"It does seem unfair to hold psychology to a scientific standard ..."

Not when they present themselves as a scientific enterprise, supposedly based on the scientific method, and appealing to experiments, controlled studies, and statistical analysis for support.

Absolutely, jd-- We do indeed use narratives to understand the world, to explain, to make predictions, to ground decisions. Sometimes the explanations and predictions can in principle be checked--to be tested in experiments, for example. When this is so, we enter the realm where the scientific method is useful. When you make testable claims and refuse to gather data that sheds light on their validity, you are at best being irresponsible.
Bob M

Surely this development is occuring because the psychological foundation of human nature is now almost universalily accepted. For much of the last century, psychology had to pretend that it was a science grounded in method and objective truth because it was still waging a battle for respectability with other views of human behaviour, primarily religious. So it hid behind the truth vs. faith paradigm science always hides behind. As recently as two decades ago it was still very embarassing for many to admit to being in therapy.

Now almost everyone can recite self-help books and therapy is like an annual check-up--necessary to cope with the stress of modern life and keep the old self-esteem topped up. No need to pretend anymore, so let's drop the rigour and just have fun.

Orrin doesn't even accept copernicanism, so it would be extravagant to expect him to willingly dip a toe in the 16th century.

However, it is one thing to deny that darwinism uses the scientific method and another to show that it does not. You'd actually have to read some research reports.

It's just a pose. He has as much confidence in the scientific method as I do. In fact, he bets his life on it.

What does Darwin have to do with the scientific method?

Oh, the typical stuff. Observation, categorization, prediction.

So it fails all three.

Jeff:

What in the world did Darwin predict?

Peter:

Darwinism predicts lots of things. Here's a few at random:

1) intermediary fossils. Many subsequently discovered after prediction...possibly the classic being archaeopteryx
2) that you won't dig up a modern-day giraffe in the mesazoic era. Not impossible I suppose, but we haven't yet, anyway.
3) That human DNA and chimp DNA should closely resemble each other
4) 'biogeography' - Darwinism explains why the fauna in Europe and North America are so similar, and would predict that the longer a continent is isolated, the more diverse its wildlife from the rest of the world. For evidence, see Australia's wierd and wonderful fauna.
5) that embryos of related animals (of the same phyletic lineage) be more similar than the fully developed versions. They are. An early human embryo is very similar to embryos of all other mammals.

As to point 5. Why wouldn't an early human embryo have some similarities to the early embryo of other mammals? They are all mammals. I was under the impression that the early theory put out by some Darwinists regarding the stages of embryonic development had been pretty much discredited. The more intersting question would be why was the theory put forward to begin with? I believe that the embryonic recapitualtion of evolutionary development was put forward to bolster the point that man nothing but a stage of development along natures road to nowhere.

Tom

I assume you're thinking of Haeckel's Recapitulation Theory which was refuted a long time ago by Darwinism.

The blatant observable connections between 'phylogeny' (common descent evolution) and ontogeny (embryonic development) are only effectively explained by Darwinism.

If a species becomes another by a series of small modifications to its development programme, then modifications that affect early steps of this program will result in changes all along the development line, so they're less likely to succeed in terms of a fit phenotype.

So most changes that become successful will be ones that take effect at the later stages of the development programme, and the earlier steps will be retained.

That's why the backbone develops very early in the ontogeny of virtually everything: fish, fowl and beast.

Brit-

You're losing me. Why wouldn't the backbone develop early? Without the backbone, what is there to develop? Are you saying that all animals with backbones have...backbones?

I think you two are talking past each other and two different things have been confused. The Law of Homologies (still very good darwinism) and Ontogency Recapitulates Phylogeny.

Haeckel's hypothesis, which was very reasonable given the limited knowledge of embryology at the time, was well worth exploring. It turned out not to be correct in general (though useful in many cases anyway), and was rejected.

That's how science works.

At just about the same time, Acton proposed -- I suppose you could call it an hypothesis, although that term of art was not used for his subject -- that the doctrine of papal infallibility was a recent invention. He was ordered to shut up. (He did, too.)

That's how religion works.

Why would Haeckel "cook the books", so to speak, by creating evidence which was at odds with the actual observations? What's that about "religion" again?

Tom:

Give up--it's just a theological spat.

Tom

Haeckel overemphasised some of the similarities between human embryos and other animal embryos and so he was accused of being a fraud, which is understandable. His motives are unknown to me.

But in actual fact, the similarities between embryos across the board are amazing anyway.

The point about the backbone is that it develops first in the embryonic development programme of all animals, while the features that stand out as differences in the full-grown phenotypes, appear last. Like the human cerebrum.

This observation fits in beautifully with what darwinism would predict.

OJ

"Give up"? You mean like you did after a few introductory paragraphs of Mayr?

Brit-

I'm sure you could come up with an hypothesis as to Haeckel's motives. It looks fairly obvious to me. What could have been the assumptions he operated under? As far as backbones are concerned, your position appears to state the obvious and would seem to signify very little.

The physical similarities extant among animals is, again, obvious. The only question I can muster is, 'so what?'

OJ:

Darwin, as a result of his theory, made a radical prediction that turned out to be true.

It is pretty darn basic, so I would think you know what it is.

Hint: It changed the Bible.

Cue Jeopardy theme.

That credulous dupes would make him the new Messiah?

Tom

So what? Well, what do you think?

I think it's pretty interesting that features that occur earlier than others in evolution, also appear earlier in embryonic development.

Darwin thought whales evolved from land mammals. A complete fossil record later proved him right.

Full-grown whales don't have legs or hair, but during the early stages of whale embryonic development, both leg extremities and hair appear, and then recede.

Similar things happen across the animal kingdom.

Only Darwinism can coherently explain this.

Tom, on what grounds do you say Haeckel cooked the books?

He presented any hypothesis, which turned out to be right in many respects but not as generally applicable as he thought it would be.

Upon investigation, his general hypothesis was rejected.

That's called learning. Something Christians have always been against. If it was up to the Church, you'd still be calculating trajectories based on how the displaced air molecules from the front run around to the back to push the projectile forward.

Tom:

Mustn't criticize Haeckel, one of the Darwinists who underpins Nazi theory:

http://www.media-culture.org.au/0106/germ.html

And Jesus underpinned Jim Jones.

Absolutely. You get Hitler, we get Jim Jones.

OJ:

Enough of the Jeopardy Theme.

Darwin said the Devonshire Downs (I think) had to be many millions of years old. Far older than the commonly accepted age.

How commonly accepted?

Most, if not all, Bibles since the early 1800s had Bishop Usher's chronology printed as marginalia.

It took awhile, but by the 1920s, Bibles no longer featured Usher's chronology.

Lord Kelvin (?) took issue with this heretical prediction, and used thermodynamics to prove the earth couldn't be that old, for if it was, it would be a stone-cold cinder.

Darwinism predicted Lord Kelvin was wrong--there had to be something going on Kelvin didn't know about. Darwinism was right

Darwin (not knowing of Mendel) also predicted particulate inheritance, instead of the commonly accepted notion of blended inheritance.

So, other than making successful predictions, what does Darwinism have to do before you acknowledge Darwinism makes successful predictions?

Harry:

Don't forget, Jesus underpinned Torquemada, too.

Tom C:

Doesn't this just all overwhelm you? Aren't you smitten with the impulse to fall on your knees in awe?

Of course, as Darwinism also explains why my Ford has fuel injection and why I spell honour with a "u", the hairy embryonic whale may not be quite as earth-shattering as our esteemed colleagues think.

Jeff:

Those are truisms, not predictions.

Heh heh.

"Those are truisms, not predictions"

Congratulations OJ, you've successfully reduced the level of debate to the equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and going "lalalalalalala..."

Brit/Jeff:

Don't be so smug. Those are not predictions in the sense of predicitng what will happen,. They are predicitons only in the sense of predicitng what others will or may discover exists or has existed in the past. It is not the same thing.

Peter

Yes, that's what Jeff meant by 'prediction.'

Brit;

Fine, but that is not what is meant by prediction within the scientific method, is it? It's fun to make up our own definitions, but it makes dialogue tough.

Everything that is discovered that appears to be consistent with evolution is deemed to be proven by evolution. Those things that are not consistent are still proven, because the theory contains this neat little concept called stasis, which is shorthand for "Nothing is evolving". Surely the objection that evolutionists are cooking or books or having it all ways is a serious one?

Peter:

My use of the term "prediction," and the examples supporting it, were entirely correct within the context of the scientific method. Lord Kelvin's use of thermodynamics to calculate the maximum age for the earth was a prediction, even though the earth's beginning happened in the past.

It is a prediction because it uses a specific method to arrive at an otherwise unknown answer. When the phenomena in question happened, whether present or future, makes no difference.

Darwin's assertion that the actual answer to the question "How old is the earth?" was a number orders of magnitude greater than anyone was a classic case of successful scientific prediction, never mind that its knock on effects radiated outside biology to physics.

As for cooking the books. There are two problems to be overcome. Time, and oversimplified analysis.

My favorite parallel is plate tectonics. The theory is that giant land masses have wandered all over the globe. But that can't be true, because none of them have moved during human history, right? I doubt you would agree with that. But if you don't, then you shouldn't apply that same line of reasoning to another phenomena that operates on geologic time scales.

The other problem is oversimplified analysis. That life in general changes over time does not mean that all life changes at the same rate, or that the rate is uniform over time.

Peter:

Even worse, they were predictions about what was already known.

Jeff:

Check a seismograph--the plates moved while you were saying that.

Now find us a Darwinograph...

Jeff:

pre·dic·tion [ prə díkshən ] (plural pre·dic·tions)

noun

1. statement about future: a statement of what someone thinks will happen in the future

2. act of predicting: the making of a statement or forming of an opinion about what will happen in the future

We've already explicitly stated that Darwinism does not tell you how things will evolve in the future - it just observes what happens and seeks to explain it.

Come on chaps, this ain't difficult to grasp. There's too much "lalalala"-ing going on here.

Darwin used his theory to make speculations about things for which there was at the time no evidence. The independant discovery of evidence later proved him right. We're using the term ' scientific prediction' to describe this phenomenon. If the semantics bother you, let's spell it out in in full: "predictions that future discoveries might support the theory".

Blah blah blah.

OJ:

A seismograph tells you something just moved. It takes a theory to show that continents were once joined together.

You want a "Darwin-o-graph"? Check out a fossil record. Examine some DNA.

You want to see experiments to demonstrate natural selection? Here's some.

Brit:

They all stay bacterias,. enzymes, etc. When one evolves let us know.

The continents keep moving. Evolution has stopped.

What - you mean when one of the bacteria passes its driving test, let you know?

And what makes you think evolution has stopped? The fact that you haven't observed any new species this week?

Your blanket refusal to acknowledge any evidence is counter-productive, because it shows that you are hostile to darwinism for the sake of being hostile to darwinism, rather than having reasoned objections to the details.

No, when a bacteria becomes other than a bacteria. Darwin's great insight was that the animal breeding that farmers explained to him could occur naturally in Nature. No one questions that. But the idea that genuine speciation occurs naturally is a faith.

Brit:

Down, boy! We understand that full well. The objection is that Darwin's theories are, by necessity, constantly being modified to accommodate whatever is discovered. That's fine, but when you all then jump up and down screaming "See! Darwin was right all along, you religious ninnies." you look foolish. Jeff is certain he can use evolution to explain this year's car models. He isn't proving or predicitng anything anymore than I would be if I used a Freudian analysis to show how historically car models reflect our collective sexual frustrations. Accept the opening premise and everything falls into place after the fact. Brit, that isn't science, especially when you consider how dismissive you are of things that don't fit, such as the failure of man's brain to evolve despite an astounding history of change and development. That's a whopper, no?

But I suppose part of the objection is aesthetic in some way. You think the "proofs" in your link are pretty impressive. I think they are hilarious. After 150 years, this is it? The whole history of life is contained therein?

Peter:

C'mon, at least they dropped the spotted moths...

Orrin:

Yeah, but where was the finch's beak? I thought the hopes and dreams of generations of darwinists hung on that one. And Harry's fruit flies?

Chaps:

All together now...to the Rod Steward theme..."we are flailing, we are flailing..."

If you want to see what happens to something in 10,000 generations, you have to use something which has a pretty short generational lifespan. I think they tried using dogs, but after a few thousand years they got bored of it.

Finding new evidence to support a theory is usually considered good for the theory, not a reason to disbelieve it.

Darwinism is by nature an adaptable theory - that is, sub-theories within it can be modified and rejected according to tests and the discovery of new evidence. For example, the sub-theory that the gene itself is the direct object of selection has been rejected.

It is also falsifiable. If some proof emerges that the earth is only 6,000 years old, or if we dig up a modern-day human in the mesazoic, we can chuck it out.

This is why it is a science, as opposed to religious 'revelation'. Revelation is not adaptable. And most religious explanantions are not falsifiable.

Finally, let's get this car thing that amuses you so much out of the way. First, Darwinism as the study of biological evolution doesn't care, or have anything to say, about the fuel-injective capabilities of your car.

It's an analogy to show how evolution happens.

So the tectonic plates move constantly but species don't--that's all we were looking for.

I like the analogy to the development of language. Now I understand why Marx was so confused regarding his insights into the immutable laws of historical development.

Tom:

Yes, the analogy--Darwinism is a system in which Nature functions without any intelligent intervention or need for intelligence at all, is just like the language of intelligent beings--is very nearly sublime in its foolishness.

OJ:

"Sublime in his foolishness". Beautiful. I think that could almost be your epitaph.

Either that or:

"Orrin Judd. Category Error."

Brit:

"Finding new evidence to support a theory is usually considered good for the theory, not a reason to disbelieve it."

Of course, it makes the theory accurate up to and including proving what the evidence shows it to prove AND NO MORE. It's when you start saying "Well, look at all this exciting evidence with icky little things. That proves it applies to man, at least when the lazy sod isn't loafing in a stasis." that we blow the whistle. But, no matter, we're all friends here and we do understand faith.

Brit:

Back to your post above about the future. If Darwinism has nothing to say about the future, why do you guys fight so hard to use a word that leaves the impression it does? You know, another analogy to Freudianism and Marxism is that you guys invent your own inscrutable language which sort of sounds like it ressembles everyday meanings, but actually does not.

Those icky things demonstrate the principles of natural selection in action. The evidence for the evolution of man is separate: it can be found in fossils and chromosomes.

One might call what you do 'blowing the whistle.' Or one might, if one less charitable, call it 'making a series of fundamental category errors.'

Re: inscrutable language. Enter jargon on wikipedia for excellent layman-friendly definitons.

Darwinism is like a loose tooth for you and OJ. You can't stop playing with it, can you?

Brit:

It's Darwin we're playing with, but Darwinists.

Brit-

Science spends it's most productive time searching for evidence to DISPROVE a theory. They structure of Darwin's and the temper of his acolytes makes it uniquely difficult to disprove. If you spent all of your time looking to PROVE (rather than falsify) the existence of, say, Bigfoot, you could convince quite a few people of his existence and, BTW, sell some books and movies along the way.

Tom:

There is an awful lot of vested interest in trying to disprove Darwinism. I bet a few people here would chuck in a few quid if they thought it would help.

Some people devote their lives to that very quest. Unfortunately the best evidence they've come up with so far is chapter one of the Bible.

And Darwinism is very easy to disprove. It is a 'vulnerable' theory. Just dig up a 'recently-evolved' animal in the mesazoic.

Peter:

Einstein's theory of relativity stated that the speed of light is constant, and is independent of the velocity of the object from which it emanated.

If that wasn't a prediction, what would you call it?

In any event, my use of the word doesn't contradict its meaning. Darwin, in suggesting the earth was far older than assumed, was predicting that in the future, any additional evidence brought to bear on the problem would substantiate his position, and contradict the others.

BTW--I have never said evolution can explain this years car models. I have said evolutionary processes explain how car models change over time, not specifically what they will be. Evolutionary processes explain how language changes over time, not what your vocabulary will be.

In particular, evolution as applied to language shows how misconceived the notion is of the first human being. Who was the first English speaker?

OJ:

The plates haven't moved in all of human history. There have been lots of earthquakes in California since, say, 1900. Compare a map of 1900 with a map of today. Any change?

Over the same time frame you assert evolution has been static, so have continents. You can't use that line of reasoning to reject one explanation, while ignoring with respect to another working over the same time spans.

Check that. You can. But you do sound silly doing it.

Your assertion that the predictions I cited were already known is, words fail me here, moronic. Bishop Usher's chronology was the accepted answer to the age of the earth. Lord Kelvin's calculations scarcely changed it. Those things were what was known. They were both stupendously wrong.

Oh, and one other thing. Evolution doesn't explain language. It explains language change. The former requires intelligence, the latter does not. Evolution does not explain life, it explains life's change. The former might require intelligence, the latter does not.

One would think that, by now, you would stop making this category mistake.

Brit:

"Unfortunately the best evidence they've come up with so far is chapter one of the Bible."

Why unfortunately?

Tom's point is very well taken. If you read Mayr on humans, it is all conjecture of varying plausibilities, but he still declares evolution to be a proven fact only the ill-informed would dispute. You really are the authors of your own challenges because you (pl) simply can't restrain yourselves from pushing the notion that the theory explains everything.

Peter

If there is any such thing as a fact, evolution is a fact.

Darwinism is still being debated. But not by biologists.

Jeff:

"I have said evolutionary processes explain how car models change over time, not specifically what they will be."

I await eagerly Brit's comment on that.

"Evolution doesn't explain language. It explains language change."

And just what exactly does that mean?

Jeff:

Yes, the change is measurable. Ever seen the San Andreas fault?

http://pubs.usgs.gov/publications/text/San_Andreas.html

Likewise you can measure continental drift:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/wonderquest/2001-05-16-expanding-atlantic.htm

brit:

But natural selection is.

Peter, that was ill-advised of you to bring up whales.

A humpback whale was harpooned that had 10-foot-long hind legs. It might be hard to explain that as a result of mere breeding within one species.

Steven Weinberg, in discussions of physics, makes the point that good theories introduce rigidity. That does not mean, as it might seem naively, that the theories are inflexible but that they limit the range of possible outcomes. In physics, it means that when symmetry is broken, it can break only in certain ways.

Darwin's theory was extremely rigid on inheritance, and Brit slightly misspoke what Darwin thought.

Darwin's theory appeared to require particulate inheritance, and Darwin postulated "gemmules" as the mechanism for that. But he could never find gemmules, or any equivalent, and to the end of his life he was puzzled that, because of lack of a mechanism, there seemed no way of denying that inheritance was blending.

The comparison with Thomson and the age of the Earth is exact.

As we now know, inheritance is particulate. Darwin's theory said it had to be. A spectacular prediction and one that trashes Orrin's belief that it is all just blending.

If the ICR can provide just one example of blending inheritance, Darwinism must fail.

OJ:

Man, you walked right into that one.

I lived next to the San Andreas fault. I have lived through a big freaking earthquake, and thousands of smaller ones.

But you hoist yourself on your own petard. Earthquakes and sudden road-bed shifts along the San Andreas fault are not meaningful examples of continental drift.

If an evolutionist points to changes of the same scale as earthquakes, you pooh-pooh them as not being meaningful examples of speciation.

Test question:

a) Small changes are evidence of far bigger changes over far longer periods of time
b) Small changes are not evidence of far bigger changes over far longer periods of time.
c) a & b above.

Peter:

"Evolution doesn't explain language. It explains language change."

Evolutionary theory does not explain the existence of life--that is, how it came to be. But it does explain the process of the delta between the state of life at time t, and time t+delta t. All those fancy deltas refer to change--change in state over a change in time.

As for language. Evoltionary theory does not explain how language came to be, but once in existence, it explains the change process over time.

It is notable that all systems with certain characteristics will change over time without external direction, or a plan, in precisely the same way life has.

BTW--has anyone identified the first English speaker? Or even when English was first spoken?

Just wondering.

Harry-

I have heard the story many times about the harpooned whale with hind legs but as of now have never been able to confirm the story. Are you spreading legends here or is there some scientific proof of said whale's existence?

Jeff

Sure, he was a lonely fellow, that guy who invented English. He got it all worked out, but nobody could understand a bloody word he was saying. Especially his poor parents.

Or was it a big conference? All the people of England got together at Stonehenge, and one of them stood up and said: "From now on, we're all going to talk like this. All those in favour say 'Oui'. I mean, Yes!"

Brit-

How about the ministry of silly walks? Where did that start?

Jeff:

Never mind meaningful, it's evidence of any. That's more than Darwinism can produce.

Well, Tom, Peter used whales. It would have been easier if he'd used chickens, because the whale was a unique event and not saved.

Whereas the lab experiment that has chicks grow teeth has been done numerous times.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands of such examples. Orrin keeps repeating there is no evidence, but only because he cannot allow himself to view it.

If he really believed his antidarwinism, he would confront the evidence and demolish it.

Harry has given several clear examples of speciation the biological kin of earthquakes.

Your reply was that those examples were not "meaningful speciation."

I guess you answer c).

Jeff:

No I believe that amoeba change into other amoeba and some fruit flies have more hair than others. That just isn't speciation. Nor is the mere inability to breed specuiation, though Darwinists have had to settle for it or they'd have nothing to fall back on. It is though exactly the kind of variation that farmers told Darwin about and which we all consider to be entirely valid. Speciation isn't out of the question, it's just not proved by what we've come up with so far.

As for plate tectonics, I doubt that there was ever just one land mass and that it broke into all of the continents--it seems like land would logically have arisen in more than one place--though it's not teribly important one way or the other. But I don't doubt that the seismic activity we measure means that stuff is shifting around and, therefore, it's entirely possible that there was once a single mass.

Once something evolves into a new species there'll be at least a possibbility that everything similarly evolved from one life form.

OJ

For Darwinists speciation is a matter of graduation, as explained on the other thread.

What particular reason do you have for denying this?

That you're denying there's ever a graduation.

OJ:

Then you are left with the position of completely throwing out all the evidence time has accumulated for us.

The evolution of the whale, for just one of many examples is so clearly preserved as to amount to a path as delineated as any you could hope to see.

Darwinism explains how those changes happened without contradiction.

Within the scientific method, theories get chucked overboard in the face of contradictory evidence, or another, more complete theory that better explains the evidence.

It is that whole little-t Big-T truth thing.

What is your replacement for Darwinism?

Harry-

The whale story is apparently false.It looks like the 10' hind legs were never observed. If supporters of Darwin's theory continue to use such silly evidence as support it becomes more of a cult than a truly scientific approach to discerning the truth about nature. It may be completely accurate, but as to speciation it proves nothing.

The land mammal to whale fossil record is one of the most complete we have, along with the evolution from the eohippus to the modern horse (equus).

Brit-

Do you honestly believe that the fossil record absolutely proves the lineage rather than suggests a possible linkage? It doesn't prove, in a strictly scientific sense, anything. Imagination and art are the key components of an unquestioning belief in macro-evolution. If one is an orthodox materialist it simply must be true and every fact is spun in suport of the a priori assumption. Personally, I don't know if the origin of life has a purely materialist explanation nor does anyone.

I should have said "origin of species".

Jeff:

I have no replacement. I have no replacement for astrology either. Nor witchcraft. It's not the duty of those who note errors in a theory to propose correct answers.

Let's get back to those chickens.

That was a prediction of darwinism, and one that would be impossible to have wrung out of any creationist theory. And it proved correct.

So, why do chicken genomes include the DNA to make teeth?

I want a specific answer. No handwaving.

Because chickens used to have teeth.

You're flailing. When did they have teeth? Were they chickens when they had them? What would it mean to say 'that animal is a chicken although unlike chickens, it has teeth?'

It has taken a while, but the inexorable evidence of darwinism has confined you into a narrow, absurdist position. It's a form of evolution.

Yes, chickens had teeth--in fact, as you point out, still have them. Life was tougher. They were still chickens though. Who cares about teeth?

C'mon Harry, How long have chickens been domesticated and subject to breeding by human beings? Chickens with teeth probably hurt each other and cost their owners money. Teeth needed to be bred away. Should be pretty simple for an old farm boy to grasp.

Tom:

How long have birds not had teeth?

Well, about as long as birds have been flying. Why? Because the reason for teeth is to bite and/or chew, which entails substantial mechanical loads. To carry those loads, heavy teeth, jaws, muscles, and attachment points, and the vascular network to support them all are required.

That equals weight, all of it in front the center of gravity. In order for a bird to be stable, the centers of lift and gravity have to be fairly close together, with the CG in front of the CL. Putting a heavy head at the very front of the airframe tosses balance completely out the window. In other words, a bird can fly, or it can have teeth. But it can't do both.

Flight conveyed better survival prospects for proto-birds than teeth. Teeth lost. Long before farmers had a chance to decide whether they needed breeding away.