Shocking claim to Macro-evolution!

[Subduction Zone]

I think he is just being polite. What he obviously means is that Tour is dishonest - a far more serious charge to level at a fellow scientist. As to what he says about Tour, that is exactly the conclusion that I, and most other readers of this thread, will now have drawn. He has captured the essence of it nicely!

Thanks for drawing this to our attention. In future we will all know what credibility Tour has, as a critic of evolution and abiogenesis, should his name come up again. And I'll look out for Moran, too.

And that is a huge problem for Tour. The errors that he made in attacking Szostak tell us that either he is stupid, and his many accomplishments tell us that that is not the case, or that he is liar. And that is a huge problem. Being wrong is permissible in the sciences. No one is perfect. But when one's mistakes are made known the proper attitude is to own up to them. Ironically @tosca1 keeps referring to the one article of Szostak's where he made an error and then later acknowledged it. He acknowledged his error to such a strong degree as to ask for a retraction of an article. That is what a scientist is supposed to do. I can't see why he does not understand this. Yet his source was shown to be lying. Tour could not have honestly made the mistakes that he made. He is a brilliant scientist that understands what a sugar is, what a nucleotide is yet he denied the obvious. He could not honestly make those errors. It is ten times worse to lie than to be wrong and it is an even ten times greater flaw to have one's lies exposed and not own up to them.

Sadly Tour can not longer be referred to properly as a scientist since he clearly refuses to follow the scientific method when something goes against his religious beliefs.

 

[tosca1]

No, he isn't. He's literally just saying that there are limits to what we currently know.


Actually, it isn't. We haven't cracked abiogenesis yet. He isn't saying anything more significant than "we don't know how abiogenesis occurred yet".

Again, there is really nothing to refute.

Interpret it the way you want. I see making a public statement that scinetists are clueless and NOBODY really understand it, is making a claim!

I suppose you agree with his comment? That's why you say, there's nothing to refute?

 

[Subduction Zone]

Interpret it the way you want. I see making a public statement that scinetists are clueless and NOBODY really understand it, is making a claim!

I suppose you agree with his comment? That's why you say, there's nothing to refute?

And Tour has been shown to be wrong about that claim.

Instead of relying on a person that owned up to his own ignorance and openly lied about others, making all of his claims all but worthless, why not try to learn? Do you understand that evolution is the only explanation right now that is supported by scientific evidence?

 

[Twilight Hue]

And that is a huge problem for Tour. The errors that he made in attacking Szostak tell us that either he is stupid, and his many accomplishments tell us that that is not the case, or that he is liar. And that is a huge problem. Being wrong is permissible in the sciences. No one is perfect. But when one's mistakes are made known the proper attitude is to own up to them. Ironically @tosca1 keeps referring to the one article of Szostak's where he made an error and then later acknowledged it. He acknowledged his error to such a strong degree as to ask for a retraction of an article. That is what a scientist is supposed to do. I can't see why he does not understand this. Yet his source was shown to be lying. Tour could not have honestly made the mistakes that he made. He is a brilliant scientist that understands what a sugar is, what a nucleotide is yet he denied the obvious. He could not honestly make those errors. It is ten times worse to lie than to be wrong and it is an even ten times greater flaw to have one's lies exposed and not own up to them.

Sadly Tour can not longer be referred to properly as a scientist since he clearly refuses to follow the scientific method when something goes against his religious beliefs.

It's really quite simple. That is to use the peer review process to be scrutinized by those with equal or greater academic qualifications to see if this passes any muster.

 

[Wandering Monk]

What does 'macro' evolution even mean? Sounds like creationist obfuscation to me.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

Interpret it the way you want. I see making a public statement that scinetists are clueless and NOBODY really understand it, is making a claim!

Not one that's really compelling, or even worth making.

I suppose you agree with his comment? That's why you say, there's nothing to refute?

I can't really say whether it's true or not - there may be scientists out there who actually DO have some clear ideas on how abiogenesis occurred, but I don't find his position particularly objectionable. It's fair to say that we still don't understand how abiogenesis occurred.

 

[exchemist]

What does 'macro' evolution even mean? Sounds like creationist obfuscation to me.

Nothing. You are right.

It is a fake distinction, invented by those creationists who have been forced to admit that things like drug resistance in bacteria and cancer, the peppered moth example and so on, are incontrovertible evidence of evolution in action. They use it to concede the point on these examples, while trying to maintain that evolution of new species remains impossible (for unexplained reasons).

The distinction has no basis in science and is not scientifically recognised.

Correction: I see from Immortal Flame that I am wrong about this and that it DOES have a scientific meaning after all. Mea culpa. My impression has been coloured by the fact that I have only ever encountered the term coming from creationists! So I've learned something new.

 

[ImmortalFlame]

What does 'macro' evolution even mean? Sounds like creationist obfuscation to me.

In scientific terms, "macro" refers to any evolution above the species level (i.e: speciation). However, whenever I've heard creationists define the term it always seems to mean "the extent of evolution past which we have yet to directly observe". Whenever I point out that macro-evolution originally refers to speciation - which has been observed numerous times - this tends to be completely ignored and then they simply assert macro-evolution is MORE than speciation, and when asked to specifically define the point at which micro becomes macro they never really can.

 

[exchemist]

Troll City, USA

Well Audie, you were not wrong.

I see he's given up on this now - having been made to look sufficiently out of his depth and ridiculous - and started a new one. That at least is about the bible, so it is a sort of retreat to his comfort zone, I suppose.

 

[tosca1]

Not one that's really compelling, or even worth making.


I can't really say whether it's true or not - there may be scientists out there who actually DO have some clear ideas on how abiogenesis occurred, but I don't find his position particularly objectionable. It's fair to say that we still don't understand how abiogenesis occurred.

...... they agree with him.


They just don't want to come out publicly.

If there's anyone who clearly understands it, would be coming out defending the community, and publicly rebutting him - preferably in the same venue like "inference" where he posted his open letter!

That's his point.

 

[Audie]

Well Audie, you were not wrong.

I see he's given up on this now - having been made to look sufficiently out of his depth and ridiculous - and started a new one. That at least is about the bible, so it is a sort of retreat to his comfort zone, I suppose.

I think such who charge in with a load of creosite
garbage to dump must have some purpose in mind.

Maybe to be able to brag how nobody could refute
anything, the evos were helpless with all their ivory
tower indoctrination, when faced with true science
and of course, god. It is the same afyer a day, or
a year, so no reason to stick around indefinitely.

Some of them may be preachers practicing for work.

Usually they are snarky and abusive, wich provides
for useful quotes when someone responds in kind.

When you spot one of those, it is probably best to
send to ig city, first thing.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Creationists don't have to invoke the Bible to make their arguments against
non-believers! We can meet you squarely on your own turf!

You can't, just like Tour can't. As has been demonstrated for decades now.

Tour's argument amounts to nothing more then "we can't create life, therefor nothing can" and "I don't understand how evolution works, therefor it's false".

And then finally, the classic and extremely fallacious statement that it's somehow impossible to investigate processes like evolution unless you know and understand how life originates.

Ridiculous.

That's like saying that you can't be a car mechanic unless you are able to design and build a car manufactoring factory.

Retarded.
Life exists and we can study it. Understanding how life originated, is not going to change how life works.

I'm just simply bashing the very thing you rely on: pseudo-science! That's all you got!
Stick to the issue.

You can't made one valid objection to evolution theory yet.
In fact, everything you said about it, just exposed how little you know about it.

This isn't going to go anywhere it seems.

 

[Polymath257]

I interpreted Tour as noting that we cannot explain evolutionary changes from a chemistry perspective.

And, to a great extent, that is true. We cannot, just by looking at the changes in a protein, determine the effects those chemical changes will have on the overall organism. We cannot, simply by looking at the chemistry, determine the morphological or behavioral changes induced by the chemistry.

That is simply true. We understand a *lot* more of this connection than we did, say, 50 years ago. But there is still a *lot* to piece together. Even basic development cannot be described *in detail* from a purely chemical perspective. And that is true even though *nobody* thinks that there is more than chemistry and physics involved.

So, as opposed to this being a statement that evolution is wrong, I see it as a direction for further research: how do we make the connection between molecular biology and development? How do we extend that to evolutionary changes in species?

These are important, interesting questions that we are just now beginning to be able to address.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Nothing. You are right.

It is a fake distinction, invented by those creationists who have been forced to admit that things like drug resistance in bacteria and cancer, the peppered moth example and so on, are incontrovertible evidence of evolution in action. They use it to concede the point on these examples, while trying to maintain that evolution of new species remains impossible (for unexplained reasons).

The distinction has no basis in science and is not scientifically recognised.

Correction: I see from Immortal Flame that I am wrong about this and that it DOES have a scientific meaning after all. Mea culpa. My impression has been coloured by the fact that I have only ever encountered the term coming from creationists! So I've learned something new.

The way it was explained to me by a friend biologist, is that in the science jargon, it's only a conceptual distinction. You could say idd "above the species level", but then again what is a species? Even that is somewhat arbitrary, to an extent at least.

This is the difficult part of classifying life that is closely related in time or genes. There is no generation where you can say "NOW it's another species". No... every generation is like 99.999999% the same as the previous one. But those 0.00001% differences add up over time, off course.

So really when talking "macro", it's about scale and context. From what level are you looking at it and in which scope are you speaking?

It's all very conceptual, and primarily for easy communication.
The actual underlying physical process however... there's only 1: "evolution".

What creationists like to pretend, is that macro evolution is actually a different physical process as opposed to micro evolution.

If you are using the terms correctly (and thus as concepts instead of distinct processes), then it's literally stupid to say that "micro happens but not macro", which would literally be like saying that driving 1 mile is possible, but not 100.

The only way you won't get to 100, is if the car breaks down (or the species goes extinct) before that.

 

[exchemist]

I think such who charge in with a load of creosite
garbage to dump must have some purpose in mind.

Maybe to be able to brag how nobody could refute
anything, the evos were helpless with all their ivory
tower indoctrination, when faced with true science
and of course, god. It is the same afyer a day, or
a year, so no reason to stick around indefinitely.

Some of them may be preachers practicing for work.

Usually they are snarky and abusive, wich provides
for useful quotes when someone responds in kind.

When you spot one of those, it is probably best to
send to ig city, first thing.

There was a time, when Dembski was teaching at some Southern Baptist diploma mill (before he was fired for being a jerk), that he would award course points to his students if they had been onto a science forum to annoy the participants with ID claptrap. We used to get "seagull" posters who would show up, drop a load, respond a couple of times and then vanish again. Not quite drive-by but just enough to earn the points. I don't know if it still goes on.

Our friend however does not seem to be one of those.

 

[exchemist]

The way it was explained to me by a friend biologist, is that in the science jargon, it's only a conceptual distinction. You could say idd "above the species level", but then again what is a species? Even that is somewhat arbitrary, to an extent at least.

This is the difficult part of classifying life that is closely related in time or genes. There is no generation where you can say "NOW it's another species". No... every generation is like 99.999999% the same as the previous one. But those 0.00001% differences add up over time, off course.

So really when talking "macro", it's about scale and context. From what level are you looking at it and in which scope are you speaking?

It's all very conceptual, and primarily for easy communication.
The actual underlying physical process however... there's only 1: "evolution".

What creationists like to pretend, is that macro evolution is actually a different physical process as opposed to micro evolution.

If you are using the terms correctly (and thus as concepts instead of distinct processes), then it's literally stupid to say that "micro happens but not macro", which would literally be like saying that driving 1 mile is possible, but not 100.

The only way you won't get to 100, is if the car breaks down (or the species goes extinct) before that.

Yes, thanks for this. Having been corrected by Immortal Flame I've looked it up. Species is certainly a slippery concept, normally defined in relation to whether two individuals can interbreed, but even that is not a black and white issue, cf. hybrids, species etc. In fact it seems to me that ring species are a very nice illustration of the process of speciation being captured in mid-flow.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Yes, thanks for this. Having been corrected by Immortal Flame I've looked it up. Species is certainly a slippery concept, normally defined in relation to whether two individuals can interbreed, but even that is not a black and white issue, cf. hybrids, species etc. In fact it seems to me that ring species are a very nice illustration of the process of speciation being captured in mid-flow.

Indeed!
Ring species are so fascinating.

I think the entire process is fascinating. I'm a software engineer and did some work with genetic algoritms in the past. I got totally captured by it.

It's hard to explain, but I got some sense of "awe". There's something incredibly elegant about the overall process. Not to be confused with the "natural cruelty" of natural selection though

I think it's the basic simplicity of the process:
1. mutate
2. pass the fitness test
3. reproduce
4. go back to 1

I literally see poetry in that.
The stuff you can do with that simple, simple algoritm...
Optimization of just about anything as long as you can model it in software, machine-learning, intelligent searching, ...

It's amazing.

 

[tosca1]

You can't, just like Tour can't.

Lol. You're in a state of denial.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Lol. You're in a state of denial.

Projection. Tour does not want to accept reality, so he tries to make ridiculous demands for "proof".

Perhaps you, and Tour, could use a refresher on the scientific method. Once you get that down we can move on to the concept of evidence. Trust me creationists do not understand the concept of evidence because they cannot afford to.

 

[Bear Wild]

Lol. You're in a state of denial.

No one but you are in a state of denial. I have read his concerns for the concept of evolution and he is clearly not familiar with the genetics associated with evolution. Yes, he is an expert in his field but that is limited to his field. The concepts of regulatory genes and epigenetics have shown how large changes can occur. If you want to find support for your beliefs about evolution then find a source that is very familiar with evolution and its genetics before making statements that are not supported.