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How stupid are you? This would calculate the incidence of mutations per generation. Is that what you said? No I quote:
Well apparently you do.</p>
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Even the simplest organisms that we see have millions if not billions of nucleotides, able to characterize thousands of traits. If you want simple, don’t study spiders. Study the stuff that you can’t see.</p>
<p>Are there any well-regarded atheist scientists who question the truth of evolution?</p>
<p>@Relevance</p>
<p>You do realize that you give atheists a bad image by demeaning the intellectual capacities of those you disagree with, right?</p>
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<p>Explaining the improbability of evolution by calling on supposed billions of planets where it failed, none of which we have observed, is wild mass guessing at best.</p>
<p>@Relevance:</p>
<p>My quote “You don’t have millions of generations to work with” was in response to you attack on my explanation of how unlikely it was that one transition would take place.</p>
<p>To clarify:</p>
<p>“You don’t have millions of generations to work with getting from proto mammal to placental mammal, when you have to get all the way to Homo in less than 150 million years.”</p>
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<p>Why should there be? With the assumption of atheism, there is no alternative! Any atheist who become convinced that evolution was false would have to reject atheism as well.</p>
<p>@Silverturtle: “According to Newsweek magazine, 99.85% of American earth and life scientists accept biological evolution as a fact. Gallup polls also show that 95% of all scientists accept evolution, though it should be noted that this figure includes scientists who study in unrelated fields, like Computer Science, Engineering, etc. The vast majority of scientists accept evolution as fact.” I’m going to assume that of the .15% that do not believe in evolution, at least one is an atheist. But I cannot find any specific examples, sorry.</p>
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The mechanism is pretty solid. However, as Mosby has correctly pointed out, there are aspects of evolution that are not “solved” with certainty yet. None disqualify the theory but it does show that evolutionary studies are an ongoing science. </p>
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You realize that it’s inherently discriminatory to characterize a group by a single individual? Since you seem to suggest that you partake in fallacy and bigotry, I have little interest in answering the question. </p>
<p>Oh and I suppose the alternative is to create a bad image by miscalculating math and appearing not to have any intellectual capacity whatsoever. </p>
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I’m not sure what you are talking about. Outside the planets in our solar system, we’ve only been able to observe a handful of others. For that reason, and the unknown probability of initial life formation, I did not calculate this into my calculations.</p>
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I hope you realize that no common person would’ve been able to interpret that from your statement. And it doesn’t matter. You keep piling in numbers without the meat to do the calculations. You say something is “unlikely”, I nod my head and agree. You says it’s SOO unlikely that it couldn’t have happened and I ask to see your math. You shrug your shoulders, repeat yourself, and throw in irrelevant numbers. </p>
<p>The numbers we need: number of individuals in population, probability of mutations, probability of mutation being beneficial, probability of the mutation propagating, amount of time, and number of generations per unit of time. As we are clearly missing about half the numbers needed to do that math and do not have any estimates for these numbers (besides that they are small), your mathematical pursuit of this probability is rather null.</p>
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<p>Ok, do it! Calculate the incidence. Note that this is the incidence of befeficial mutations that survive.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can get a reasonably small incidence by doing so.</p>
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<p>There were atheists before evolution was theorized. I could come up with alternate theories right now: aliens brought us here, or, we have always been in this form.</p>
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<p>See bottom of previous post to understand what computations are necessary and why the calculation cannot be completed.</p>
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Which raises the point - evolution isn’t a product of atheism - it’s a product of scientific rationalism.</p>
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<p>It’s a common atheist argument to explain the improbability of evolution to say “well, given the billions upon billions of stars, it’s not suprising at all that evolution would happen on at least one, and we happen to be that one.”</p>
<p>This argument will only have weight with me when they can show me those billions upon billions of planets on which life never evolved or never made it as far as it did here.</p>
<p>As long as you aren’t using that argument, it’s fine, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t.</p>
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<p>Neither of which theories are a shred more reasonable than that of a creator god whose existence is on a higher plane than any natural laws yet observed.</p>
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<p>Thanks for the information. Does the apparent lack of doubters of evolution among those who study life as a profession cause you to doubt the lucidity of your thinking, MosbyMarion?</p>
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<p>Very well then, Evolution is a hypothesis which can be neither proven nor disproven.</p>
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<p>Actually, aliens can exist within the natural laws that have been observed.</p>
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Well, actually you’re not the only one that’s been doing it.</p>
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I have no idea how you arrived at that conclusion. Nice little evasion, though.</p>
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<p>This is not a logical assertation, either. Bringing one’s self to be above demeaning the intellectual capacity of others does not require that one diminish one’s own intellectual capacity.</p>
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<p>Doesn’t work…the last respons from the theist would not likely happen.</p>
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<p>Not really, especially considering:</p>
<p>a: These people all passed through an educational system which mocks and ridicules any opposition to evolution.</p>
<p>b: Many of these people would be stripped of their jobs and credibility if they came out against evolution.</p>
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Oh ignoring you, your attacks, and your illogical posts? No I’m not, apparently. </p>
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Lucidity, possibly, but the direct quantity of believers has little reflection upon the nature of a fundamental truth. </p>
<p>Rational argumentation should stem from self-investigation - ideally, you should believe in evolution not because leading scientists do but because it follows a certain train of logic, experience, and evidence.</p>
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It’s a theory because it’s very hard to observe in real time (although bacterial cultures gets us close). It’s currently pursued as the best, most convincing theory out there. If you’re suggesting that science if fallible to error, you’re correct. However, to disprove evolution, you would need to suggest a stronger alternate hypothesis. This a key mechanism in science - the “hypothesis” with the most evidence is propagated widely until a better hypothesis can take it’s place. This is why rationality is dependent not on a clear fundamental truth, but on what the best explanation of said truth is. The quality of this explanation is determined by comparative review with the evidence for the next-best theories.</p>
<p>And finally, not being able to do the calculations does not subtract from the merit of evolution’s mechanism. It just removes one avenue in which it could potentially be disproved.</p>
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<p>Quoted for truth.</p>