NG Best Underwater Photos

[ct_vol]

I love National Geographic... If you do to, check out these pics...


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...st-underwater-fish-animal-pictures/index.html

The jawfish looks like a freaking alien... :eek1:

 

[TriMax]

I have always loved the photography in NG.

Just could no longer take the constant evolution preaching.

Eddie

 

[Runner]

I know what you mean, Eddie. I was a "member" for a while. Finally got tired of being a "member" when I only wanted the pretty magazine full of pictures and not a bunch of preaching about the latest environmental fad. Might still get it if they would call me merely a "subscriber". Different connotation...

 

[macclellan]

Nice pics. Randy, that jawfish DOES look like an alien!

If you guys want simply photographs (nature pron), there are better places to look than NG magazine. NG is an explicitly conservation-oriented science mag.

Evolution "preaching." That's a good one Eddie!
Evolution is an important component of the earth and life sciences' explanation of the diversity and history of life on earth, and a very compelling explanation it is for those who bother to examine the issue objectively. Public realization of this has been pretty slow, but that shouldn't be altogether surprising for obvious reasons... heck, Tennessee didn't repeal the Butler Act until the late 1960's for crying out loud (over 30 years after the Scopes trial)!

 

[Runner]

I agree with one point -- it is an important component in earth and life sciences' explainations. I think Michael Behe does a pretty good job of objectively blowing holes the central key component of that theory in his book "The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism". A good reading for a person desiring to be objective. An objective person would see that we really don't know anything about it -- or that we've only scratched the surface and see in bits and pieces and understand even less.

P.S. Rarely do you find anything "objective" in science. Read Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" to see the true nature of science and the scientists behind them. Scientists are just imperfect people like the rest of us with their own desires and preferences and biases.

 

[ct_vol]

Ummmmm, pretty pictures... Pretty pictures...

 

[Runner]

Okay, okay. I'll stick with pretty pictures...

Although, I prefer my pictures to be of the more evolved animals:

 

[macclellan]

I've read Behe and Kuhn... Behe's view in Edge of Evolution and Darwin's Black Box is in pretty wide disrepute, specifically how he construed random mutation as evolution's principle force rather than natural selection, and there are case by case deconstructions of the supposedly "irreducible complex" biological systems he constructs, but that horse has been beaten to death over at talkorigins.org... It is true, we don't know everything, and not even very many things... but some things we do know beyond reasonable doubt.

Also, there has been a good 40+ years of work in the philosophy of science since Kuhn's Structure... the main thing that Kuhn got right was the historicity and "social character' of science, but he never could account for the objectivity of science (by his own admission). And science is very clearly more than simply one 'paradigm' after another... it is increasingly accurate in explaining and predicting the objective world. You are right that scientists are people just like the rest of us, but science is widely regarded as something special due to its methods and epistemic standards - sorting that out has occupied philosophers of science since Kuhn. Longino's "Fate of Knowlege" is a good recent and representative attempt to merge the objectivity and subjectivity of science in a 'post Kuhnian' world.

But, um, yeah...pretty pictures....

 

[EvilMel]

I think I've gained a new appreciation for McLovin'.

I can't think of another theory that has held up to such scrutiny. Some people will never believe in evolution no matter whether you turn back time and show it to them.

 

[Runner]

True, some people will believe anything. Like the idea that random mutation can add to the information to an organism's DNA (rather than destroy it) -- even though not one example can be shown to exist. That's not "holding up" to scrutiny. There are many holes in the theory that do not look to ever be filled by classical evolution. Evolutionists like Behe are coming up with alternatives to fill those holes.

I am fairly well read on this and responding to somebody is not debunking them. Evolution has to actually prove something happened rather than postulate possibilities before I will agree it is true. Until then, feel free to believe or disbelieve -- because that is all it is -- belief.

 

[TriMax]

Some people may never believe in anything except evolution because it requires belief that "absolute chance" is responsible for all that exist. Believing in some other explanation requires believing that something or Someone else is responsible. Does absolute change produce much in today's world?

Nice pictures -- I agree.

I only think/believe that the myriads of diversity and complexity are not due to chance.

 

[EvilMel]

I'm just going to have to disagree and leave it at that.

I find that in these types of discussion there is very little common ground.

 

[macclellan]

Scott, no one has advocated "classical evolution" for over 70 years....

What do you mean "add to the information" of the DNA? Mutations don't always add, they subtract, or simply change as well. There are countless examples of nondestructive mutations. "Not one example?" Are you serious? Polyploidy in plants is a very common, completely uncontroversial kind of nondestructive mutation...oats, peanuts, potatoes, apples...
Recent examples of beneficial mutations: CCR5 mutation for HIV resistance in humans... avian flu... swine flue... actually, epidemiology would be a very impoverished field without the concept of beneficial mutations (from the perspective of the organism in question, like influenza)...Note that evolution is not merely theoretical - it has a real practical bearing on issues that matter to us all. I for one am glad that NIH and CDC explicitly adopt evolution. They wouldn't be able to do their job as effectively without out it.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14992165#post14992165 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Runner
Evolution has to actually prove something happened rather than postulate possibilities before I will agree it is true.

What do you count as "proving something happened?" Can we "prove" that Pangaea existed? By your logic, the theory of plate tectonics merely postulates possibilities - we can't prove all continents were once one. Note that plate tectonics was ridiculed by scientists at its inception and many "common sense" objections were devastating to it... but within 50 years no one denied its truth since it explains the observable phenomena better than alternatives.

In my understanding, theories aren't ever "proven" they are confirmed or disconfirmed by evidence, they successfully predict or account for previously unknown phenomena or they do not, etc. and theories are to be evaluated by the extent to which they conform to these standards. By these standard criteria of adequacy for scientific theories (and others like scope, simplicity, etc.), evolution is without a doubt the best theory of the observed diversity, distribution, and structure of organisms on earth. Neither Behe's "God of the Gaps" in Edge of Evolution or "Intelligent Design" in Darwin's Black Box measure up, and this is why Behe and other ID folks are on the fringe of scientific legitimacy - the theories haven't measured up to the epistemic standards central to science.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14992165#post14992165 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Runner
Until then, feel free to believe or disbelieve -- because that is all it is -- belief.

This platitude sounds nice, but science is about more than belief. Any good charlatan can produce copious amount of belief, but science is about the production of knowledge (i.e. justified, true belief), not merely belief. Do we "know" evolution is true? I'd submit that we do. This is compatible with our not fully knowing the mechanism(s) involved or the complete exact evolutionary history. We don't know everything about gravity either... but we do know that Einstein is pretty much right...

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14991812#post14991812 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by EvilMel
Some people will never believe in evolution no matter whether you turn back time and show it to them.

If there is anything to Weiner's "The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time," we don't even need to turn back time, we can observe natural selection over very short time scales if we pay close enough attention for a few years. I own a copy, you can borrow it if you like.

 

[TriMax]

I agree with you Mel. There is very little common ground.

Mac - Natural Selection is not Evolution (Well, maybe micro but not macro if those terms are actually are terms). They are all still finches.

I will stop at that. We may have already gone further than we should.

 

[planejane]

If you were a passenger one a plane spiriling out of control, whom would you cry out to for help, Darwin or God?

 

[macclellan]

The pilot?

Not that your possible answers are mutually exclusive (as the pope himself recently attested: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19956961 ).

 

[Runner]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15002914#post15002914 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by macclellan
What do you mean "add to the information" of the DNA? Mutations don't always add,

They NEVER have been shown to add information. They always destroy or replicate what was already there. The destruction of flight may make a beetle better able to live on a windy island, but the it doesn't explain how the information for flight got in the DNA to begin with.

...they subtract, or simply change as well. There are countless examples of nondestructive mutations. "Not one example?" Are you serious? Polyploidy in plants is a very common, completely uncontroversial kind of nondestructive mutation...oats, peanuts, potatoes, apples...
Recent examples of beneficial mutations: CCR5 mutation for HIV resistance in humans... avian flu... swine flue... actually, epidemiology would be a very impoverished field without the concept of beneficial mutations (from the perspective of the organism in question, like influenza)...

Nope, not one. Those are all examples of destruction of information in the DNA (beneficial end-result or no) that gives the organism defense against something that was harmful to the older form. "Beneficial", in a sense, but no information added to the DNA. The mutations work in diseases because they destroy or deform what used to be attacked -- and almost invariably weaken the organism in another manner. No new organism created. No NEW information in the DNA. This is all "micro-evolution" or adaptation and does not do anything to explain "macro-evolution" in that it doesn't describe at all how new information is added to the DNA -- only how it is destroyed.

You really need to re-read that Behe book -- he goes into extreme detail on this matter with research on malaria being the central focus. Double mutations are rare, but give rise to immunities from anti-malarial agents by shifting the "shape" of the virus. The probability of a triple simultaneous mutation occuring that would give rise to immunity from both our methods of combating malaria is astronomically high enough to discount it scientifically as possible. And our simplest biological molecules would need many more mutations than that for something to change in them.

Note that evolution is not merely theoretical - it has a real practical bearing on issues that matter to us all. I for one am glad that NIH and CDC explicitly adopt evolution. They wouldn't be able to do their job as effectively without out it.

Evolution has zero impact on anything of import. Many of the latest breakthroughs in understanding human biological systems are coming from treating them as engineered systems (particularly when you view the intracy of the cellular machinary). If evolutionary science was to totally dissapear, nothing would be affected except people's philosphy of the nature of life's origins. And perhaps we'd have a classification system for orginisms that wouldn't be declared invalid every 3 to 5 years and would instead remain stable.

 

[Runner]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15002914#post15002914 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by macclellan
Do we "know" evolution is true? I'd submit that we do. This is compatible with our not fully knowing the mechanism(s) involved or the complete exact evolutionary history. We don't know everything about gravity either... but we do know that Einstein is pretty much right...

You are honestly comparing a law that is verified by repeatable testing to a theory/philosophy has never been witnessed? Partical dynamics is repeatable. Math is repeatable and testable. Evolutionary theory is not. You can't say evolution must be true simply because we are here. The theory is all about the method.

If you were honest, you would say they we know next to nothing about evolution for a fact. Every argument on the key problems with macro-evolution is an endless stream of posutlations with little to no evidence in support. We assume based on bits and pieces of evidence upon which has been piled assumptions and theories and postulates and a philosphical system. The ID Theorists and the Creationists see the same data that the Darwinists do and come up with different answers. The same data -- the fossil record, the geological layers, etc. The difference is in interpretting that data. And too much flies in the face of the evolutionary (classical or modern) model.

Personally I like ID camp simply because they have traction at the tip of where Evolutionary Theory has troubles explaining what happens. I believe Specified Complexity has enough traction that it will eventually overcome the entrenched (politically, economically, and philosophically) inferior understanding of "macro-evolution" and cause a paradigm shift.

I'm just going to have to disagree and leave it at that.

I find that in these types of discussion there is very little common ground.

Heh. For my next act, I will argue Sharia Law with an Imam.

 

[macclellan]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15016106#post15016106 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Runner
They NEVER have been shown to add information. They always destroy or replicate what was already there.

The way you've defined it, no change could possibly "add" anything. "Destruction" is a laden term. A gene sequence being modified ("destroyed") and repeated (one kind of mutation) is "adding information" in any plausible understanding of those two words combined (there is information that there wasn't before). Whether or not it is beneficial depends, but happens often enough. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB102.html

There is some really neat work being done in artificial evolution... information very clearly being added, which on Dembski's view is impossible... It's not just possible, it is actual, and very common at that.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15016106#post15016106 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Runner
And perhaps we'd have a classification system for orginisms that wouldn't be declared invalid every 3 to 5 years and would instead remain stable.

If species were "fixed eternal kinds," we'd expect them to be easy to classify. If we accept evolutionary speciation (what creationists call "macroevolution"), we should expect classification to be oftentimes difficult, which is what we find. A lot of the recent change in biological nomenclature is due to the rise of phylogenetic systematics, which now dominates other approaches to systematics, and is explicitly evolutionary...

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15016188#post15016188 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Runner
Personally I like ID camp simply because they have traction at the tip of where Evolutionary Theory has troubles explaining what happens. I believe Specified Complexity has enough traction that it will eventually overcome the entrenched (politically, economically, and philosophically) inferior understanding of "macro-evolution" and cause a paradigm shift.

Troubles explaining things? For evolution, the devil is explaining the mechanisms in detail - how things happen is an explanation. "Poof" is not an adequate explanation...

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15016188#post15016188 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Runner
YThe ID Theorists and the Creationists see the same data that the Darwinists do and come up with different answers. The same data -- the fossil record, the geological layers, etc. The difference is in interpretting that data. And too much flies in the face of the evolutionary (classical or modern) model.

This is one of the main cruxes of the issue. The "too much" assessment is where protracted debate would have to take place. I'd make the same claim about ID... homologous structures, vestigal organs, common biochemistry, biodiversity distribution patterns, etc. fly in the face of ID (and just about everything flies in the face young earth creationism).

I find a lot of recent theology reconciling theism with evolution to be very interesting - focusing on immanence, omnipresence, and continual creation like Haught's "God After Darwin" - since it is happening in our time. The theistic reconciliation with a Copernican solar system is easy to see only in retrospect... The main outlines are already there for the darwinian reconciliation in several theistic sects, catholicism, liberal protestantism, orthodox judaism, etc...

But yeah, you're right Mel, this is starting to seem pointless....
So... purty pictures...

Note the 'thumb' Clearly contrived and jury-rigged, not designed.

 

[GPhiAce]

After such a Fiesty and informative thread, Are we all going to be able to get along at the meeting........ before the beers kick in???