Flores said:
I know of no such rule concerning evening hours, particularly since when the sciforums clock says 10:30PM it's about 4:30PM here.
This is a nice argumentum ad hominem and all, (except for the ASSUME part, I've read that about 15 times today already) but you missed on a couple of important points.
1) I wasn't talking about you. I imagined up until now that you had adopted at least some of the terms of our discussion here, namely that evolutionary theory was either acceptable for a reason, or unacceptable for a reason, and that the purpose of the discussion was to determine one reason or the other. (Q) was asking about someone who does not agree to any of the terms of discussion and does not permit any possibility of agreement, which I hope does not characterize you.
2) I have ASSUMEd that you are here to give input to the same domain of discourse as I am, that is, whether evolutionary theory has merit as a description of a natural process. If I am wrong, and this is not the case, then I am only an ASS for paying attention to U.
So, enough with the cheap shots.
What do you think the moth example is? Why do you think I bothered to mention it?
Your belief in the power of humankind is strong indeed if you think that our laboratory techniques actually invented selective breeding. At best, by breeding selectively we are putting pressures on organisms which could have come from a natural environment. Certainly the development of corn from its initial grass-like state didn't happen in a laboratory.
At the very least, as a hydrologist you cannot possibly think that the natural environment has always remained the same, forever sacrosanct and unchanging, until the first tread of human beings. We may be good at building stuff, but we don't control the world.
Who cares about man? Why would a human example of selective breeding be less confusing? For the most part, the human examples are more confusing.
There are other examples, such as the recent increase in tuskless elephants in Africa. I understand that in Scotland they bred sheep to have shorter legs so they wouldn't have to build their fences so high. I use the moth example because the effect was not intentional on the part of human beings; most people are willing to accept that artificial selection by human beings will result in a genetic change in a population of organisms.
I don't believe that I have ever once on sciforums implied that any field of scientific study produced infallibly accurate results of ANY kind. Generally I am one of those people who describes scientific study as an attempt to incrementally improve a world view which we know to be distorted and splintered. Perfection of our world view was never even an option and we should not pursue science in any sort of misapprehension that we will derive ultimate Platonic truth from any set of observations, no matter how complete or well-made we may flatter ourselves to think that they are.
I apologize, I don't know what moon behaviour is, so I'll take this as being a general argument against extrapolation.
My answer is this. If I want to demonstrate that glass jars break, I don't have to break them all, I just have to break one of them.
If I want to demonstrate that selective breeding is possible, I don't have to demonstrate with every species by the same token. Your general injunction "For every species selective breeding is not possible within that species," cannot reasonably be amended to "For every species except peppered moths selective breeding is not possible within that species," when the counterexample of peppered moths is given. You might as well say "It is not possible to break any glass jar except for that one you just broke."
Instead we have to consider the broken jar as a proper counterexample, a demonstration that the original conjecture "It is not possible to break any glass jar" is not the truth.
Then we come up with the next reasonable theory, "It is possible to break some glass jars." We can't inductively divine that all jars are breakable from the single example, but we can predict that the broken jar is not unique, and that others probably share its properties.
So, it may still be the case that selective breeding does not act upon some species. But we DO know that it does act upon one from this example, and that this property is probably not unique to one species of moth.
Okay, first - the peppered moth is a species.
Second, there is a variety of answers as to how heredity and adaptation interact and how they can be described. Of those that I have studied, the combination of genetic material as a mechanism of heredity, and natural selection as an explanation for how populations adapt, present to me the most compelling evidence of how the process is to be described.
Lastly, to accuse me of a lack of imagination is not justified, since so far you have sought to deny others' ideas and offered no alternatives.
Or the other one is known not to post during evening hours and holidays, and news goes, yesterday was Veterans day. Are you as hasty making decision about science and their validity like you are hasty about assuming things about people. Didn't they teach you in biology 101 that ASSUME means Making an ASS out YOU and not ME.
I know of no such rule concerning evening hours, particularly since when the sciforums clock says 10:30PM it's about 4:30PM here.
This is a nice argumentum ad hominem and all, (except for the ASSUME part, I've read that about 15 times today already) but you missed on a couple of important points.
1) I wasn't talking about you. I imagined up until now that you had adopted at least some of the terms of our discussion here, namely that evolutionary theory was either acceptable for a reason, or unacceptable for a reason, and that the purpose of the discussion was to determine one reason or the other. (Q) was asking about someone who does not agree to any of the terms of discussion and does not permit any possibility of agreement, which I hope does not characterize you.
2) I have ASSUMEd that you are here to give input to the same domain of discourse as I am, that is, whether evolutionary theory has merit as a description of a natural process. If I am wrong, and this is not the case, then I am only an ASS for paying attention to U.
So, enough with the cheap shots.
Selective breeding does not happen in nature. They are conducted under overly managed conditions in laboratories. There is no proof that selective breeding ever took place in nature, and thus it's outcome can not be used to assert that evolution does indeed take place in nature.
What do you think the moth example is? Why do you think I bothered to mention it?
Your belief in the power of humankind is strong indeed if you think that our laboratory techniques actually invented selective breeding. At best, by breeding selectively we are putting pressures on organisms which could have come from a natural environment. Certainly the development of corn from its initial grass-like state didn't happen in a laboratory.
At the very least, as a hydrologist you cannot possibly think that the natural environment has always remained the same, forever sacrosanct and unchanging, until the first tread of human beings. We may be good at building stuff, but we don't control the world.
Why do we hear about that a million times, use other species that represent man for instance. You can't draw general conclusions based on such a specific example. That's called insane extrapolation.
Who cares about man? Why would a human example of selective breeding be less confusing? For the most part, the human examples are more confusing.
There are other examples, such as the recent increase in tuskless elephants in Africa. I understand that in Scotland they bred sheep to have shorter legs so they wouldn't have to build their fences so high. I use the moth example because the effect was not intentional on the part of human beings; most people are willing to accept that artificial selection by human beings will result in a genetic change in a population of organisms.
Agree.....I don't ask you to stop researching though, just stop attesting that this is the most INFALIABLE ACCURATE theory.
I don't believe that I have ever once on sciforums implied that any field of scientific study produced infallibly accurate results of ANY kind. Generally I am one of those people who describes scientific study as an attempt to incrementally improve a world view which we know to be distorted and splintered. Perfection of our world view was never even an option and we should not pursue science in any sort of misapprehension that we will derive ultimate Platonic truth from any set of observations, no matter how complete or well-made we may flatter ourselves to think that they are.
Incline all you want, you are making a big mistake extrapolating moon behavior based on moth population...It's a free world though, so feel free to base your assertion on a very very specific example.
I apologize, I don't know what moon behaviour is, so I'll take this as being a general argument against extrapolation.
My answer is this. If I want to demonstrate that glass jars break, I don't have to break them all, I just have to break one of them.
If I want to demonstrate that selective breeding is possible, I don't have to demonstrate with every species by the same token. Your general injunction "For every species selective breeding is not possible within that species," cannot reasonably be amended to "For every species except peppered moths selective breeding is not possible within that species," when the counterexample of peppered moths is given. You might as well say "It is not possible to break any glass jar except for that one you just broke."
Instead we have to consider the broken jar as a proper counterexample, a demonstration that the original conjecture "It is not possible to break any glass jar" is not the truth.
Then we come up with the next reasonable theory, "It is possible to break some glass jars." We can't inductively divine that all jars are breakable from the single example, but we can predict that the broken jar is not unique, and that others probably share its properties.
So, it may still be the case that selective breeding does not act upon some species. But we DO know that it does act upon one from this example, and that this property is probably not unique to one species of moth.
You are mistaken my dear, just like you are mistaken about the Moth being a representative of the entire living species. As I said, lack of answers on your part is not a good reason that the one answer that you have adopted is correct. It's a sign of trying to achieve convineance.
Okay, first - the peppered moth is a species.
Second, there is a variety of answers as to how heredity and adaptation interact and how they can be described. Of those that I have studied, the combination of genetic material as a mechanism of heredity, and natural selection as an explanation for how populations adapt, present to me the most compelling evidence of how the process is to be described.
Lastly, to accuse me of a lack of imagination is not justified, since so far you have sought to deny others' ideas and offered no alternatives.