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no1nose
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50 Posts |
 Posted - 06/16/2008 : 11:38:35 [Permalink]
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| logical answer to the questions posed when one looks at the data. |
Logical for his culture. People form other cultures and world views would have come up with something different. The Theory of Evolution is culture bound and not universal. You have to make judgements and say "we have the right way of looking at things" and then impose your views on other peoples. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 11:55:02 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by no1nose
People form other cultures and world views would have come up with something different. |
Where is there any evidence for this assertion of fact?| The Theory of Evolution is culture bound and not universal. |
The theory of evolution is science. Some cultures are not interested in science. Those that are, but still choose to elevate dogma and call it "science," like Stalinist Russia (they rejected Darwinian evolution, too, for political reasons), can't make their non-science work like science does (Russia faced crop shortages because of Lysenko's communist-approved ideas about biology). What is science is independent of culture, and cultural norms can't turn a non-science into a science by sheer force of will.| You have to make judgements and say "we have the right way of looking at things" and then impose your views on other peoples. |
Ah, the tired old "imposition of views" bit from ultra-conservatism. If you don't wish to be a part of a society that maintains that a good science education should be a priority for its citizens, then don't be. Quit pretending that it's the scientists who are the cause of the problem you face: the one of maintaining a scientific ignorance while living within a high-tech society. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
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Simon
SFN Regular
USA
1992 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 12:13:35 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by no1nose
| logical answer to the questions posed when one looks at the data. |
Logical for his culture. People form other cultures and world views would have come up with something different. The Theory of Evolution is culture bound and not universal. You have to make judgements and say "we have the right way of looking at things" and then impose your views on other peoples.
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Science is based on some very basic assumptions:
-Things have causes
-The same causes will produce the same consequences
-Causes occur before the consequences do
There might be more that I can't think of, but no many more.
These assumptions are pretty much universal; I can't think of anybody which would not accept them.
Indeed, they probably are hard-wired into our brains and animals do seem to make the same assumptions. A fish that received food when pushing a lever, will learn to push it and, visibly, expect it to produce the same results.
When you accept these assumptions, you should be able to repeat all the scientific experiences ever produced and reach the same conclusions.
That includes Darwin's work.
So, no, Science is not culture bound.
Refusal of Science might be, though. For example Biblical fundamentalists seem to refuse to finish the reasoning that would bring them to the same conclusions than the ToE.
But it is an example of (semi)willfull delusion and not a shortcoming of science itself. |
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996 |
| Edited by - Simon on 06/16/2008 12:15:22 |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 12:25:56 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by no1nose
| logical answer to the questions posed when one looks at the data. |
Logical for his culture. People form other cultures and world views would have come up with something different. |
Obviously. A fundamentalist Christian who was a biblical literalist would interpret all the evidence for evolution as being the work of the devil, just trying to deceive us. But that doesn't make their view correct.
| The Theory of Evolution is culture bound and not universal. You have to make judgements and say "we have the right way of looking at things" and then impose your views on other peoples. |
This is sheer rubbish. Indeed, think about what you're saying: if the ToE isn't "universal" does that mean that, say, stone-age tribes living in the Amazon somehow arrived on earth via some other way? That while I emerged via the billions-of-years-long process of evolution, some fundamentalist Christian can trace his ancestry to Noah? They all can't be right. |
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no1nose
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50 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 13:22:48 [Permalink]
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| This is sheer rubbish. Indeed, think about what you're saying: if the ToE isn't "universal" does that mean that, say, stone-age tribes living in the Amazon somehow arrived on earth via some other way? That while I emerged via the billions-of-years-long process of evolution, some fundamentalist Christian can trace his ancestry to Noah? They all can't be right. |
That is actually a point. When you ask these people how they "got here" they never say "we evolved". As the coffee cup "thought experiement" has shown the world inside our minds is not the actual world out there. It is like getting a statment from the bank that has no final balance and some entries missing. We have some information but will never really know everything. The closure principle means we fill in the gaps with our own cultural narrative.
The idea that we have "only way" to the truth is by the way another cultural impuse that came originally from Christianity. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 13:48:30 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by no1nose
| This is sheer rubbish. Indeed, think about what you're saying: if the ToE isn't "universal" does that mean that, say, stone-age tribes living in the Amazon somehow arrived on earth via some other way? That while I emerged via the billions-of-years-long process of evolution, some fundamentalist Christian can trace his ancestry to Noah? They all can't be right. |
That is actually a point. When you ask these people how they "got here" they never say "we evolved". As the coffee cup "thought experiement" has shown the world inside our minds is not the actual world out there. It is like getting a statment from the bank that has no final balance and some entries missing. We have some information but will never really know everything. The closure principle means we fill in the gaps with our own cultural narrative. |
No one says we know everything. And I'm not sure about this "closure principle" but it obviously doesn't apply here. In science, we fill in gaps when we have more data.
| The idea that we have "only way" to the truth is by the way another cultural impuse that came originally from Christianity. |
You're putting words in my mouth. I never said anything about having an "'only way' to the truth." The available data suggest a fairly clear path and mechanism about the evolution of life on earth. After decades of research, no one has come up with anything better.
And by the way, it's a rather poor rhetorical technique to characterize something that's non-Christian in a nevertheless decidedly Christian way and then marvel at how Christian it is. |
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no1nose
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50 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 15:32:22 [Permalink]
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| No one says we know everything. And I'm not sure about this "closure principle" but it obviously doesn't apply here. In science, we fill in gaps when we have more data. |
The problem with the Theory of Evolution is that the theory itself lacks a mathematical foundation. As such the Theory cannot be verified by empirical means. The empirical science that is often associated with evolution really exists independent of the Theory of Evolution and would be equally valid if the Theory of Evolution were to completely disappear. So like the coffee cup in one's mind that is as good as it gets for this theory. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 16:36:22 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by no1nose
| No one says we know everything. And I'm not sure about this "closure principle" but it obviously doesn't apply here. In science, we fill in gaps when we have more data. |
The problem with the Theory of Evolution is that the theory itself lacks a mathematical foundation. As such the Theory cannot be verified by empirical means. The empirical science that is often associated with evolution really exists independent of the Theory of Evolution and would be equally valid if the Theory of Evolution were to completely disappear. So like the coffee cup in one's mind that is as good as it gets for this theory. |
I'm not sure I follow. While it's true that there isn't some proof that demonstrates Evolution's 100% truth, the ToE can be falsified. After decades, no one has been able to offer evidence to do that.
Similarly, the ToE makes predictions. For instance, if humans and chimps share a common ancestor, we would expect there to be certain specific markers in our genomes to show this. Those markers exist. If they weren't there, the ToE would be horribly wrong. Moreover, it is difficult to explain such markers other than the ToE being correct.
There are a few older threads here that spell this out. I can dig them up for you if you like. It sounds like you may need a bit more exposure to properly understand the compelling evidence for the ToE. |
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no1nose
BANNED
50 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 16:56:17 [Permalink]
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| I'm not sure I follow. While it's true that there isn't some proof that demonstrates Evolution's 100% truth, the ToE can be falsified. After decades, no one has been able to offer evidence to do that. |
World views tend to have long life times - hundreds or throusands of years once established. The fact that the evolutionary secenario parallels so closily the Christian one casts doubt on the idea that mankind has actually found a way to describe the natural world objectively. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 17:13:28 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by no1nose
The problem with the Theory of Evolution is that the theory itself lacks a mathematical foundation. |
The problem is your ignorance of the modern theory, in which quite a lot of math gets done.| As such the Theory cannot be verified by empirical means. The empirical science that is often associated with evolution really exists independent of the Theory of Evolution and would be equally valid if the Theory of Evolution were to completely disappear. So like the coffee cup in one's mind that is as good as it gets for this theory. |
The exact same things could be said of any scientific theory. If we suddenly lost the equation which describes universal gravitation, gravity would still exist afterwards, things would continue to fall, and eventually another Newton would re-create the equation. If we all suddenly forgot the theories of optics, my glasses would continue to function to correct my vision. If electron theory were stricken from the textbooks, this computer would still work.
The empirical observations and other evidence which form the basis for all scientific theories exists independent of those theories, because the theories only explain and describe the observations and the relationships between the observations. Observations and evidence which existed long before any scientific theory was ever developed by anyone. So of course the fossil record and genetics and cladistics exist independently of the theory of evolution, just like stars exist independently of our solar models, and the planet Earth exists independently of geology, and human cultures exist independently of any theory of sociology.
Yet all these things - including evolutionary theory - can be empirically verified so long as a theory's predictions follow from its observations. This doesn't require math (which isn't a science, anyway), but it is easier when knowledge is highly quantifiable and conforms simply to our ability to express relationships as equations. But that doesn't mean we don't have any mathematical theories of evolution. To say such a thing is to simply (and insanely) deny the existence of population genetics (for example).
By the way, I'm interested in any cultural epistemology which is not science but which works as well as (or better than) science in describing the world around us. If you've got anything, that is, besides empty rhetoric. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 17:18:45 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by no1nose
The fact that the evolutionary secenario parallels so closily the Christian one... |
You keep saying that as if it'll magically come true, but your alleged parallels have all been refuted by demonstrable facts.| ...casts doubt on the idea that mankind has actually found a way to describe the natural world objectively. |
Ah, so you're just making a case for guilt by association. That's even more pathetic than the vocal YECs who claim (falsely) that they have valid evidence against the theory. |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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no1nose
BANNED
50 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 17:33:40 [Permalink]
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| The problem is your ignorance of the modern theory, in which quite a lot of math gets done. |
I would like to see an example of this |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 18:01:41 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by no1nose
| The problem is your ignorance of the modern theory, in which quite a lot of math gets done. |
I would like to see an example of this
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Okey dokey:
"Evolution fundamentally says that if if you have heritable variation and mutations and selection pressures on that variation then you will get evolution over generations. This is trivially observable fact. There is no genuine scientific dispute over biological evolution exacly because there is so much evidence that cross checks and cross validates across so many feilds, both current observations and study of prehistorical evidence left behind. Trying to even scratch the surface of this mountain of evidence in this post would be hopeless. If you are questioning the quantity and quality of the evidence, I suggest you either crack open a text book on the subject or at least browse the talkorigins website. It's all well documented if you actually question the issue. If you don't truely question the issue and you instead simply reject the entire subject on non-rational grounds, well obviously you're not going to be swayed by something silly like actual evidence and actual science.
Anyway, the real issue I wanted to address was this one: the sheer numeric CERTIANTY. There's powerful mathematics to evolution, powerful effects going on that you don't hear about in the common explanations of evolution. The common idea of evolution is as a sequence of individual beneficial mutations, like climbing a ladder. If that's how evolution actually worked then critics would be right, it would have been mathematically impossible for evolution to produce the incredible complexity we see today.
To show the true mathematical power of evolution I will first abandon that "ladder climbing" of beneficial mutaions. In fact lets assume that every single mutation that occurs is either neutral or harmful. I'll demonstrate that we still get the real and powerful mechanism of evolution, the math of evolution.
A good place to start is with the common complaint of creationists that mutation and evolution "cannot create information". Well in the initial mutation phase they are right. When a mutation occurs it introduces noise, it tends to degrade information. But look what happens the moment that mutation gets passed on to an offspring. That mutation is now no longer random noise, it now carries a small bit on information. It carries a little tag saying "this is a nonfatal mutation". The presence of this mutation in the offspring is new and created information, the discovery and living record of a new nonfatal mutation. Over time the population builds up a LIBRARY of nonfatal mutations. This library is a vast accumulation of new information."
Read on....
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Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
Posted - 06/16/2008 : 18:57:16 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by no1nose
| The problem is your ignorance of the modern theory, in which quite a lot of math gets done. |
I would like to see an example of this |
Aside from what filthy posted, as well as the already-mentioned population genetics, the famous "29+ Evidences for Macroevolution" offers things like this:...gradual evolution from common ancestors must conform to the mathematics of Markov processes and Markov chains. Using Markovian mathematics, it can be rigorously proven that branching Markovian replicating systems produce nested hierarchies (Givnish and Sytsma 1997; Harris 1989; Norris 1997). For these reasons, biologists routinely use branching Markov chains to effectively model evolutionary processes, including complex genetic processes, the temporal distributions of surnames in populations (Galton and Watson 1874), and the behavior of pathogens in epidemics.
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The degree to which a given phylogeny displays a unique, well-supported, objective nested hierarchy can be rigorously quantified. Several different statistical tests have been developed for determining whether a phylogeny has a subjective or objective nested hierarchy, or whether a given nested hierarchy could have been generated by a chance process instead of a genealogical process (Swofford 1996, p. 504). These tests measure the degree of "cladistic hierarchical structure" (also known as the "phylogenetic signal") in a phylogeny, and phylogenies based upon true genealogical processes give high values of hierarchical structure, whereas subjective phylogenies that have only apparent hierarchical structure (like a phylogeny of cars, for example) give low values (Archie 1989; Faith and Cranston 1991; Farris 1989; Felsenstein 1985; Hillis 1991; Hillis and Huelsenbeck 1992; Huelsenbeck et al. 2001; Klassen et al. 1991). Now, where is your evidence that had a different culture come up with evolution, it would be markedly different? |
- Dave W. (Private Msg, EMail)
Evidently, I rock!
Why not question something for a change?
Visit Dave's Psoriasis Info, too. |
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Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist
USA
4955 Posts |
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Darwin’s debt to Christianity
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