Argumentum ad populum

Hockeycowboy said:

You’re deflecting.

I simply asked for any obvious precursors to the Cambrian biota.

Post some, please.

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Well, there are some have difficulty seeing that Homo erectus is an obvious precursor to modern humans, and the obvious sequence shown going from Australopithecines to humans.

Such a person would have difficulty seeing obvious precursors anywhere else in the fossil record, I would think.

Jose Fly said:

IMO, it depends on what your purpose is. If you're hoping to persuade the creationist you're talking to, then yeah I'd say your harsh style is a bit counter-productive.

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I can see that, but then, I see 'gentler' posters also being ignored, attacked, dismissed, etc., so I'm not sure ANY particular type or style of response is productive.

But if it's more about exposing their nonsense as clearly as possible for everyone else to see, then you're probably okay.

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Yup, you're quite adept at it and I for one appreciate it.

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Sadly, it is from years of experience.

I mean, let's be honest here. Your typical internet creationist doesn't fully understand the arguments he posts, and is instead merely parroting things he's read or heard from some professional creationist he trusts. It's not like they're all paleontology buffs who independently read and reviewed a bunch of papers and data, eventually realized "Hey, there are no transitional fossils", and then posted that realization online. Instead, it's a combination of "transitional fossils can't exist because that would contradict creationism" and "this good Christian who I trust says there are none".

That's why plagiarism isn't really a big deal to them.

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Sadly true. I have seen semi-'professional' creationist sites on which the author(s) advocate for the free dispersal of their material, all to 'spread the Word'. Of course, that does not absolve the plagiarist in any way.
Can you imagine a student turning in a plagiarized paper and arguing that it isn't plagiarism because the source said it was cool to copy paste it?
I did have a creationist on another forum once claim, after I caught him plagiarizing a scientific paper, that it could not be plagiarism because he had taken the time to type the stuff he was copying, he did not copy-paste it, so no plagiarism...

Exactly my point with @Hockeycowboy and asking him why he's asking for "obvious" pre-Cambrian to Cambrian transitionals. Does anyone here really believe his request is made in good faith? That he'll objectively consider what's presented to him and respond in a thoughtful manner?

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Well, he did take about 90 seconds to type up a nice dismissal of a site I had linked for him.... Such effort!

The only reason I ever answer such creationist challenges is to see the absurd and bizarre lengths they'll go to in order to maintain their denialism. It fascinates me from a psychological/human behavior standpoint.

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Indeed. From my POV, it also opens up more chances to find plagiarism and/or misrepresentation.

Everyone has their own personal style. That's part of what makes these things entertaining. I mean, if it wasn't fun, why do it, right?


And he'll probably never stop, no matter what anyone here says to him. That's the nature of creationism...being rooted in deeply personal beliefs means even the prospect of changing them can be absolutely terrifying. Far safer to just stay the course.

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Yup...

nPeace said:

Hey bro. Thanks for this fairly recent article.
Multifactorial huh. Seems like no end to the guesswork.
See you later.

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Want to discuss phylogenetics again, bro?

cladking said:

My theory is very unpopular everywhere.

But everytime someone thinks my argument has been demolished they forget to read my response. In almost every case when someone thinks they won an argument they just show things that they misinterpret and that actually support or are irrelevant to my theory.

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No, that is not what happens. You usually ignore most of the rebuttals. Like when you got all indignant when I asked you to provide evidence that behavior drives evolution, and you said that you never wrote any such thing. And then I found like 6 quotes from you saying EXACTLY what I indicated, and in your reply to that post, you just omitted all that stuff and only addressed something else I had written. Same thing with your claim about Broca's area - all omitted in your reply.

You really should not make these self-aggrandizing claims when one need only read a few posts up to see that you are mis-characterizing the situation.

tas8831 said:

No, that is not what happens.

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I don't like going over the same ground again and again. I've only explained how bottlenecks cause species change for you about five times now.

Doing it again will not change the result.

cladking said:

I don't like going over the same ground again and again. I've only explained how bottlenecks cause species change for you about five times now.

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You have asserted it without any evidence, despite claiming 'ALL THE EVIDENCE' agrees with you.

It is truly a shame that you cannot bring yourself to admit to even blatantly obvious errors and misrepresentations of even your own positions.

You wrote, foolishly:

Using your own claims, I then clearly refuted that... ummm.... 'misrepresentation.'

Still waiting for THAT ^^^^^ evidence, too...

Also still waiting for you to show that Darwin claimed that populations remain stable in the first edition of his book - remember when I linked to a searchable online version of it for you and you ignored it? Wonder why...


Weird, I mean, you just deleted all of that from your reply in that thread, as if it never happened - as if you never actually claimed that you never did what I documented you doing 7 times. And keep in mind - there were more, these were just the most obvious ones. I find such refusals to acknowledge and own up to such obvious fibs indicative of far-reaching character flaws. But that is just in my experience dealing with religious fanatics and the like.

Doing it again will not change the result.

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You've not once provided evidence, so you are just trying to assert-away your false claims.

You are just boring now. I'll probably take a break from documenting your 'scientific' fraud and egregious, laughable errors. it is pretty tiresome.

And I know you will ignore this, but you still have run away from these:

Show me this second motor speech area.

Show me the experimental evidence that behavior alone causes speciation, which is "sudden."

Show me that there is a genetic difference between natural and man-made bottlenecks.

Show me that you actually know what is meant by "survival of the fittest."

Define "peer" as in 'peer review".

Let me ask you this;

When something falls is it because of gravity, lack of normal force, or that it sits in a gravity well? When a fired bullet falls is it because it hasn't hit anything yet or that it can't go higher? If a bullet lodges in a rocket at takeoff does it disprove the "theory of gravity"?

How can a bat eat a moth if dead moths fall?

Is "4" two times two or two plus two?

Why do you keep on with semantics?


The world is a big complicated place and all we have to describe it is a language that arose from the dust of babel and the models we create with it.

A then B then C therefore A then C. When I said A did not lead to C I merely meant that A (behavior) is not the direct cause of C (speciation). It could have been pedantic but I'm not going back to look. You seem to be parsing my words enough for both of us. Not all behavior leads to speciation. There must be a bottleneck created by behavior. Behavior does NOT lead to speciation and I certainly never intended to say otherwise. You're like a snapping turtle when you get hold of something. You'll have to let it go or starve.

tas8831 said:

I can see that, but then, I see 'gentler' posters also being ignored, attacked, dismissed, etc., so I'm not sure ANY particular type or style of response is productive.

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I think in all the years I've done this, I've seen one person change his mind. And even that was just from a YEC to an ID creationist with an agnostic view of the age of things. The main factor in his change was his willingness to consider what we posted and do the necessary work to understand the subject. That's exceedingly rare among creationists.

Can you imagine a student turning in a plagiarized paper and arguing that it isn't plagiarism because the source said it was cool to copy paste it?
I did have a creationist on another forum once claim, after I caught him plagiarizing a scientific paper, that it could not be plagiarism because he had taken the time to type the stuff he was copying, he did not copy-paste it, so no plagiarism...

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That's hilarious! Especially coming from the side of the debate that claims to be on the side of God and morality.

Well, he did take about 90 seconds to type up a nice dismissal of a site I had linked for him.... Such effort!

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He can't consider it fairly and openly...he's not allowed to. But then he'll pretend that his faith plays absolutely no role in it (thus my thread yesterday). Weird.

Jose Fly said:

I think in all the years I've done this, I've seen one person change his mind. And even that was just from a YEC to an ID creationist with an agnostic view of the age of things.

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And, I wager, you've never seen a believer in science come to change his mind.

cladking said:

And, I wager, you've never seen a believer in science come to change his mind.

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You would lose that bet. I've personally seen some of my colleagues change their mind on significant issues. Heck, I've changed my mind in my work.

TagliatelliMonster said:

whatever makes you sleep at night

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Lame.

cladking said:

Let me ask you this;

When something falls is it because of gravity, lack of normal force, or that it sits in a gravity well? When a fired bullet falls is it because it hasn't hit anything yet or that it can't go higher? If a bullet lodges in a rocket at takeoff does it disprove the "theory of gravity"?

How can a bat eat a moth if dead moths fall?

Is "4" two times two or two plus two?

Why do you keep on with semantics?


The world is a big complicated place and all we have to describe it is a language that arose from the dust of babel and the models we create with it.

A then B then C therefore A then C. When I said A did not lead to C I merely meant that A (behavior) is not the direct cause of C (speciation). It could have been pedantic but I'm not going back to look. You seem to be parsing my words enough for both of us. Not all behavior leads to speciation. There must be a bottleneck created by behavior. Behavior does NOT lead to speciation and I certainly never intended to say otherwise. You're like a snapping turtle when you get hold of something. You'll have to let it go or starve.

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Bottlenecks are near extinction events that result from a rapid environmental change that exceeds the ability of natural variation and fitness to address it. A meteor strike. Massive volcanism.

A new behavior could result in a rapid change in the environment and the species expressing the behavior could nearly exterminate another species as a result, forming a bottleneck. But behavior is not required for a bottleneck and is not likely to be a significant cause of one. Certainly, it is not a requirement and has not been observed in nature or shown experimentally to be so.

Speciation results from significant alterations of the genome and the regulation of genes within the genome so that a population becomes optimized and adapted to a new environment.

Jose Fly said:

You would lose that bet. I've personally seen some of my colleagues change their mind on significant issues. Heck, I've changed my mind in my work.

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I fully expect that you, tas and others know things about biology and evolution that I do not and I may have to amend my views based on information and understanding that you provide. In fact, I have often removed or added details that have been brought to my attention through these discussions. I have noted some posters expressing the same views I have arrived at on my own in a much more articulated, comprehensive and succinct version and have found that useful as well.

cladking said:

I don't like going over the same ground again and again. I've only explained how bottlenecks cause species change for you about five times now.

Doing it again will not change the result.

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The evidence indicates that humans have gone through a bottleneck as recently as 50,000 years ago without any change in species or any requirement of behavior. Cheetahs have gone through at least two bottlenecks without any speciation associated with it.

I do not think you understand what a bottleneck is.

blü 2 said:

So you agree that 'truth' indeed is correspondence with reality? And the only problem is working out what's real?

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That depends on what you mean.
I don't agree that truth and reality has anything to do with "the best opinion". Far from.
Working out reality often falls into that category, as is shown by science - a tool that has considerable limits for accurately knowing truth and reality.

Let's use this approach.
Reality - God -> Truth -> Test / Examine / Experiment -> Find -> Reality - God -> Truth ...an unbreakable cycle.
Notice, we are doing both top down, and bottom up, and if the cycle is working flawlessly - which it it. Then to me, it is reality. It is truth.
Why not join us.
Start here. Every house is constructed by someone. True? What do we expect? He that constructed all things, is God. By the way, that's found here - Hebrews 3:4.
Now test it. How? You ask.
What does your experience tell you?
I know what mine tells me - from every angle.

@blü 2 by the way, I don't have any experience otherwise, so if you do, please present it. No magic please.

blü 2 said:

Or you're saying that there's no such thing as truth?

Or you're saying that truth is anything you want it to be?

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blü 2 for real? I am trying to take into consideration that you may not be a young man, but now I am wondering if you read my posts.
To both questions. NO. Please read my posts. There is no benefit to asking someone questions, if you are not going to take your time reading their posts.
I'm sure you would agree, that is very frustrating.

blü 2 said:

Good to have these things clear. We agree that reality is the world external to the self, and we agree that our senses are capable of informing us about that world and we agree that reason is a valid tool.

My own view is that logic is one of the fruits of reason, and that common sense intends to be reason used informally.

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No problem. It's good we can agree on something, at least.

blü 2 said:

It's called 'debate'. I do it to make me think. Why do you do it?

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Isn't it useless debate? I don't do that. I have things to do.
So you ask a question. Someone gives you an answer. You say they are imagining things. You ask the same question again, to get the same answer. ? That' makes you think? Wow.

blü 2 said:

Love is attitude and conduct generated by evolved biochemistry.

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Please prove that.

blü 2 said:

Biochemistry has objective existence. Conduct, words, writing, and so on, have objective existence

Experience is just another version of being informed, and in the case of sex, love and breeding, propelled by very evolved instincts regarding signals and responses, most of them not conscious. One simple example is the porn industry, because males in particular have evolved to respond to the sight (inter alia) of the female body and to become randy accordingly. A more elaborate version within the same class of things is attraction between A and B which may lead to bonding and generation within the norms of the society.

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I only partially agree with you there. SOME have evolved those behaviors - by what they gained through the senses... and by evolved, I am not referring to the theory.

blü 2 said:

If you're talking about gods. spirits, miracles and so on, the question is whether such things are purely mental phenomena or whether they exist independently, as parts of the world external to the self. As I've already remarked, no one has a suitable definition of a real god, such that if we found a real candidate we could tell whether it was God, or a god, or not. That's one of an armory of smoking guns that say gods are only found as concepts in the brains of individuals, have no objective counterpart, are purely imaginary. I've only met two people who said they'd had personal experience of god, and in both cases the 'meeting' was an emotional state which they found ─ attractive? stimulating? exhilarating? ─ with zero information content. No sensory input was involved (although I understand some people like a particular environment, semi-darkness, incense, soft couch, whatever). i can recall three occasions where I've had what I might call 'altered vision', a sudden different perceiving of what I was looking at, but I think it was simply odd, not marvelous, something human brains sometimes do.

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As you said, you had a lifetime of experiencing something. It was not God. So I nor anyone else can give you that.
I say your lifetime experience was all in your head - imagined.

blü 2 said:

No, it's just a handy way of making the point. The way to refute it is to point to a Babylonian treatise at that time which describes aspects of modern cosmology: a spherical earth, heliocentry, the concept of satellites, planets, stars, galaxies. None of that is there, as any history of science will tell you (and as the bible by its own statement confirms).

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False

blü 2 said:

There you go again, trying to get rid of things you find inconvenient by waving your hands at them, argument from wishful thinking. The smoking gun this time is that you think it's to a website as such, meaning you didn't even look at it before you slagged it.

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No, I did look at it before, but I forgot it's rubbish you collected from a website, and piled up in your post.
I have a right to wave my hand at rubbish, don't I? Especially when you repeatedly keep pushing it my way, although I repeatedly point out to you, it is completely false.

blü 2 said:

Just to be clear: It's correct to say that you don't have a definition of a real God such that if we found a real candidate we could tell whether it was God or not, yes?

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No.

blü 2 said:

And if that's the case, it's correct to say that the only alternative to a real god is a wholly conceptual one, an entirely imaginary one, yes?

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No.

blü 2 said:

And an entirely imaginary god can do magic whereas entities with objective existence can't, yes?

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No.

blü 2 said:

How is that relevant? Factories ─ buildings purpose-built for making things ─ have existed for millennia before there were machines. We know of watermills in the 3rd century BCE and windmills powering a machine in the 1st century CE. The English word 'factory' in the building-for-making sense is earliest known 1618, well before the steam age.
It's yet another example of a biological entity that does something, in this case stitch amino acids together. All your cells, all your organs, are 'biological machines' ─ if that's how you want to think of them.
So you don't understand the theory, let alone the practice, of evolution?
Like evolution, they're examples of complexity produced without intention, so they're actually center stage in this conversation.
So you say the snowflake has its many forms because it's created by something analogous to a deliberately written computer program? You're joking, I take it?
What if no one cares? What if the paint factory has leaks so various streams of color flow together and continually product different colors and shades by accident? What if the first biochemical thing on earth had merely the quality of reproducing itself under very particular circumstances? What if no one cared whether it existed or not, reproduced or not, reproduced in any particular way or not? The thing itself wouldn't care or plan or desire. It'd just keep happening.

And evolution explains the rest. Evolution also doesn't care, doesn't have a plan, doesn't pursue any particular purpose or outcome. It consists simply of the observation that if you're genetically better at surviving long enough to breed, the odds favor your genes being present in the next generation in larger numbers than those of the genetically not so good at surviving long enough to breed.

Whereas magic doesn't explain anything, unless you can tell us exactly how magic is done.
You think there's something wrong with wanting to know as much about reality as we can? Why? What's the problem?

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So there are biological machines working in a biological factory?
Yet they had no designer?

ecco said:

You choose to use the word "almighty". OK. If there is only one almighty then how do you decide which he is? Is he Atlas or Olokun or Abenaki or Shiva or Allah or the Judeo/Christian god?

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you don't choose who He is

He chooses you

Dan From Smithville said:

Bottlenecks are near extinction events that result from a rapid environmental change that exceeds the ability of natural variation and fitness to address it. A meteor strike. Massive volcanism.

A new behavior could result in a rapid change in the environment and the species expressing the behavior could nearly exterminate another species as a result, forming a bottleneck. But behavior is not required for a bottleneck and is not likely to be a significant cause of one. Certainly, it is not a requirement and has not been observed in nature or shown experimentally to be so.

Speciation results from significant alterations of the genome and the regulation of genes within the genome so that a population becomes optimized and adapted to a new environment.

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Yes, this is our understanding of evolution. I believe our understanding is incorrect.

No doubt speciation can occur in this manner but the real question is what caused giraffes to arise or birds to fly. Such major changes apparently come from bottlenecks that select for behavior just like early humans created dogs from wolves or cats from dangerous hunters. Perhaps birds came from land loving animals which were all wiped out except those in trees and giraffes came from shrub loving animals which like a specific leaf from a tree. I've seen no evidence for slow moving "evolution". No experiment shows a slow change. We interpret "missing links" as fossils not yet found but the reality is they never existed at all.

Behavior is key to change in species, not fitness. Fitness only assures the health of a species and not the direction it changes, typically.

Dan From Smithville said:

The evidence indicates that humans have gone through a bottleneck as recently as 50,000 years ago without any change in species or any requirement of behavior.

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I've never heard of this and a quick wiki search yields nothing.

It's curious that your number coincides with my dating for the arrival of Homo Sapiens.

Can you point me toward research or confirmation? Perhaps, it wasn't mutation at all that created the first humans.

cladking said:

Behavior is key to change in species, not fitness. Fitness only assures the health of a species and not the direction it changes, typically.

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we humans are not healthy
not of body
or of mind