[_ Old Earth _] Is Evolution 'Bats'?

[Deavonreye]

It is interesting when a person who hasn't spent the majority of their life in experimentation, testing, analyzing, studying, etc. the scientific method and getting upper level degrees in their subjects, corresponding with and comparing notes with those who studied other fields of scientific discovery, . . . . . yet can type on a computer, in a forum, about how they are all idiots and he [who hasn't had the same] has it all figured out, . . . . . based soley upon him NEEDING himself to be right so that his religion isn't punched with holes.

 

[Asyncritus]

You asked how it 'came about', not how did it evolve. It 'came about' through evolutionary pressures manifested through natural selection.

That is unworthy of you. It must be obvious to a pretty mean intellect that it is the question of how it 'evolved' that I am raising.

As I said, you are assuming what you're trying to prove. You have already used the words 'evolutionary pressures' in your reply, and have therefore fallen at the first hurdle, which I pointed out to GM.

To repeat, you may not use what you are trying to prove as proof.

How is this any less of an explanation than claiming that these animals were formed in one supernatural creative act?

Evolution is alleged to be 'science', and therefore capable of being proven 'scientifically'. It is not. It is an article of faith, as much as my belief in God.

You are, if you persist in claiming that it is a 'science' compelled to produce proof. So produce already.

Umm, that isn't my reply. There are several hypotheses that account for the development of flying behaviour all within the explanatory framework of evolutionary theory. Flying lifeforms are no more 'unlikely' from an evolutionary point of view than are any other sort.

As there are so many, would you like to produce, with evidence, some that account for the existence of

a. the instincts which power flight and

b. the organs of flight, specifically in the bat?

Most such hypotheses suggest that wings are exaptations and that the development of the ability to fly using these exaptations was driven by one or more evolutionary pressures:

Question begging.

to escape predators, to catch flying or speedy prey, to move more safely from one place to another, to free the hindlegs for use as weapons, to exploit a new food source, to exploit an otherwise unexploited niche.

And what was happening BEFORE they DEVELOPED these things? Why didn't they get wiped out?

There are multitudes of organisms which do not fly, and yet have flightlessly survived and done exactly as you have described (successfully at that) and survive to the present day.

That alone proves that you have no case.

In fact, what you are describing is of value only when they are already able to fly.

But since the origin of flight is what you are attempting to account for, and not the reasons why flight is or may be of value, then I'm afraid your answer is valueless and would receive a mark of zero.

I think that this is as good a point as any to say this:

You have produced two very long, somewhat tedious and irrelevant posts.

The point under discussion, and I wish to draw you back to it, is this:

a. We have bats which echo-locate magnificently

b. They are mammals which fly, using their wings which are really hands (as opposed to arms, as with the normal birds) with skin stretched between the fingers.

You, as a supporter of evolution, are required to produce proof, or accounting, for my 2 questions which still stand. Leaving aside the question of how they acquired the apparatus:

a. How did the flight instincts which power the use of their wings and flying arise

and

b. How did they enter the genome?

Those are essentially the questions I want answered by you, deavonreye, Dawkins, Ruse, Theobald (or whoever else's aid you may care to enlist.) Just in passing, you may like to go read the talkorigins section on instinct. Its very revealing and extensive!

As you have completely failed to answer those questions, but have chosen to engage in mere debating tactics, and have avoided the questions of reality which confront you, I will depart from the wasteful exercise of answering your debating points, and demand that you put up, or concede that

a. You have no real answers to give

b. evolution cannot account for these phenomena (and the many others you'll find on my blog)

and that

c. since these phenomena ocur in about 20% of the mammal species (ie the bats), then that represents a considerable chunk of the mammalian species for which evolution is meaningless, could not, and did not occur.

That alone disqualifies it as a 'scientific' theory, and justifies our describing it as 'useless'.

And of course, necessitates it's abandonment by the scientific community.

 

[jasoncran]

It is interesting when a person who hasn't spent the majority of their life in experimentation, testing, analyzing, studying, etc. the scientific method and getting upper level degrees in their subjects, corresponding with and comparing notes with those who studied other fields of scientific discovery, . . . . . yet can type on a computer, in a forum, about how they are all idiots and he [who hasn't had the same] has it all figured out, . . . . . based soley upon him NEEDING himself to be right so that his religion isn't punched with holes.

if darwin were alive today.he would be the laughing stock as he was no scientist. uh what is you job? asynchritus has a job in the field. we have those jobs in florida. you like florida orange juice right? lemonade and grapefruit? if so, persons that work for the florida dept of ag with only asynchritus credential do ensure that the enviroment of florida is beneficial to those fruit and also this includes fish species and also the indian river lagoon.

depending on degree and expericience one does write and publish papers. a friend of mine is applying for one such job. she has a masters in biology and is skeptical of macroevolution herself. so if i were you.. i guess florida is in some trouble then?

 

[Asyncritus]

So because Haldane had no formal science education and because (I presume) you have none either, this automatically means that you are 'an outstanding scientist and a polymath' as well?

Heh heh heh, indeed.

That merely proves that one does not have to have formal qualifications to be extremely competent. You may or may not recall that Edison had about 6 months schooling in his life, and that Einstein was a patents clerk in Berne when he produced his relativity theory.

But I do have formal scientific qualifications, and yes, I am a polymath, multi-talented wouldn't be too wide of the mark, and quite well-known in my own field too.

I would rather not have had to say that, but you did ask.

 

[jasoncran]

funny how they insuenate your credentials when you present logical arguments to which they cant answer.

so let me guess if some ignorant redneck stumbles on the cure for cancer are these athiest going to call him stupid for the find? yup.

book smarts doesnt mean you can do the job. i know of some smart men such as my fil who had only sixth grade education and has street smarts yet makes more then(in his retirement) then most biology students in the field.

as the later usually has to work for the state of florida which doesnt pay much. one doesnt fish farm here to make money, you do it because you like it.

 

[Deavonreye]

My apologies if I stepped on anyone's credentials. I didn't see them. In my defense, a lot of new christians [not saying anyone in this discussion is] try to argue Behe/Hovind points and come off sounding rather ignorant.

 

[lordkalvan]

Two-part reply again, I'm afraid.

That is unworthy of you. It must be obvious to a pretty mean intellect that it is the question of how it 'evolved' that I am raising.

Then you need to be more careful in your phrasing and tell us exactly what you mean by ‘how’. If you want a step-by-step fossil record with genetic annotations for every evolutionary ‘step’ from a wholly-terrestrial ancestral species lacking echolocation ability, then you know quite well that you are asking for something which, because of the unlikelihood of the fossilization process and the dynamic destructive processes of geology you are unlikely to get. If, on the other hand, you want a hypothesis to explain how bats might most likely have involved from an ancestral species, then that is a different matter. So which do you want?

As I said, you are assuming what you're trying to prove. You have already used the words 'evolutionary pressures' in your reply, and have therefore fallen at the first hurdle, which I pointed out to GM.

Nope, I am drawing an inference from observed features of life that we can see in both the fossil record, molecular genetics, developmental embryology and existing life: that it responds and adapts to changes in its environment and that those adaptations tend towards offering advantages to the populations of organisms that express them. I am calling the consequential impact of these effects evolutionary pressure. We can see it currently in changes in finch beaks in the Galapagos according to the availability of different food sources, in the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria, in the range of HIV viruses and in ring species; we can see it in the fossil record in the transitional features displayed by animals like Archaeopteryx and Tiktaalik.

To repeat, you may not use what you are trying to prove as proof.

I am not trying to ‘prove’ anything, I am simply pointing to arguments and pieces of evidence that support evolutionary theory.

Evolution is alleged to be 'science', and therefore capable of being proven 'scientifically'. It is not. It is an article of faith, as much as my belief in God.

Disregarding your misrepresentation of the scientific respectability and stature of evolutionary theory and associated research, your point still fails to elucidate why claiming supernatural creation amounts to a meaningful explanation of anything while evolutionary theory does not.

You are, if you persist in claiming that it is a 'science' compelled to produce proof. So produce already.

There is plenty of evidence that has been produced, but you choose to ignore it and focus instead on what you believe to be a weak-point (the evolution of bats and echolocation). Let me point out again that, even if evolutionary biologists were completely unable to offer testable hypotheses explaining the evolution of these animals and this characteristic (which they aren’t, by the way), this would still not serve to falsify evolutionary theory as there is ample evidence elsewhere to support its overall robustness.

As there are so many, would you like to produce, with evidence, some that account for the existence of

a. the instincts which power flight and

What ‘instincts’ are these that ‘power flight’? My understanding is that muscles, sinews and tendons ‘power flight’.

b. the organs of flight, specifically in the bat?

What do you regard as evidential in this instance? Bats, avians and pterosaurs share morphological adaptations of invertebrate, tetrapod species’ characteristics that have been co-opted into flight organs; in other words, you can see the same bones in these animals as you can see in your own arm and hands, but used for a different purpose than their ancestral species used them for.

And what was happening BEFORE they DEVELOPED these things? Why didn't they get wiped out?

Demonstrably not, but I fail to see the point you are trying to make. Shrews cannot fly, but they have not been wiped out. Monkeys can leap from tree to tree, but they cannot fly and they have not been wiped either. Flying squirrels can glide considerable distances, but here is another animal that cannot fly and also has not been wiped out. Why do you suppose that being unable to fly should lead to a species being wiped out?

There are multitudes of organisms which do not fly, and yet have flightlessly survived and done exactly as you have described (successfully at that) and survive to the present day.

And the ability to fly allows the animals with this ability to do one (or more) of the things mentioned than it would otherwise not be able to do. This does not immediately imply that the lack of that characteristic is a short-step to extinction.

That alone proves that you have no case.

I’m sorry, it proves nothing of the kind. Your argument has no logic to it that I can see and seems to depend upon the idea that if some species can survive and prosper with one set of characteristics, this precludes the possibility that another species with similar characteristics might follow a different evolutionary pathway. Were the 1,000+ bat species and 350,000+ beetle species, many with strikingly different characteristics, habitats, diets and behaviours all specially created by supernatural act? Were they all taken on board the Ark? I recall asking these questions before, but I don’t recall you answering them.

In fact, what you are describing is of value only when they are already able to fly.

Well, not if the assertion you made above – that ‘There are multitudes of organisms which do not fly, and yet have flightlessly survived and done exactly as you have described (successfully at that) and survive to the present day.’ – is correct. So which of these mutually exclusive assertions do you wish to run with?

But since the origin of flight is what you are attempting to account for, and not the reasons why flight is or may be of value, then I'm afraid your answer is valueless and would receive a mark of zero.

I do not see how you reach the conclusion that the argument is valueless. The benefits that accrue from the ability to fly are exactly those that contribute to its evolution, i.e. to its origin. It is akin to a positive feedback loop. If you do not understand this, then it is no wonder that you struggle to come to grips with evolutionary theory.

 

[lordkalvan]

I think that this is as good a point as any to say this:

You have produced two very long, somewhat tedious and irrelevant posts.

Well, pardon me for attempting to address your arguments in some detail. I am not sure why you regard comments and points that are directly pertinent to your own as ‘irrelevant’. Perhaps you can explain? As you have quite failed to respond to a number of questions and points that are entirely relevant to your arguments, I could be forgiven for thinking that this is perhaps because you can’t and that you are just engaging in an element of handwaving here.

The point under discussion, and I wish to draw you back to it, is this:

a. We have bats which echo-locate magnificently

Yes. We also have other animals that use echolocation ‘magnificently’, so I am not sure what point you are driving towards here.

b. They are mammals which fly, using their wings which are really hands (as opposed to arms, as with the normal birds) with skin stretched between the fingers.

The morphological differences amongst bird, bat and pterosaur wings are ones of degree only. I do not see why you are belaboring this point, as if it is crucial to demonstrating some imagined inadequacy of evolutionary theory. The pterosaur wing is supported by an elongated fourth digit, i.e. by a finger-bone, and by the radius, humerus and ulna. The bat wing is supported by four digits of the hand and by the radius, humerus and ulna. The bird wing is supported by the radius, humerus and ulna, modified wrist bones and also the second digit of the hand. In other words, and as I pointed out before, the development of flying limbs from the forelimbs of pterosaurs, avians and chiroptera demonstrates morphological similarities through the adaptation of the same bones that you can find in all vertebrates.

You, as a supporter of evolution, are required to produce proof, or accounting, for my 2 questions which still stand.

Actually, you have it pretty much the wrong way around. Evidentially, evolutionary theory is one of the most widely supported scientific theories we have, undisputed by virtually the entirety of biological scientists, the overwhelming majority of other scientists, a fundamental tool in medical training and research, and vitally important to the pharmaceutical industry. If you have found two ‘questions’ that you believe falsify evolutionary theory, you need to do more than simply demand others provide proof satisfactory to you that they do not; you need to offer a reasoned, evidentially supported account of how evolutionary theory is not the best explanation for the origins of the characteristics you are referring and whatever alternative hypothesis you intend to put forward is better explanation.

Leaving aside the question of how they acquired the apparatus:

a. How did the flight instincts which power the use of their wings and flying arise

and

b. How did they enter the genome?

Your questions are poorly formed. As I have pointed out already, muscles, tendons and sinews are what ‘power the use of …wings’. If you are asking, rather, how motility arose, the obvious direction in which to look is patterns of feeding and reproductive behaviour and responses to external stimuli (e.g. danger). Organisms need to feed, they need to reproduce and they need to have some sort of defence against external dangers. Any organism which can change its location will have an advantage over others in this respect. Some organisms use different behavioral adaptations to achieve these ends, some use external forces (wind to disperse seeds, ocean currents to disperse eggs, etc), and some use the ability to move. A number of evolutionary hypotheses can be put forward to emphasize one behavioral response over another, but given that the origins of motility almost certainly lie at the microscopic level, the chances of finding fossil evidence to support one hypothesis over another is remote. Consequently, our best route to understanding may be by looking at currently existing microscopic organisms, observe the differences amongst motile and non-motile forms and look for transitional features in both.

Those are essentially the questions I want answered by you, deavonreye, Dawkins, Ruse, Theobald (or whoever else's aid you may care to enlist.)

I doubt that any of the last three named individuals are likely to come here and answer you, so your wanting them to respond to you seems a forlorn demand. I also doubt that you will be satisfied with any answer I can give you because you already seem to have made your mind up about this matter.

Just in passing, you may like to go read the talkorigins section on instinct. Its very revealing and extensive!

Maybe Daniel R. Papaj’s chapter on Automatic Behavior and the Evolution of Instinct in Insect learning: Ecological and Evolutionary Perspectives, edited by the same author, would be a better place to start?

As you have completely failed to answer those questions, but have chosen to engage in mere debating tactics, and have avoided the questions of reality which confront you, I will depart from the wasteful exercise of answering your debating points…

How convenient that you can dismiss questions and points that you seem otherwise incapable of responding to as mere ‘debating points’. So when you say that a gene is ‘defective’ to support an assertion you make and I ask you to explain what you mean by ‘defective’, that is just a ‘debating point’? Is ‘defectiveness’ so obvious that it requires no explanation? When I point out that your ‘explanation’ that instincts originate with God amounts to no explanation at all, this is just a ‘debating point’ as well? Give me a break.

…and demand that you put up, or concede that

a. You have no real answers to give

Since when do you get to define what constitutes a ‘real answer’? As you appear to have already made up your mind that your questions are ‘unanswerable’ from an evolutionary point of view and constitute a falsification of evolutionary theory, I doubt that any answer I can give you will persuade you otherwise.

b. evolution cannot account for these phenomena (and the many others you'll find on my blog)

Unfortunately, your saying this is so does not make it so. If you believe your arguments are sound, you need to explain why evolutionary hypotheses accounting for these phenomena are incorrect and why your explanation (which, as far as I can see, amounts to nothing more than declaring God as an Intelligent Designer responsible for every trait we see in every living organism) is a better one in terms of the observed evidence.

and that

c. since these phenomena ocur in about 20% of the mammal species (ie the bats), then that represents a considerable chunk of the mammalian species for which evolution is meaningless, could not, and did not occur.

Question begging with a vengeance again. You cannot simply proclaim bat wings and bat echolocation as evolutionary impossibilities, you have to show that they are evolutionary impossibilities. And what about the other 80% of mammals (not to mention insects, birds, reptiles, fish, bacteria, viruses, etc)? Is evolution ‘meaningless’ for them too?

That alone disqualifies it as a 'scientific' theory, and justifies our describing it as 'useless'.

No, it doesn’t, because you have failed to show that which you claim to have shown. Questions that you pose for which you believe no acceptable answer can be given do not amount to a falsification of an hypothesis. Hypotheses are falsified by providing evidence that shows them to be wrong, not by simply asserting that you find them personally incredible, which is all your arguments seem to amount to.

And of course, necessitates it's abandonment by the scientific community.

If you want that to happen you’re going to have to work a lot harder. Have you submitted any papers to peer review yet?

 

[lordkalvan]

That merely proves that one does not have to have formal qualifications to be extremely competent.

But it does not 'prove' that an absence of formal qualifications implies extreme or any other level of competence.

You may or may not recall that Edison had about 6 months schooling in his life...

And?

....and that Einstein was a patents clerk in Berne when he produced his relativity theory.

A 'patents clerk' who received exceptional marks in the mathematics and physics part of the entrance exam for the Eidgenössische Polytechnische Schule in Zurich and who studied mathematics and physics at the Polytechnic in Zurich. Again, I don't see your point.

But I do have formal scientific qualifications, and yes, I am a polymath, multi-talented wouldn't be too wide of the mark...

Well, it seems to me that you need to work a little harder on your arguments and your understanding of the scientific method, then.

...and quite well-known in my own field too.

Which is?

I would rather not have had to say that, but you did ask.

What I asked was why you mentioned Haldane's lack of qualifications. If you have the background you claim you have, I remain mystified as to why you raised his name at all.

 

[lordkalvan]

funny how they insuenate your credentials when you present logical arguments to which they cant answer.

I insinuated nothing. I asked a question based on a statement, a statement that appears to have no purpose except to hint at the poster's view of his own competencies.

so let me guess if some ignorant redneck stumbles on the cure for cancer are these athiest going to call him stupid for the find? yup.

The stupidest person in the world can stumble across something; so can the brightest. Serendipitous discoveries say very little about the intellectual capabilities of the discoverer.

book smarts doesnt mean you can do the job. i know of some smart men such as my fil who had only sixth grade education and has street smarts yet makes more then(in his retirement) then most biology students in the field.

Unfortunately a degree of 'book smarts' is necessary to an understanding of many aspects of scientific research, laws, hypotheses and theories. Some jobs require 'book smarts', some don't. Some jobs return large incomes, some don't.

as the later usually has to work for the state of florida which doesnt pay much. one doesnt fish farm here to make money, you do it because you like it.

And nothing wrong with that at all.

 

[Deavonreye]

I insinuated nothing. I asked a question based on a statement, a statement that appears to have no purpose except to hint at the poster's view of his own competencies.

The stupidest person the world can stumble across something; so can the brightest. Serendipitous discoveries say very little about the intellectual capabilities of the discoverer.
Unfortunately a degree of 'book smarts' is necessary to an understanding of many aspects of scientific research, laws, hypotheses and theories. Some jobs require 'book smarts', some don't. Some jobs return large incomes, some don't.

And nothing wrong with that at all.

Jason was addressing my post, . . . as I made a comment about asyncritus's "understanding of science" without knowing his credentials [scholastically speaking].

Regardless, I see many of the same SEEMINGLY ignorant comments on here, such as the typical "evolution takes more faith than believing in a god". There is NO evidence of any god [though I would be delighted to see it, in all sincerity], and never HAS been by anyone. However, there IS evidence of change over time that has been discovered [also called "evolution"].

 

[Asyncritus]

Well, pardon me for attempting to address your arguments in some detail. I am not sure why you regard comments and points that are directly pertinent to your own as ‘irrelevant’. Perhaps you can explain? As you have quite failed to respond to a number of questions and points that are entirely relevant to your arguments, I could be forgiven for thinking that this is perhaps because you can’t and that you are just engaging in an element of handwaving here.

The original questions asked have received no answers, apart from:

'Your questions are poorly formed'

'You are not answering my questions'

'You haven't much understanding of evolutionary theory'

and such like.

None of these constitute any kind of answer to the 2 questions I asked, so I will repeat them for the last time - in vain, I know- but here's hoping.

The bats have wings and echolocate.

How did the instincts powering these behaviours arise, and

How did they enter the genome?

I don't quite know how to form the questions better, but I do know how you could answer them better than you have so far done.

You could say 'I/ evolutionary theory have no answer that will stand up to scrutiny'.

You cannot say that of course, because it is an enormous can of worms which threatens to chew evolution to pieces.

But try any way.

Good luck.

 

[lordkalvan]

Jason was addressing my post, . . . as I made a comment about asyncritus's "understanding of science" without knowing his credentials [scholastically speaking].

Sorry, my bad.

Regardless, I see many of the same SEEMINGLY ignorant comments on here, such as the typical "evolution takes more faith than believing in a god". There is NO evidence of any god [though I would be delighted to see it, in all sincerity], and never HAS been by anyone. However, there IS evidence of change over time that has been discovered [also called "evolution"].

Broadly speaking, I would agree with you.

 

[Asyncritus]

Jason was addressing my post, . . . as I made a comment about asyncritus's "understanding of science" without knowing his credentials [scholastically speaking].

Regardless, I see many of the same SEEMINGLY ignorant comments on here, such as the typical "evolution takes more faith than believing in a god". There is NO evidence of any god [though I would be delighted to see it, in all sincerity], and never HAS been by anyone. However, there IS evidence of change over time that has been discovered [also called "evolution"].

Evolution does take more faith than believing in God. Why?

Seemingly highly intelligently constructed organs and processes (Dawkins said so with regard to the bats) had to arise in either of 2 ways:

Way 1 via blind, undirected, unintelligent evolutionary processes

or

Way 2 via the design of an intelligent God.

There aren't too many alternatives, and it seems to me that unintelligence cannot produce the appearance of intelligence millions of times over.

Once, yes; twice OK; 3 times welllll... 1,000,000 times? Absolutely not.

So which requires more faith? A belief in Way 1, or a belief in Way 2?

Given that we have never seen evolution produce anything of any significance, and we haven't seen God either, where does our faculty of intelligence and inference lead us?

To Newton's position. He never saw God either, but using his enormous powers of intelligence and inference came to this conclusion:

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. [...] This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called "Lord God" παντοκρατωρ [pantokratōr], or "Universal Ruler". [...] The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, [and] absolutely perfect.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_religious_views#cite_note-Principia.2C_Book_III_1953-3


Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_religious_views#cite_note-20

 

[lordkalvan]

The original questions asked have received no answers, apart from:

'Your questions are poorly formed'

'You are not answering my questions'

'You haven't much understanding of evolutionary theory'

and such like.

I see, so unable to offer a reasoned reply to any of the questions I asked, points I raised and comments I made, you prefer to misrepresent and trivialise them instead. And this strengthens your arguments how, exactly?

None of these constitute any kind of answer to the 2 questions I asked, so I will repeat them for the last time - in vain, I know- but here's hoping.

The bats have wings and echolocate.

How did the instincts powering these behaviours arise, and

How did they enter the genome?

You could try defining your terms and explaining exactly what you mean, as I have asked several times. By 'instinct', do you mean behaviour? Behaviour can be learned, in the way that a chimp baby can learn how to do things from its mother and from members of its own clan, but behaviour can also be a reflex action - move towards food/light, move away from danger. If circumstances of life change, behaviour changes as well. Why should the pre-existing instinct to glide, for example, resist adaptation to flight? Behaviour does not exist in isolation from the rest of the organism; changes in behaviour do not generally occur absent a change in conditions that the animal experiences. The evolution of traits and the evolution of behaviour go hand-in-hand in a positive feedback loop.

I don't quite know how to form the questions better, but I do know how you could answer them better than you have so far done.

You mean in the same way that you have answered my questions?

You could say 'I/ evolutionary theory have no answer that will stand up to scrutiny'.

What would seem more apposite is that no answer can be provided that will satisfy you. This is not quite the same thing.

You cannot say that of course, because it is an enormous can of worms which threatens to chew evolution to pieces.

If you have the scientific training you claim, you will already be aware that 'I don't know' is insufficient to falsify a hypothesis. As I have pointed out before, even if evolutionary theory is quite unable to offer explanatory hypotheses for how bat wings, echolocation and particular patterns of behaviour arose (which it isn't), this is insufficient alone to falsify evolutionary theory because (a) there is a weight of evidence from other areas of evolutionary biology that supports the robustness of the theory and (b) pointing to a perceived problem is alone insufficient: you need to provide a robust alternative explanation that explains the observed evidence at least as effectively as evolutionary theory does. Demonstrably you have not done this, except to credit God as an explanation.

But try any way.

Good luck.

That's all right, luck doesn't enter into it.

 

[Deavonreye]

Evolution does take more faith than believing in God. Why?

Seemingly highly intelligently constructed organs and processes (Dawkins said so with regard to the bats) had to arise in either of 2 ways:

Way 1 via blind, undirected, unintelligent evolutionary processes

or

Way 2 via the design of an intelligent God.

There aren't too many alternatives, and it seems to me that unintelligence cannot produce the appearance of intelligence millions of times over.

Once, yes; twice OK; 3 times welllll... 1,000,000 times? Absolutely not.

So which requires more faith? A belief in Way 1, or a belief in Way 2?

Given that we have never seen evolution produce anything of any significance, and we haven't seen God either, where does our faculty of intelligence and inference lead us?

To Newton's position. He never saw God either, but using his enormous powers of intelligence and inference came to this conclusion:

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent Being. [...] This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called "Lord God" παντοκρατωρ [pantokratōr], or "Universal Ruler". [...] The Supreme God is a Being eternal, infinite, [and] absolutely perfect.


Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors".

I disagree [that it takes more faith to believe evolution than god]. The strong nuclear force insists that things MUST happen as they did. No magic involved.

To the contrary, having a magical being pop everything into existence takes much MUCH more faith.

As for Newton, . . . I don't really care what he said about god. He was also an alchemist. Should we then [because of dropping his name] believe that it is possible to change base metals into gold?

 

[Barbarian]

BTW, humans can also echolocate, although to a much lesser degree than bats (partially because they can't hear at the frequencies that give the best resolution)

Try this:
Go to a large empty space, like a gym or empty warehouse with few obstructions like chairs, curtains, etc.

Go in the middle of a large space, facing a wall. Close your eyes and walk toward the wall, slapping the soles of your shoes as you walk. You will find that you are aware of the wall getting closer.

It gets better with practice. Vikings often navigated foggy fjords by shouting and listening for echoes.

 

[Asyncritus]

BTW, humans can also echolocate, although to a much lesser degree than bats (partially because they can't hear at the frequencies that give the best resolution)

Try this:
Go to a large empty space, like a gym or empty warehouse with few obstructions like chairs, curtains, etc.

Go in the middle of a large space, facing a wall. Close your eyes and walk toward the wall, slapping the soles of your shoes as you walk. You will find that you are aware of the wall getting closer.

It gets better with practice. Vikings often navigated foggy fjords by shouting and listening for echoes.

Quite true Barbarian.

Now try catching 5 insects in a minute that way!!

BTW, are you the Barbarian I once knew on another forum?

 

[Asyncritus]

I disagree [that it takes more faith to believe evolution than god]. The strong nuclear force insists that things MUST happen as they did. No magic involved.

To the contrary, having a magical being pop everything into existence takes much MUCH more faith.

As for Newton, . . . I don't really care what he said about god. He was also an alchemist. Should we then [because of dropping his name] believe that it is possible to change base metals into gold?

And, um, where did this strong nuclear force come from?

Newton produced a vast amount of work which has proved absolutely essential to the progress of science.

We are transmuting metals every day in nuclear reactors and bombs.

Why condemn Newton for trying to do so? And are you aware that the alchemists were responsible for the discovery of many chemical processes and substances which are highly valuable and being used even today? For instance, Basil Valentine invented ether - which has proved to be a wonderful anaesthetic.

And should we shelve Dawkins for believing in evolution, which is about as baseless a theory imaginable? I think we should, but that's just my opinion.

 

[Asyncritus]

You could try defining your terms and explaining exactly what you mean... The evolution of traits and the evolution of behaviour go hand-in-hand in a positive [question-begging] feedback loop.

The word instinct refers to innate, unlearned behaviour, as I'm sure you really do know...

Wiki: Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.

Whichever instinct you may care to ignore, the instinct remains, and evolution has no accounting for it.

We are discussing here the origin of bats' wings and their ability to echolocate.

The origin of their wings is a non-starter, since the very first fossil bats already had them, and presumably knew how to use them.

There's that instinctive behaviour already in existence, and fully functional. Questions: where and how and why did it arise? And most critical of all, how did it enter the genome?

You are sufficiently intelligent to recognise that any gradual hypothesis is also a non-starter - because somewhere within the organism is ALREADY the ability to register the new behaviour and act on it.

Surely you can see that.

So X (can't fly) ..... n1, n2 ... steps......Y (can fly).

I don't know if you can see that n1, however incrementally small the difference from X, MUST have the new behaviour superimposed on X.

But X also MUST have the ABILITY to RECEIVE that superimposed new behaviour. Otherwise, no matter how excellent the new behaviour may be, it is useless evolutionarily.

You can't put a wing, or a wing precursor on to something that is incapable of receiving it. Now where did that ability to receive it come from?

And that is the root of all your evolutionary difficulties, as I'm positive you can see.

Now to return to the question of echolocation.

We have seen that the bats' echolocation ability is not just excellent. It's so good that the US military is busy trying to copy it - and failing.

So here is a creature, however many millions of years old, in possession of a faculty which is far in advance of anything we can produce.

And, you insist, that ability just happened.

I don't know how you think, but it seems to be in a very curious fashion indeed.

You would be entirely unwilling to accept that a perfectly functioning aircraft could possibly have originated in random fashion, such as a typhoon blowing through a junkyard.

Yet here, we have a super-duper aircraft, in many ways far superior to any we have been able to produce, one of the most highly successful mammalian species of all time, and here are you attempting to avoid the blindingly obvious conclusion that it could not have appeared by chance processes.

You have nothing better to offer than casuistry - certainly you have no science to back up your conclusion. I offer you the facts of flight, echo-location and all the anatomical and physiological functions in the creature.

Facts, I say. No hypotheses.

And I demand an explanation of how they could have originated. You can only mumble about evolution having an explanation as follows:

even if evolutionary theory is quite unable to offer explanatory hypotheses for how bat wings, echolocation and particular patterns of behaviour arose (which it isn't)...

OK. So where's the explanation? I've never seen one, but would be willing to listen. But for heaven's sake, don't produce some stupid article which anybody can see says nothing of evidenced substance in answer to the question.

...Demonstrably you have not done this, except to credit God as an explanation.

Because I can't produce a good explanation of the facts (in your opinion), it doesn't follow that I have to swallow your bad one.

In fact, in this particular case, you haven't got one at all.

And that is my limited objective in these writings. There is no way to establish scientifically that God did it. It is, as you rightly think, an article of faith.

But as Sherlock Holmes said, when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I'm eliminating the impossible.

The evolutionary non-explanation is impossible. We therefore must fall back on the 'however improbable' (in your opinion) explanation.

I'm positive that you intuitively know that this is right. Why not just admit it and save us both a lot of trouble?