Greg Guarino
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>killerlimpet wrote:
>
>> > Lets presume soot was white and thus all the black moths would have
>> > been eaten leaving behind the white ones. We would be told that this
>> > is also
>> > natural selection making the whole story unfalsifiable because no
>> > matter what happens it would always be the same universal mechanism
>> > that explains everything - natural selection.
>
>> Suppose, all other factors being held equal, birds preferrentially
>> hunted black moths, and black pigmentation began to increase in the
>> population. How would you use natural selection to explain this?
>
>You are begging the question natural selection is the term under
>dispute. Do bird have "preferences"?
Maybe, maybe not. It doesn't matter.
>What is your intent with preference. If birds hunted black moths it
>would also be a pattern, there was no choices made or decisions.
All that matters is how many moths of each color get eaten before they
reproduce. The "why" doesn't make any difference, at least as far as
the coloration of future generation of moths goes.
>And I
>have addressed your question in my reply to Steven.You think the
>traditional moth story is brilliant because no matter what happens
>either the white moths get eaten or the black moths - would be NS. But
>this makes NS unfalsifiable because theories that explain everything
>explain nothing their control of the facts is an illusion.
Troll or impenetrable dullard? It's hard to be sure, but you're a
coward either way. Many people have already corrected you on your
"unfalsifiability" schtick, including me, in this very thread:
"Nope. The birds could eat the moths in equal numbers, regardless of
color. That would falsify the hypothesis that bird predation was
correlated with color, and that selective pressure from bird predation
drives the color change in subsequent generations. "
"Nope (2). If fewer white moths lived to reproduce (for whatever
reason) yet future generations kept the same color proportions, that
would falsify natural selection as a factor in moth coloration. "
"The more astute creationist might now complain that that would be
impossible; genetics prohibits that outcome. Quite so. That does not
make Natural Selection unfalsifiable, only *unfalsified*, as any true
scientific concept must be. "
Greg Guarino
Ymir
backspace <sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Steven J. wrote:
> > > Which redirects to "Evolution". "evolution" as a word only has meaning
> > > as a free agent communicates his intent. We for example say "society
> > > evolves" with the intent that prosperity and 'culture' increases for
> > > example. Sapolsky though has different intent with "evolution" -
> > > intent, sir intent. Everything revolves around your intent. A theory
> > > is a mechanistic description of something and this description you
> > > won't find on Wikipedia since there is no theory of evolution.
>
> > I don't quite take your point; I suspect that YOUR intent does not
> > include clear thinking. Are you saying that there cannot be words
> > that describe processes that are not guided by intent?
>
> Which depends on entirely on your intent: What are these processes not
> guided by intent?
Would you agree that subduction is a process? Do you believe it is
guided by an intent?
What about evaporation, or condensation, or combustion, or...
>
> > > Then why are you using the word "selection" then ? Because a selection
> > > is a goal directed decision. Do you wish to dispute this fact about
> > > language itself.
>
> > No, this is a fact about how words are used in English. English
> > speakers cause words to have their meanings by convention rather than
> > by obedience to divine law; if some subcommunity of English speakers
> > decides to give a new meaning to a word, it acquires, at least within
> > that subcommunity
>
> Exactly and this subcommunity are the materialist overlords who
> believe that matter created language and that
> their thoughts are just illusions created by bouncing atoms and thus
> they can make "selection" mean whatever they want to make it mean
> depending on how the atoms are bouncing in their heads.
>
> > "Selection" has referred to nonrandom
> > differential reproductive success, whether due to anyone's goals or
> > intentions or not, since the late 19th century.
>
> A goal directed decision has got nothing to do with reproduction,
> achievements and being non-similar. Because that is what "selection"
> means - a decision, choice and preference. And you can't by your
> authority change the meaning and the intent we have had from Adam till
> 1859 with whatever word was used to communicate the intent of
> making a decision.
The word verb 'select' didn't even exist in English prior to the 16th
century, and the noun 'selection' until the 17th.
And English (rather broadly defined) didn't exist until the 5th or 6th
century, so Adam has no relevance here.
If you think that the meanings of words are fixed, then you obviously
haven't read any English from prior to circa 2007.
> > The only person in this thread who seems confused is you. That seems
> > to me a rather small price to pay for a theory that explains so many
> > features of biology.
>
> What exactly does it explain? How does it explain the interdependence
> relationship between the control algorithms of a human and it's nerve
> signals and contracting muscles. Where is your theory that explains
> the feed forward control loop in the human body. Where did Darwin
> predict that such a control loop would be found?
>
> > > What has this got to do with a goal directed choice ?
> > Frequently, nothing whatsoever. "Selection" does not automatically
> > imply "goal-directed choice."
>
> Yes,it does - that is what it means and you can't redefine God's
> language for HIm.
>
> > I am not going to accept your own word
> > that this is not so; given the number and prominence of the scientists
> > who use "selection" in the way
>
> They use selection but what is their intent with it?
>
> > People routinely do redefine the meanings of words.
>
> The meaning of a word can change but not the original intent. And the
> original intent with "Selection" was a goal directed decision.
Do please explain this. If the meaning of a word changes, how can the
'original intent' remain the same? Please illustrate this using a
concrete example. Here's a few for you to consider:
Old English Modern English
wyf 'woman' wife
kniht 'child' knight
laec 'barber/surgeon' leech
deor 'nondomestic animal' deer
Pre-Germanic Modern English
*cape 'seize' have
Proto-Indo-European
*ghosti ghost (n.b. etymology dispute)
guest (via Norse)
host [in either sense] (via Latin)
hostile (via Latin)
hostage (via Latin)
hospital (via Latin)
xeno(phobe) (via Greek)
*ghel yellow
glass
glad
guild (via norse)
chlorine (via greek)
What were the 'intents' of these words and how have they remained
unchanged?
n.b. I've left the translations of the Proto-Indo-European forms as an
exercise for the reader. This should be trivial for you since intents
don't change.
Andre
[note: For those unfamiliar with historical linguistic practice, an
asterisk before a word indicates that it is a reconstructed form]
Woland
It doesn't explain everything. Really it's a simple observation. Some
traits within populations allow members of that population to have
more offspring. If members with a given trait have more offspring than
others that lack the trait then the frequency of that trait within the
population tends to increase.
It really isn't that difficult.
And you're right it is a pattern. Let me describe what the pattern
looks like: see the first paragraph.
Thats the pattern.
If differing traits repeatedly did not affect the number off offspring
had then it would falsify NS (or fred, if you want to call it that).
killerlimpet
When in doubt, deny all terms and definitions...
mur...@tntech.edu
> Steven J. wrote:
[...]
> > > What has this got to do with a goal directed choice ?
> > Frequently, nothing whatsoever. "Selection" does not automatically
> > imply "goal-directed choice."
>
> Yes,it does - that is what it means and you can't redefine God's
> language for HIm.
English is God's language?
---DPM
Greg Guarino
>The word verb 'select' didn't even exist in English prior to the 16th
>century, and the noun 'selection' until the 17th.
>
>And English (rather broadly defined) didn't exist until the 5th or 6th
>century, so Adam has no relevance here.
>
>If you think that the meanings of words are fixed, then you obviously
>haven't read any English from prior to circa 2007.
For backspace:
Faeder ure,
Thu the eart on heofonum,
Si thin Nama gehalgod
Tobecume thin rice.
Gewurthe thin willa on eorthan
Swa swa on heofonum...
Greg Guarino
Tiny Bulcher
>
> Do please explain this. If the meaning of a word changes, how can the
> 'original intent' remain the same? Please illustrate this using a
> concrete example. Here's a few for you to consider:
>
> Old English Modern English
>
> wyf 'woman' wife
> kniht 'child' knight
> laec 'barber/surgeon' leech
I think you're wrong about this one ... surely læc meant leech, the
creature, and only by metaphorical extension a surgeon (a usage that has
not yet quite died out).
Tiny Bulcher
And three quarks for Musther Mark, to you, you broth of a boy.
> English is God's language?
And has never changed since God invented it!
Please, somebody, show backspace the LOLcat Bible!
http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Matthew_5
kthxbi
John Vreeland
> žus cwęš murd...@tntech.edu :
Show him the KJV. I don't think he talks that way.
Free Lunch
"Tiny Bulcher" <alyc...@btinternet.com> wrote in
<Q8mdnTCQN53C1L_a...@bt.com>:
>þus cwæð mur...@tntech.edu :
Good Ceiling Cat, that is a fascinating translation.
John McKendry
Curiously, just yesterday I was lamenting that I have never
managed to acquire Bosworth & Toller's Anglo_Saxon Dictionary
and I have to make do with J.R. Clark Hall's Concise Anglo-Saxon
Dictionary. A quick google, though, reveals that Bosworth &
Toller is now online, thanks to the Germanic Lexicon Project,
at
http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/texts/oe_bosworthtoller_about.html .
You want pages 606 and 607.
laec doesn't seem to be the right form (B&T says 'laec' only
occurs once, and with doubtful meaning); laece seems to be
right. B&T give 'doctor, physician' as the first meaning,
with a great many citations, and 'species of worm' as a
distant second, with only a comparative handful of cites.
I also find (using Clark Hall now) laeceboc "book of
prescriptions", laececraeft "art of healing", laececyst
"medicine chest", laecefeoh "doctor's fee", laecehus
"hoatelry, hospital", laeceseax "lancet", and a few
others that I won't bother to type in.
The OED points out that the form lyce occurs in Kentish
for the worm but not for the doctor, and suggests that
the two senses might originally have been two distinct
words, assimilated to one another by folk etymology. Or
maybe not. Either way, it seems the "doctor" sense is
pretty much as early as the "worm" sense.
John
Ymir
John McKendry <jlas...@comcast.dot.net> wrote:
Yes, laece is correct -- a typo on my part.
AFAIK, the metaphorical extension went the other direction, with the
meaning of doctor coming first.
AndrŽ
Christopher Denney
> Steven J. wrote:
> > > Which redirects to "Evolution". "evolution" as a word only has meaning
> > > as a free agent communicates his intent. We for example say "society
> > > evolves" with the intent that prosperity and 'culture' increases for
> > > example. Sapolsky though has different intent with "evolution" -
> > > intent, sir intent. Everything revolves around your intent. A theory
> > > is a mechanistic description of something and this description you
> > > won't find on Wikipedia since there is no theory of evolution.
> > I don't quite take your point; I suspect that YOUR intent does not
> > include clear thinking. Are you saying that there cannot be words
> > that describe processes that are not guided by intent?
>
> Which depends on entirely on your intent: What are these processes not
> guided by intent?
Photosynthesis, oh wait, you'll probably go on about how some magical
ability in the cells of plant lets them intend stuff, never mind.
[snip]
> > "Selection" has referred to nonrandom
> > differential reproductive success, whether due to anyone's goals or
> > intentions or not, since the late 19th century.
>
> A goal directed decision has got nothing to do with reproduction,
> achievements and being non-similar. Because that is what "selection"
> means - a decision, choice and preference. And you can't by your
> authority change the meaning and the intent we have had from Adam till
> 1859 with whatever word was used to communicate the intent of
> making a decision. And the result of this language confusion over the
> word "selection" is responsible for Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot who
> all were atheists and attributed it to Darwin and this non-existent
> term NS. Atheists have killed more people in numbers alone than any
> previous religious war including our friends from the "religion of
> piece"
That's all false.
> > The only person in this thread who seems confused is you. That seems
> > to me a rather small price to pay for a theory that explains so many
> > features of biology.
>
> What exactly does it explain? How does it explain the interdependence
> relationship between the control algorithms of a human and it's nerve
> signals and contracting muscles. Where is your theory that explains
> the feed forward control loop in the human body. Where did Darwin
> predict that such a control loop would be found?
Irrelevant fluff.
> > > What has this got to do with a goal directed choice ?
> > Frequently, nothing whatsoever. "Selection" does not automatically
> > imply "goal-directed choice."
>
> Yes,it does - that is what it means and you can't redefine God's
> language for HIm.
English isn't gods language, even a tiny amount of education should
tell you that.
> > I am not going to accept your own word
> > that this is not so; given the number and prominence of the scientists
> > who use "selection" in the way
>
> They use selection but what is their intent with it?
>
> > People routinely do redefine the meanings of words.
>
> The meaning of a word can change but not the original intent. And the
> original intent with "Selection" was a goal directed decision. And
> since materialists tell us there are no "goals" in nature then they
> can't use the word "selection". Materialists have no theory - there is
> no theory of evolution so instead they have made the word "selection"
> undefined.
The English language didn't exist back when you think the world was
created,
no amount of you pretending that gods made up the word and set it's
definition in stone will change that.
There was no original intent, the word didn't exist.
In case you didn't know, there are no languages with a one to one
mapping of words to another language.
Every language in existence (and ones no longer used) has a different
number of words with different combinations of meanings associated
with them.
For example, the word spirit in English does not have one and only one
word that corresponds to it in French, Norwegian or Russian.
Christopher Denney
You are mistakenly conflating "theories that explain everything" with
"theories that explain everything observed"
You see, by accident I am sure, you are right. Theories that explain
all possible outcomes (like goddidit) explain nothing.
The goal, however, of scientific theories is to explain everything
observed.
There are plenty of things which would be contrary to NS, but for some
reason nobody ever sees those actually happen.
As a friend of mine would say "the system's working", in other words,
no contrary examples have been found.
So if more white moths got eaten than darker ones, and the population
of white moths kept going up, that would look an awful lot like a
counter example, but that isn't what we see in the "moth story" as you
put it.
Christopher Denney
> > <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_evolution>
> > Never let it be said that I never did anything for you.
>
> as a free agent communicates his intent. We for example say "society
> evolves" with the intent that prosperity and 'culture' increases for
> example. Sapolsky though has different intent with "evolution" -
> intent, sir intent. Everything revolves around your intent. A theory
> is a mechanistic description of something and this description you
> won't find on Wikipedia since there is no theory of evolution.
Errnt, wrong answer: Here is one definition of theory, I think it fits
quite nicely.
Theory:
A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts
or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is
widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural
phenomena.
[snip]
> The first man Adam knew that cows make cows, it wasn't Darwin who
> discovered this. How did traits fit organisms to the environment -
> clarify this for me please.
Lots of people know that cows have baby cows, so what.
Lot's of people can't really wrap their brain around why cows that
spend several hundred generations in a climate that is colder longer
than their cousins back in the warmer areas develop longer coats of
hair and other protections from the climate. And why these changes
persist in individuals moved back to a warmer climate.
> > > >Nor does natural selection depend on any agent
> > > >actually choosing or selecting anything, as has been explained to you
> > > >over and over and over and over again.
>
> > > This is begging the question: NS is the term under dispute.
> > Or, as Woland noted, natural
> > selection doesn't actually imply anything or anyone "naturalling" or
> > "selecting" any more than "nuclear arms" implies "nuclear fingers."
>
> Then why are you using the word "selection" then ? Because a selection
> is a goal directed decision. Do you wish to dispute this fact about
> language itself.
You are the one disputing the common usage.
> > There is no point to disputing the term; it is simply what people have
> > chosen to call the phenomenon, which demonstrably exists.
>
> What phenomena? Spell out what exactly is this phenomena and don't
> confuse the cause with the effect.
The phenomena is, critters with traits that help them survive better
than their fellows will tend to out breed their fellows, and thus
increase the percentage of individuals in the population with that
helpful trait.
[snip]
> > Of course, you have explicitly asserted that God has endowed words
> > with specific, unalterable meanings, and that He has kept these
> > meanings constant and present in all languages.
>
> God has kept the intent that he gave Adam with choice, decision and
> selection the same in whatever language you are versed.
> The intent is the issue and thus there must be concepts such as
> choice, decision, selection, love, hate, hope than can in eternity not
> change their
> semantics or nobody would be able to communicate their intent
> anymore.
This is your problem, concepts don't have semantics, words do,
concepts ARE the semantics.
Words can, and do, have different concepts associated with them, at
different times,
in different contexts; very few words only have one meaning all the
time.
> > Words have ranges of meanings. These meanings are dependent on context and they can change
> > across time.
>
> The intent God and Adam had with "... In the beginning...." can never
> change. A "beginning" is a beginning nobody can change the intent with
> the word. What the language terrorists have done is to make
> "selection" undefined by concatenating if with natural the last 150
> years. AS and NS have only existed as terms from 1858(1859 Darwin
> published). All this confusion because one man who understood no
> calculus hated God for the death his child.
Now you are just trying to excite people with buzz words.
You still seem to think that English is what god wrote the bible in.
That is wrong on so many levels.
> > > >Again, "natural selection" is an effect, not an action.
> > > Again, you are begging the question: NS is the term under dispute, you
> > > have assumed there is such a thing as a NS and then stated that
> > > therefore it is an effect not a cause. Chris Colby makes the same
> > > mistake on talkorigins.org: If NS is an effect what then is the cause?
> > There are many causes. If you want to reduce it to a single class of
> > causes, the cause is "over-reproduction."
>
> What has reproduction got to do with a goal directed "decision" -
> because that is what "selection" means , it is a goal directed
> choice.? Do you agree on this or not, because this is where is the
> confusion is.
Now here YOU are begging the question. You are deliberately coming up
with a
word definition that is incompatible with the concepts being
discussed, and
complaining that we do not adhere to your definition in the
discussion.
[snip]
> When God confused the languages at the tower of Babel he made certain
> that each person who spoke in a new language had the same intent/
> semantics as everybody else had with "selection", choice, decision and
> preference. There is no way that you can change the semantics of
> selection, decision, choice and preference the last 150 years simply
> by decreeing as the materialist overlords over society that
> "selection" doesn't mean anymore what it meant in 1750. The last 150
> years the language terrorists have taken over society, the only thing
> you can't hijack is the truth and Language itself - because God is
> Language.
demonstrably false. This "paragraph" is complete BS.
Kent Paul Dolan
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/e38ef27fd440a134
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/2af67ec79680e616
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/4642472ab9189472
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/c8c903bc7a5c6934
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/msg/c752d734b67764db
[drivel so wrongheaded and palpably counter-factual
that its mere creation in such volume and
concentration seems beyond the capacities of the
ordinary mortal, yet this is just one thread of
many similar ones]
Ye, chaos!
This just doesn't look like any identifiable kind of
*human* behavior.
Hypothesis:
Poster "backspace" is a proof of concept, by
example, that creationism must come complete with a
"big honking crowbar"(sm), for prying open the
adherent's skull to make room to cram in all that
extra incoherence, incomprehension, gibberish, and
ignorance. stuff that wouldn't fit in the skull
volume typical of Homo sapiens sapiens.
Comments?
xanthian.
Steven J.
> > > Which redirects to "Evolution". "evolution" as a word only has meaning
> > > as a free agent communicates his intent. We for example say "society
> > > evolves" with the intent that prosperity and 'culture' increases for
> > > example. Sapolsky though has different intent with "evolution" -
> > > intent, sir intent. Everything revolves around your intent. A theory
> > > is a mechanistic description of something and this description you
> > > won't find on Wikipedia since there is no theory of evolution.
>
> > I don't quite take your point; I suspect that YOUR intent does not
> > include clear thinking. Are you saying that there cannot be words
> > that describe processes that are not guided by intent?
>
> Which depends on entirely on your intent: What are these processes not
> guided by intent?
>
summer, rain, snow, the tides: the list goes on. For many organisms,
the entire process of development, growth, and reproduction is
accomplished without intent (think of bacteria, protists, plants and
fungi, and many animals). Mutations in the course of cell
duplication are a known phenomenon that occurs without intent.
>
> > > Then why are you using the word "selection" then ? Because a selection
> > > is a goal directed decision. Do you wish to dispute this fact about
> > > language itself.
>
> > No, this is a fact about how words are used in English. English
> > speakers cause words to have their meanings by convention rather than
> > by obedience to divine law; if some subcommunity of English speakers
> > decides to give a new meaning to a word, it acquires, at least within
> > that subcommunity
>
> Exactly and this subcommunity are the materialist overlords who
> believe that matter created language and that
> their thoughts are just illusions created by bouncing atoms and thus
> they can make "selection" mean whatever they want to make it mean
> depending on how the atoms are bouncing in their heads.
>
"selection" can acquire new meanings than to suppose that words like
"battery" or "charge" can acquire new meanings.
>
> > "Selection" has referred to nonrandom
> > differential reproductive success, whether due to anyone's goals or
> > intentions or not, since the late 19th century.
>
> A goal directed decision has got nothing to do with reproduction,
> achievements and being non-similar. Because that is what "selection"
> means - a decision, choice and preference. And you can't by your
> authority change the meaning and the intent we have had from Adam till
> 1859 with whatever word was used to communicate the intent of
> making a decision. And the result of this language confusion over the
> word "selection" is responsible for Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot who
> all were atheists and attributed it to Darwin and this non-existent
> term NS. Atheists have killed more people in numbers alone than any
> previous religious war including our friends from the "religion of
> piece"
>
could it have a meaning going back to Adam? You don't even have an
argument here; you have a string of arbitrary assertions made without
regard for whether they are even superficially consistent with one
another.
>
> > The only person in this thread who seems confused is you. That seems
> > to me a rather small price to pay for a theory that explains so many
> > features of biology.
>
> What exactly does it explain? How does it explain the interdependence
> relationship between the control algorithms of a human and it's nerve
> signals and contracting muscles. Where is your theory that explains
> the feed forward control loop in the human body. Where did Darwin
> predict that such a control loop would be found?
>
to why gene imprinting is found in mammals. It does not, of itself,
explain every phenomenon in biology.
>
> > > What has this got to do with a goal directed choice ?
> > Frequently, nothing whatsoever. "Selection" does not automatically
> > imply "goal-directed choice."
>
> Yes,it does - that is what it means and you can't redefine God's
> language for HIm.
>
for all time, the meaning of the word "selection." Please note that
if you post, e.g. John 1:1 or some verse with similar metaphors, I
will insist that you explain why God felt it necessary to fix, for all
time, the meaning of "selection" but not the meaning of, e.g. "leech"
or "deer."
>
> > I am not going to accept your own word
> > that this is not so; given the number and prominence of the scientists
> > who use "selection" in the way
>
> They use selection but what is their intent with it?
>
under consideration.
>
> > People routinely do redefine the meanings of words.
>
> The meaning of a word can change but not the original intent. And the
> original intent with "Selection" was a goal directed decision. And
> since materialists tell us there are no "goals" in nature then they
> can't use the word "selection". Materialists have no theory - there is
> no theory of evolution so instead they have made the word "selection"
> undefined.
>
and insight into science?
-- Steven J.
Steven J.
> > > Which redirects to "Evolution". "evolution" as a word only has meaning
> > > as a free agent communicates his intent. We for example say "society
> > > evolves" with the intent that prosperity and 'culture' increases for
> > > example. Sapolsky though has different intent with "evolution" -
> > > intent, sir intent. Everything revolves around your intent. A theory
> > > is a mechanistic description of something and this description you
> > > won't find on Wikipedia since there is no theory of evolution.
>
> > I don't quite take your point; I suspect that YOUR intent does not
> > include clear thinking. Are you saying that there cannot be words
> > that describe processes that are not guided by intent?
>
> Which depends on entirely on your intent: What are these processes not
> guided by intent?
>
summer, rain, snow, the tides: the list goes on. For many organisms,
the entire process of development, growth, and reproduction is
accomplished without intent (think of bacteria, protists, plants and
fungi, and many animals). Mutations in the course of cell
duplication are a known phenomenon that occurs without intent.
>
> > > is a goal directed decision. Do you wish to dispute this fact about
> > > language itself.
>
> > No, this is a fact about how words are used in English. English
> > speakers cause words to have their meanings by convention rather than
> > by obedience to divine law; if some subcommunity of English speakers
> > decides to give a new meaning to a word, it acquires, at least within
> > that subcommunity
>
> Exactly and this subcommunity are the materialist overlords who
> believe that matter created language and that
> their thoughts are just illusions created by bouncing atoms and thus
> they can make "selection" mean whatever they want to make it mean
> depending on how the atoms are bouncing in their heads.
>
"selection" can acquire new meanings than to suppose that words like
"battery" or "charge" can acquire new meanings.
>
> > differential reproductive success, whether due to anyone's goals or
> > intentions or not, since the late 19th century.
>
> A goal directed decision has got nothing to do with reproduction,
> achievements and being non-similar. Because that is what "selection"
> means - a decision, choice and preference. And you can't by your
> authority change the meaning and the intent we have had from Adam till
> 1859 with whatever word was used to communicate the intent of
> making a decision. And the result of this language confusion over the
> word "selection" is responsible for Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot who
> all were atheists and attributed it to Darwin and this non-existent
> term NS. Atheists have killed more people in numbers alone than any
> previous religious war including our friends from the "religion of
> piece"
>
could it have a meaning going back to Adam? You don't even have an
argument here; you have a string of arbitrary assertions made without
regard for whether they are even superficially consistent with one
another.
>
> > to me a rather small price to pay for a theory that explains so many
> > features of biology.
>
> What exactly does it explain? How does it explain the interdependence
> relationship between the control algorithms of a human and it's nerve
> signals and contracting muscles. Where is your theory that explains
> the feed forward control loop in the human body. Where did Darwin
> predict that such a control loop would be found?
>
to why gene imprinting is found in mammals. It does not, of itself,
explain every phenomenon in biology.
>
> > Frequently, nothing whatsoever. "Selection" does not automatically
> > imply "goal-directed choice."
>
> Yes,it does - that is what it means and you can't redefine God's
> language for HIm.
>
for all time, the meaning of the word "selection." Please note that
if you post, e.g. John 1:1 or some verse with similar metaphors, I
will insist that you explain why God felt it necessary to fix, for all
time, the meaning of "selection" but not the meaning of, e.g. "leech"
or "deer."
>
> > that this is not so; given the number and prominence of the scientists
> > who use "selection" in the way
>
> They use selection but what is their intent with it?
>
under consideration.
>
>
> The meaning of a word can change but not the original intent. And the
> original intent with "Selection" was a goal directed decision. And
> since materialists tell us there are no "goals" in nature then they
> can't use the word "selection". Materialists have no theory - there is
> no theory of evolution so instead they have made the word "selection"
> undefined.
>
Tiny Bulcher
> In article <5ofdoiF...@mid.individual.net>,
> John McKendry <jlas...@comcast.dot.net> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, 26 Oct 2007 21:02:48 +0100, Tiny Bulcher wrote:
>>
>>>>
>>>> Do please explain this. If the meaning of a word changes, how can
>>>> the 'original intent' remain the same? Please illustrate this
>>>> using a concrete example. Here's a few for you to consider:
>>>>
>>>> Old English Modern English
>>>>
>>>> wyf 'woman' wife
>>>> kniht 'child' knight
>>>> laec 'barber/surgeon' leech
>>>
>>> creature, and only by metaphorical extension a surgeon (a usage
>>> that has not yet quite died out).
>>
>> Curiously, just yesterday I was lamenting that I have never
>> managed to acquire Bosworth & Toller's Anglo_Saxon Dictionary
>> and I have to make do with J.R. Clark Hall's Concise Anglo-Saxon
>> Dictionary. A quick google, though, reveals that Bosworth &
>> Toller is now online, thanks to the Germanic Lexicon Project,
>> at
>> http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/texts/oe_bosworthtoller_about.html .
>> You want pages 606 and 607.
>>
>> laec doesn't seem to be the right form (B&T says 'laec' only
>> occurs once, and with doubtful meaning); laece seems to be
>> right. B&T give 'doctor, physician' as the first meaning,
>> with a great many citations, and 'species of worm' as a
>> distant second, with only a comparative handful of cites.
>
> Yes, laece is correct -- a typo on my part.
>
> AFAIK, the metaphorical extension went the other direction, with the
> meaning of doctor coming first.
Hmmm. So, on that hypothesis, the name for the animal might originally
have been something like 'laeceorm', i.e., a worm used by leeches
(doctors). One way to find out would be to look for cognates in related
langauages, and see whether they mean worm or doctor (of course if they
all turn out to mean both, we are no further forward). Also, regarding
the cites given in B&T, consider that people speak of doctors far more
often than they speak of leeches.
backspace
> > Which depends on entirely on your intent: What are these processes not
> > guided by intent?
> >
> They are myriad: water freezing in the winter, or evaporating in the
> summer, rain, snow, the tides: the list goes on. For many organisms,
> the entire process of development, growth, and reproduction is
> accomplished without intent (think of bacteria, protists, plants and
> fungi, and many animals). Mutations in the course of cell
> duplication are a known phenomenon that occurs without intent.
Steven what you are basically saying is that it is impossible to make
language undefined. Let me try and put it to
you this way: How could we then make the word "selection" deliberately
become undefined? Because you seem to be saying that this is not a
possibility.
You have also not stated your religious beliefs to me:
1) Do you believe matter created itself and thus language.
2) Do you believe language created matter.
There are only two options, do you know of any others?
backspace
> On Oct 25, 10:44 pm, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > dispute. Do bird have "preferences"?
> > What is your intent with preference. If birds hunted black moths it
> > would also be a pattern, there was no choices made or decisions. And I
> > have addressed your question in my reply to Steven.You think the
> > traditional moth story is brilliant because no matter what happens
> > either the white moths get eaten or the black moths - would be NS. But
> > this makes NS unfalsifiable because theories that explain everything
> > explain nothing their control of the facts is an illusion.
>
> The goal, however, of scientific theories is to explain everything
> observed.
Appealing to abstract authority: Theories have no goals only free
agents do and only you can define for me what is "scientific". What is
a scientific theory, please define it for me and tell who says so. Who
is this individual that has established what is a scientific theory -
because it isn't defined, yet everybody refers to it as some sort of
rhetorical way. What for example is "science"? And specifically who
says so, people say things or more specific individuals.
backspace
Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
> Ye, chaos!
Do you believe matter created language or did language create matter?
Your religious beliefs influences everything you say or more
specifically your refusal to spell out that you actually believe
matter created language. Taken to its full logical conclusion nothing
you say can therefore be believed since it is purely matter in motion.
If the atoms moved a little bit differently you will become a YEC.
What for example does the concept of the "Truth" even matter to you.
You are an atheist because the atoms are bouncing to left in your
head. I am YEC because the atoms are bouncing to the right in my head.
Since we will both die and cease to exist - what will the "truth"
about this thread even matter at that point in time. Why are you so
worked up about what I believe? What does anything in the end wether
the truth or not really matter. I am YEC - so what? What difference
will it make since it all just an illusion.
If language is subject unto matter then all attempts at utilizing
logic are undercut.
br.he...@planet.nl
> >> lawn and goes ballistic he is also getting naturaled.
> "Natural" has only a meaning as conveyed by the speaker as he
> communicates his intent. "Natural" as a word on its own means nothing
> without intent. "Natural Selection" as a term is a semantic
> impossibility on linguistic grounds alone.
Let's continue this discussion on the North Pole, shall we.
(Since natural selection is a mere matter of semantics, you're fitness
will not be at stake, so don't bother to wear an extra coat.)
Kent Paul Dolan
> Do you believe matter created language or
> did language create matter?
Those are questions that could only be entertained
by a fool, one attempting to change the subject to
some topic other than the questions raised in the
prior posting.
It is therefore no surprise at all to notice that
it is you who is asking them.
xanthian.
Jim Willemin
news:1193477715.8...@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com:
how old are you really? 15? 18? The lack of reflection in your posts
suggests a mid-to-late adolescent writer. Are you in the top quartile
of your high school class? Top 10%? No college yet? Your dismally
sophomoric twaddle above indicates you are reasonably smart but
incredibly unsophisitcated intellectually, and almost entirely ignorant
of the natural world. This ignorance in turn suggests a sheltered if
not isolated upbringing with strict curbs on curiosity. Amusing.
Woland
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
> > Ye, chaos!
>
> Do you believe matter created language or did language create matter?
> Your religious beliefs influences everything you say or more
> specifically your refusal to spell out that you actually believe
> matter created language.
Wrong. YOUR religious beliefs color everything you say, hear and
believe. That is simply not the case with normal people. We normal
people don't think about religion when we are talking or thinking
about someting like NS (or Fred if you prefer). These things are
simply observations that do not require us to think about our
metaphysical beliefs. Stop telling people what they believe.
J.J. O'Shea
(in article <1193249946....@i13g2000prf.googlegroups.com>):
> On Oct 24, 11:06 am, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> The Peppered moth story: http://www.icr.organd Wells misses the
>> point. Even if the moths were staged and the research a fraud - it
>> doesn't matter. The confusion is one of semantics and intent,
>> specifically the difference between the words "detection, pattern" and
>> "selection,design".
>
> I suspect you to be a pony, due to your restriction to one trick.
>
Equine, yes. However, I suspect that he's an example of Equus asinus, not of
any variety of Equus caballus, no matter how small.
--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.
Ken Shackleton
3) Matter condensed from the energy of the Big Bang.
Greg Guarino
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Steven J. wrote:
>> > Which depends on entirely on your intent: What are these processes not
>> > guided by intent?
>> >
>> They are myriad: water freezing in the winter, or evaporating in the
>> summer, rain, snow, the tides: the list goes on. For many organisms,
>> the entire process of development, growth, and reproduction is
>> accomplished without intent (think of bacteria, protists, plants and
>> fungi, and many animals). Mutations in the course of cell
>> duplication are a known phenomenon that occurs without intent.
>
>Steven what you are basically saying is that it is impossible to make
>language undefined.
He doesn't seem to have mentioned language at all.
>Let me try and put it to
>you this way: How could we then make the word "selection" deliberately
>become undefined? Because you seem to be saying that this is not a
>possibility.
Words mean what people agree they mean. Some of us, myself included,
bristle at certain constructions; "I could care less" comes to mind.
Nonetheless, disinterest exists, even if I don't approve of the words
people use to express it.
The idea that God gave us the word selection, its meaning never to be
altered, is stupid. But even if God did create the world, and gave us
your immutable words, then the most that means is that He might be
ticked off at the word Darwin chose for one of his most elegant and
powerful ideas.
>You have also not stated your religious beliefs to me:
>1) Do you believe matter created itself and thus language.
>2) Do you believe language created matter.
>
>There are only two options, do you know of any others?
I suspect that the ultimate nature of the universe is beyond human
imagination. That said, yours seems awfully limited.
Greg Guarino
Steven J.
> Steven J. wrote:
> > > Which depends on entirely on your intent: What are these processes not
> > > guided by intent?
>
> > They are myriad: water freezing in the winter, or evaporating in the
> > summer, rain, snow, the tides: the list goes on. For many organisms,
> > the entire process of development, growth, and reproduction is
> > accomplished without intent (think of bacteria, protists, plants and
> > fungi, and many animals). Mutations in the course of cell
> > duplication are a known phenomenon that occurs without intent.
>
> Steven what you are basically saying is that it is impossible to make
> language undefined. Let me try and put it to
> you this way: How could we then make the word "selection" deliberately
> become undefined? Because you seem to be saying that this is not a
> possibility.
>
obvious way, directed by will, purpose, or intent, and that we can
create or adapt words to describe these processes. If we discover
some process or phenomenon (whether teleological or not) that was
previously unknown, we can either create new meanings for old words to
describe it, or coin a new term (often based on old terms). Think of,
e.g. how Isaac Newton altered the meaning of the word "gravity" to
mean something related to, but quite distinct from, "heaviness."
Darwin needed a word for "nonrandom differential survival and
reproductive success of variant individuals in a population," because
phrases like that take just too much space, so he hit on "natural
selection." I find this no odder or more perverse than using
"gravity" to mean "the force that makes massive things heavy" rather
than "heaviness;" you, for some odd reason, seem to feel differently.
I have pointed out that the same word can have different meanings
depending on context. One can see this in words as simple and common
as, e.g. "nut:" depending on whether I'm talking about making fudge
with nuts in it, or finding a nut to hold a bolt, or calling you a nut
for saying that "God is language," you know which of the several
meanings I have in mind; they coexist comfortably and cause little
confusion. By the same token, the local store can talk about its wide
selection of produce, or political commentators can discuss the
President's selections of federal judges, or a biologist can talk
about the relative importance of selection and drift in evolution, and
no one except you seems confused by the shifting meaning of
"selection," or the need to check the context to see whether this use
of "selection" implies any choice or will.
It seems to me that you have done better than I could hope to at
making words meaningless or undefined: you keep saying "God is
language," although presumably there are not thousands of gods in the
world (although there are thousands of languages), nor, I would
presume, do you hold that God gives rise to new gods (as Latin gave
rise to French, Spanish, Italian, and other tongues), nor, I suspect,
do you see God as changing over time until you could hardly recognize
Him as the same God He was before, although this has happened to
English and many other languages over time. So when you say "God is
language," it is almost impossible to figure out what on Earth you
mean by "God" and "language."
If, however, you wish further guidance in obfuscation and in draining
words of intelligible meaning, seek out Ray Martinez,. who recently
has demonstrated that when he uses the word "racist" he means ...
well, actually, no one, Ray himself included, seems quite clear on
what, if anything, he means. Ray could give you valuable advice on
how to use words without the danger of having them convey actual
meaning.
>
> You have also not stated your religious beliefs to me:
>
That is true; I have not. I subscribe to this pesky, old-fashioned
idea that science does not depend on authority or dogma, and that
evidence can be evaluated without reference to religious
precommitments.
>
> 1) Do you believe matter created itself and thus language.
> 2) Do you believe language created matter.
>
> There are only two options, do you know of any others?
>
Since I have no idea what you mean by "created itself," or "language,"
I cannot tell whether what seem to me like additional possibilities
are actually different from either of these suggestions of yours.
-- Steven J.
backspace
> President's selections of federal judges, or a biologist can talk
> about the relative importance of selection and drift in evolution, and
> no one except you seems confused by the shifting meaning of
> "selection," or the need to check the context to see whether this use
> of "selection" implies any choice or will.
And until you define for me "evolution" you are not even wrong.
Seriously you need to define for me evolution. Even the opening
sentence on Wikipedia Evolution page is under dispute
by evolutionists themselves.
> That is true; I have not. I subscribe to this pesky, old-fashioned
> idea that science does not depend on authority or dogma, and that
> evidence can be evaluated without reference to religious
> precommitments.
Fallacy of Appeal to Abstract Authority: There is no person with the
name of "Science" and hence he can't "depend" on anything. Why do
materialists persist in this fallacy no matte how
many times it is pointed out to them?
You have also not answered my core observation to you on NS as cause /
effect. First you told us NS is an effect and then you posted that it
is a cause. How can something be both a cause and an effect?
[Hint: It is actually a meaningless question just as meaningless as
asking wether triangular circles is a cause or an effect].
backspace
> Wrong. YOUR religious beliefs color everything you say, hear and
> believe. That is simply not the case with normal people. We normal
> people don't think about religion when we are talking or thinking
> about someting like NS (or Fred if you prefer). These things are
> simply observations that do not require us to think about our
> metaphysical beliefs. Stop telling people what they believe.
White moths being eaten is the observation - this is what you observe.
You are giving it a label NS.
Rocks falling to the ground is what we observe - we label this
gravity. You can't observe the "label" gravity or NS, only the
phenomena. I am disputing the label NS that you are giving to the
"pattern" of white moths being eaten. Your label, NS of the the
observation implies that there is a "design". You are confusing a
pattern with a design.
Ymir
"Tiny Bulcher" <alyc...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> þus cwæð Ymir :
> > In article <5ofdoiF...@mid.individual.net>,
> > John McKendry <jlas...@comcast.dot.net> wrote:
> >
> >> On Fri, 26 Oct 2007 21:02:48 +0100, Tiny Bulcher wrote:
> >>
> >>> þus cwæð Ymir :
> >>>>
> >>>> Do please explain this. If the meaning of a word changes, how can
> >>>> the 'original intent' remain the same? Please illustrate this
> >>>> using a concrete example. Here's a few for you to consider:
> >>>>
> >>>> Old English Modern English
> >>>>
> >>>> wyf 'woman' wife
> >>>> kniht 'child' knight
> >>>> laec 'barber/surgeon' leech
> >>>
> >>> I think you're wrong about this one ... surely læc meant leech, the
> >>> creature, and only by metaphorical extension a surgeon (a usage
> >>> that has not yet quite died out).
> >>
> >> Curiously, just yesterday I was lamenting that I have never
> >> managed to acquire Bosworth & Toller's Anglo_Saxon Dictionary
> >> and I have to make do with J.R. Clark Hall's Concise Anglo-Saxon
> >> Dictionary. A quick google, though, reveals that Bosworth &
> >> Toller is now online, thanks to the Germanic Lexicon Project,
> >> at
> >> http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/texts/oe_bosworthtoller_about.html .
> >> You want pages 606 and 607.
> >>
> >> laec doesn't seem to be the right form (B&T says 'laec' only
> >> occurs once, and with doubtful meaning); laece seems to be
> >> right. B&T give 'doctor, physician' as the first meaning,
> >> with a great many citations, and 'species of worm' as a
> >> distant second, with only a comparative handful of cites.
> >
> > Yes, laece is correct -- a typo on my part.
> >
> > AFAIK, the metaphorical extension went the other direction, with the
> > meaning of doctor coming first.
>
> Hmmm. So, on that hypothesis, the name for the animal might originally
> have been something like 'laeceorm', i.e., a worm used by leeches
> (doctors).
That, or it might have simply been a metonymous development ('ah, you're
ill, I'll call for the doctors' --> 'I'll call for the leeches').
My knowledge of annelids is about the same as it used to be (i.e. nil),
but according to Wikipedia, medicinal leeches are native to Europe. From
that statement, I cannot infer whether they are also native to England,
or whether they were imported from the mainland. If the latter, then it
is possible that no native expression for 'leech' was retained in
English once it had become established as separate from its continental
cousins.
> One way to find out would be to look for cognates in related
> langauages, and see whether they mean worm or doctor (of course if they
> all turn out to mean both, we are no further forward). Also, regarding
> the cites given in B&T, consider that people speak of doctors far more
> often than they speak of leeches.
According to Watkins, it traces back to the PIE root _leg-_ 'to speak'
(as well as 'to collect') which survived phonologically unchanged into
Latin as _leg-_ 'law' whence English forms in leg- or lect- (legal,
lecture, dialect, etc.). The earliest germanic form he gives is the
putative *leekjaz 'enchanter'. Other cognates in English would include
derivatives of Greek _logos_ 'word' (e.g. words in -ology).
It's fairly easy to see how one could get from this to the meaning
'doctor'; less easy to see how one could get to 'leech'.
Fortunately, backspace will undoubtably be able to clear this up for us
and explain the original intent of the word.
André
Ymir
backspace <sawirel...@yahoo.com> wrote:
This fallacy is what is commonly referred to as the 'argumentum de
gibberatio profundus' (also known as the 'argumentum de rrida') -- i.e.
an argument based on the assumption that something sufficiently
nonsensical might come across as being profound.
Andre
Steven J.
> On Oct 28, 7:08 am, "Steven J." <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>
> > President's selections of federal judges, or a biologist can talk
> > about the relative importance of selection and drift in evolution, and
> > no one except you seems confused by the shifting meaning of
> > "selection," or the need to check the context to see whether this use
> > of "selection" implies any choice or will.
>
> And until you define for me "evolution" you are not even wrong.
> Seriously you need to define for me evolution. Even the opening
> sentence on Wikipedia Evolution page is under dispute
> by evolutionists themselves.
>
need. It is as though someone told me I "needed" to cast pearls
before mangy, rabid, brain-damaged swine; the value such an activity
would have for me, the swine, or pearl divers is not at all clear.
You have, after all, been told many times and have learned nothing
from the experience.
Nonetheless: evolution, in this context, is a change in the frequency
of inheritable characteristics in populations over time. Please note,
for purposes of this definition, that "zero" and "100%" are
frequencies. Wikipedia is not a peer-reviewed scientific journal, or
a standard science text, or even a popularization by a recognized
scientist, so I'm not sure why you regard it as the be-all and end-all
of scientific sources, but the only problem I see with the opening
sentence of the article on "evolution" is that it doesn't mention
"frequency" of traits, speaking only of traits themselves changing.
Do you have other criticisms from other supporters of mainstream
science?
More broadly, since different populations in the same species may
experience different sorts of change in the frequency of various
inherited traits (a trait that becomes less common in one population
may become commoner in another), and since there is hard-and-fast
limit on how much a population can change from its ancestral state,
"evolution" means branching descent with modification, so that one
species can give rise to several different species, and, over enough
time, to different genera, families, orders, classes, or kingdoms.
>
> > That is true; I have not. I subscribe to this pesky, old-fashioned
> > idea that science does not depend on authority or dogma, and that
> > evidence can be evaluated without reference to religious
> > precommitments.
>
> Fallacy of Appeal to Abstract Authority: There is no person with the
> name of "Science" and hence he can't "depend" on anything. Why do
> materialists persist in this fallacy no matte how
> many times it is pointed out to them?
>
There is no such person as "basketball," either; am I therefore
appealing to "abstract authority" when I note that basketball does not
require helmets or hockey sticks? The reason people don't listen when
you point out their supposed fallacies is that you are merely showing
off fallacies of your own -- some of them, admittedly, bizarre and
unique.
>
> You have also not answered my core observation to you on NS as cause /
> effect. First you told us NS is an effect and then you posted that it
> is a cause. How can something be both a cause and an effect?
> [Hint: It is actually a meaningless question just as meaningless as
> asking wether triangular circles is a cause or an effect].
>
All sorts of things can be both causes and effects. Have you never
heard the phrase "causal chain" (not that one needs to have heard the
phrase to grasp the concept -- A causes B, and B causes C, and so on
until you get to Z)? Competition (not all of it deliberate or even
vaguely conscious) for resources by individuals with varying traits
and abilities gives rise to differential survival of the variant
individuals, which causes the mix of traits in the population to
change.
-- Steven J.
Cheezits
[about backspace]
> This just doesn't look like any identifiable kind of
> *human* behavior.
No kidding. It's clearly a bot.
Sue
--
"It's not smart or correct, but it's one of the things that
make us what we are." - Red Green
josephus
> On Oct 28, 7:08 am, "Steven J." <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>
>>President's selections of federal judges, or a biologist can talk
>>about the relative importance of selection and drift in evolution, and
>>no one except you seems confused by the shifting meaning of
>>"selection," or the need to check the context to see whether this use
>>of "selection" implies any choice or will.
>
>
> And until you define for me "evolution" you are not even wrong.
> Seriously you need to define for me evolution. Even the opening
> sentence on Wikipedia Evolution page is under dispute
> by evolutionists themselves.
>
evidently you cant read
a defintion of evolution is the first paragraph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution
>
>>That is true; I have not. I subscribe to this pesky, old-fashioned
>>idea that science does not depend on authority or dogma, and that
>>evidence can be evaluated without reference to religious
>>precommitments.
>
>
> Fallacy of Appeal to Abstract Authority: There is no person with the
> name of "Science" and hence he can't "depend" on anything. Why do
> materialists persist in this fallacy no matte how
> many times it is pointed out to them?
>
first of all you remember only fragments of what you have been told.
Science is a method that we ALL adhere to. science is a way of
collecting and undeerstanding the universe. the explanation of
evolution is just that. it is not a thing but a method. biology uses
the scientific method and juried papers to conform to the method.
there is tons of data, dna, fossiles, zoology and all the forms
studying those things all agree with evolution. infact the agreement
involves most physical sciences and many collecting sciences. Because
people must collect specimans to be evaluated. the BEST and Most
accurate method of explanation of specimen is evolusion.
> You have also not answered my core observation to you on NS as cause /
> effect. First you told us NS is an effect and then you posted that it
> is a cause. How can something be both a cause and an effect?
> [Hint: It is actually a meaningless question just as meaningless as
> asking wether triangular circles is a cause or an effect].
>
because it is a chain of events. it is both a cause and effect. you can
look back or forward to find it.
josephus
--
I go sailing in the Summer and
look at STARS in the Winter.
"Everybody is igernant, jist on differt subjects"
Will Rogers Jr.
"it aint what you know that gets you in trouble
it is what you know that aint so"
Josh Billings.
Ken Shackleton
>
> Fallacy of Appeal to Abstract Authority: There is no person with the
> name of "Science" and hence he can't "depend" on anything. Why do
> many times it is pointed out to them?
>
Fallacy of Appeal to Abstract Authority: There is no person with the
name of "God" and hence he can't "depend" on anything. Why do
religionists persist in this fallacy no matter how
Christopher Denney
> Christopher Denney wrote:
> > On Oct 25, 10:44 pm, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > dispute. Do bird have "preferences"?
> > > What is your intent with preference. If birds hunted black moths it
> > > would also be a pattern, there was no choices made or decisions. And I
> > > have addressed your question in my reply to Steven.You think the
> > > traditional moth story is brilliant because no matter what happens
> > > either the white moths get eaten or the black moths - would be NS. But
> > > this makes NS unfalsifiable because theories that explain everything
> > > explain nothing their control of the facts is an illusion.
>
> > The goal, however, of scientific theories is to explain everything
> > observed.
>
> Appealing to abstract authority: Theories have no goals only free
Look you really need to learn English if you are going to continue
to attempt to communicate in it. I am not an English teacher, it's not
my job to teach you all the reasons you are so very wrong every
time you post something here. But you are, you demonstrate a
profound lack of understanding of the basics that I learned
in grade school. Perhaps you were home schooled, or didn't have
the benefit of learning English from someone who actually knew it.
> agents do and only you can define for me what is "scientific". What is
> a scientific theory, please define it for me and tell who says so. Who
> is this individual that has established what is a scientific theory -
> because it isn't defined, yet everybody refers to it as some sort of
> rhetorical way. What for example is "science"? And specifically who
> says so, people say things or more specific individuals.
Wow really running in fear now, eh? Since everything you say is either
ignored as gibberish, or refuted, you have taken to continued
deliberate
ignorance and nitpicking. Look up the word quibble, in case you didn't
know the word for what you are doing.
Almost every thing you have said here has been said before, and
responded
to, when people call you on it you just go on to other threads and
ignore the
answers. Honestly, why should we bother responding to you at all,
except
to let the readers who can actually understand the words know what a
kook you are.
Christopher Denney
[snip]
> If language is subject unto matter then all attempts at utilizing
> logic are undercut.
Why would you think that?
In case you care, nothing you have brought up is in anyway new.
Many similar, if considerably more coherent, arguments have come
to us from thinkers of the past.
I expect you will spout gibberish and
question my usage of the words if and is, and what my intent was with
the word my.
But seriously, why would you think that language based on magic was
more reliable than language as it really developed.
Christopher Denney
> In article <1193477715.830858.163...@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com>,
>
>
>
> backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>
> > > Ye, chaos!
>
> > Do you believe matter created language or did language create matter?
> > Your religious beliefs influences everything you say or more
> > specifically your refusal to spell out that you actually believe
> > matter created language. Taken to its full logical conclusion nothing
> > you say can therefore be believed since it is purely matter in motion.
> > If the atoms moved a little bit differently you will become a YEC.
> > What for example does the concept of the "Truth" even matter to you.
> > You are an atheist because the atoms are bouncing to left in your
> > head. I am YEC because the atoms are bouncing to the right in my head.
> > Since we will both die and cease to exist - what will the "truth"
> > about this thread even matter at that point in time. Why are you so
> > worked up about what I believe? What does anything in the end wether
> > the truth or not really matter. I am YEC - so what? What difference
> > will it make since it all just an illusion.
>
> > If language is subject unto matter then all attempts at utilizing
> > logic are undercut.
>
> This fallacy is what is commonly referred to as the 'argumentum de
> gibberatio profundus' (also known as the 'argumentum de rrida') -- i.e.
Coffee --> Nose --> keyboard.
(almost, but not quite)
> an argument based on the assumption that something sufficiently
> nonsensical might come across as being profound.
>
> Andre
>
> --
> use rot thirteen to email
> ntvf...@tznvy.pbz
Christopher Denney
You know, you (well, other readers, at least) might benefit from
reading Kuhn's book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, I avoided reading it for a
long time because
"paradigm shift" was so thoroughly misused by the popular press (and
others) for so long.
But it has a lot of things to say on topics that you seem to utterly
fail to understand.
see also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm_shift
I like the duck/bunny particularly.
Woland
No, we changed its name to Fred, remember?
Tiny Bulcher
OK, that flies. (Or worms). I was clearly wrong to suggest leechworms
had a separate linguistic origin from leechdoctors. Interesting stuff,
thanks.
> It's fairly easy to see how one could get from this to the meaning
> 'doctor'; less easy to see how one could get to 'leech'.
Indeed.
> Fortunately, backspace will undoubtably be able to clear this up for
> us and explain the original intent of the word.
Maybe he could consult his local leekjaz on the point. With any luck
he'll get the bejeezus leeched out of him.
Woland
Which is why we qualify the word 'selection' with the other word
'natural.' This qualifier implies that it is an unconscious selection.
The words are more than the sum of their parts...
So you don't like the words we use to describe the observation. La-dee-
frickin-da. You don't have to use it, especially since you aren't even
in a scientific field(ooh! Look a metaphor!). It is a convenient way
for us to talk about it.
Some people actually do think its a design, like Ray Martinez for
example along with many other creationists like yourself. We could
even say metaphorically that nature has indeed designed this process.
I don't think that it would be a very useful metaphor but we could use
it.
Why do creationists have such language issues? Is it a by product of
their literal interpretation of religious texts or is their literal
interpretation a by-product of their language issues, namely the
inability to understand metaphor, even in common conversation? Could I
get a grant to study this? It would be great to put them in a giant
maze, not as part of the research mind you, just for kicks(not literal
kicks of course).
Ymir
Christopher Denney <christoph...@gmail.com> wrote:
You should try drinking beer instead.
Andre
--
use rot thirteen to email
ntv...@tznvy.pbz
John Wilkins
It is only de rrida if you say it in a French, or possibly German,
accent. Mayr, I think, called this "farts from the Rhine".
--
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
> On Oct 28, 10:11 am, backspace <sawireless2...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> > On Oct 27, 4:54 pm, Woland <jerryd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Wrong. YOUR religious beliefs color everything you say, hear and
> > > believe. That is simply not the case with normal people. We normal
> > > people don't think about religion when we are talking or thinking
> > > about someting like NS (or Fred if you prefer). These things are
> > > simply observations that do not require us to think about our
> > > metaphysical beliefs. Stop telling people what they believe.
>
> > White moths being eaten is the observation - this is what you observe.
> > You are giving it a label NS.
> > Rocks falling to the ground is what we observe - we label this
> > gravity. You can't observe the "label" gravity or NS, only the
> > phenomena. I am disputing the label NS that you are giving to the
> > "pattern" of white moths being eaten. Your label, NS of the the
> > observation implies that there is a "design". You are confusing a
> > pattern with a design.
>
> Which is why we qualify the word 'selection' with the other word
> 'natural.' This qualifier implies that it is an unconscious selection.
Says who?
Woland
>
> - Show quoted text -
Everyone. Except for you of course. All one needs is the context
surrounding the two words to know that 'natural' is being used to
qualify 'selection.'
See in this case 'natural' is an adjective. Another way of saying this
would be, "Selection that is Natural," or in other words, selection
free from human intervention.
Humans often take themselves out of the natural world as I'm sure
you've noticed, so we often draw a distinction between nature and the
things that we are directly involved with. Not just western society
either. The Yanamamo of Brazil have two categories for things, things
'of the village' and 'things of the forest.' A basic dichotomy between
themselves and the 'natural' world.
You can also think of it like this, "green couch." What kind of
couch? The couch that is green. 'Natural Selection.' What kind of
selection? The selection that is Natural. In this case 'green' is the
adjective. You can see by this example that nothing 'got greened,' or
'couched.' The couch is green in the same way that the selection is
natural.
So thats that.
J'ai classe de Francais, a tout a l'heure.
Ye Old One
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> enriched this group when s/he wrote:
>On Oct 28, 7:08 am, "Steven J." <steve...@altavista.com> wrote:
>> President's selections of federal judges, or a biologist can talk
>> about the relative importance of selection and drift in evolution, and
>> no one except you seems confused by the shifting meaning of
>> "selection," or the need to check the context to see whether this use
>> of "selection" implies any choice or will.
>
>And until you define for me "evolution" you are not even wrong.
Evolution is the gradual process that led, after 3.8 billion years, to
all the different life forms we see around us.
[snip]
--
Bob.
Ye Old One
<sawirel...@yahoo.com> enriched this group when s/he wrote:
Science.
--
Bob.
Woland
Before backspace starts talking about how there is no person named
'science therefore blah blah blah,' let me say a few things:
When we use words like 'science' as if it was a person saying things
we are using it as a kind of collective noun. Obviously there isn't
some guy in an office issuing statements whose name is science. What
we're saying is something like "all of our collected knowledge points
to such-and-such." It's linguistic short-hand. It's easier to
personify it than it is to write a few sentences, especially since
normal people seem to have no problem with this.
We also say things like, "The environment selects against such-and
such..." This simply means that we're lumping many many many factors
together like temperature, humidity, acidity, terrain, predation among
countless other things and labeling, "Environment."
Hope that helps clear some of backspace's confusion. Since he is a
Christian I can only assume in good faith that he is truly confused
about the language we use and how we use it and that he is not trying
to be deceptive.
Christopher Denney
> In article <1193595840.787688.320...@v23g2000prn.googlegroups.com>,
I usually wait on the beer till AFTER breakfast. :)
backspace
> Humans often take themselves out of the natural world as I'm sure
> you've noticed, so we often draw a distinction between nature and the
> things that we are directly involved with. Not just western society
> either. The Yanamamo of Brazil have two categories for things, things
> 'of the village' and 'things of the forest.' A basic dichotomy between
> themselves and the 'natural' world.
Googling for "Peppered moth" and "design" brings up this thread
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.origins/browse_frm/thread/bc2f37c94ca7a2eb/4295911477a2cb70#4295911477a2cb70
at number 1 out of 28500 pages. So it seams that everybody around here
is following what I have to say.
http://www.google.co.za/search?as_q=design&hl=en&num=100&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=peppered+moth&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&as_rights=&safe=images
Perhaps it is because I seem to be the only YEC who are taking a
completely different view on this whole issue from my fellow YEC Ken
Ham whom I consider as bordering on apostasy if not outright heresy
over this issue of NS. As I have stated God did not tell him to talk
about dead bones, but proclaim Christ as Language incarnate - and
nobody can redefine God's language.
Woland lets talk about dichotomy now that you bring it up,
specifically the difference between a cause and an effect. It is a
fundamental axiom that to have a well reasoned description or theory
one must not confuse the cause with the effect. Yet the confusion
amongst materialists concerning NS wether it is a cause or an effect
is so rampant that it represents a fissure in the structure of their
thought as wide as the Grand Canyon.
http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-18-t-000014.html
"...Yet, amazingly, he still believed the basic story of the shift in
coloration of the peppered moth as caused by bird predation and
natural selection..."
This author tells us NS is a cause, Colby that it is an effect, Steven
first that it is an effect then that it is a cause and then that it
can be both or something to that effect. What nobody is willing to
consider is that this confusion is the result of talking about
something which can't exist on linguistic grounds alone! That's it,
there is nothing further to discuss about "evolution" once you
understand this - the entire Darwinian paradigm collapses.
Woland
> On Oct 29, 3:14 pm, Woland <jerryd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Humans often take themselves out of the natural world as I'm sure
> > you've noticed, so we often draw a distinction between nature and the
> > things that we are directly involved with. Not just western society
> > either. The Yanamamo of Brazil have two categories for things, things
> > 'of the village' and 'things of the forest.' A basic dichotomy between
> > themselves and the 'natural' world.
>
> at number 1 out of 28500 pages. So it seams that everybody around here
>
> Perhaps it is because I seem to be the only YEC who are taking a
> completely different view on this whole issue from my fellow YEC Ken
> Ham whom I consider as bordering on apostasy if not outright heresy
> over this issue of NS. As I have stated God did not tell him to talk
> about dead bones, but proclaim Christ as Language incarnate - and
> nobody can redefine God's language.
>
> Woland lets talk about dichotomy now that you bring it up,
> specifically the difference between a cause and an effect. It is a
> fundamental axiom that to have a well reasoned description or theory
> one must not confuse the cause with the effect. Yet the confusion
> amongst materialists concerning NS wether it is a cause or an effect
> is so rampant that it represents a fissure in the structure of their
> thought as wide as the Grand Canyon.
>
> http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-18-t-000014.html
> "...Yet, amazingly, he still believed the basic story of the shift in
> coloration of the peppered moth as caused by bird predation and
> natural selection..."
>
> This author tells us NS is a cause, Colby that it is an effect, Steven
> first that it is an effect then that it is a cause and then that it
> can be both or something to that effect. What nobody is willing to
> consider is that this confusion is the result of talking about
> something which can't exist on linguistic grounds alone! That's it,
> there is nothing further to discuss about "evolution" once you
> understand this - the entire Darwinian paradigm collapses.
Differential reproductive success (I've gone through before and
explained each word to you and explained what they mean in context)
exists. Normally we just say, Natural Selection, it's just easier. It
is not a novel use of language, you have been shown countless examples
of metaphorical language and you even use it yourself, I think that
might be irony...
The only dichotomy existing in 'cause and effect' is one that we
humans have devised to separate events that occur in the world. NS
can in fact be both a cause and effect, it's not confusing at all, it
simply depends on ones perspective or point of view if you will. I
believe it was Stew who raised this before if you care to look back
through the posts.
It is difficult for us to consider that that it can't exist on
'linguistic grounds alone' mainly because it is an easily observed
phenomenon. Anyway, we changed it's name to "Fred." It's still a
description of what we see occurring in populations of organisms, it's
name is Fred though. I think it'll make it more personable, less
threatening...
Steven J.
> On Oct 29, 3:14 pm, Woland <jerryd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Humans often take themselves out of the natural world as I'm sure
> > you've noticed, so we often draw a distinction between nature and the
> > things that we are directly involved with. Not just western society
> > either. The Yanamamo of Brazil have two categories for things, things
> > 'of the village' and 'things of the forest.' A basic dichotomy between
> > themselves and the 'natural' world.
>
> at number 1 out of 28500 pages. So it seams that everybody around here
>
> Perhaps it is because I seem to be the only YEC who are taking a
> completely different view on this whole issue from my fellow YEC Ken
> Ham whom I consider as bordering on apostasy if not outright heresy
> over this issue of NS. As I have stated God did not tell him to talk
> about dead bones, but proclaim Christ as Language incarnate - and
> nobody can redefine God's language.
>
the same reason that people slow down to stare a car wrecks -- and
your arguments are the intellectual equivalent of a ten-car pileup.
Second, I'm pretty sure that, from a theological point of view,
apostasy (rejecting God and His revelation) is worse than heresy
(obstinately misinterpreting God's revelation). Third, Christ, in
traditional Christian theology, is the Incarnate Word (the message of
God, through which God creates and intervenes in His creation), not
"Incarnate Language." Your insistence on the message of creation
being "nobody can redefine God's language" is, itself, heresy. Now,
if heresy's your thing, of course, feel free to indulge your freedom
of religion, but be aware that you are inventing novel and
idiosyncratic interpretations of the Bible and Christian theology.
Fourth, yammering about the supposed unchangeable meanings God
imparted, at creation, to words that didn't even exist 500 years ago,
is, I suppose, a good way to avoid talking about dead bones and other
evidence. Fifth, natural selection exists, even if you don't like the
name. Give Ken Ham credit for acknowledging that much reality.
>
> Woland lets talk about dichotomy now that you bring it up,
> specifically the difference between a cause and an effect. It is a
> fundamental axiom that to have a well reasoned description or theory
> one must not confuse the cause with the effect. Yet the confusion
> amongst materialists concerning NS wether it is a cause or an effect
> is so rampant that it represents a fissure in the structure of their
> thought as wide as the Grand Canyon.
>
of other causes, and yet itself the cause of other effects? I aim a
rifle at a target, and pull the trigger: the resulting shot is the
effect of my trigger pull, and yet is the cause of the hole that
appears in the target. A person drinks too much, gets cirrhosis of
the liver, and dies young: the cirrhosis is both an effect and a
cause.
>
> http://www.iscid.org/boards/ubb-get_topic-f-18-t-000014.html
> "...Yet, amazingly, he still believed the basic story of the shift in
> coloration of the peppered moth as caused by bird predation and
> natural selection..."
>
> This author tells us NS is a cause, Colby that it is an effect, Steven
> first that it is an effect then that it is a cause and then that it
> can be both or something to that effect. What nobody is willing to
> consider is that this confusion is the result of talking about
> something which can't exist on linguistic grounds alone! That's it,
> there is nothing further to discuss about "evolution" once you
> understand this - the entire Darwinian paradigm collapses.
>
what ISCID propagandists proclaim. Second, when a single bird eats a
single grey moth off a soot-covered branch, that is not natural
selection, but when hundreds of birds eat thousands of grey moths,
leaving a much larger proportion of black moths behind to pass on
their genes, THAT is natural selection: an effect of the cause that,
under those circumstances, grey moths are easier to see and more
likely to be eaten. The resulting change in gene frequencies, in
future generations of the moth, is the effect of natural selection,
which is, in turn, the effect of differential success in surviving
avian depredation.
Thank you for your attention. I hope this helps.
-- Steven J.
Rusty Sites
> What nobody is willing to
> consider is that this confusion is the result of talking about
> something which can't exist on linguistic grounds alone!
Certainly no reasonable person would consider it. Do you think if one
does not have words to describe something, then it doesn't exist? Some
primitive languages only have words for numbers up to two or three.
Does that mean that for a person who only speaks this language 100 does
not exist? You are not getting anywhere with your argument because it
is obviously stupid if not insane.
That's it,
> there is nothing further to discuss about "evolution" once you
> understand this - the entire Darwinian paradigm collapses.
>
I agree that you have said all you have to say about evolution which is
nothing really at all. Isn't time for you to leave, then? If not, then
it's time for me to kill file you and cut down on the litter in my
version of this NG. I think the fact that you can type in and send
messages on a newsgroup is proof that you are not as stupid as you come
across and are, in fact, just a troll.
Ye Old One
John Harshman
A vain hope, but a nice job of explaining, if only he were interested in
explanations or capable of comprehending them.
Rusty Sites
That's not God's language. Watch out for lightning bolts.
backspace
> Differential reproductive success (I've gone through before and
> explained each word to you and explained what they mean in context)
> exists. Normally we just say, Natural Selection, it's just easier.
Darwin didn't say "reproductive success" we discussed the issue here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Reproductive_success. What I want to
know from you and Harshman is does the frog know it is an
achievement?
Al
wrote:
> I usually wait on the beer till AFTER breakfast. :)
But... but... Whatever happened to beer on corn-flakes?
Al
> On Oct 29, 11:01 pm, Woland <jerryd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Differential reproductive success (I've gone through before and
> > explained each word to you and explained what they mean in context)
> > exists. Normally we just say, Natural Selection, it's just easier.
>
> know from you and Harshman is does the frog know it is an
> achievement?
But Darwin clearly had the same idea, and just didn't use those
words. Why are you so hung up on;
What one person has said about the topic?
and which words people use?
Hell, Darwin spelt a lot of words with Xs in them that wouldn't be
spelt that way now. It doesn't mean we have to throw out the core of
his theory because his language is slightly archaic. By that way of
thinking, every religious text, with a few exceptions, are inherently
false because they were written in archaic languages.
Darwin clearly spotted that variations between individuals' success at
reproducing was what drove evolution. The fact that he didn't put
those two words together means jack sh1t.
And to answer your question: "The frog" doesn't know it's an
acheivement. Why should it think so? It may feel a sense of
acheivement when it (the frog) acheives some goal.
It's horribly wrong headed (and Lamarkian) to suggest that evolution
requires some sort of striving for greatness, or inherent increases in
complexity/fitnes/whatever.
Al
J.J. O'Shea
(in article <1193707806.4...@k35g2000prh.googlegroups.com>):
You're in Australia, where there is Real Beer(tm). There is only
sex-in-a-canoe beer in America, and putting that on corn flakes is a waste of
good corn flakes.
--
email to oshea dot j dot j at gmail dot com.
Greg G.
Corn flakes? The Breakfast of Champions is beer on Wheaties. Left over
beer from the night before works best. You don't want a head of foam
on cold cereal.
--
Greg G.
Scotty, beam down Yeoman Randall and a six pack.
.
SeppoP
That's *sooo* average family. My breakfast is beer on potato chips.
--
Seppo P.
What's wrong with Theocracy? (a Finnish Taliban, Oct 1, 2005)
John Wilkins
Good cornflakes. Good cornflakes. Sorry, those two words don't make
sense together.
Woland
> On Oct 29, 11:01 pm, Woland <jerryd...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Differential reproductive success (I've gone through before and
> > explained each word to you and explained what they mean in context)
> > exists. Normally we just say, Natural Selection, it's just easier.
>
> know from you and Harshman is does the frog know it is an
> achievement?
I would guess not. I have no idea how much frogs are aware of anything
compared to me and I have no idea how aware I am compared to any
hypothetical alien creature. I would guess though that frogs don't
keep track of how many kids they have compared to the rest of the
population. Neither do the majority of humans though. I've gathered
that you are in fact a robot so I understand your difficulty with
using abstract concepts.
It doesn't matter what Darwin said(I haven't read anything in depth
that he wrote since high school). We now have entirely independent
evidence from his original observations that support Fred and
evolution.
Walter Bushell
j.wil...@uq.edu.au (John Wilkins) wrote:
> J.J. O'Shea <try.n...@but.see.sig> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:46:10 -0400, Al wrote
> > (in article <1193707806.4...@k35g2000prh.googlegroups.com>):
> >
> > > On Oct 30, 6:03 am, Christopher Denney <christopher.den...@gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >> On Oct 28, 6:55 pm, Ymir <y...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> > >
> > >>>> Coffee --> Nose --> keyboard.
> > >>>> (almost, but not quite)
> > >>
> > >>> You should try drinking beer instead.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >> I usually wait on the beer till AFTER breakfast. :)
> > >
> > > But... but... Whatever happened to beer on corn-flakes?
> > >
> >
> > You're in Australia, where there is Real Beer(tm). There is only
> > sex-in-a-canoe beer in America, and putting that on corn flakes is a waste
> > of
> > good corn flakes.
>
> Good cornflakes. Good cornflakes. Sorry, those two words don't make
> sense together.
Ok, two this week. Oregon described as "California without the
craziness", and "good cornflakes".
Walter Bushell
"Greg G." <ggw...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Corn flakes? The Breakfast of Champions is beer on Wheaties. Left over
> beer from the night before works best. You don't want a head of foam
> on cold cereal.
Champaign on corn flakes. Actually it's more likely to be steak with the
champaign. Or just the champaign. Or anything hair of the dog.
LT
> The Peppered moth story: http://www.icr.organd Wells misses the
> point. Even if the moths were staged and the research a fraud - it
> doesn't matter. The confusion is one of semantics and intent,
> specifically the difference between the words "detection, pattern" and
> "selection,design".
>
*snip*
... and so, backspace's assault on the dead horse continues
unabated...
LT
Greg G.
> In article <1193745648.711942.270...@d55g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>,
But no champagne on Rice Krispies or you get "Snap, Crackle, Achoo!"
--
Greg G.
Does an eagle get a thrill when it sees a bald man?
.