Natural Selection Is Teleological= Therefore Self-Contradicting

Science and Technology
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So what you must be trying to get at, but have avoided saying straightforwardly, is that God created all creatures. But you won’t come out and say that, because the fossil evidence, that you say doesn’t exist, shows that yours is a REALLY STUPID hypothesis for explaining the life forms that have existed historically on Earth. Timb
There is old biblical saying. 'Iron sharpens Iron.' We can have dialogue without being rude and disrespectful. I find it hypocritical that the 'all inclusive' crowd accepts everyone, except those that don't agree with them. I am Christian, Republican and Conservative, I voted for Hillary, and Obama, do not like Trump. I thought we could have dialogue, but I guess we can't. Since you are my only contact so far with BLM; as it pertains to BLM I going to sit on the fence and watch it play out. Why should I or anyone like me want to get involved where we are not welcomed, anyhow I can't fix stupid. Have a nice day.

Mr. Mod please discontinue my privileges.

 

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BTW CFI = Center For Ignorance.

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We can have dialogue without being rude and disrespectful. I find it hypocritical that the ‘all inclusive’ crowd accepts everyone, except those that don’t agree with them.
There is something wrong with your mirror. You keep saying we can respectful, and then in the very next sentence you say something disrespectful. And in your next post, you say something that sounds like it was written by a 4th grader.

Oh, wait a minute, you asked me to “discontinue your privileges”? If you want to delete your account, you can do that yourself.

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We can have dialogue without being rude and disrespectful. I find it hypocritical that the ‘all inclusive’ crowd accepts everyone, except those that don’t agree with them.

@towerwatchman
BTW CFI = Center For Ignorance.


That’s the way to show us how it’s done.

I notice you never took the time to respond to the many serious paragraphs various folks have tried sharing with you in this thread. You feel you have the right to toss insults at others, but woes be to them if they toss a few back.

I myself, just expect a civil discussion, that doesn’t mean we need to like each other, and if one of us flies off the handle a little, the other simply lets it slid as we get back to the heart of that matter. But then I’m one of those who puts learning above personal beliefs. Which are you towerwatchman.

Speaking of a tower watchman

 

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@towerwatchman seems to me you reject knowledge or you are a write for Watchtower propaganda. Being a JW isn’t something to be proud of.

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...We can have dialogue without being rude and disrespectful. I find it hypocritical that the ‘all inclusive’ crowd accepts everyone, except those that don’t agree with them. I am Christian, Republican and Conservative, I voted for Hillary, and Obama, do not like Trump. I thought we could have dialogue, but I guess we can’t. Since you are my only contact so far with BLM; as it pertains to BLM I going to sit on the fence and watch it play out...
He must have considered me to be rude and disrespectful because I recognized his agenda and called his hypothesis (which I think was something like "Intelligent Design" based on the Bible) REALLY STUPID. I did not say that he is REALLY STUPID. I do think that he is rather deceptive, in that he did not make his true agenda manifest. But I think that he is probably less deceptive than most people who identify as "Christian, Republican and Conservative".

I also wonder what this means “…you are my only contact so far with BLM…” . Is it possible to live in the USA today and not have any knowledge about BLM, except from me, on CFI? If so, the “Christian, Republican and Conservative” bubble is more restrictive of truth than I had imagined.

I am sorry he is gone. Despite his faulty thinking in many respects, he said that he voted for Hillary and Obama. SO he must have something reasonable going on.

CC, Thanks for the song. Here is the lyrics to one of the verses from the full lyric version:

You will be saved by grace in the end Saved by time if you don't understand That your hatred is rooted in your fear And your paranoia and insecurities Well, they don't belong here
Goodbye Towerwatchman.

BTW, I like the Jimi Hendrix version of All Along the Watchtower. He wrote it, too.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=+watchtower+by+jimi+hendrix&view=detail&mid=919A9CF2F6D86DAF87C0919A9CF2F6D86DAF87C0&FORM=VIRE0&ru=%2fsearch%3fq%3d%2520watchtower%2520by%2520jimi%2520hendrix%26qs%3dn%26form%3dQBRE%26sp%3d-1%26pq%3dwatchtower%2520by%2520jimi%2520hendrix%26sc%3d3-26%26sk%3d%26cvid%3dB67F2D8F49FB405696394C9EA3DAE98B

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I am sorry he is gone. Despite his faulty thinking in many respects, he said that he voted for Hillary and Obama. SO he must have something reasonable going on.
There's that glimmer of hope in me. I couldn't go on without it. I know a guy like him shares a lot of my values. My hope is, he left because he felt his narrative being challenged, he felt the cracks. His defenses were tiny little walls that we all stepped over. If this was his first foray into a skeptic discussion, I commend him for it.

And that rendition of All Along the Watchtower, became my favorite song in 1977 sometime and that has not changed.

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If he is gone, it saved me from thinking about warning him again.

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And that rendition of All Along the Watchtower, became my favorite song in 1977 sometime and that has not changed.
Oh my gosh! The stereophonics, the guitar work, great lyrics, great song - among the absolute best of Rock and Roll.
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Let’s consider evolution from the Neanderthal’s perspective, . . .

 

Svante Pääbo

Most people are part-Neanderthal, the closest extinct human relative. Svante Pääbo explores human genetic evolution by analyzing preserved genetic material from the remains of ancient organisms, including Neanderthals. What can we learn from the genomes of our closest evolutionary relatives? Pääbo is an evolutionary anthropologist and pioneer of paleogenetics and the director of the Max Plank Institute of Evolutionary Genetics. He was awarded the 2018 Nierenberg Award for Science in the Public Interest. Recorded on 10/03/2018. [12/2018] [Show ID: 34037]

University of California Television (UCTV)

:slight_smile:

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I thought that might be a nice way to wrap up this thread. It makes a great contrast in styles.

As for Svante. He’s what a serious person and amazing scientist sounds like. It’s worth the listen.

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Always great to see stories about my Neanderthal brothers. (1-2% brothers at least). It was notable that even though no individual modern homo sapiens have been found to have more than 1-2% fragments of the Neanderthal genome. BUT when you add up all of the different fragments in all the individuals of the totality of Neanderthal genes in all homo sapiens, today — 40% of the Neanderthal genome still exists inside of homo sapiens living today.

I also thought it notable that Svante speculated on the possibility that, in some cases, homo sapiens may have subsumed the Neanderthals. IOW, it could be that the dwindling population of Neanderthals became a part of homo sapiens societies who made the Neanderthals a part of their own, and eventually the “pure” Neanderthals just further dwindled in to extinction.

 

 

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Natural selection in Darwin’s terms was an abstract resolution.

To this day the simple alternative of ‘god’ as the resolution is still upheld.

Atheism deserves criticism for lacking a philosophy as much as natural selection does. I don’t mean to blur these things, but to mention them so as to open up the context of wee humans who barely understand ourselves but who continue to learn more and more about our traits. Simply uttering ‘god’ seems to still be a going solution, particularly when the president of the most powerful country on earth does so and dismisses science as much as possible. That way lays a very simple attempt; too simple. The other way does lead into tremendous complexity and somehow biologists have cracked a huge amount of the puzzle. Some painstaking experiments for very modest results, but now we arrive with motor proteins bathed in ATP fuel inside the cell delivering various payloads along a lightly charged route of microtubules. That this mechanism evolved is stupendous to me. We can as well be astonished at virtually every detail of life.

We happen to be bathed in fusion reactor energy radiation at the surface of a fairly stable planet at 1000 Watts per square meter. A human will be quite healthy to maintain a kW of output for an hour. My point being that the abundant energy which fuels life helps relax the possibility that something active might take place on the surface of our planet without any other external inputs other than the sun’s. How we get all the way back to raw molecular interactions from motor proteins is still an open problem. While this lays open other theories such as the seeding of our planet from another civilization can be entertained, though this solution can only beg the problem onto their civilization so that their substrate becomes the mysters. If for instance they were networked gas cloud beings who could compute a terestrial solution of discrete beings… they still would be smart enough to see that Darwin’s way is the way it will go on the new substrate.

Validating the math of a 99 percent failure rate and one percent successful mutation rate still leaves out the stable solution which still carries the mysterious and astounding details of protein based mechanics. For a primitive form (pre-DNA) that mutation rate would likely be quite high. A pre-cellular form would be even more challenging to assess. I think the most important detail to consider is that beyond the rate of mutation of an individual there lays the actual population of individuals. We have to multiply these figures. Let p be the population of individuals. Let r be the rate of mutation. Let s be the rate of successful mutation within those mutations. All of this is statistical, but the population of successful mutants within just one reproductive generation is then

m = p r s

Assuming this mutant is stable then in some generation it will out-compete the old form. Modeling niche ecosystems will raise the diversity and amplify the success rate. Deeper than all of this generational reproductive modeling of discrete beings is another era of pre-cellular ‘life’.

Accidental learning is one of the finest forms of informational gain and to admit that life is a long series of accidents touches on a mechanism that lacks philosophy and morality. As humans we are subject to these constraints. We build philosophy and ethics atop this substrate and possibly specifying this barrier between human existence with language and the substrate of our existence is a valid pursuit; a necessary pursuit. It seems to me that you are on this path. The one need not obviate the other. Instead possibly becoming an informant on this boundary will further both.

 

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to admit that life is a long series of accidents touches on a mechanism that lacks philosophy and morality.
Do you see that as a problem?
As humans we are subject to these constraints.
Do you appreciate the difference between the Human Mindscape and Physical Reality?
Simply uttering ‘god’ seems to still be a going solution,
How's that? Hugging a teddy bear is also a viable solution for emotional health, but is it really the teddy bear who's doing the solving?
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Instead possibly becoming an informant on this boundary will further both. ==Tim
What? What are you saying?
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Yeah, please specify “both” what?

And the boundary of which you speak is between what, specifically? Do you mean a “boundary” between our “existence” through the sheer chance involved in evolution (on the one hand) AND our development of philosophy and ethics through our verbal behavior abilities (on the other hand)?

Certainly our development of complex verbal behavior is just another product of the chances involved in evolution. We would not have developed a theory of evolution, nor developed philosophies or recognized ethics without having complex verbal behavior. Hence the concept of a “boundary” between these two things seems like an awkward construct, to me.

That being asked and said, I do appreciate your rather erudite post.

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I know of a genuine boundary, or at least the two sides of it = Physical Reality and the swarm of thoughts that swirl around our brain.

775×995 969 KB

Behold our Mindscape.

 

image source: https://towardsdatascience.com/deep-learning-versus-biological-neurons-floating-point-numbers-spikes-and-neurotransmitters-6eebfa3390e9

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Good questions @timb, I find it a shame we can’t assume @timbandtech will offer a direct response. Would love to see how he’d handle them.

@timb Yeah, please specify “both” what?

And the boundary of which you speak is between what, specifically?

Do you mean a “boundary” between our “existence” through the sheer chance involved in evolution (on the one hand) AND our development of philosophy and ethics through our verbal behavior abilities (on the other hand)?

Certainly our development of complex verbal behavior is just another product of the chances involved in evolution. We would not have developed a theory of evolution, nor developed philosophies or recognized ethics without having complex verbal behavior. Hence the concept of a “boundary” between these two things seems like an awkward construct, to me.

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Pretty.

There is a difference in brain function between those creatures who have complex verbal behavior, and those who don’t. But ALL creatures are a product of evolution.

The ones with complex verbal behavior can also develop philosophies, and ethics, etc.

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Following the theory of evolution, it is an accumulation of minute mutations over a large period of time that brings about a new species.
@towerwatchman - That is outdated thinking. Things are way more complex than that. Stop using 50 and 100 year old arguments to dispute the science of today!

I’m curious are you even aware of Punctuated Equilibrium? - no I’m not going to help with a bunch spoon feed links for you - do some serious homework for yourself.

How about “Jumping Gene” - ever learn anything about that? Sorry won’t find anything in your ancient texts on the topic, you’ll have to look at very recent work to learn about it.

How about “Adaptive Radiation”?

Timb tries explaining to towerwatchman: If you believe in what you call microevolution, then it is just a matter of time and organisms exposure to various ecological conditions over time, that enough microevolutionary changes become enough that the resulting organism is something other than the organisms it evolved from.
500,000 years = well over 182,500,000 days (since the days were actually a bit shorter, during dinosaur's reign, with roughly 372 days per year). A lot can happen.

Also you seem oblivious to how environmental change and disruption drives much of evolution.

Scientists make their pronouncements based on the facts at hand. Of course, their pronouncements are provisional and change as new evidence and facts get accumulated. @towerwatchman, Why do you feel it’s okay to ignore new lessons?

@towerwatchman - your calculated fraud is in your willingness to ignore evidence and only include what fit’s your world view not matter how out of date or obsolete, misleading or downright fraudulent that information is.

Evolution is fundamentally accumulated change over time - and you are basically demanding that we accept change over time is a fraud.

Evolution is evolution, it begins at the micro level and turns into the macro world.

Where do you get off pretending they are different entities.

Regarding the Finches, what you are missing there is that the finches, they evolved to fit existing niches that have served them well these past 2 million years. That is why some animals don’t change much because their body plan continues working for their circumstance. All very straightforward and rational even if every nuance isn’t absolutely totally understood.

 

Oh case in point about environment driving change:

On the Origin of Darwin's Finches Akie Sato, Herbert Tichy, Colm O'hUigin, Peter R. Grant, B. Rosemary Grant, Jan Klein Molecular Biology and Evolution, Volume 18, Issue 3, March 2001, Pages 299–311,

https ://doi -org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a003806

Abstract
Darwin’s finches comprise a group of 15 species endemic to the Galápagos (14 species) and Cocos (1 species) Islands in the Pacific Ocean. The group is monophyletic and originated from an ancestral species that reached the Galápagos Archipelago from Central or South America.

Descendants of this ancestor on the Archipelago then colonized Cocos Island. In the present study, we used sequences of two mitochondrial (mt) DNA segments (922 bp of the cytochrome b gene and 1,082 bp of the control region), as well as two nuclear markers (830 bp of numt2, consisting of 140 bp of mtDNA control region and 690 bp of flanking nuclear DNA; and 740 bp of numt3, consisting of 420 bp of mt cytochrome b sequence flanked by 320 bp of nuclear DNA) to identify the species group most closely related to the Darwin’s finches.

To this end, we analyzed the sequences of 28 species representing the main groups (tribes) of the family Fringillidae, as well as 2 outgroup species and 13 species of Darwin’s finches. In addition, we used mtDNA cytochrome b sequences of some 180 additional Fringillidae species from the database for phylogeny reconstruction by maximum-parsimony, maximum-likelihood, minimum-evolution, and neighbor-joining methods.

The study identifies the grassquit genus Tiaris, and specifically the species Tiaris obscura, as the nearest living relative of Darwin’s finches among the species surveyed. Darwin’s finches diverged from the Tiaris group shortly after the various extant species of Tiaris diverged from one another.

The initial adaptive radiation of the Tiaris group apparently occurred on the Caribbean islands and then spread to Central and South America, from where the ancestors of Darwin’s finches departed for the Galápagos Islands approximately 2.3 MYA, at the time of the dramatic climatic changes associated with the closure of the Panamanian isthmus and the onset of Pleistocene glaciation.