Back home now and I can actually type normally to break down the argument Loki can't seem to grasp:
From Wiki: "The central concept of natural selection is the evolutionary fitness of an organism.[94] Fitness is measured by an organism's ability to survive and reproduce, which determines the size of its genetic contribution to the next generation.[94] However, fitness is not the same as the total number of offspring: instead fitness is indicated by the proportion of subsequent generations that carry an organism's genes.[95] For example, if an organism could survive well and reproduce rapidly, but its offspring were all too small and weak to survive, this organism would make little genetic contribution to future generations and would thus have low fitness.[94]"
From Wiki: "Fitness (often denoted w in population genetics models) is a central idea in evolutionary theory. It can be defined either with respect to a genotype or to a phenotype in a given environment. In either case, it describes the ability to both survive and reproduce, and is equal to the average contribution to the gene pool of the next generation that is made by an average individual of the specified genotype or phenotype. If differences between alleles of a given gene affect fitness, then the frequencies of the alleles will change over generations; the alleles with higher fitness become more common. This process is called natural selection."
So the central question becomes: How do we determine scientifically which members of the species were fit, and passed their genes on, and which ones were not? The answer to that question is clearly stated above. As evolutionary "scientist", we merely study which genes or traits are most common in a given species, and by those results, we can determine that the specific species in the previous generation that was most fit, and must have contributed those genes.
Unless you are in denial of the relationship between genotype and phenotype, and that genetics is fundamentally about inheritable phenotypes, then I am faiuling to see your point in tracing and retracing the
DEFINITION of fitness.
And here we arrive at what Loki can't seem to comprehend, that is, we observe an organism and we conclude, this organism must be the result of natural selection, and its predecessor must have been the most fit, otherwise, it wouldn't be here.
Strawman. No such presumption is made, except in the bullshit version of evolution you have created for the sole purpose of claiming you have invalidated the actual theory of evolution.
But isn't fitness a central concept of natural selection? Have we proven this or is it still a theory?
What you're bitching about half the time (when you find it convenient) is something like, "Evolution says "fitness" means "fitness," and that's a "question-begging" arguement. The thing is, "fitness" is not presented as an argument; it's not an "argument" at all.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding (or more likely a DELIBERATE misunderstanding) of the conditions under a tautolgy is illegitimate (question-begging). In formal logic (rather than rhetoric), tautologies are ALWAYS valid.
DEFINITIONS are inherently tautological AND formally valid. They LITERALLY use different words to say the same thing. They HAVE TO!
A
THEORY is something else entirely.
"FITNESS" is not the theory you say it is. While fitness is certainly "a central concept of natural selection," fitness IS NOT natural selection. Why is this so difficult for you to understand? I mean, after all, the definition of "fitness" is fully applicable in the Creationist notions of design--organisms are "designed" to be fit--that is to say, the "Creator/Designer/God/Leprechaun designed organisms to successfully reproduce and pass their genetic material to their progeny.
I told you before that you had to decide what you want, a
DEFINITION or a
THEORY. You have chosen BOTH so you can illegitimately and dishonestly switch your usage to meet the convenience of your argument. Just like every other member of your intellectually dishonest, superstitious tribe of retards.
The very core of evolutionary theory rests on natural selection. I'm not sure why Loki can't get this: this modern definition of fitness attempts its proof by assuming it is true.
Fitness is NOT A
THEORY. Fitness is not the same thing as NATURAL SELECTION you equivocating douche-bag.
Mr. Fallacy, aka, Loki, should recognize this as begging the question.
There is no question-begging involved, except in the STRAWMAN version of evolution you created where "fitness" is the EXACT SAME THING as "natural selection."
We conclude that the fittest species pass along their dna because if they weren't fit, they wouldn't pass on their dna.
This is consistent with the
DEFINITION of "fitness."
Said another way... the types of organisms that survive and reproduce are the types of organisms that survive and reproduce.
This also is consistent with the
DEFINITION of "fitness."
How many more ways can I say it? Your links prove the very thing you deny.
You are wrong. So woefully wrong. So purposefully wrong.
But the end result is exactly what I posted pages back:
"Bethell argued that evolutionary theory based on natural selection (survival of the fittest) is vacuous: it states that, first, evolution can be explained by the fact that, on the whole, only the fitter organisms survive and achieve reproductive success; and second, what makes an organism fit is the fact that it survives and successfully reproduces. This is the long-running and much-debated claim that natural selection, as an explanation of the evolutionary origin of species, is tautological — it cannot be falsified because it attempts no real explanation. It tells us: the kinds of organisms that survive and reproduce are the kinds of organisms that survive and reproduce."
Bethell is just fatuously arguing that
DEFINITION are tautologies, and that in the case of evolution the use of
DEFINITION for terms makes the whole theory an illegitimate tautology.
You and Bethell are BOTH retarded.
Seriously. Once you get past the fact that FITNESS is not the same thing as NATURAL SELECTION, what you and Bethell are actually expressing denial of, is the well established relationship between genotype and phenotype. You are expressing a denial that so many of the functional structures and processes exhibited by living things are determined solely by the genetics of that living thing--and those functional structures and processes have peceptable effect on that organism's survival, and that they are inheritable.
And the explanation you offer as an alternative to the reality you deny is literally ...
MAGIC!
Begging the question, sometimes known by its Latin name petitio principii (meaning assuming the initial point), is a logical fallacy in which the writer or speaker assumes the statement under examination to be true. In other words, begging the question involves using a premise to support itself. If the premise is questionable, then the argument is bad.
I am aware of this ... I have been pointing out that you have no evidence for your Creator/Designer/God/Leprechaun that doesn't ultimatley rely upon first believing your Creator/Designer/God/Leprechaun is real in order to accept that the "evidence" submitted validates the existence of your Creator/Designer/God/Leprechaun.
So Loki, that brings me to my next question: Is it true (or STRAWMAN) that evolutionary theory teaches man came from a single cell ancestor. Let's see what Darwin himself said:
"[W]ould it be too bold to imagine, that in the great length of time, since the earth began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of mankind, would it be too bold to imagine, that all warm-blooded animals have arisen from one living filament, which the great First Cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts attended with new propensities, directed by irritations, sensations, volitions, and associations; and thus possessing the faculty of continuing to improve by its own inherent activity, and of delivering down those improvements by generation to its posterity, world without end?"
"Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed."
So we are led to believe that a single cell, with natural selection acting on random variations through a large number of subsequent generations, produced a man? Are you saying this is a strawman?
Aside from the fact that the variations within a gene-pool are not random, no this is not a strawman.
And if it isn't a strawman, we are told this process succeeded, because the organisms that weren't fit, didn't have reproductive success.
This is consistent with the
DEFINITION of fitness.
I just cannot wait for you to get to yout point.
Then we are given some bird examples and some moth examples that show a single trait change, i.e., length of beak in the case of the bird and color in the case of the month, and we're told these changes happened, because the other organisms that didn't have these changes didn't survive.
Strawman. You are not told that at all, except in the bullshit version of evolution you created for the sole purpose of claiming you have invalidated the actual theory of evolution.
However, the punch line to both stories is that the original trait that supposedly didn't contribute to reproductive success in the specific environment, reappeared when the rains came back or the pollution went away. We are given a
"just so" story about the color of the moths contributing to their survival.
Can you please link me to a study where a scientific sample was taken and birds were actually observed eating more of one color moth?
Why do I have to provide validation for your retarded notions?
Or did we simply notice more black moths and make up a neat story of why they survived, having never ruled out other causes for why black moths or white moths might flourish?
If by "we" you mean "you" and your "neat story" about your invisible superfriend, then yes.
If anything qualifies for a "just so" story about anything, it's your story about how your personal imaginary friend just magics everything to be just the way you believe it is.
And finally, we are asked to believe that based on these typically lame examples, that this "selection" of better equipped species, (or can I even say that anymore??) or more successful reproductive species, that this has produced the amazing complexity of life we see around us. We are supposed to believe that this process gave rise to the chemically complex process of blood clotting or for that matter, human consciousness?
No. No one but your strawman evolutionists bases their conclusions "on these typically lame examples."
What has the theory of evolution proven? Absolutely NOTHING.
So what? The theory of evolution (or any other scientific theory) is not a tool to "prove" anything.
Real scientists do not conform to the bullshit paradigm of superstitious retards who are desperately trying to
PROVE that their imaginary superfriends are real.
It basically tells us that the surviving organisms survived because their ancestors were good at reproducing successfully. Where is is the explanation for more complex species arising from less complex species?
"Our simulations show that such mutational events, coupled with a selective pressure, leads to growth of pathways. These results indicate that pathways could be driven toward complexity via simple evolutionary mechanisms and that complexity can arise without any specific selective pressure for it. Furthermore, we find that the level of complexity that pathways evolve toward depends on the selection criteria. In general, we find that final pathway size tends to be lower when pathways evolve under stringent selection criteria. This leads to the counterintuitive conclusion that simple response requirements on a pathway would facilitate its evolution toward higher complexity." (
Soyer and Bonhoeffer 2006).
Or would you argue that an Ecoli is just as complex as a species that can make music and send one of its members to the moon?
No.
Based on this simplistic explanation for fitness, how do we arrive at the human eyeball?
The human eyball is not explained by fitness.
And why do we still have single cell organisms billions of years later?
Does the actual theory of evolution predict single cell organisms sould not exist now, or is it just your strawman version that predicts this?
Why were some with slight genetic changes able to reproduce successfully enough to produce a human over millions of generations, but others remained virtually unchanged for billions of years, also successfully reproducing like crazy.
I suppose the answer could be magic, but I'll stand by the notion that every microbe that ever lived did not exists under the exact same conditions, and did not magically experience the exact same mutations at exactly the same time ... or anything even close.
Is E coli more fit that a man or vice versa?
Yes to both.
Under your new, modern definition of fitness, the answer is a resounding NO!
Wrong. Under your personally engineered, strawman theory of evolution, the answer is a resounding NO!
So if man is no more fit than E coli, how did we ever get from a microbe to a man?
Why do I have to explain or validate your strawman?
How did the soup become the soup nazi? Before you whine, STRAWMAN!! STRAWMAN! I am not falling for your semantics tricks.
Between us, I'm not engaging in semantic tricks.
I am not making the claim that man's ancestor is E coli.
But you would if you found it convenient. I'll bet that you will, just as soon as you find it convenient. You have no principled refutation for evolution ... you just grasp at any opportunity--even if it means contradicting yourself.
I am merely drawing an example for argumentative purposes, which in your ignorance you fail to grasp, or you resort to playing word games.
Nonsense.
No, evolution does not teach that humans came from mice or amoeba's, or elephants came from lizards, but in principle, this is what it claims.
Nope. Not even in principle.
The TOE claims that Humans could have come from an "amoeba-LIKE" organism, or an amoeba like organism could be a distant ancestor. So I'm not falling for your black and white explanation denials, for the fact of the matter is, the TOE makes some preposterous generalized claims, but then says, but we really don't know the actual players.
Not at all surprising. I have pointed this out to you before, and I will point it out to you once again, without any fear that you will refuse to understand what is being explained to you.
Science
ideally seeks unconditional certainty or "proof", but scientists never really claim such absolute certainty--they claim rather specifically qualified certainties. None of the conclusions made are asserted with unconditional certainty. Every single explanation made by scientists in their respective fields remains susceptible to scrutiny and invalidation in the light of better evidence and better understanding of the evidence. While every single explanation that posits some supernatural "Creator" or "Designer" or "God" thing is asserted on faith, with the conviction of unconditional certainty in the of the reality of the "Creator" or "Designer" or "God" thing--and unqualified certainty in the of the truth of the explanations of reality derived from that certainty. There is no uncertainty in the faith that is the foundation of religion, because faith does not express uncertainty.
Scientists--real scientists, practicing actual valid science--allow for the possibility that a creator is responsible for the existence of everything they observe; applying valid logic to the verifiable evidence simply does not currently point to that conclusion. However, there is no ontological barrier that would prevent a real scientist--practicing actual valid science--from concluding that a creator is responsible for the existence of everything he observes if applying valid logic to the verifiable evidence points to that conclusion.
Christian Creationists, on the other hand, having already presumed the absolute certainty of the existence of this invented Creator of theirs, simply dismiss any verifiable evidence that contradicts their baseless preconceptions, on the basis that such evidence does not support their baseless conclusions. Christian Creationists have imposed upon themselves an intellectually dishonest denial of the significant validity of select evidence and logically valid arguments that do not conform to, validate, or support their conclusions. Christian Creationists have sanctimoniously, without basis in any valid reasoning, for the purposes of promoting the illusion of their intellectual/spiritual/moral superiority, imposed upon themselves an ontological barrier preventing them from concluding that a Christian Creator is not necessary for the existence of everything they observe; especially if applying valid logic to the verifiable evidence points to that conclusion.
Science simply does not share the paradigm of starting from a position of unconditional certainty that religion or superstition does. The uncertainties understood in scientific explanations, working hypotheses, and speculations (expressed in, and as, assumptions) can obviously not be construed as faith. And while there may be no universally satisfying and agreed upon scientific explanation for the existence of the universe, none of those explanations are baseless in valid logic applied to verifiable evidence. Science actually still allows for the existence of a creator who may be responsible for all of the universe as we understand it; the valid logic, applied objectively to the current evidence simply does not require, or point to such a creator. Yet religion, your religion maybe, the Christian religion as practiced by Creationists certainly, has a fundamental problem with this position--as it has with any position that does not agree with or advance the preconceived and very specific conclusions asserted as facts of reality on faith. Christian Creationists, without any basis in verifiable evidence and/or valid logic, simply refuse to accept ANY theory that does not include the
superstitious requirement of the existence of this "Creator" or "Designer" or "God" thing" of theirs.
