11th December 2005, 12:26 PM
Biggah, gravity is a theory. So are germs. So is every single study of science in all of it's long history.
A theory is a collection of mechanisms designed to explain observations, which can make predictions based on these explanatory mechanisms which can be tested and falsified.
Evolution matches this definiton. So does both relativistic and newtonian gravity. Laws are contained IN theories.
The layman's definition of theory is actually closer to what scientists call a hypothesis. That's an untested explanation for a phenomenon, but which can be falsified by testing.
lazy, you are simply not being creative enough if you insist there is NO way something can just naturally evolve into a walking stick. Come on, you are a very smart person but are currently being delusional. Intelligent people have a way of intelligently convincing themselves of things they came to believe for unintelligent reasons.
Let us imagine this original bug was the color of a branch. This is a survival trait, so it is kept. Imagine over the years that another mutation makes the insect longer or thinner. These make it slightly more convincing, and so are also kept. Over time, this will eventually lead to something that looks very much like a branch. Add to this some mutations that alter it's behavior so that in the wind it will "sway" in a manner more and more similar to the way branches normally do, and you get a pretty good system going.
Of course I didn't bother explaining plant's intelligence, because I have yet to see evidence they HAVE it. You explain a phenomenon only AFTER you have evidence the phenomenon actually exists.
But here's this: evolutionary programming. Programs which base themselves on "unintelligent" design. The programmer simply sets up some basic parameters, take them as the "laws of physics" if you will. The program is designed to, far more rapidly than in nature, mutate some starting thing over and over again. The mutations that meet the standards the program was set to are kept, and those that didn't are deleted. Again, this is much more analogous to the way reality itself "dumbly" weeds out things than some intelligence. Over time, many odd mutations show up that look very little like the original. What you end up with is many "successful" strains. In this way, computers have "evolved" everything from organization charts for wine cellars to actual alterations to OTHER programs to "evolved" robots. (In the latter case, it was rather complicated as the program had to basically be a simulation of newtonian physics, with the deciding elements being "fastest moving", it made some very interesting devices, all completely without intelligence.) Indeed, this method has been used for art as well.
Randomness? Hardly. Randomness is a very small part of things. The only random element is which genes get damaged, but from there things progress at a very unrandom pace. For example, some of the damaged genes will simpy repair themselves. Some of the genes will be too critical to be altered and will produce invalid offspring. And, some of them will simply be detrimental and over time will be weeded out. If you look at the vast history of life forms, it's a gradiant. "Kinds" aren't really the right way to describe it, so much as more established variations. Life forms are more like the vast variations of light wavelengths. There's the red and the blue, but between them is a slow gradiant of wave lengths and it is namely an arbitrary thing that we picked specific wavelengths to name. (A little less since our eyes have specific cells attuned to specific wavelengths, but the fact remains that wavelengths taken at sheer numerical value are not seperated very specifically.) You keep saying I insist on it being "completely random", but no, I do not. Randomness is only an element that provides the mutations. The rest of evolution is clearly not random but is just obeying the laws of physics. Things that live, live. Things that die, die.
And by the way, I hardly see why a literal interpretation of an origin story that has two contradictory versions is needed to be a Christian. Biggah, just a small challenge to see if you might change from literal creationism to something figurative: What day was humanity created on? Read both Genesis 1 and 2 and come back to me on that.
A theory is a collection of mechanisms designed to explain observations, which can make predictions based on these explanatory mechanisms which can be tested and falsified.
Evolution matches this definiton. So does both relativistic and newtonian gravity. Laws are contained IN theories.
The layman's definition of theory is actually closer to what scientists call a hypothesis. That's an untested explanation for a phenomenon, but which can be falsified by testing.
lazy, you are simply not being creative enough if you insist there is NO way something can just naturally evolve into a walking stick. Come on, you are a very smart person but are currently being delusional. Intelligent people have a way of intelligently convincing themselves of things they came to believe for unintelligent reasons.
Let us imagine this original bug was the color of a branch. This is a survival trait, so it is kept. Imagine over the years that another mutation makes the insect longer or thinner. These make it slightly more convincing, and so are also kept. Over time, this will eventually lead to something that looks very much like a branch. Add to this some mutations that alter it's behavior so that in the wind it will "sway" in a manner more and more similar to the way branches normally do, and you get a pretty good system going.
Of course I didn't bother explaining plant's intelligence, because I have yet to see evidence they HAVE it. You explain a phenomenon only AFTER you have evidence the phenomenon actually exists.
But here's this: evolutionary programming. Programs which base themselves on "unintelligent" design. The programmer simply sets up some basic parameters, take them as the "laws of physics" if you will. The program is designed to, far more rapidly than in nature, mutate some starting thing over and over again. The mutations that meet the standards the program was set to are kept, and those that didn't are deleted. Again, this is much more analogous to the way reality itself "dumbly" weeds out things than some intelligence. Over time, many odd mutations show up that look very little like the original. What you end up with is many "successful" strains. In this way, computers have "evolved" everything from organization charts for wine cellars to actual alterations to OTHER programs to "evolved" robots. (In the latter case, it was rather complicated as the program had to basically be a simulation of newtonian physics, with the deciding elements being "fastest moving", it made some very interesting devices, all completely without intelligence.) Indeed, this method has been used for art as well.
Randomness? Hardly. Randomness is a very small part of things. The only random element is which genes get damaged, but from there things progress at a very unrandom pace. For example, some of the damaged genes will simpy repair themselves. Some of the genes will be too critical to be altered and will produce invalid offspring. And, some of them will simply be detrimental and over time will be weeded out. If you look at the vast history of life forms, it's a gradiant. "Kinds" aren't really the right way to describe it, so much as more established variations. Life forms are more like the vast variations of light wavelengths. There's the red and the blue, but between them is a slow gradiant of wave lengths and it is namely an arbitrary thing that we picked specific wavelengths to name. (A little less since our eyes have specific cells attuned to specific wavelengths, but the fact remains that wavelengths taken at sheer numerical value are not seperated very specifically.) You keep saying I insist on it being "completely random", but no, I do not. Randomness is only an element that provides the mutations. The rest of evolution is clearly not random but is just obeying the laws of physics. Things that live, live. Things that die, die.
And by the way, I hardly see why a literal interpretation of an origin story that has two contradictory versions is needed to be a Christian. Biggah, just a small challenge to see if you might change from literal creationism to something figurative: What day was humanity created on? Read both Genesis 1 and 2 and come back to me on that.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)