yeah seriously why does no one differentiate between theory and hypothesis. gravity is a theory for fuck sake.
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Mike Huckabee and Evolution
- Thread starter Surgo
- Start date
yeah seriously why does no one differentiate between theory and hypothesis. gravity is a theory for fuck sake.
what obi just said is what i have been saying the whole fucking time. that is what evolution is. just because a something is a disease does not mean it is not an evolutionary breakthrough. before you laugh at my fucking comments, take a look at yours. look at obi's post. it explains what ive been trying to tell you the whole time. youve just been too busy laughing at me to understand.
i understand what youre saying when you use malaria as your example, but ive brought up evidence about sickle cell anemia and how it has come about as a way to resist malaria. i didnt say malaria is now held in check like other diseases. stop putting words in my mouth.
as obi has said, the allele for sickle cell exhibit incomplete dominance. meaning that depending on whether you are RR, Rr, rr, (r representing the allele) you can still be immune from malaria by just being a carrier of the sickle cell gene.
the way that the red blood cell sickles is evidence of natural selection. just because an adaptation may be detrimental, does not mean that it is not an adaptation.
ive tried to keep the discuss with you polite, however you continue to laugh at my points instead of giving me reasonable evidence to disprove what i have been saying.
i understand what youre saying when you use malaria as your example, but ive brought up evidence about sickle cell anemia and how it has come about as a way to resist malaria. i didnt say malaria is now held in check like other diseases. stop putting words in my mouth.
as obi has said, the allele for sickle cell exhibit incomplete dominance. meaning that depending on whether you are RR, Rr, rr, (r representing the allele) you can still be immune from malaria by just being a carrier of the sickle cell gene.
the way that the red blood cell sickles is evidence of natural selection. just because an adaptation may be detrimental, does not mean that it is not an adaptation.
ive tried to keep the discuss with you polite, however you continue to laugh at my points instead of giving me reasonable evidence to disprove what i have been saying.
I don't know how anyone can deny evolution when it is right in front of you. Bacteria are a prime example, since they evolve and become resistant to antibiotics.
Plus to me, evolution sounds a lot more reasonable then "God snapped his fingers and everything was suddenly there all at the same exact time"
Plus to me, evolution sounds a lot more reasonable then "God snapped his fingers and everything was suddenly there all at the same exact time"
LoL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe3v4JDD_gA
It doesn't have to do with Huckabee and evolution, just who Huckabees spokesmen really think should win.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe3v4JDD_gA
It doesn't have to do with Huckabee and evolution, just who Huckabees spokesmen really think should win.
Attn: Creationists
Even if you guys did manage to find an actual hole in the theory of evolution, hell, even if you disproved the damn thing - you still haven't made any sort of case for why alternatives like ID should be taught in schools, which is what this debate was sort of originally about.
It is not a logical leap to go from "evolution is wrong" to "invisible sky wizards did it".
ID is not a legitimate alternative, because there is no serious evidence for it. The Watchmaker fallacy, irreducible complexity, they've all been torn apart by real actual scientists who know what they are talking about.
To Dan: wait a minute, what? You think evolution needs to have an explanation for the human soul? You think the fact that a practically irrefutable theory doesn't account for a hypothesis with absolutely no evidence to back it up means that the theory is flawed? Hahaha, cripes
Even if you guys did manage to find an actual hole in the theory of evolution, hell, even if you disproved the damn thing - you still haven't made any sort of case for why alternatives like ID should be taught in schools, which is what this debate was sort of originally about.
It is not a logical leap to go from "evolution is wrong" to "invisible sky wizards did it".
ID is not a legitimate alternative, because there is no serious evidence for it. The Watchmaker fallacy, irreducible complexity, they've all been torn apart by real actual scientists who know what they are talking about.
To Dan: wait a minute, what? You think evolution needs to have an explanation for the human soul? You think the fact that a practically irrefutable theory doesn't account for a hypothesis with absolutely no evidence to back it up means that the theory is flawed? Hahaha, cripes
Kumar have you ever seen that video of all the little kids in some school in Iowa praying with a card board cut out of Bush in the morning before school starts?
MAD creepy.
That kid that happens to be your arvitar looks like he just got face fucked with a 36" long christianity sandwich.
MAD creepy.
That kid that happens to be your arvitar looks like he just got face fucked with a 36" long christianity sandwich.
Since becoming an entirely different species means that you cannot, by definition, produce fertile offspring with members of other species, mutating to become an entirely different species doesn't constitute an advantage; you're at a disadvantage because you have no others that you can produce fertile offspring with, unless they developed the exact same mutations. Obviously, those who didn't mutate to the same species will outnumber those who did by an astronomical amount. Therefore, according to natural selection, those who mutate to become members of an entirely different species will be elliminated because their mutation is disadvantageous.
That is why I believe natural selection (anyone who doesn't is a complete dolt) and not macroevolution.
Except that most evolution occurs when populations split or become isolated, where the path of evolution diverts due to different environmental pressures. Look at placental and marsupial mammals for an example of this, with the latter occurring only on one isolated continent in the world.
If a population doesn't split, the original phenotype and genotype of the animal will eventually be replaced by the new one and the whole population will evolve at a simultaneous rate. They do not suddenly become unable to breed with eachother as you're suggesting, look at the different kinds of dogs that are still able to interbreed.
See Ring Species.
If you mutate, it is in the interest of your neighbors to mutate with you. Further, your neighbors can serve as a "bridge" for your genes to their neighbors.
This particular fact breaks your argument: The Herring Gull can mate with the American Herring Gull. The American Herring Gull can mate with the Vega Herring Gull. The Vega Herring Gull can mate with the (etc. etc. etc.) Finally, the Siberian Lesser black-backed Gull can mate with the Lesser Black-Backed Gull.
However, the Black-Backed Gull cannot mate with the Herring Gull. Meaning the Black-Bakced Gull is a different species than the Herring Gull. But the Herring Gull is the same species as the American Herring Gull, which is the same species as the Vega Herring Gull, which is the same species (etc. etc. etc.) as the Lesser Black-Backed Gull.
Clearly, you can mutate into a different species and carry the advantages of your new species (stronger genetics, or better beaks or whatever) while STILL having access to indirectly spreading your genes with individuals no longer of your species through this continum of species. In this case, this ring is geographical. Every species/subspecies (it isn't really defined here...) can mate with their geographical neighbor, with exception of the Herring Gull and Lesser Black-Backed Gull.
Ring Species clearly show that the difference between species is not black-and-white, but instead is a gradient of grays. You don't become a different species instantly: it takes time, and sometimes it never really happens as in the case of these Ring Species.
Are you sure they told the whole story?
http://www.reviewevolution.com/press/pressRelease_100Scientists.php
I"m a junior in college for mechanical engineering and an honors student. It doesn't relate to biology or anything, the only bio I've had is in high school. All I can use my major for in this context is to scientifically analyze what both sides are saying.
But wait, how can you say all this Dan? You've only had 1 class and it was in high school and that was a long time ago. Well, what I did was do some research outside of class about the subject. I started to read Darwin's black box to see if there was anything to this ID thing. I got about 2 chapters into that and stopped because it assumed a level of technical proficiency that I don't have. Instead I read the book 'The case for a Creator' it appealed to me because the deal with that book is a journalist goes around the country inteviewing experts in various fields and dicussing Darwinism and ID.
After I got done reading it I talked a few of my friends into reading it, some believed evolution and some didn't. After they finished it we all got together and talked about it. They said the book was legit and they had talked to a few of their professors about it and the professors couldn't refute most of the stuff in the book adequatly.
In short, I've actually researched my claims. I'm not coming in here saying random stuff. There are several scientists who are skeptical about Darwinian evolution and they arn't the crazy religious fanatics they are protrayed as. Some of them have quite impressive creditals.
http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/
Not going to finish the other post. What I have written is too long for 1 post I fear, I'm going to give each topic its own post. That will make it easier to navigate. I'm sorry in advance for spelling errors, I ran it through spell check but that didn't catch everything. Also, apparantly it won't let me break it up into paragraphs. I'll go back in later and try to fix that.
Nearly everything in the next 3 posts is a direct quote from the book. Everytime it says someone said somthing it is cited in the book, I just didn't do it here. If needed I can provide citations. Sorry this took me so long, life got really hectic and I didn't have time to re-read the book until yesterday.
Instead of finishing the post were I reserved space for later, I'm going to do it here becasue it might be too long for a single post.
In the following posts almost all of it is dialouge from Lee Strobel's 'The Case for a Creator'. I have selected the parts that I think best explain what I outlined earlier. In the book the author travel around the country interviewing various scientists, experts in thier fields to see if there is anthing to thier claims. He sees if he can use the most commonly used objections to tear down the stuff they are presenting him with. I have done my best to remove all material relating to religion and the promotion of ID in an attempt to only present the science.
First is irreducible complexity. The person interviewed was Michael Behe, he is a biochemist and I believe is the guy who came up with irreducible complexity. (if people want I can provide more credintals, I'm not concentrating on that at the time though.)
All of the following is directly taken from the book
Irreducible complexity
"We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity; but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations."
-Biochemist Franklin M. Harold
"Most scientists speculated that the deeper they delved into the cell, the more simplicity they would find. But the opposite happened." "Now that we've probed to the bottom of life, so to speak-we're at the level of molecules-and there's complexity all the way down. We've learned the cell is horrendously complicated, and that it's actually run by micro machines of the right shape, there right strength, and the right interactions. The existence of these machines challenges a test that Darwin himself provided."
"A test? I asked."
"Darwin said in his Origin of Species, 'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.'"
Definition:
"You see, a system or device is irreducibly complex if it has a number of different components that all work together to accomplish the task of the system, and if you were to remove one of the components, the system would no longer function. An irreducibly complex system is highly unlikely to be built piece-by-piece through Darwinian processes, because the system has to be fully present in order for it to function."
Mouse Trap example
"But a mousetrap has turned into a great example."
He stood and walked over to a filing cabinet, removing a run-of-the-mill mousetrap and putting it down on the desk next to me. " You can see the interdependence of the parts for yourself," he said, pointing to each component as he described them. "First, there's a flat wooden platform to which the other parts are attached. Second, there's a metal hammer, which does the job of crushing the mouse. Third, there's a spring with extended ends to press against the platform and the hammer when the trap is charged. Fourth, there's a catch that releases when a mouse applies a slight bit of pressure. And, fifth, there's a metal bar that connects to the catch and holds the hammer back when the trap is charged."
"Now, if you take away any of these parts-the spring or the holding bar or whatever-then it's not like the mousetrap becomes half as efficient as it used to be or it only catches half as many mice. Instead, it doesn't catch any mice. It's broken. It doesn't work at all."
He pointed down at the trap again. "And notice that you don't just need to have these five parts, but they also have to be matched to each other and have the right spatial relationship to each other. See-the parts are stapled in the right place. An intelligent agent does that for a mousetrap. But in the call, who tells the parts where they should go? Who staples them together? Nobody-they have to do it on their own. You have to have the information resident in the system to tell the components to get together in the right orientation, otherwise it's useless."
Behe sat back down. "So the mousetrap does a good job of illustrating how irreducibly complex biological systems defy a Darwinian explanation," he continued. "Evolution can't produce an irreducibly complex biological machine suddenly, all at once, because it's much too complicated. The odds against that would be prohibitive. And you can't produce it directly by numerous, successive, slight modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor system would be missing a part and consequently couldn't function. There would be no reason for it to exist. And natural selection chooses systems that are already working"
He also gave examples of specific irreducibly complex parts of a cell, but what I have above, at least for me, is sufficient to get his point across
This makes sense to me, as an engineer. If you have any system and you take away a part it doesn't work anymore. It doesn't work worse, it doesn't work. If evolution is true then there would have to have existed a version of the system were a part was missing, it wouldn't have functioned as it was supposed to. Natural selection would have picked another system in place of that one.
The Cambrian explosion:
The expert interviewd for this was Johnathan Wells -earned a doctorate in molecular and cell biology from Universtiy of California Berkley
The following is in response to a question about Darwin's tree of life diagram, which shows all life beginning with one animal and branching out to all the others
"A key aspect of his theory was that natural selection would act in his own words, 'slowly by accumulating slight , successive, favorable variations' and that 'no great or sudden modifications' were possible.
I didn't want to miss the significance of what Wells was claiming. "You're saying that the tree of life illustrates Darwin’s ideas but hat his theory is not supported by the physical evidence scientists have found in fossils?'
"That's right," he continued. "In fact, Darwin knew the fossil record failed to support his tree. He acknowledged that major groups of animals-he calls them division, now they're called phyla-appear suddenly in the fossil record. That's not what his theory predicts.
"His theory predicts a long history of gradual divergence from a common ancestor, with the differences slowly becoming bigger and bigger until you get the major differences we have now. The fossil evidence, even in his day, showed the opposite: the rapid appearance of phylum-level differences in what's called the 'Cambrian explosion.'
"Darwin believed future fossil discoveries would vindicate his theory-but that hasn't happened. Actually, fossil discoveries over the last hundred and fifty years have turned his tree upside down by showing the Cambrian explosion was even more abrupt and extensive than scientists once thought."
"Elaborate on the Cambrian explosion" I said.
"The Cambrian was a geological period that we think began a little more than 540 million years ago. The Cambrian explosion has been called the 'biological big bang' because it gave rise to the sudden appearance of most of the major animal phyla that are still alive today, as well as some that are now extinct," Wells said "Here's what the record shows: there were some jellyfish, sponges, and worms prior to the Cambrian, although there's no evidence to support Darwin’s' theory of a long history of gradual divergence.'
"Then at the beginning of the Cambrian-boom-all of a sudden, we see representatives of the arthropods, modern representatives of which are insects, crabs, and the like; echinoderms, which include modern starfish and sea urchins; chordates, which include modern vertebrate; and so forth. Mammals came later, but the chordates-the major group to which they belong-were right there at he beginning of the Cambrian."
"This is absolutely contrary to Darwin's tree of life. These animals , which are so fundamentally differe3nt in their body plans, appear fully developed, all of a sudden, in what paleontologists have called the single most spectacular phenomenon of the fossil record."
Spectacular, indeed. It was staggering! But I as having trouble thinking in vast geological terms. ' How suddenly did these animals com onto the scene' I asked Wells.
He replied "Imagine yourself on one goal line of a football field. That line is represents the first fossil, a microscopic, single-celled organism. Now start marching down the filed. You pass the 20, 40, and midfield, and you're approaching the other goal line. All you've seen this entire time are microscopic, single celled organisms. You come to the sixteen yard line of on the far side of the field, and now you see some jellyfish and sponges and worms. Then-boom!-in the space of a single stride all these other forms of animals suddenly appear. As one evolutionary scientist said, 'the major animal groups appear in the fossil record as Athena did from the head of Zeus-full blown and ready to go.'"
"Now, nobody can call that a branching tree! Some paleontologists even though they may think Darwin's overall theory is correct, call it a lawn rather than a tree, because you have these separate blades of grass springing up." "One paleontologist in China says it actually stands Darwin’s tree on its head, because the major groups of animals-instead of coming last, at the top of the tree-come first, when animals make their first appearance."
Origin of the soul and consciousness
The expert interviewed was J.P. Moreland-earned a doctorate in philosophy from the University of California
"We don't have an adequate theory of how the brain causes conscious states, and we don't have an adequate theory of how consciousness fits into the universe"
-John Searle, Professor of the mind at the university of California Berkley, physicalist, evolutionist
How do we know that the soul even exits?
"What makes you think that the soul is real? I asked
0Moreland replied by saying" First, we’re aware that we're different from our consciousness and our body. We know we're beings who have consciousness and a body, but we're not merely the same thing as our conscious life or our physical life.
"Let me give you an illustration of he we're not the same thing as our personality traits, our memories, and our consciousness. I had a student a few years ago whose sister had an accident on her honeymoon. She was knocked unconscious and lost all of her memories and a good bit of her personality. She did not believe she had been married. As she began to recover, they showed her videos of the wedding to convince her that she had actually married her husband. She eventually got to the point where she believed it, and she got remarried to him."
"Now, we all know this was the same person all along. This was Jamie's sister. She was not a different person, though she was behaving differently. But she had totally different memories. She had lost her old memories and she didn't even have the same personality. What that proves is you can be the same person even if you lose old memories and gain new memories, or you lose some of your old personality traits and gain news personality traits."
"Now, if I were just my consciousness, when my consciousness was different, I'd be a different person. But we know that I can be the same person even though consciousness changes, so I can't be the same thing as my consciousness. I've got to be the 'self' or soul, that contains my consciousness."
"Same with my body. I can't be the same thing as my body or brain. There was a story y on television about an epileptic who underwent an operation in which surgeons removed 53% of her brain. When she woke up, nobody said 'We have 47% of person here.' A person can't be divided into pieces. You are either a person or you're not. But your brain and your body can be divided. So that means I can't be the same thing as my body.
Can evolution show where the soul comes from?
"If you apply a physical process to physical matter, you're going to get a different arrangement of physical materials. For example, if you apply the physical process of heating to a bowl of water, you’re going to get a new product-steam-which is just a more complicated form of water, but it's still physical. And if the history of the universe is just a story of physical processes being applied to physical materials, you'd end up with increasingly complicated arrangements of physical materials, but you're not going to get something that is completely non physical. That is a jump of a totally different kind."
"If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of the atoms in my brain, I have not reason to believe my beliefs are true and hence no reason for supposing my brain is composed of atoms."
-J.B.S. Haldane, British evolutionist
There was more stuff I wanted to put for this topic, but I was tired of typing and was worried about length.
In conclusion, no matter which side of the fence you sit on I encourage you to look into both sides of the story. If nothing else, you will get an interesting read.
Dan the Man:
Are you sure they told the whole story?
http://www.reviewevolution.com/press/pressRelease_100Scientists.php
First, many of those scientists are in disciplines that have nothing to do with biology: physicists, mathematicians? Come on. If we only take people in the relevant field, the list is down to about 25.
Besides, don't you know about the Steve list? 861 people named Steve/Stephen/etc. who support evolution. I have not counted myself, but it says that half of them are biologists. That means we have approximately 10 times more biologists named Steve who support evolution than we have biologists (with no constraints on their name) who doubt it.
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3697_the_list_2_16_2003.asp
Scientists who doubt evolution are statistical oddities. I could surely gather 100 scientists with "impressive credentials" that doubt that cigarettes causes cancer. That doesn't give them any credibility.
I started to read Darwin's black box to see if there was anything to this ID thing. I got about 2 chapters into that and stopped because it assumed a level of technical proficiency that I don't have.
You can't even get bad science? Ouch. Bad start. You can only go so far without technical proficiency.
Instead I read the book 'The case for a Creator' it appealed to me because the deal with that book is a journalist goes around the country inteviewing experts in various fields and dicussing Darwinism and ID.
What tells you he's interviewing the right experts? I really don't get an unbiased vibe from that book and you have no idea how easily fallacious arguments can be made convincing. Look, there is only one way to get a valid opinion on something like evolution: you have to understand it. Just as well as any biologist would, without seeking to prove anything. You just have to get it. If you can't understand evolution (or don't want to bother, and I can understand that), then you have to trust the opinion of mainstream science: that it is a very solid theory. When you take a book titled "The case of a Creator" and base your opinion on that, it's a recipe for fucking disaster. That's not unbiased, that's not peer-reviewed, that's not mainstream science. It's... propaganda, really. If you want real science, read papers published in peer-reviewed journals. Sure, mainstream science makes mistakes sometimes, but you'll have to notice that new theories are almost always refinements of existing ones, not radical changes. If you start following black sheep you'll fail a hundred times before you can say "I told you so". And you'll have to admit that when something like "Darwin's Black Box" flies over your head, there's no way in hell you're going to tell good science apart from bad science. Any intellectually honest search would show you that scientists support evolution in overwhelming numbers and that the more they understand the field the more they support it. Stop struggling with your beliefs and follow the goddamn pack.
After I got done reading it I talked a few of my friends into reading it, some believed evolution and some didn't. After they finished it we all got together and talked about it. They said the book was legit and they had talked to a few of their professors about it and the professors couldn't refute most of the stuff in the book adequatly.
Adequately by what standards?
Mouse Trap example <snip>
http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html
http://www.fidelibus.com/mousetrap/01.htm
Anything is reducible if you put some thought into it. To say that a mouse trap, or anything else for that matter, is irreducibly complex, is terribly narrow-minded. It's not even that hard to figure out how a part could evolve: there are some useful tricks. First, it is often the case that a structure serving purpose X could serve purpose Y with a small change. Second, if you add some scaffolding to a structure, some of its necessary parts can be safely done without. You only have to imagine that the scaffolding evolved first and then disappeared because it was not needed anymore, making necessary a part that was optional at first. This is why, in my opinion, ID is intellectually dishonest: instead of really trying to figure out how a structure could evolve, they just say it's impossible, and when they are proven wrong (which happens all the fucking time), they just find something else.
"His theory predicts a long history of gradual divergence from a common ancestor, with the differences slowly becoming bigger and bigger until you get the major differences we have now. The fossil evidence, even in his day, showed the opposite: the rapid appearance of phylum-level differences in what's called the 'Cambrian explosion.'
Maybe those people should attack current theories rather than one that's over 100 years old. Also, Surgo posted a link exploring some possible explanations and you responded with a link that contained zero scientific information, only a poll, dubious comments by a religious propaganda center and the amazing claim that a thousandth of relevant scientists don't support evolution. I'm not impressed.
"Let me give you an illustration of he we're not the same thing as our personality traits, our memories, and our consciousness. I had a student a few years ago whose sister had an accident on her honeymoon. She was knocked unconscious and lost all of her memories and a good bit of her personality. She did not believe she had been married. As she began to recover, they showed her videos of the wedding to convince her that she had actually married her husband. She eventually got to the point where she believed it, and she got remarried to him."
"Now, we all know this was the same person all along. This was Jamie's sister. She was not a different person, though she was behaving differently. But she had totally different memories. She had lost her old memories and she didn't even have the same personality. What that proves is you can be the same person even if you lose old memories and gain new memories, or you lose some of your old personality traits and gain news personality traits."
What if I doctored the videos to show her marrying me and she ended up believing it and marrying me? I mean, what the fuck? If you just showed me the anecdote without its conclusion, I would have thought it as the perfect example that the concept of soul is bullshit because evidently it didn't do anything to preserve anything relevant about the person. What the fuck can I do when the guy's evidence that there's a soul is my evidence that there isn't?
"Same with my body. I can't be the same thing as my body or brain. There was a story y on television about an epileptic who underwent an operation in which surgeons removed 53% of her brain. When she woke up, nobody said 'We have 47% of person here.' A person can't be divided into pieces. You are either a person or you're not. But your brain and your body can be divided. So that means I can't be the same thing as my body.
If I remove 53% of a magazine's pages, I still have a magazine. So magazines have a soul now? What the fuck is his point? Does he just make that shit up as he goes along?
"If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of the atoms in my brain, I have not reason to believe my beliefs are true and hence no reason for supposing my brain is composed of atoms."
First, what kind of mental process does he think could give him reason to believe his beliefs are true? Magic? You either have reason to believe your beliefs are true or you don't, regardless of how the world works.
Second, the argument is circular: if X then I can't know Y, but I know Y, therefore not X. The argument is a fancy version of wishful thinking. It is null and void.
Are you sure they told the whole story?
http://www.reviewevolution.com/press/pressRelease_100Scientists.php
First, many of those scientists are in disciplines that have nothing to do with biology: physicists, mathematicians? Come on. If we only take people in the relevant field, the list is down to about 25.
Besides, don't you know about the Steve list? 861 people named Steve/Stephen/etc. who support evolution. I have not counted myself, but it says that half of them are biologists. That means we have approximately 10 times more biologists named Steve who support evolution than we have biologists (with no constraints on their name) who doubt it.
http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3697_the_list_2_16_2003.asp
Scientists who doubt evolution are statistical oddities. I could surely gather 100 scientists with "impressive credentials" that doubt that cigarettes causes cancer. That doesn't give them any credibility.
I started to read Darwin's black box to see if there was anything to this ID thing. I got about 2 chapters into that and stopped because it assumed a level of technical proficiency that I don't have.
You can't even get bad science? Ouch. Bad start. You can only go so far without technical proficiency.
Instead I read the book 'The case for a Creator' it appealed to me because the deal with that book is a journalist goes around the country inteviewing experts in various fields and dicussing Darwinism and ID.
What tells you he's interviewing the right experts? I really don't get an unbiased vibe from that book and you have no idea how easily fallacious arguments can be made convincing. Look, there is only one way to get a valid opinion on something like evolution: you have to understand it. Just as well as any biologist would, without seeking to prove anything. You just have to get it. If you can't understand evolution (or don't want to bother, and I can understand that), then you have to trust the opinion of mainstream science: that it is a very solid theory. When you take a book titled "The case of a Creator" and base your opinion on that, it's a recipe for fucking disaster. That's not unbiased, that's not peer-reviewed, that's not mainstream science. It's... propaganda, really. If you want real science, read papers published in peer-reviewed journals. Sure, mainstream science makes mistakes sometimes, but you'll have to notice that new theories are almost always refinements of existing ones, not radical changes. If you start following black sheep you'll fail a hundred times before you can say "I told you so". And you'll have to admit that when something like "Darwin's Black Box" flies over your head, there's no way in hell you're going to tell good science apart from bad science. Any intellectually honest search would show you that scientists support evolution in overwhelming numbers and that the more they understand the field the more they support it. Stop struggling with your beliefs and follow the goddamn pack.
After I got done reading it I talked a few of my friends into reading it, some believed evolution and some didn't. After they finished it we all got together and talked about it. They said the book was legit and they had talked to a few of their professors about it and the professors couldn't refute most of the stuff in the book adequatly.
Adequately by what standards?
Mouse Trap example <snip>
http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mousetrap.html
http://www.fidelibus.com/mousetrap/01.htm
Anything is reducible if you put some thought into it. To say that a mouse trap, or anything else for that matter, is irreducibly complex, is terribly narrow-minded. It's not even that hard to figure out how a part could evolve: there are some useful tricks. First, it is often the case that a structure serving purpose X could serve purpose Y with a small change. Second, if you add some scaffolding to a structure, some of its necessary parts can be safely done without. You only have to imagine that the scaffolding evolved first and then disappeared because it was not needed anymore, making necessary a part that was optional at first. This is why, in my opinion, ID is intellectually dishonest: instead of really trying to figure out how a structure could evolve, they just say it's impossible, and when they are proven wrong (which happens all the fucking time), they just find something else.
"His theory predicts a long history of gradual divergence from a common ancestor, with the differences slowly becoming bigger and bigger until you get the major differences we have now. The fossil evidence, even in his day, showed the opposite: the rapid appearance of phylum-level differences in what's called the 'Cambrian explosion.'
Maybe those people should attack current theories rather than one that's over 100 years old. Also, Surgo posted a link exploring some possible explanations and you responded with a link that contained zero scientific information, only a poll, dubious comments by a religious propaganda center and the amazing claim that a thousandth of relevant scientists don't support evolution. I'm not impressed.
"Let me give you an illustration of he we're not the same thing as our personality traits, our memories, and our consciousness. I had a student a few years ago whose sister had an accident on her honeymoon. She was knocked unconscious and lost all of her memories and a good bit of her personality. She did not believe she had been married. As she began to recover, they showed her videos of the wedding to convince her that she had actually married her husband. She eventually got to the point where she believed it, and she got remarried to him."
"Now, we all know this was the same person all along. This was Jamie's sister. She was not a different person, though she was behaving differently. But she had totally different memories. She had lost her old memories and she didn't even have the same personality. What that proves is you can be the same person even if you lose old memories and gain new memories, or you lose some of your old personality traits and gain news personality traits."
What if I doctored the videos to show her marrying me and she ended up believing it and marrying me? I mean, what the fuck? If you just showed me the anecdote without its conclusion, I would have thought it as the perfect example that the concept of soul is bullshit because evidently it didn't do anything to preserve anything relevant about the person. What the fuck can I do when the guy's evidence that there's a soul is my evidence that there isn't?
"Same with my body. I can't be the same thing as my body or brain. There was a story y on television about an epileptic who underwent an operation in which surgeons removed 53% of her brain. When she woke up, nobody said 'We have 47% of person here.' A person can't be divided into pieces. You are either a person or you're not. But your brain and your body can be divided. So that means I can't be the same thing as my body.
If I remove 53% of a magazine's pages, I still have a magazine. So magazines have a soul now? What the fuck is his point? Does he just make that shit up as he goes along?
"If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of the atoms in my brain, I have not reason to believe my beliefs are true and hence no reason for supposing my brain is composed of atoms."
First, what kind of mental process does he think could give him reason to believe his beliefs are true? Magic? You either have reason to believe your beliefs are true or you don't, regardless of how the world works.
Second, the argument is circular: if X then I can't know Y, but I know Y, therefore not X. The argument is a fancy version of wishful thinking. It is null and void.
Dan the Man:
1. Irreducible complexity is an interesting argument. However, there are many faults in it. The easiest means of which is simple: you find an irreducibly complex cell or organelle, and put it forth in this thread. The only one that I knew about that had any argument to it has been disproven: that is the Flagellum. (see here for a non-technical explanation)
It is an interesting theory, but until it is shown that an irreducibly complex organ or organelle exists, then its just hot air.
2. The Cambrian explosion was discussed earlier in this thread, IIRC by Surgo. It probably would be easier to build up from the current discussion instead of going by what was discussed in "A Case for a Creator".
3. Case for a soul. I personally am neutral on the soul. I am a Catholic and I believe that a soul exists. However, I don't have evidence and can only believe for now. Nonetheless, I've taken psychology and can show that whoever wrote "A Case for a Creator" probably hasn't taken psychology either.
First, your quote so this is all in context.
Psychological experiments that deal with this issue are rare, because they aren't allowed to happen. As much as it would be scientifically sound to remove parts of people's brains and test their memories... they aren't allowed.
Nonetheless, there are famous well-documented case studies on this subject. Ever heard of Phineas Gague? He lost part of his brain in an accident.
As shown in the above diagram, the very front of his brain, the prefrontal cortex, was destroyed by a steel rod. This is where much of your personality is stored. Enough that those who knew him described him as "No longer Gage".
An interesting fact is that he survived this accident and actually was able to speak, talk, stand and so forth. What changed was himself however, which contradicts your claim of mind vs body.
References:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1114479
Wikipedia Phineas Gage
1. Irreducible complexity is an interesting argument. However, there are many faults in it. The easiest means of which is simple: you find an irreducibly complex cell or organelle, and put it forth in this thread. The only one that I knew about that had any argument to it has been disproven: that is the Flagellum. (see here for a non-technical explanation)
It is an interesting theory, but until it is shown that an irreducibly complex organ or organelle exists, then its just hot air.
2. The Cambrian explosion was discussed earlier in this thread, IIRC by Surgo. It probably would be easier to build up from the current discussion instead of going by what was discussed in "A Case for a Creator".
3. Case for a soul. I personally am neutral on the soul. I am a Catholic and I believe that a soul exists. However, I don't have evidence and can only believe for now. Nonetheless, I've taken psychology and can show that whoever wrote "A Case for a Creator" probably hasn't taken psychology either.
First, your quote so this is all in context.
Psychological experiments that deal with this issue are rare, because they aren't allowed to happen. As much as it would be scientifically sound to remove parts of people's brains and test their memories... they aren't allowed.
Nonetheless, there are famous well-documented case studies on this subject. Ever heard of Phineas Gague? He lost part of his brain in an accident.
As shown in the above diagram, the very front of his brain, the prefrontal cortex, was destroyed by a steel rod. This is where much of your personality is stored. Enough that those who knew him described him as "No longer Gage".
An interesting fact is that he survived this accident and actually was able to speak, talk, stand and so forth. What changed was himself however, which contradicts your claim of mind vs body.
References:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1114479
Wikipedia Phineas Gage
The first problem is that to show that an organ or organelle is irreducibly complex is intractable. You'd pretty much have to make an exhaustive list of all possible ways the individual parts could occur and/or interact with each other. There's just too many of them and usually we do find a viable evolutionary path.
The second problem (that one for IDists) is that an irreducibly complex organ isn't even evidence for intelligence. It is evidence for nothing, so to speak. Intelligence is an orderly way to explore the space of possible structures. This entails that any structure made by intelligence has to be "reducibly complex" with respect to a transformation of the space of structures that corresponds to the way that intelligence works. Just think of how humans make their structures: that is not the sort of structure evolution can come up with, but they are still made out of parts and they still follow an incremental logic in their design. That's how we can know we are "close" to solving a problem: even if a structure doesn't work, we can see that some small changes could be enough to make it work because it already has some properties that we know the real solution will have. An irreducibly complex structure with respect to evolution, in order to be evidence for intelligence, has to be shown to be reducibly complex with respect to that intelligence - and that requires us to understand how that intelligence works.
There certainly exist, in theory, structures that work to solve a particular problem and are irreducibly complex with respect to evolution as well as all general-purpose intelligences. They might even be the true optimal structures! But they will not be made out of any obvious parts and they will break down completely on the slightest changes regardless of the transformation you apply to the problem. In math speak, they are exceptionally narrow minima no matter how you look at them. This means that the only ways to ever find them are chance or brute force. That's pretty much what irreducible complexity truly means: structures so hard to find that they can only happen by chance. Needless to say, we can't expect to find any of those.
Out of curiosity, what do you think the soul does?
When ID was being talked about, I thought about their arguements and I could at that moment, refute only one of them through logic.
"If life is too advanced to have come out by its own and needed an intelligent designer, than isn't that intelligence too complicated to have existed without being created by an even higher intelligence?"
I basically made it a chicken and the egg argument and I find that most theories need to not even be able to be put in a circular logic form. It needs to be linear at the least.
Also, there as a comedian who got on this subject on stage and basically he poked into it with two different lines. First one is that you ask a kid if he wants to do his biology homework or say God did and go outside to play.
The other though was even funnier, "It is just so complicated." (Too advanced to have come into its own). He said that sounded like "I don't get it. It must be magic."
Keep in mind, I am spiritual but I say this....
WHY CAN'T IT BE BOTH!!!!!!
God/dess uses evolution like a painter uses a canvas to create.
"If life is too advanced to have come out by its own and needed an intelligent designer, than isn't that intelligence too complicated to have existed without being created by an even higher intelligence?"
I basically made it a chicken and the egg argument and I find that most theories need to not even be able to be put in a circular logic form. It needs to be linear at the least.
Also, there as a comedian who got on this subject on stage and basically he poked into it with two different lines. First one is that you ask a kid if he wants to do his biology homework or say God did and go outside to play.
The other though was even funnier, "It is just so complicated." (Too advanced to have come into its own). He said that sounded like "I don't get it. It must be magic."
Keep in mind, I am spiritual but I say this....
WHY CAN'T IT BE BOTH!!!!!!
God/dess uses evolution like a painter uses a canvas to create.
Since when has the human "soul" been scientifically proven to exist? Last I checked that was a spiritual belief.
@Brain
(responses numbered in order of objections raised in your post, e.g. 1 is in response to the 1st thing etc..)
1) Sure the scientists aren’t all biologists, but are all the scientists that agree with evolution biologists? I think not, they don't claim to have expert knowledge on the subject. All they are saying is that they are skeptical. I posted the link to show that not everyone is 100 satisfied with evolution as an explanation of the origin of life. The Steve list doesn't mean anything to me, personally. Set the clock back about 600 years or so and you could find 100 scientists who said the world was flat for every one scientist who said it was round. Saying the majority believes something is no way to justify the validity of a scientific theory.
2) Just trying to be transparent for the purposes of the discussion. I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert on the subject. The other reason I stopped reading was because that book was boring. I don't like reading boring books.
3) I can tell he is interviewing experts because of the page and a half of credentials he gives for each person. I would disagree on your claim that there is only one way to get a valid opinion of something. You can understand it, as you said, but you also can research it as I said I did. I would ask you if you have read the book since you seem to be attacking its credibility. It is titled that way to fit in line with a few of the author's other books. He didn't go out and accept what these people told him without question, he brought out all of the major arguments against what the people being interviewed were saying and made them refute them. Finally, I'm not struggling with any beliefs or anything and I don't appreciate the insinuations that I am less than intelligent because we disagree on this subject. In life people will disagree with you, get over it.
4) When I say adequately, I mean he couldn’t do it. The only thing the professor came close on was irreducible complexity. He showed a rebuttal to the theory and we showed him a rebuttal to the rebuttal and he showed us something rebutting that and it started to go in a big circle.
5) In the section immediately after where I stopped quoting Behe was presented with this very objection. Sure there are ways to produce a simpler mousetrap that his, as Mr. McDonald has shown. However, in his mouse traps(McDonald’s) he designs (don't miss this, all his traps had an intelligent designer) all of them and someone has to assemble them. In evolution there is no one there to design a new mousetrap and no one there to assemble it since evolution has to come by random variations. In creating his reducible mousetraps Mr. McDonald has severely damaged the case for Darwinism in this particular example.
6) I didn't post the link for scientific purposes. I put it up to show that the PBS special only presented one side of the story and glossed over the controversial evidence. I don't believe the organization has anything to do with religion. The statement that they all sign says nothing of religion. Not all of the members are religious.
7-rest) I didn't put much effort into proving the soul exists because I've never met a rational person who has claimed it doesn't. I thought that was something that we could all agree on. Maybe it would help if we abandoned the traditional definition of soul and for our purposes define it as consciousness/self-awareness/free will.
@ Dragontamer
(same numbering as before)
1) I've heard that the eye is a popular example. I can post links to supposed irreducibly complex organs and you guys can post rebuttals and then I can rebut the rebuttals but I really don't want to get into an argument that goes around in a circle. I'm not trying to cop out, I'll do it if you want but it will be very slow as I don't have time to get very involved with this.
2) Don't let the title of the book deceive you, I know it sounds one sided, but it wasn't. As I said before I ran all this past my friends who are biology majors and it checked out. That being said, I will look into the previous thread.
3) As I said before, I thought we could all agree the soul exists, so I didn't put as much effort into that section. If we can't agree on that I think a good starting place for the discussion would be if you think the brain produces conciousness/self-awarness.
(responses numbered in order of objections raised in your post, e.g. 1 is in response to the 1st thing etc..)
1) Sure the scientists aren’t all biologists, but are all the scientists that agree with evolution biologists? I think not, they don't claim to have expert knowledge on the subject. All they are saying is that they are skeptical. I posted the link to show that not everyone is 100 satisfied with evolution as an explanation of the origin of life. The Steve list doesn't mean anything to me, personally. Set the clock back about 600 years or so and you could find 100 scientists who said the world was flat for every one scientist who said it was round. Saying the majority believes something is no way to justify the validity of a scientific theory.
2) Just trying to be transparent for the purposes of the discussion. I'm not going to pretend I'm an expert on the subject. The other reason I stopped reading was because that book was boring. I don't like reading boring books.
3) I can tell he is interviewing experts because of the page and a half of credentials he gives for each person. I would disagree on your claim that there is only one way to get a valid opinion of something. You can understand it, as you said, but you also can research it as I said I did. I would ask you if you have read the book since you seem to be attacking its credibility. It is titled that way to fit in line with a few of the author's other books. He didn't go out and accept what these people told him without question, he brought out all of the major arguments against what the people being interviewed were saying and made them refute them. Finally, I'm not struggling with any beliefs or anything and I don't appreciate the insinuations that I am less than intelligent because we disagree on this subject. In life people will disagree with you, get over it.
4) When I say adequately, I mean he couldn’t do it. The only thing the professor came close on was irreducible complexity. He showed a rebuttal to the theory and we showed him a rebuttal to the rebuttal and he showed us something rebutting that and it started to go in a big circle.
5) In the section immediately after where I stopped quoting Behe was presented with this very objection. Sure there are ways to produce a simpler mousetrap that his, as Mr. McDonald has shown. However, in his mouse traps(McDonald’s) he designs (don't miss this, all his traps had an intelligent designer) all of them and someone has to assemble them. In evolution there is no one there to design a new mousetrap and no one there to assemble it since evolution has to come by random variations. In creating his reducible mousetraps Mr. McDonald has severely damaged the case for Darwinism in this particular example.
6) I didn't post the link for scientific purposes. I put it up to show that the PBS special only presented one side of the story and glossed over the controversial evidence. I don't believe the organization has anything to do with religion. The statement that they all sign says nothing of religion. Not all of the members are religious.
7-rest) I didn't put much effort into proving the soul exists because I've never met a rational person who has claimed it doesn't. I thought that was something that we could all agree on. Maybe it would help if we abandoned the traditional definition of soul and for our purposes define it as consciousness/self-awareness/free will.
@ Dragontamer
(same numbering as before)
1) I've heard that the eye is a popular example. I can post links to supposed irreducibly complex organs and you guys can post rebuttals and then I can rebut the rebuttals but I really don't want to get into an argument that goes around in a circle. I'm not trying to cop out, I'll do it if you want but it will be very slow as I don't have time to get very involved with this.
2) Don't let the title of the book deceive you, I know it sounds one sided, but it wasn't. As I said before I ran all this past my friends who are biology majors and it checked out. That being said, I will look into the previous thread.
3) As I said before, I thought we could all agree the soul exists, so I didn't put as much effort into that section. If we can't agree on that I think a good starting place for the discussion would be if you think the brain produces conciousness/self-awarness.
Damnit evolution is based on darwin's research and logical scientific evidence. This is just one reason why Mike Huckabee is a blatant moron, and does not have the intelligence to lead a dominant nation such as the US.
No problem, I'll explain the eye and then I'll go for the gold instead.
The evolution of the eye is well documented in molluscs. The steps are as follows: strange light sensitive pigment on the skin, which isn't much, but it is enough to notice that a preditor is above you in the water so you can attempt some sort of evasion. Then, a fold which increases the sensitivity, and then the fold getting more accute and rounded which serves as a pin-hole camera. The lens then evolved and then you have the full eye.
That said, if you don't feel like example / counterexample... then I'll go for another argument.
Irreductible Complexity does not prove intelligence. Further, it does not discount the case where Evolution itself is actually intelligence. I've discussed in previous posts how the theory of evolution has been applied sucessfully in many areas of AI. In one specific case, the evolutionary algorithm created a hardware layout thing... (to be specific: FPGA mapping) that the creators could not figure out. Indeed, they tried to remove a part of the mapping that should have not affected the design, but it did.
Ergo: even though the design was created with simulated evolution, the design itself was irreductibly complex. You could not remove a single part of the design and expect it to work. (including a few parts that the researched didn't understand). If you're interested, I'll fetch the citations... but I'm somewhat too busy right now to look em up.
This thread actually.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=879144&postcount=58
Hmm, wasn't much of a retort, but it was an interesting link that Surgo did give.
The problem if you take this stance is that we can track various forms of behavior through the evolution of the brain.
Starting from humans, of which we don't really understand, the Cerebellum controls muscles and muscle memory. "Spinal Cord" is a reference point, every single animal in the above diagram has a spinal cord. Cerebellum is a little vague, but it works. It is the higher-order functions of the brain. From an evolutionary standpoint, humans have more or less tacked on the pre-frontal lobes to the mamilian brain. These are the same lobes that were discussed with Phineas Gage. The increased surface area of the Cerebral Cortex (the wrinkles) also implies that various parts of our brain are more complex, but I won't go into that. Obviously the 3 language parts of the human brain are also the most developed out of all mamals.
BTW: the "Ape" brain looks like a cat brain if you ever seen one. I've never seen a real ape brain in my life, but my psychology professor did bring in a cat brain. I dunno what kind of mammal the "mammal" refers to in the diagram... but it must be dumber than a cat.
Anyway, going back to evolution, MacLean notes 3 stages of evolution from reptiles to humans, all portrayed by their brains.
1. The R-Complex, or the reptilian brain is found in every animal on this chart, with exception of fish who came earlier than reptiles. This controls reactions and so forth. This is the cerebellum and the brain stem.
2. The old mammilian brain is the next step which includes the Limbic system. This is where emotions (the 4 "f"s, fleeing, fighting, feeding and sex :-p) and instincts lay.
3. The new mammilian brain is the final step which more or less represents us. A larger neo-cortex, pre-frontal lobes and so forth.
And with this, a step-by-step evolution from reptiles to us has been constructed, which of course matches fossil records.
-----------
Oh, and Brain, on the soul. My belief is that the soul is the part of us that goes to Heaven :-p Whatever we don't need for bodily function is shed away. I really can't get more detailed than that because I haven't really reflected on this subject too long.
*sigh* I noted that my response got deleted and I don't like that. So I will state it again, excluding the comedic commentary. Let's hope that was the only problem that got it deleted and not that I am taking a middle ground posistion.
Speaking for the opinion of someone who has had minimal training in the sciences; I favor Evolution over Intelligent Design or Creationism. This is because the arguments for ID and Creationism do not follow linear logic at all. Their logic works on blind faith and the argument that something is too complicated to exist on its own, so it must have its own creator.
This has been disproven by science in the lab as they took energy and a mixture of gases common to the early Earth and derived organic compounds. Scans into space have also shown the presence of these same compounds in star-forming nebulas.
This doesn't mean I am a god-hater. I just tend to think that God/Goddess/Allah/Jehovah/whatever you want to call this power uses evolution to create life and that such a being is NOT constrained by how we percieve time and having to exist omnipotent to us. I feel that this being is omnipresent in everything around us.
I feel this argument does us no good as belief in evolution shouldn't be the sole thing that judges someone for office. But I also feel Huckabee is not the right man for the job.
Speaking for the opinion of someone who has had minimal training in the sciences; I favor Evolution over Intelligent Design or Creationism. This is because the arguments for ID and Creationism do not follow linear logic at all. Their logic works on blind faith and the argument that something is too complicated to exist on its own, so it must have its own creator.
This has been disproven by science in the lab as they took energy and a mixture of gases common to the early Earth and derived organic compounds. Scans into space have also shown the presence of these same compounds in star-forming nebulas.
This doesn't mean I am a god-hater. I just tend to think that God/Goddess/Allah/Jehovah/whatever you want to call this power uses evolution to create life and that such a being is NOT constrained by how we percieve time and having to exist omnipotent to us. I feel that this being is omnipresent in everything around us.
I feel this argument does us no good as belief in evolution shouldn't be the sole thing that judges someone for office. But I also feel Huckabee is not the right man for the job.
With the introduction of arguments related to the soul (and as a Philosophy major) I finally feel like I have something to offer to this thread.
Albeit it's very little.
Very few respectable Philosophers (modern and historical) would argue that we have a soul. This is because by the very nature of the type of argument that it is, it is not provable. Some philosophers would however argue that we cannot have a soul (determinists). If we have a soul, it is intangible and immeasurable, not an argument many people would want to defend. Similarly, most Philosophers will not argue for the existence of a God, or multiple Gods, since it cannot be argued with any amount of real evidence. Most cases of credible philosophers arguing for a God are documented in a region or time in which not presenting such an argument would almost certainly result in incarceration, exile or execution. Most notably, Descartes offered one of the most sound arguments explaining why literally nothing can be proven beyond ones own existence, only to later add that one cannot exist without God either. His greatest fans to this day don't look beyond his initial argument, as his argument for God was incredibly weak and full of holes.
Note: Descartes' initial argument is perhaps the strongest argument ever presented for the existence of a soul (he referred to it as "mind"). His argument states that any physical thing, including your own body, cannot be proven to exist, nor can the mind (soul) of any other thing. The only thing that can be proven to exist is your own mind (soul), because you can't possibly think to yourself "Do I exist?" without having a mind (soul) that is not connected to your body (which you can't even prove exists). It's literally impossible. It's a surprisingly sound argument when looked at in detail.
I hope that offers a little bit into the argument of the soul (which I don't feel should be related in any way to a discussion about evolution, IMO they are not related).
Albeit it's very little.
Very few respectable Philosophers (modern and historical) would argue that we have a soul. This is because by the very nature of the type of argument that it is, it is not provable. Some philosophers would however argue that we cannot have a soul (determinists). If we have a soul, it is intangible and immeasurable, not an argument many people would want to defend. Similarly, most Philosophers will not argue for the existence of a God, or multiple Gods, since it cannot be argued with any amount of real evidence. Most cases of credible philosophers arguing for a God are documented in a region or time in which not presenting such an argument would almost certainly result in incarceration, exile or execution. Most notably, Descartes offered one of the most sound arguments explaining why literally nothing can be proven beyond ones own existence, only to later add that one cannot exist without God either. His greatest fans to this day don't look beyond his initial argument, as his argument for God was incredibly weak and full of holes.
Note: Descartes' initial argument is perhaps the strongest argument ever presented for the existence of a soul (he referred to it as "mind"). His argument states that any physical thing, including your own body, cannot be proven to exist, nor can the mind (soul) of any other thing. The only thing that can be proven to exist is your own mind (soul), because you can't possibly think to yourself "Do I exist?" without having a mind (soul) that is not connected to your body (which you can't even prove exists). It's literally impossible. It's a surprisingly sound argument when looked at in detail.
I hope that offers a little bit into the argument of the soul (which I don't feel should be related in any way to a discussion about evolution, IMO they are not related).
A hypothetical person cannot differentiate between colors, having no knowledge that different colors have different appearances. He sees a red light on a traffic light. He knows that green is a color that appears on a traffic light, but was never told that yellow or red appear on traffic lights, has no ability to distinguish red from yellow from green, because he was never taught to associate the name or idea of a color with the color that he sees, and that colored lights are on traffic lights. Therefore, because a light is illuminated, it must be green, and thus the red light is green to him.
As logical is "If 'A implies B' and 'If not B, then not A'" is in logic, it relies that "A implies B" is always true, if I remember correctly.
His entire argument was based around coming up with reasons why we can't prove that something must exist, or can't exist. The only thing that he couldn't say "this can't exist" for with some argument is himself. He COULD however find reasons why his body can't exist, and therefore came to the conclusion that his body and mind must be seperate, and his mind MUST exist. Reasons were:
Life could be a dream
The devil or some other force could have created this world as an illusion to you
God could be creating this world as an illusion to you (basically same as above but with different intentions)
There were other reasons but I can't remember them... the only conclusion you can come to from these possibilities (which can't be disproven) is that your mind must exist. Not necessarily your body however, and not necessarily anything else.
Life could be a dream
The devil or some other force could have created this world as an illusion to you
God could be creating this world as an illusion to you (basically same as above but with different intentions)
There were other reasons but I can't remember them... the only conclusion you can come to from these possibilities (which can't be disproven) is that your mind must exist. Not necessarily your body however, and not necessarily anything else.
I thought this was pretty interesting about the iraq war and huckabee looks pretty good in this too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiFsxp5qOpM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiFsxp5qOpM