I'll try to keep things on the topic of the original post. I don't see how it is possible for a student of biology to succeed while rejecting evolution. Modern biology is primarily based on 2 concepts: Cell Theory and Evolution by Natural Selection. To deny evolution as a biology student is tantamount to a engineering denying math or an English student denying grammar. It is an absolute essential to the field of biology and anyone who would openly deny the FACT of evolution will find themselves unable to succeed in biology.


Now for the less on-topic points: Let's begin by clarifying terminology, a theory in science does not mean the same thing as a theory in everyday usage. A theory is not a hunch, a theory is a well-accepted and well-tested set of hypotheses that explain a natural occurrence. The natural occurrence is an observable event and as such, is non-disputable. To sum this up, you CANNOT argue against evolution, just as you would find it impossible to argue against the existence of light or gravity. You CAN however, argue against the mechanism by which it occurs, which is proposed to be the theory of natural selection.

Also, before it comes up, there is NO debate among the scientific community about evolution. If you believe there is you have been feed misrepresented data. While only ~75% of all scientists accept evolution, the people who deny evolution in this statistic have no qualifications to comment (earth sciences, sociology, physicists, and all the other non-biological sciences). If you narrow this statistic down to people who actually are qualified to make assertations on evolution, you will find that 99.996% of all biologists accept the theory of evolution by natural selection, and of the 0.004% who don't, most find a problem with the theory, rather than the actual phenomenon of evolution. (mind you, these statistics are from the USA, which is very religious)

Here's a fun link for people, it will take you to examples of naturally occurring speciation events that we have observed, or in other words, more reasons why you can't call evolution a lie. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categor...ation_e vents

Originally Posted by Rudiger

So I think it's completely wrong to say "I have no other theories, but there's missing data so you're all probably wrong about evolution." It's not skepticism to me, it's just bad reasoning.

Is exactly what I was looking for originally. I wanted to see exactly how people cannnot accept evolution based on their scientific field of study. This thread has given me a couple examples of "wonky" reasoning.

[quote=marcie;235110]I have a friend who doesn't "believe" in evolution... we had a deep conversation about it and I was all "wtf what about the fossils!" and she was all "the idea of God creating a special world for Adam and Eve is just so much more beautiful..." Eh, I guess people can believe whatever nonsense they want as long as I don't have to hear about it.

I agree, people shouldn't impose their religion on others just as you should not impose atheism. Live and let live.

Ever heard of Project Steve?



[email protected] the dude who came into bio class to tell us that "Science actually disproves Darwin's theory!" Kajiura was standing behind him at the podium and just kind of did a slow, sad headshake.

Kinda off topic but has anyone ever heard of Ray Comfort? He's this guy who uses illogical reasoning for supporting creationism, but he obviously does not have a biological background.




Note: exactly one third of the people who rated this video "liked" it.

I need we all need to note that while beliefs can influence action, they do not decide it. Take the bio student, they can have doubts or be unsure about natural selection, etc, but it doesnt mean they wont cite the theory in a lab report, for example, or propose it as a possible mechanism for some data they collected. They'll certain be able to describe it on a test.

After all, ideally, science and belief system are separate and ideally one should have no bearing on the other.

Just because someone thinks a particular theory is bs doesn't mean they wont cite it as a possible explanation. In fact, the best scientists that will do this, cite theories they doubt, given the data fits, being impartial.

So it is totally possible to not believe things, but still understand and cite a theory or other idea, and hence still be a decent scientist.

Now, not understanding (vs accepting/believing/etc the basics of natural selection (or cell theory, that's another good example) and being a biologist, that's a stretch.

Originally Posted by ms92

Kinda off topic but has anyone ever heard of Ray Comfort? He's this guy who uses illogical reasoning for supporting creationism, but he obviously does not have a biological background.




Note: exactly one third of the people who rated this video "liked" it.

/waits for counter Pluto-killing man meme

Quick Question:
Does anybody know any shortcomings of the theory of natural selection (I'm almost certain I've heard there are holes but I can't think of any)?

Originally Posted by Tailsnake

Quick Question:
Does anybody know any shortcomings of the theory of natural selection (I'm almost certain I've heard there are holes but I can't think of any)?

http://www.rae.org/natsel.html

This guy says "over design," the existence of complex mech that do not affect survival. I guess the reasoning is if everything was perfectly governed by natural selection, they wouldn't exist. There's probably more but its tl;dr for me

*Jerry Bergman teaches biology, chemistry, and physics at Northwest State College in Archbold, Ohio. He has over 400 publications in scholarly and popular science journals and has written 20 books and monographs. His work has been translated into eight languages. To discuss his research, Bergman has been a featured speaker on many college campuses throughout the United States and Europe, and a frequent guest on radio and television programs. Dr. Bergman has earned six college degrees, including two masters degrees and two doctorates. His last Ph.D. is in biology, and most of his course work is in the sciences. A resident of Montpelier, Ohio since 1986, he and his wife, Dianne, have two children, Aeron and Mishalea; two Stepchildren, Christine and Scott; and two granddaughters, Kearstin and Bryn.

Well, there you go. A successful biologist with issues with natural selection.

Originally Posted by Rudiger

The 'science' used by anti-evolutionists is awful. Your analogy with mathematicians sounds nice, but there really aren't any competent biologists that argue against evolution, just quacks.

Your post is a good example of my point - evolution is a 'popular' scientific (I think this idea holds beyond just the particular conditions associated with scientific practice, but let's not go into that) topic, and so most of us take a position on the issue, and so feel strongly towards the opposing camp - especially in this case, where we've almost got the opposing camp in a 'social checkmate'. If you ask many philosophical (and mathematical) logicians about their views on adherents of, say, Intuitionistic logic, you may well find that they feel just as strongly as you on the topic as do about anti-evolutionists.

Of course, this isn't restricted to logic, by any means. It seems that this sort of debate happens all around academia - of course, on evolution, the body of biological scientists is pretty much at a consensus. However, if you look back 40-odd years, you'll find that the biological community had to decide on the acceptability of group selection, a topic students are 'indoctrinated' against these days. 'Popular' technical topics tend to expose the machinery of the discipline's method to the public and give us public divisions like the one on evolution, but I'd argue that from a general perspective, there's nothing more irrational about anti-evolutionism than there was about group selectionism, or than there is about intuitionistic logic.

Originally Posted by REPLEKIA/.

To deny evolution as a biology student is tantamount to a engineering denying math or an English student denying grammar.

I don't think you're comparing apples to apples here, on a pedantic note. An engineering student denying math would be denying a linguistic paradigm for their discipline, while a biologist denying evolution would be contesting anempirical observation. I think the analogy you wanted to make uses 'natural selection' over 'evolution', since natural selection may be seen as a language of biology.

It is an absolute essential to the field of biology and anyone who would openly deny the FACT of evolution will find themselves unable to succeed in biology.

Again, remember that our spatio-temporal sense isn't transcendental, and so that empirical observation is inherently subjective. Indeed, we've seen changes in scientific theory due to changes in method.

Originally Posted by Mowicz

The reason I don't buy into what was termed "Macro evolution" by someone in this thread, is because it's a historical account created from bits and pieces. It's like we're receiving a radio transmission that's degraded substantially...we can look at the parts that are intact, and make guesses as to what comes in between those chunks to form a coherent message. But statistically speaking, the probability that we've pieced it together perfectly is so small that, well, for all intents and purposes we can assume we're wrong. Whether it's a good estimate or not...in particular, whether it relays the appropriate message...it's probably not right. I mean if there are people who argue about whether or not the holocaust happened, and that was less than a century ago...I guess being a number driven person, I find it hard to trust. Can I suggest a better theory? Certainly not...but I still see it as a leap of faith.

I see no problem with having qualms as to the proposed "road map" of how humans (and other species) evolved, in terms of ancestors. You're right that we have incomplete data in terms of mapping this out, and when I took Bio 1M03 its something that our professors talked about when we were covering phylogenetic trees. That said, the fossil record has provided us with at least a rough picture- certainly enough to show that there was evolution taking place.

There is a huge difference from having a bit of trouble with some of the book keeping of our anscestors and having a problem with the concept of evolution.

Originally Posted by britb

http://www.rae.org/natsel.html

This guy says "over design," the existence of complex mech that do not affect survival. I guess the reasoning is if everything was perfectly governed by natural selection, they wouldn't exist. There's probably more but its tl;dr for me

*Jerry Bergman teaches biology, chemistry, and physics at Northwest State College in Archbold, Ohio. He has over 400 publications in scholarly and popular science journals and has written 20 books and monographs. His work has been translated into eight languages. To discuss his research, Bergman has been a featured speaker on many college campuses throughout the United States and Europe, and a frequent guest on radio and television programs. Dr. Bergman has earned six college degrees, including two masters degrees and two doctorates. His last Ph.D. is in biology, and most of his course work is in the sciences. A resident of Montpelier, Ohio since 1986, he and his wife, Dianne, have two children, Aeron and Mishalea; two Stepchildren, Christine and Scott; and two granddaughters, Kearstin and Bryn.

Well, there you go. A successful biologist with issues with natural selection.

I've only read the intro and conclusion (will have to read the rest when I have more time), but this is a surprisingly logical and well argued critique of natural selection. I'll have to go through it and see if there are any obvious holes in it (I've already found one), but I actually wanna take some of these more compelling arguments up with my thesis supervisor.

Thanks for finding this.

LOLLL!!! well luckily for us, male genitals are shaped perfectly to fit into mouths too
thanks god

Originally Posted by ms92

Kinda off topic but has anyone ever heard of Ray Comfort? He's this guy who uses illogical reasoning for supporting creationism, but he obviously does not have a biological background.




Note: exactly one third of the people who rated this video "liked" it.

lol i love the most liked comment on that vid go see it.....

Originally Posted by Rudiger

So I think it's completely wrong to say "I have no other theories, but there's missing data so you're all probably wrong about evolution." It's not skepticism to me, it's just bad reasoning.

I don't think it's bad reasoning at all.
There's two components to this - one empirical, and one rational. I'll leave the empirical part be, since it's quite 'metaphysical' and thus doesn't work with the argument I'm trying to put forth. I'll only mention that:
(i) There are problems in making conclusions from observation (we rely on consensus, or argument by authority)
(ii) There's a problem with natural induction, which is quite well-known and taken for granted by the majority of the scientific community

Now, let's move on to my primary focus, which is the rational bit of any scientific theory.
All I ask is that you take a fixed logic (say, first-order logic) as an axiom, the necessity of which I think perfectly self-evident for any sort of rational conveyance of ideas. Considering the discipline that we find easiest to describe based on the choice a logical paradigm, mathematics (specifically 'arithmetic' or 'elementary number theory'), we know by something called Goedel's incompleteness theorem that there exist arithmetical truths that are logically undecidable. In other words, even something as easily describable (by logical standards) as arithmetic cannot be fully described, and it so follows that arithmetic is either incomplete or inconsistent, and we have to then rely on quasi-induction - that is, the idea of 'we were right so far, so we're right overall' to pick the former over the latter.
So, in a discipline as easily-described (logically speaking) as arithmetic, there's an inherent flaw - we have no idea whether we're right or not simply based on logic. So, for more complex systems (biology, for example, where even the most flexible mathematical models can't adequately describe biological complexity) we're lost even further from a safe foundation for decision.

Now, the conclusion that we're probably wrong (something I don't think Mowicz meant) is just as justified as the conclusion that we're probably correct. We're relying on natural induction in both cases - looking back at the history of science, we've been "wrong" quite a lot more often then we've been "right", so if we accept natural induction as a valid means of inference (which you have, based on your posts) we have to accept both possibilities.