A Civil Discussion: Evolution, Science, Theology, Atheism, Climate

The first and second laws of thermodynamics are not violated.
Yes they are. You are ignoring them.
No new energy is created in global warming.
It requires additional energy to warm the Earth. Where is that coming from?
More solar radiation is retained and less infrared thermal radiation is remitted to space because GHG effectively acts as a thermal blanket so to speak.
Nope. You cannot reduce entropy...ever. You are AGAIN ignoring the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the Stefan-Boltzmann law. There is no 'thermal blanket'. CO2 is actually the best conductor of heat of all the common materials. Heat is not conducted into space.
The distribution and transport of heat is changed, but no new energy is created
Heat has no location. You cannot trap heat. You cannot trap light. You cannot heat the surface using a colder gas. You are still ignoring the 2nd law of thermodynamics and the Stefan-Boltzmann law.
Earth and it's atmosphere are not a closed system,
Yes it is.
so the second law of thermodynamics does not apply either.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics applies to ALL systems, whether they are open or closed.
 
That’s easy enough to answer. This is a popular misconception of Evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory does not state or predict that man evolved from Monkeys. Evolutionary theory predicts that Humans and the rest of the primates had a common ancestor from which they evolved. So primates/monkeys have evolved. They just didn’t evolve into modern humans.

So, according to you, modern humans never existed.
 
It doesn’t.
It does. The Theory of Evolution is in and of itself a religion. Most believers are fundamentalists.
It’s not supposed to or more correctly it’s not a relevant question in science. Science is predicated completely on natural causation and specifically excludes supernatural causation.
A nonsense statement. No apparent coherency.
Once supernatural causation is suggested, in science, for some phenomena that particular study is no longer science but something other than science.
No such thing in science, so any such suggestion would not change anything.
To put that in neutral terms you may appreciate liberal post modernism is probably as great a threat to science
Science has no threat.
as it also violates the ground rules of science
Science has no 'ground rules'.
as much as religion does.
Religion has no 'ground rules'.
Postmodernism rejects objective observation as naive realism and that truth relies on an individuals perception of truth.
There is no such thing as 'postmodernism'. Buzzword fallacy. There is no such thing as 'naive realism'. Buzzword fallacy.
You seem to be attempting to describe phenomenology, a branch of philosophy. It's been around a very long time.
Now this might be fine in the arts or social sciences
There is no such thing as 'social science'. Buzzword fallacy.
but science is predicated also on empirical objective observations
Science is not observations. All observations are subject to the problems of phenomenology.
which can be independently verified by others.
Science does not use consensus. There is no voting bloc in science.

The Theory of Evolution is not a theory of science. It is a nonscientific theory, and a religion.
 
I don't think evolution and religious teachings have to be incompatible.
The Theory of evolution IS a religious teaching, so yes...it is quite compatible.
But one is scientific, and the other is spiritual.
The Theory of Evolution is not a theory of science. It is not falsifiable. Science has no theories about past unobserved events.
Those who adhere more to the latter can look to "intelligent design" and that kind of thing - but I always find it odd that people oppose the idea of evolution, or find the theory of it threatening.
I always find it odd the you find the Theory of Creation threatening.
It just is.
Both the Theory of Creation and the Theory of Evolution do exist. So?
The fossil record is pretty clear,
What 'fossil record'? Circular argument fallacy (fundamentalism).
and we see evolution happening today.
The Theory of Evolution states that higher life forms (including Man) evolved from lower life forms. This not a theory of science.
It's not some fringe idea.
The Theory of Evolution is a popular religion, true.
 
Gene flow and random genetic mutation provide the variation. Natural selection results when certain mutations produce advantages in environmental adaptation and survivability.

Paradox. Irrational. Natural selection produces variations???????!? How does a selection produce more selections??????!?
 
Well that could be that Berlinski is working from a totally false premise. Scientist don’t believe all theories are true and thus religion is false.
Science is not scientists. Science does not care whether any god or gods exist or not or whether any religion exists or not. It is totally atheistic. It is not possible to prove any theory True.
This is a false representation (which is a polite way of saying “He’s lying”) as all scientific theories are built upon the falsification principle. The falsification principle means that all scientific theories can, in principle, be falsified. This one go the most important steps of the scientific method and is predicated on the principle that all human knowledge is tentative and that all scientific theories, no matter how well it’s understood to be correct, will have some probability of being wrong even if that probability is very small.
So close, but science has no 'method' or 'procedure'. No theory can ever be proven True. Science does not use probability math. Math errors: Failure to specify boundary. Failure to specify randX.
This is an incredibly important fundamental and foundation part of the scientific method
Science is not a 'method' or procedure.
as it makes science self correcting.
Science is never 'correct'. It is not possible to prove any theory True.
If a major new discovery is made that has a very high probability of being correct and it makes useful predictions that observed and independently validated
Science is not 'discoveries'. Science does not use probability math. Science is not observations. All observations are subject to the problems of phenomenology. It is not possible to prove any theory True. Science does not use supporting evidence at all.
than any scientific theory that is impacted by this new information than that theory must modify to account for this knew knowledge or it will die.
A theory of science either exists or it doesn't. There is no 'modification'. Falsification of a theory utterly destroys the theory.
That there is proof enough that what Berlinski state is at best wrong and at worst a lie. I’ve had a lot of experience with this too. If someone makes a claim that “Science says this is always true but my data shows this is true blah, blah, blah yet science rejects this discovery.” Then you would be wise to review that premise carefully as more often as not it will be false as Berlinski’s is in this case.
Since science does not use supporting evidence (only religions do that), this is basically correct.
I have quite of bit of experience with this type of logical fallacy, as a lot of us have, by quack physicians trying to sell an unproven modality (e.g. snake oil) by saying something similar. “The medical establishment says only this and only this will work for that but my evidence shows this is what works.
The name of this logical fallacy is a circular argument fallacy, which is also what a fundamentalist does.
Usually the is that hasn’t been said by the medical establishment.

Nonsense statement. Try English.
 
Well because we are Apes and we did evolve into humans. The other apes have gone their own evolutionary way.

The mistake you’re making here, no offense intended, is that you are kind of placing the cart before the horse and confusing yourself on the biological taxonomy.

In biological taxonomy you have a classification system that starts at the top with Kingdom which contains all the groups of life forms followed by 9 sub groupings of life forms in which at the very bottom level is the species subcategory which is the basic unit of taxonomy and defined as a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals that can interbreed.

The Great Apes is just a synonym for the taxonomic “Family” classification for the Hominidae Family. Which is four steps above the species classification in the taxonomic hierarchy. A taxonomic family is made up of groups of species in which the species groups have widely similar homologies (similar or the same anatomical structures). Human beings (aka Homo Sapiens or modern humans) belong to the Hominidae or Great Apes Family. That is to say Humans are Great Apes. So are Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Bonobos and Orangutans, etc,.

However all these species are distinct and separate species that cannot interbreed. Because the other Great Apes species cannot interbreed with each other there is no evolutionary pathway for Homo Sapiens to have evolved from the other great apes. Evolutionary theory would not predict this happening but what it does predict is that due to their great number of homologies that somewhere back in time all the Great Apes species shared a common ancestor.

I hope this explains for you why humans have not evolved from other Great Apes.

So his mistake is that he doesn't believe in your religion????!?
 
You do understand that science defines the word “theory” very differently than how it is used in common speech?

Science does not define the word 'theory' at all. A theory is an explanatory argument. A theory of science is a falsifiable theory that continues to survive attempts to destroy it.
 
A lot of the mainline Protestant and Catholic Churches a accept evolutionary biology.

In principle, I don't think intelligent design is a stupid idea. Looking at nature, we see design, and it's not unreasonable to believe in a designer underlying it. Intelligent design was good enough for Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, and Gregor Mendel.

But they understood it was just an idea or belief. It wasn't a scientific theory or hypothesis.

The Theory of Creation is not a theory of science. Neither is the Theory of Abiogenesis or the Theory of Evolution.
The Theory of Abiogenesis is mutually exclusive with the Theory of Creation.
 
I’d have to disagree with you there. I think there’s heaps of evidence that design has nothing to do with it.
...such as?
I’ll give you an example. Compare the frontal appendages of cetaceans, bats and great apes. They all have three distinctly different different functions. Cetaceans use theirs to steer through water, bats use theirs to fly and the great apes use theirs to grasp and manipulate objects.
Why does this act as evidence against design?
Now look at the anatomy of the bones of the three species frontal appendages and they are virtually identical.
No, they are not.
All three species frontal appendages bone structures are comprised of a humorous, a radius and ulna bones, the same number of carpal bones in the same position and an identical number of metacarpal bones.
No, there are different numbers of 'fingers' and differently shaped radius and ulna bones.
Yet all three have the same bone structures yet completely different functions.
They don't, but just for the sake of argument, let say they do. Why does that act as evidence against design?
From a design standpoint they are nothing close to optimal which is a major violation of the principles of design.
Design does not require 'optimal'. For example, no car is 'optimal'. There are many different cars that serve a different kind of purpose. Same with aircraft or ships.
I would consider this serious evidence against design.
Why? The design is so good that it can do all these things very well.
 
That's why they evolved in different directions. It was geography that kept them from interbreeding.

Homo sapiens sapiens is about 300,000 years old but the "races" were only about 50,000 years old. Why? Because about 70,000 years ago a super volcano caused a mass extinction event and human beings almost went extinct. It took a few thousand years for human beings to reproduce their numbers enough to spread out far and wide enough for those genetic mutations to alter facial characteristics and skin tone. Interbreeding would homogenize any group but if geography separated them, they'd evolve in different directions like the squirrels.

https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwi...ings-almost-vanished-from-earth-in-70-000-b-c
How Human Beings Almost Vanished From Earth In 70,000 B.C.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Mount-Toba

Abert squirrels are found on both sides of the Canyon.
 
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