So! You Have Yourself a Science With No Verifiable Facts??

Count the Weasel Words, Discard the Count, Jump To Desired Outcome

Oldest fossil ever found on Earth dating back 4.2bn years shows alien life on Mars is likely
Ancient microbes were spewed from deep-sea hydrothermal vents, study claims

The discovery is the strongest evidence yet that similar organisms could also have evolved on Mars, which at the time still had oceans and an atmosphere, and was being bombarded by comets which probably brought the building blocks of life to Earth.

Except for three things: they don't have actual fossils; they don't actually know that they came from thermal vents; and they don't really know how old they are.

Here's what they have:

The organisms would have resembled small tubes, with a ball-like base which stuck to the ocean rocks, and a stalk suspended in the water to collect iron, on which they fed.

They are similar to iron-oxidising bacteria found near other hydrothermal vents today.

“We found the filaments and tubes inside centimetre-sized structures called concretions or nodules,” said Dr Dominic Papineau (UCL Earth Sciences and the London Centre for Nanotechnology).

“The fact we unearthed them from one of the oldest known rock formations, suggests we’ve found direct evidence of one of Earth’s oldest life forms.

“This discovery helps us piece together the history of our planet and the remarkable life on it, and will help to identify traces of life elsewhere in the universe.”

So what they have is some tubes which look like currently living creatures.

Even certain other scientists are skeptical:

Biology is indeed one possible explanation, says astrobiologist Abigail Allwood of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “But the evidence could equally be interpreted as non-biological.”

Each line of evidence, she points out, reflects processes that could have actually occurred at different times, layering potential clues in a way that looks biological, but really isn’t. “You can’t just wave your arms and say this all happened together,” she says.

Paleobiologist David Wacey of the University of Western Australia in Crawley agrees that “the individual lines of chemical evidence are not particularly strong.” But combined with the microstructures, he says, the authors come up with a “pretty convincing biological scenario

It's not even a credible scenario, considering all the actual unknowns. Yes, it could be non-life, or it could be an instance of relatively current life, or it could be a bazillion years old: which one should we choose?

Well, the least parsimonious is the one that fits the narrative, so of course, that one is the choice. Breathless extrapolations ensue, on schedule.

Conveniently, this gig overcomes last year's record holder for breathless bogus claims:

4.1-billion-year-old crystal may hold earliest signs of life

It's a zircon crystal with a 12Carbon globular inclusion: hence: life!!!

Axioms, Logical, Dialectical, and Rhetorical

An axiom is a concept that is accepted as true for purposes of establishing further claims. What distinguishes axioms by types or classes is the degree of truth which is considered acceptable.

A logical axiom is one of the Three Aristotelian First Principles of Thought. Those are considered self-evidently true, and they pass the Aristotelian test of Reductio Ad Absurdum. These, plus others such as coherence, grounding, valid form of deduction, are used in the generation of deductive truths - the only form of incorrigible truth.

A dialectical axiom is formed from observations of the material universe, where certain characteristics are found to be self-evidently true within the universe. This includes the three Aristotelian First Principles, as well as material determinism but not the principles of coherence, argument form, arithmetical axioms etc.

A Rhetorical Axiom is demanded by force, where opposition to the principle is demonized and demeaned by being muted due to fear - fear of rejection, fear of being falsely categorized, fear of being defamed, fear of other losses. Silencing is necessary when the axiom is not immutably self-evident as a universal truth or physical law which transcends criticism.

Evolution is a Rhetorical Axiom.

Here's how Jerry Coyne put it in his video, "Why Evolution is True":
If you dissent, then

"you are perverse; you are a moron; you simply can’t understand the nature of evidence; or you are blinded by religion."(3:27)

There is no room for intelligent dissent, because you are placed into one of his Classes, his categories of Ad Hominem Abusive denigrations. Coyne thus is a Class Warrior, who protects his Rhetorical Axiom by placing any other concept into one of his classes of inferior beings. This is an axiom by force of fear of denigration, the common axiom of evolution.

Dawkins:

"If you don't believe in evolution you are willfully ignorant."

"It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."

John Maynard Smith:

"Natural selection is the only workable explanation for the beautiful and compelling illusion of 'design' that pervades every living body and every organ. Knowledge of evolution may not be strictly useful in everyday commerce. You can live some sort of life and die without ever hearing the name of Darwin. But if, before you die, you want to understand why you lived in the first place, Darwinism is the one subject that you must study."

The Rhetorical Axiom claims that a principle need not be self-evident to you; it is self-evident to me ("us", the constant if implicit Appeal to Authority), and that is sufficient to remove you from any class of principled, intelligent beings capable of valid thought, purely because you have some disagreement. Thus I need not recognize or address your point of disagreement, because of the source, which I declare non-valid and reprehensible.

In evolution, all criticism is blamed on stupidity, evil, religion, anti-science, insanity, morons and other pejoratives. Given that, there is the additional assumption of no need to address any criticisms, except by invoking "Creationism, stupidity, anti-science, insanity, etc." The Ad Hominem Abusive denigration accusation is seen as sufficient to silence the dissenter, and thus quell the dissent. It works well enough in university settings that jobs and careers have been lost due to dissent.

Further, the axiom of evolution is now protected by a friendly court. That is a protection which is not needed by any REAL science, those which have produced objective yet contingent knowledge to support their hypotheses (which necessary feat evolution cannot perform).

That is the Axiom of Evolution (and the Axiom of human caused global warming). Pure rhetorical Ad Hominem Abusives rather than disciplined, evidentiary, objective disproof of the dissent.

Moderation is ON

None of Hugo's comments will be allowed here in the future.

Hugo is stuck in the raw Darwinism rut, claiming that his views represent all of biological science. He refuses to address logic failures in evolution, and in his own comments.

He never addresses the need for objective knowledge in order to believe a thing (the logical underpinning of empirical science).

He has been forcefully equivocating several basic terms in order to support raw Darwinian micro-evolution as the engine of speciation (a concept rejected by the evolution industry roughly 70 years ago).

He claims truth for that which cannot rise even to contingent factoids due to the non-falsifiability of all - ALL - claims of historical evolution.

He maintains that my demands for falsifiability amounts to false claims on my part that evolution is not an empirical science, as is Modern Biology, and therefore evolution does deserve all of the respect that modern biology garners. This claim is absolutely demonstrably NOT the case by merely asking for empirical proof for evolutionary claims regarding historical events.

Hugo claims that demanding that he address the need for objective knowledge and the observation that he never responds to that demand, is an insult. He never has responded to that.

His final complaint is that the logical analysis of evolutionary claims, from raw Darwinism to the Modern Synthesis and the newer Extended Synthesis is "spreading misinformation". It would seem that any evolutionary analysis at all is "spreading misinformation", unless the only a priori axiom which is accepted is that "evolution is True" and anything which shows otherwise is therefore false. That includes all analyses based on empirical processes which fail to conform to raw Darwinism, all analyses which use Aristotelian processes which fail to validate evolution, all examples and instances of industry claims and equations which show logic failures, all these are of no consequence, because evolution is axiomatically True.

The concept that a non-empirical, non-falsifiable, untestable hypothesis is axiomatically True, is irrational. Evolution is not a First Principle of Universal Thought. And it also is not an empirical science, and it does not deserve the reverence which is reserved for voluntarily materialist, falsifiable, empirical sciences - such as is Modern Biology (upon which evolution is an ideological parasite).

This sort of persistent irrationality comes to an end, now.

Proof of Evolution of Complexity

This doesn't even involve any spanking new dedicated-channel feedback systems or double-coded binary manufacturing instructions for enabling this dryer to create two new identical dryers by splitting in half. It's so simple, comparatively that it must be happening all the time - probably on many planets, even in infinite universes.

I haven't actually seen it myself, though, but that doesn't matter, because it's possible, ya know. Just think of all the dryers in the universe(es)... And when you add energy to a system, even a closed-door system, it can turn stuff like heat into folded clothes because: deep time and deep imaginary stories and all.

Evolution: IF it can be imagined THEN it happened so shut up.

HT: Steven Satak

The Answer to the Above

Answer to the above:
The actual paper does not claim "...the first fossil record of chemosensory cues, or chemotaxis...".

The actual paper accurately states this:
"We infer that these queues represent mass migratory chains coordinated by chemotaxis, comparable to those observed in modern crustaceans such as spiny lobsters, and further suggest that the two forms, which occur in an approximately 1:1 ratio, may be dimorphs. "

Even the vaunted Science Magazine is vulnerable to the deadly anti-intellectual overreach of claiming fact from what is merely inference, extrapolation, and guess work. I.e., the Science Mag author turned the inference into an impossible "fact".

This is a direct consequence of the Darwinian assault on science, knowledge and rationality, where such guess work must be considered factual, not by the actual community of experts, but certainly by the vast gaggles of acolytes who want it to be Truth, regardless of non-factuality of the "scientific" content, and the ubiquitous rational falsifiers for such pursuits.

This would not be brooked in the REAL sciences of physics, chemistry, modern biology or any of the fields of engineering. It would be considered, rightly, to be fraud.

Dr. Dawkins’ Deceptive Demonstration Doesn’t Display Descent

Evolutionists sometimes claim that there is nothing which evolution cannot “explain”. Stories can be created to cover everything and nothing. However, there are some creatures which serve as falsifiers, in the sense of not having any stories possible to account for their existence. Of a number of cases which have no story – e.g. woodpeckers, platypus - the Bombardier Beetle is a common first-lister.

The Bombardier Beetle is named for its ability to discharge and aim a hot, steaming chemical toxin from its posterior glands to repel predators. This entails generating and combining two chemicals in the presence of two specific necessary catalysts in an internal reaction chamber, also called the explosion chamber [1]. The resulting heated toxin and steam are aimed and directed toward predators, with some being able to deflect the stream straight forward and even to cover themselves with the offensive defense soup, to prevent being eaten. Others merely expel a hot, toxic fog in front of the predator.

The issue is how this evolved; specifically, what evolutionary path created the many components needed for this defense mechanism to work, even at a minimal level. Where are the precursor beetles which evolved in steps to this condition of complexity?

There are several components which must simultaneously exist for this to happen.

Watch Dawkins take on the evolution of the Bombardier Beetle in his video:



Dang. I missed it, I guess. Where in this "explanation" does Dawkins reveal the evolutionary steps required to develop the internal chemistry and structure of the beetle? Where does he enumerate the mutations and their exact locations in the DNA which made this beetle entirely different from all others? Where does he point out the "gradual" mutations which were kept, and which must have included both the peroxide, the claimed catalyst, and the hydroquinone. Not to mention the output of boiling temperature benzoquinones and steam. And also not to mention the fully aimable, pulsed jet stream which can be directed nearly 360 degrees including forward, or to the beetle’s own shell to deter attackers.

Here’s what Dawkins purposefully did: he ignored the actual conditions for catalyzed explosion in the beetle’s explosion chamber. He did this in order to prove his point that some catalyzed oxidation events can be shown to have gradations in the volatility which correspond to the amount of catalyst. He did this by using gun powder, which does not at all correlate with the process used in the chemistry of the beetle’s explosion. He did NOT show that to be the case for the beetle, and further he showed absolutely zero interest in defining the evolutionary steps required – and requiring isolation empirically – for the development of the beetle’s chemical processes. However, Dawkins was successful in demonstrating the possibility of gradual hardening of the explosion chamber, IFF the beetle used gun powder instead of the actual components.

Here’s the full story, which Dawkins dishonestly avoids by claiming that the hydroquinone is of no importance, when in fact it is of specific importance.

1. The output spray product is at roughly 100 degC, and is a caustic product called benzoquinone along with steam. Benzoquinone has been compared with burning plastic, and it is an interrupter of synapses in the control of skeletal muscles.

2. The process starts internally in cells that are said to produce both the hydrogen peroxide and the hydroquinone; they are stored separately, and are recombined on demand. The chemical process requires the presence of catalysts, one for the reduction of the peroxide in order to form oxygen, another which catalyzes hydroquinone with oxygen to produce benzoquinone and H2O plus heat. The catalysts are present in the explosion chamber.

3 There is a valving system which allows the two chemicals into the reaction chamber when the pressure inside the chamber is lower than the supply line pressure. When the reaction chamber pressure increases to greater than the supply line pressure, the inline valve closes, preventing backwash. The high pressure in the reaction chamber is released outward past deflection devices which are muscle controlled and are aimed with high accuracy. The deflection devices change the path of the ejecta to the direction chosen by the beetle.

4. Tests on various predators show revulsion and confusion when hit with the hot toxin which is sprayed by the beetle. Some show loss of control of musculature.

5. The spray varies by beetle “tribe” or sub-clade from a mist to a pulsed jet.

It’s no wonder that Dawkins didn’t use the hydrogen peroxide with the hydroquinone: it might have damaged the audience and himself. That would demonstrate the improbability of that combination of chemicals being developed accidentally, without the protective chambering and valving pre-existing. And why would the chambering and valving become so complex without having the combination of hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone production systems to use it?

And why is the beetle not affected by this toxin?

What Dawkins did was to use the magician’s trick of diverting attention away from the actual subject. He did this with a misdirection to a pretense of scientific experiment – smoke and beakers. And he made a point which fails the slightest examination (beetles don’t use simple gunpowder), yet which the audience accepted completely.

And more conclusively, Dawkins provided absolutely zero validation for the claim that evolution actually did produce this one-off capacity. In the final analysis, it’s all smoke. All of it.

Might we legitimately conclude that Dawkins, Darwin's Chihuahua, has no actual "story" for explaining the Bombardier Beetle? Yes, we might.

UPDATE:
After watching the video one more time, I notice that Dawkins actually says that "the hydroquinone does nothing at all, and we can set it aside". That is more than a misdirection; it is false, and is a purposeful lie. The actual, real reaction involves hydrogen peroxide, hydroquinone, and two (2) catalysts. The result is not what Dawkins produces in his science-fair misdirection cum lie. The actual reaction is more complex.

UPDATE 2:
Two interesting videos on Bombardier Beetles (there are a number of less interesting ones of course).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgqF-ND2XcY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ukSdJizRFI

NOTES:
1. http://news.mit.edu/2015/how-bombardier-beetles-produce-defensive-spray-0430

IM Skeptical Tries His Hand At Refutation

IMS takes umbrage with regard to the quotations listed in the post HERE.

In his attempt to refute the positions that were taken in the quotes from people such as Darwin’s teacher and mentor, Dawkins, Gould and others, IMS takes to refuting, not the statements which are made, but the characters of the persons making the statements. He even attributes quotes not presented by me as if those were the quotation he is attacking. Or maybe he thinks his quotes cancel out the original thoughts which were presented. They don’t. The quotes are real; they stand.

When IMS “critiques”, he does nothing of substance. It is always in the form of attacks on the persons who make the arguments. His title for this particular Ad Hominem Abusive Article is not fully appropriate: “Intellectual Dishonesty of Creationists”. He presents no “intellectual dishonesty”, only the hideous specter of a proposed evil character flaw in the subjects. His favorite response to any actual contrary attack is to shout, “CREATIONIST”, “ANTI-SCIENCE”, and other pejoratives because when he needs to discredit the attack on his belief system, he really has no other weapon than to attack using the deviational fallacies, not actual empirical data. Why? Because: evolution does not have any empirical data. IMS cannot present data that does not exist. So he must attack the people, not the non-existant data.

Neither of two quotes which IMS presents refute the actual quotes which were made. He doesn’t have a prayer (not that he’d want one) of disproving the quotes, as they stand: these are honest opinions of the authors, without any scent of creationism attached to them. They are direct hits on evolution, and by extension the blind believers in the untestable, unprovable, unfalsifiable cult of Atheist origins and Philosophical Materialism which constitutes the several, mostly mutually exclusive, Theories of Evolution.

Let’s take the following false analogy:

”But Stan refuses to recognize just how widely supported evolution theory is, preferring instead to paint a picture of divided opinions, and suppression of minority views. Imagine a similar statement in support of the theory of gravity, which is similarly accepted my most scientists. Would Stan call that a religious cult? ”

How many scientists have lost their jobs for claiming that the source of gravity is unknown, but that the effect of gravity is at least measurable? None. Category Error: unrelated variables of unlike kind; rhetorical failure. Physicists claim knowledge ONLY of that which they can test by making actual gravitational measurements under repeatable and falsifiable objective conditions, which anyone with a weight and stopwatch can demonstrate for himself. But as for the cause of the effect, no claims are made, much less claims that are required to be believed as Truth.

Not so with Evolution. Evolution does, in fact, make truth claims which cannot be proved by anyone, much less some outside observer with a stopwatch or other physical instrumentation. And being unprovable, the truth claims cannot be proven false. And here is the rub: True Believers insist that their unprovable truth claims must be taken as immutable Truth – not by evolutionists of course, who are constantly writing new stories to replace the old stories which cannot possibly work in light of the complexities discovered by modern biology (the only REAL science of biology). No. The external world is assured that there is no internal conflict on "basic True facts" of evolution, as if there actually were some. The claims made by evolutionists are vague and abstract enough, unfalsifiable enough, and Materialist enough, that they got them declared Truth in court in order to force these faux Truth claims into school systems without any fear of any critical thinking being applied to them; dissent successfully disabled.

Thus the IMS analogy fails, pitifully, painfully. Fallacy: False Analogy.

It is presupposed within the Evolutionary Cult that non-falsifiability means that if it can't be disproved, then it must be True by default. Nonetheless, it is obvious to the critical thinker (which exists only outside of the carefully thought-controlled interior of the Cult) that non-falsifiability does NOT confer truth by default, as evolutionists assume. But what it does do is to deny the validity of any Truth Claim being made for such non-falsifiable claims, and it denies the intellectual respectability of those who claim otherwise.

The quotes presented in the post at this site are intended to demonstrate factually that there is no internal law of evolution which is accepted as causal, even after 150 years of internal conflict within the rarefied, oxygen-free atmosphere of the Evolutionary Cult; that there is no provable mechanism, not only for the source of life, but for the increase in complexity which is claimed for the fossil record – which merely shows animals which existed, not evolution in progress… certainly not macroevolution; that the entire claim of “Theory” is a sham because it consists of nothing at all except for science-fantasy stories.

The quotes are taken from many more which could be assembled into a book. The internal conflicts have gone on from 1859 through today and will not stop, because there is no possible determinative data which can provide an actual objective fact that could be weaponized to stop it.

Evolution is a fine field in which to be employed because there are no objective metrics to gauge the value or productivity of an evolutionist, save for the volume of science-fantasy stories he tells which get published. There is no limit to the imaginary fantasies which can be attached to DNA, or to bones, or to the new type of fossilization which didn’t turn bone into rock and still contains DNA in the soft tissue. The obvious falsifiers don’t matter because, in principle Evolution as a theory is so abstract that it has no actual meaning which can be falsified even at the metanarrative level, on top of having no possible data to examine for the possibility of falsification, as required by REAL sciences including modern biology.

So here’s what happens when the impossibility of evolution crops up in one of its various forms, say complexity requirements or the existence of the numerous creatures which have no lineage (platypus for example). First comes Radical Scientism: “science will advance someday, and then we’ll know the unfalsifiable ‘truth’”. Then comes the heated invective discrediting of the source of the contentious information: “Creationist! Anti-Science!” And then, if the unwitting source of the contentious information is employed in thrall to the Cult, he is fired. To present any contentious information which threatens Evolution is “treason to science”, and punishable by expulsion from the tribe and suppression of the claim.

This is hide-bound, dogmatic, political correctness [Note 1] which is designed to strike fear in the hearts of all who want to keep their employment as story tellers safe. Expulsion from the tribe carries the stank of perceived incompetence, and the weight of the black-ball. One who is ejected from the Cult is unemployable except as night clerk at the local convenience store. The devastation is physically and fiscally palpable as well as emotional and reputational.

So IMS is merely doing what the entire industry does: he attempts to destroy the character of anyone who presents the actual, valid, logical and demonstratively true case against Evolution which is this: the theory is totally empty of any conceivable capacity to prove, objectively, the truth of any of its fantasy stories, and completely unable to maintain the stance that there is just one comprehensive theory which has substance and is believed by all the experts in the field. Evolution has no testable, falsifiable hypotheses for First Life and goes out of its way to deny any responsibility for explaining that. Evolution cannot explain the creation of the eye when considered as a complete vision system, despite the claims of 1800 steps from pre-existing light sensitive packages to round packages… an absurd attempt in the first place, yet which is hailed as highly meaningful within the Cult. Evolution cannot prove, yet presupposes, that mutations of some sort can create massive amounts of new information, despite the entropic impossibility to do so. (Thus establishing that nothing is “impossible” for a pursuit that cannot be falsified).

Any story will do, if it can’t be experimentally falsified. And that’s despite the incredibly vast odds against it, in its simplest form, much less in the necessity of its hugely complex reality.

So all that is needed, within the cult anyway, is the Ad Hominem, whether it applies or not. The Ad Hominem is just another faux story from a non-empirical, fact-free Cult, this time a faux story about a human, directed at the character of that human. And all their faux stories demand belief. Or else.

One last thought. The weapon of political correctness likely descended from the “science” of Darwinian tribal exclusionism. The ejection from a tribe is a traumatic event, especially when it is accompanied by denial of career, denial of personal integrity, denial of personal value, and persistent public denigration. This was illuminated when The Amazing Randi made his fatal faux pas, and was attacked, de-tribed and denigrated voluminously until he barely recovered his status by fully recanting his faux pas publically and accepting his disgrace meekly. He essentially did a submissive belly crawl before his attackers in order to get back in the tribe.

These tactics are de rigueur amongst the gate keepers of the Cult. They employed their armaments of personal denigrations in full volley against the Premier Atheist of the 20th Century, Antony Flew, when he recognized that the information content in the huge molecule, DNA, was a physical refutation of Materialism and a blatant case for Deism. He was attacked mercilessly, publicly, and relentlessly; he did not recant, and was permanently de-tribed. The tribalist attacks of political correctness did not prevail against this man of intellectual integrity.

Many third-tier evolutionists such as Jerry Coyne and PZ Meyers are tribal gatling guns overheated with constant rhetorical attacks on tribal outsiders. It’s their job to keep the cult tribally purified of actual disciplined deductive logic, and keep the science-fantasy stories sanctified. (Even Coyne admits near the end of his book, “Why Evolution is True” that he can’t prove any of the stories he presents in his book. So everything about the book, from title to the admission, is not falsifiable and yet completely true. Not just true, but True.)

The cult’s passion, from the gate-keepers to the least of minions such as IMS, demonstrates the lack of objectivity inherent in the tribe. If objectivity is part of science, and it was at one time, then evolution is definitely not science. If science necessarily provides only contingent knowledge based on non-falsification, then evolution is definitely not science. If science pursues physically demonstrable causal hypotheses in pursuit of support for overall narrative, then evolution is definitely not science. If science is dispassionately self-correctable with the advent of further causal demonstration, then evolution is definitely not science.

If passion and non-falsifiablity of dogmatic principles within a protected tribe define a cult, the evolution definitely is a cult. Stephen Jay Gould said so.

To conclude, IMS is an inveterate liar; he was removed from this blog for that reason.

Notes:
1. Political Correctness is designed specifically to strike the fear of losing one’s tribal association. “I’m sorry I said that ‘all lives matter”! I now understand that only ‘black lives matter’ – Forgive Me!!” To be called “intolerant”, “racist”, etc. is to lose your personal credibility as a “nice” person, and to be seen as an evil-doer, and shunned for it. This fear of loss of personal integrity is the weapon, the lever which wrenches the unwary from logical reality, in order to avoid loss of association with the presumed, self-anointed “moral class”.

Correlation vs. Causation in Evolution

Every serious student of cause and effect, i.e. the material sciences, knows that correlation is not to be endowed with the designation, "causation".

Correlation identifies two sets of facts, Set [A] and Set [B], then looks at similarities between the two sets in trends or other features. After finding similarities, correlation cannot produce any causation without additional facts, facts which identify the cause of the similarity as being due to the actual cause of the target set of facts. It is always false to say that if Set [A] and Set [B] appear to have similarities, then one set caused the other.

This issue is even more severe for evolution, because one set is a loose amalgam of individual static facts which do not provide any objective proof of evolution, and the other set is a “mountain” of extrapolations, interpolations, opinions, and inferences: definitely not actual objective, falsifiable facts. So any correlation which is made is between actual isolated facts on the one hand, and no facts at all on the other hand. For evolution, not only is the correlation falsely endowed with causation as the isolated individual facts are compared (with science fiction stories supplied specifically for the purpose of correlation), but also the entire premise is fatally flawed by the lack of a factual set against which to “correlate” with the isolated facts of the original set. So even the attempt to correlate fact with fiction is a logic fallacy.

Set [A (facts)] cannot be logically correlated with Set [B(non-facts)].

Each of the two flaws, 1) use of correlation as causation and 2) correlating facts with non-facts, are individually fatal to the “necessary intellectual process” demanded by Evolution. So Evolution is doubly false when making such claims, and such claims are all that evolutionists are capable of providing.

There is every reason, if one is devoted to actual logic first and foremost, not to accept any pursuit which attempts to make such a correlation. And when the pursuit requires such fallacious faux correlation to be accepted as “Truth” and “the only Truth”, it is obvious that that pursuit has no dedication to either logic or rational thought.

Further, the attack on those who DO accept logical requirements before any acceptance of this sort of claims of Truth is purely an act in blatant support of irrationality. The motivation for that is clear, because the cultish quality of such demands leads straight back through the false hypothesis of Philosophical Materialism to the necessary irrationality of Atheism (Neither Philosophical Materialism nor Atheism can prove the foundational claims underlying their propositions or worldviews; but both require a physical, material creation story, and evolution, they claim, is the only story available – ignoring all the falsifiers of course).

So not only is such a pursuit demonstrably fallacious, it is also demonstrably ideologically motivated similar to cultism.

There Is Activity On...

...The Discussion Zone For Evolution.

Evolution: Always Good For a Laugh.

There has been a claim made as follows:

” Why would a benign mutation be destroyed? Lethal mutations will die out . The eye for for example is believed to have started out as just a patch that was capable of detecting light. See http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/selection/eye/

"Researchers at Lund University wanted to find out how long it might take for a complex eye to evolve. Starting with a flat, light-sensitive patch, they gradually made over 1,800 tiny improvements—forming a cup, constricting the opening, adding a lens—until they had a complex, image-forming eye. It is important to note that every tiny change these researchers made measurably improved image quality. The researchers concluded that these steps could have taken place in about 360,000 generations, or just a few hundred thousand years. 550 million years have passed since the formation of the oldest fossil eyes, enough time for complex eyes to have evolved more than 1,500 times.””

The implication, not stated otherwise, is that they did an actual experiment in the lab that was able, after 1800 steps, to produce a physical, working eye, starting with a light-sensitive skin patch.

But. That’s not what happened, not at all.

I screwed up. I failed to do my due diligence in pursuing the implied claim being made for eye evolution in a lab. Now I have corrected that. I found the source, a 1994 paper by D. E. Nilsson, and Pelger, of Lund University where Nilsson runs a vision lab.

The paper refers to a multitude of speculations and assumptions (see the source for illustrations of their assumptions) which are then used in calculations. Calculations only, and not implemented in actual living creatures, or on living skin. No experiments were done; no data taken.

In fact, the calculations start with the presumption of a complex animal of unknown origin or species, which they presume is blind and “needs sight”. And the model starts with all the necessary elements already in place with no attempt to account for them. But the elements are shaped as a flat, round spot on skin, with light sensitive cells sitting on dark cells which form bottom and sides of their circle. The proceeding assumptions and calculation consider the morphological changes only (shape change only, not functional change as in novel invention).

The authors proceed with their design of an eye shape by going from a FLAT planar patch, then curving (for no non-teleological reason at all) to a global, near-spherical shape. Each slightly increased curvature is said to be selected as a presumed benefit. In fact, everything about this calculated is based in assumptions, many of them, and all of them strictly beneficial, by design, and toward the desired objective (teleology).

"We let the evolutionary sequence start with a patch of light-sensitive cells, which is backed and surrounded by dark pigment, and we expose this structure to selection favouring spatial resolution. We assume that the patch is circular, and that selection does not alter the total width of the structure. The latter assumption is necessary to isolate the design changes from general alterations of the size of the organ."

Note the reference to "design"; they specifically designed this to occur teleologically to their expectation.

"A graded-index lens can be introduced gradually as a local increase of refractive index. As the focal length becomes shorter, the blur spot on the retina will become smaller. The effect this has on resolution was calculated by using the theory of Fletcher et al. (1954) for an ideal graded-index lens (figure 1 c). Even the weakest lens is better than no lens at all, so we can be confident that selection for increased resolution will favour such a development all the way from no lens at all to a lens powerful enough to focus a sharp image on the retina (figure 1 c)."

Declaring the shape to cause "squeezing" extremely fortuitously produces a "lens".

"Having quantified the changes needed for a lens eye to evolve, we continue by estimating how many generations such a process would require. When natural selection acts on a quantitative character, a gradual increase or decrease of the mean value, m, will be obtained over the generations. The response, R, which is the observable change in each generation is given by the equation

R = h2iap or R = h2iVm, (2)

where h2 is the heritability, i.e. the genetically determined proportion of the phenotypic variance, i is the intensity of selection, V is the coefficient of variation, which measures the ratio between the standard deviation, o-P, arid the mean, m, in a population (Falconer 1989). For our estimate we have chosen h2 = 0.50, which is a common value for heritability, while deliberately low values were chosen for both i (0.01) and V (0.01) (see Lande 1980; Futuyma 1986; Barton & Turelli 1989; Falconer 1989; Smith 1989). The response obtained in each generation would then be R = 0.00005m, which means that the small variation and weak selection cause a change of only 0.005 0 per generation. The number of genera- tions, n, for the whole sequence is then given by 1.000 05' = 80 129 540, which implies that n = 363 992 generations would be sufficient for a lens eye to evolve by natural selection. 5."

[...]

The only real threat to the usefulness of our model is that we may have failed to introduce structures that are necessary for a functional eye. Features of many advanced eyes, such as an adjustable iris and structures for distance accommodation, may in this context seem to be serious omissions from the model sequence.

[...]

"If advanced lens eyes can evolve so fast, why are there still so many examples of intermediate designs among recent animals? The answer is clearly related to a fact that we have deliberately ignored, namely that an eye makes little sense on its own. Although reasonably well-developed lens eyes are found even in jellyfish (Piatigorsky et al. 1989), one would expect most lens eyes to be useless to their bearers without advanced neural processing"

[...]

"Because eyes cannot evolve on their own, our calculations do not say how long it actually took for eyes to evolve in the various animal groups. However, the estimate demonstrates that eye evolution would be extremely fast if selection for eye geometry and optical structures imposed the only limit. This implies that eyes can be expected to respond very rapidly to evolutionary changes in the lifestyle of a species. Such potentially rapid evolution suggests that the eye design of a species says little about its phylogenetic relationship, but much about its need for vision. It follows that the many primitive eye designs of recent animals may be perfectly adequate, and simply reflect the animal's present requirements. In this context it is obvious that the eye was never a real threat to Darwin's theory of evolution."

To re-cap this last paragraph:

1. “… eyes cannot evolve on their own.”

2. Mechanical structure is not the only limit, but it is the only consideration in this calculation.

3. This is the best conclusion: “eye design of a species… says much about its need for vision.” So. The need for vision is determines where selection stops, after it causes the development in the first place.

"Altogether 1829 steps of 1% are needed for the entire model sequence. Natural selection would act simultaneously on all characters that positively affect the performance."

Only positive mutations are allowed and considered in this design scenario.

In our model there are several transformations that would speed up the improvement of function if they occurred in parallel. True to our pessimistic approach, we deliberately ignored this and assumed that all 1829 steps of 1% change occur in series. This is equivalent to a single structure becoming 1.01^1829 or 80,129,540 times longer. In terms of morphological modification, the evolution of an eye can thus be compared to the lengthening of a structure, say a finger, from a modest 10 cm to 8000 km, or a fifth of the Earth's circumference".

Here they not only admit to the complete absurdity of using this calculation as any reasonable proof that an eye occurred in this fashion, they openly ridicule it, in the form of a Reductio Ad Absurdum. Despite this, they submit to the necessary non sequitur conclusion, which is always required to maintain employment in the evolutionary field:

” It follows that the many primitive eye designs of recent animals may be perfectly adequate, and simply reflect the animal's present requirements. In this context it is obvious that the eye was never a real threat to Darwin's theory of evolution.”

Of course, that “context” requires the separate use of the same mutations in the same order to put eyes (however primitive) into creatures that existed at different times. Barring the discovery of an actual common ancestor proving otherwise, (which hasn’t been done despite 150 years of fossil hunting and millions of fossils uncovered). Under the common scientific abeyance to material evidence, then, none exists to support the evolution of the eye, much less the existence of common ancestors for each of the open ended branches not yet attached to the vaunted “tree of life”.

But it’s not just the 1829 step improbability that is being ignored.

It is not the fact that this would be occurring in pre-existing advanced animals which were "blind and needed" eyes, and which are not known to exist in the fossil record, is ignored.

It is not the fact that the necessary neural connections are ignored.

It is not the fact that the necessary mental processing is ignored.

It is not the fact that INFORMATION including introns and exons in each mutation drives the minimum size of the correct mutation forcing each step to absolutely require much greater than 3,000 bits per step - new, correct bits at that - is ignored.

It is not the fact that dilatory mutations would of necessity have halted the process by requiring adverse selection thereby losing all the prior steps in the process, is ignored.

All those things merely stretch out the probability to beyond astronomical odds against it.

The real issue is this:

Is it reasonable to assume that the exactly correct INFORMATION WHICH IS NEW AT EACH STEP occurs randomly and in the correct sequence 1829 times in a row?

Is it reasonable to assume that random events would produce all that exactly correct information, sequentially and just in time?

The question was raised, “why does it have to be correct?” Because if any step in the process is a failure, then the process stops and the endeavor fails to complete because all defects are selected OUT of the population: fundamental Darwinist evolutionary theory. Incorrect data causes organism failures.

Evolution self-refutes because of just this issue: random beneficial mutations absolutely must be accumulated if they are to provide useful novel features. New organs are very complex, including not only the functionality of the organ but also the communication feedback channels with the associated agents at either channel end for regulation of organic activity. For instance, real spheroid eyes contain special fluid and fluid pressure regulation feedback systems, including pumps and valves.

The addition of new information is presumed not to delete existing information. If so, then the genome increases size in the one organism out of the population which mutated. Can mismatched DNA produce offspring? DNA is a palindrome, reading the same backwards as forwards. Defects in the palindrome are not beneficial to the organism because reading DNA in the reverse direction is used to check the validity of the DNA translation of the forward direction. If they don't match, the transcription is considered a failure and is stopped.

The palindrome DNA issue also applies to mating failures, because the sizes no longer match as they should, intra-species. Sterile hybrids and failure to hybridize at all are examples.

Another internal contradiction: the information required for the novel organ to occur is stored in DNA, raising the internal contradiction: which came first, organ or information? Neither can be justified to have occurred before the other.

Natural sciences are based on the axiom of cause and effect, with the cause acting in a deterministic fashion on an entity which is controlled by initial conditions. Entropy precludes any information being created by this process, and in physics it is not observed that information emerges from deterministic processes at either the macro-level (Newtonian) or at the micro-level (quantum particle). Entropy says exactly that: disorder increasingly occurs, always. There are no truly reversible systems, and there is no open system that receives information via outside input of extra photonic energy.

And yet, life is different. That is a perpetual contradiction which physicalist evolutionists ignore because (like all things evolution) there are no actual empirical facts available to the evolutionist in order to deal with the issue.

And now back to my error: due diligence is late, but done. Evolutionary theory is once again shown to be mere imaginary stories, fantasies and calculations based on those fantasy stories. And it’s all said to prove Darwinism.

For evolution, “proof” is a very, very low bar, indeed.

And finally, this entire exercise is a fantasy. It was my error in allowing the fantasy to be wielded as evidence for evolution. Error: corrected.

Last Response to Hugo

This is a response to Hugo's last comment. It is placed here due to length.

Hugo:
The above comments demonstrate the total anti-rationality of your position, which is that of complete rejection of the principles of rational thought. This should, I think serve to conclude this conversation, precisely because of that rejection. The entire body of scientific knowledge theory outside the single exception of the ideology of evolution supports the theory of objective, replicable, falsifiable, demonstration which is universally known as Empiricism as the sole source of knowledge of material existence, and the sole source of what are known as contingent facts, those being the only objective knowledge available (Aristotle; Descartes; Hume; Locke; Berekley; Bacon; Russell; the Enlightenment Empiricists; Newton; Popper; Einstein; Feynman; etc. ad physicists/chemists/modern biologists).

Here is Popper:

”So it is, I hold, the possibility of overthrowing it, or it’s falsifiability, that constitutes the possibility of testing it, and therefore the scientific character of a theory; and the fact that all tests of a theory are attempted falsifications of predictions derived with its help, furnishes the clue to the scientific method. This view of the scientific method is corroborated by the history of science, which shows that scientific theories are often overthrown by experiments, and that the overthrow of theories is indeed the vehicle of scientific progress. The contention that science is circular cannot be upheld.”
Popper; The Open Society and Its Enemies; 1945; Routldge Classics; 2003; p288.

The evolutionary Appeal to Authority is both circular and an obvious logical fallacy: that constitutes a failure of evolutionary theories of all stripes.

As for the historical requirement for falsifiable demonstration for knowledge of material entities:
Aristotle:

“For this reason, science requires more than mere deduction. Altogether, then, the currency of science is demonstration (apodeixis), where a demonstration is a deduction with premises revealing the causal structures of the world, set forth so as to capture what is necessary and to reveal what is better known and more intelligible by nature [I.e., experiments] (APo 71b33–72a5, Phys. 184a16–23, EN 1095b2–4).

And,

"Aristotle’s approach to the appropriate form of scientific explanation invites reflection upon a troubling epistemological question: how does demonstration begin? If we are to lay out demonstrations such that the less well known is inferred by means of deduction from the better known, then unless we reach rock-bottom, we will evidently be forced either to continue ever backwards towards the increasingly better known, which seems implausibly endless, or lapse into some form of circularity, which seems undesirable. The alternative seems to be permanent ignorance. Aristotle contends:

‘Some people think that since knowledge obtained via demonstration requires the knowledge of primary things, there is no knowledge. Others think that there is knowledge and that all knowledge is demonstrable. Neither of these views is either true or necessary. The first group, those supposing that there is no knowledge at all, contend that we are confronted with an infinite regress. They contend that we cannot know posterior things because of prior things if none of the prior things is primary. Here what they contend is correct: it is indeed impossible to traverse an infinite series. Yet, they maintain, if the regress comes to a halt, and there are first principles, they will be unknowable, since surely there will be no demonstration of first principles—given, as they maintain, that only what is demonstrated can be known. But if it is not possible to know the primary things, then neither can we know without qualification or in any proper way the things derived from them. Rather, we can know them instead only on the basis of a hypothesis, to wit, if the primary things obtain, then so too do the things derived from them. The other group agrees that knowledge results only from demonstration, but believes that nothing stands in the way of demonstration, since they admit circular and reciprocal demonstration as possible.’ (APo. 72b5–21)

Aristotle’s own preferred alternative is clear:

‘We contend that not all knowledge is demonstrative: knowledge of the immediate premises is indemonstrable. Indeed, the necessity here is apparent; for if it is necessary to know the prior things, that is, those things from which the demonstration is derived, and if eventually the regress comes to a standstill, it is necessary that these immediate premises be indemonstrable.' (APo. 72b21–23)

In sum, if all knowledge requires demonstration, and all demonstration proceeds from what is more intelligible by nature to what is less so, then either the process goes on indefinitely or it comes to a halt in undemonstrated first principles, which are known, and known securely. Aristotle dismisses the only remaining possibility, that demonstration might be circular, rather curtly, with the remark that this amounts to ‘simply saying that something is the case if it is the case,’ by which device ‘it is easy to prove anything’ (APo. 72b32–73a6).

Aristotle’s own preferred alternative, that there are first principles of the sciences graspable by those willing to engage in assiduous study, has caused consternation in many of his readers. In Posterior Analytics ii 19, he describes the process by which knowers move from perception to memory, and from memory to experience (empeiria)—which is a fairly technical term in this connection, reflecting the point at which a single universal comes to take root in the mind—and finally from experience to a grasp of first principles. This final intellectual state Aristotle characterizes as a kind of unmediated intellectual apprehension (nous) of first principles (APo. 100a10–b6).”

The First Principles of evolution seem to be primarily "change" and "selection", both of which have no specific meaning and are circular (two items are different - the first "changed" somehow into the second because it came from the first. The second was selected to exist because it exists).

Another First Principle of evolution is Philosophical Materialism, a notoriously internally contradictory false axiom.

The final First Principle of evolution is that evolution science must not be held to norms for objective demonstrative knowledge (Special Pleading).

Isaac Newton:

” The proper method for inquiring after the properties of things is to deduce them from experiments.”

And:

” A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.”

Francis Bacon:

“But the best demonstration by far is experience, if it go not beyond the actual experiment.”

And,

"Observation and experiment for gathering material, induction and deduction for elaborating it: these are are only good intellectual tools.""

David Hume:
(Hume illuminates falsifiability, the necessity of cause and effect for continuity, and the necessity of experiments as well as the original cause)

” That the Sun will not rise Tomorrow is no less intelligible a Proposition and implies no more contradiction than the Affirmation that it will rise. We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood.”

” If ... the past may be no Rule for the future, all Experience becomes useless and can give rise to no Inferences or Conclusions.”

”If we take in our hand any Volume; of Divinity or School Metaphysics, for Instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract Reasoning concerning Quantity or Number? No. Does it contain any experimental Reasoning concerning Matter of Fact and Existence? No. Commit it then to the Flames: For it can contain nothing but Sophistry and Illusion.”

”Tho' there be no such Thing as Chance in the World; our Ignorance of the real Cause of any Event has the same Influence on the Understanding, and begets a like Species of Belief or Opinion.”

”To consider the matter aright, reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations. This instinct, 'tis true, arises from past observation and experience; but can anyone give the ultimate reason, why past experience and observation produces such an effect, any more than why nature alone should produce it?”

Rene Descartes

” I should consider that I know nothing about physics if I were able to explain only how things might be, and were unable to demonstrate that they could not be otherwise.
Rene Descartes”

” In philosophy, when we make use of false principles, we depart the farther from the knowledge of truth and wisdom exactly in proportion to the care with which we cultivate them, and apply ourselves to the deduction of diverse consequences from them, thinking that we are philosophizing well, while we are only departing the farther from the truth;””

James Clerk Maxwell”

” But when we face the great questions about gravitation Does it require time? Is it polar to the 'outside of the universe' or to anything? Has it any reference to electricity? or does it stand on the very foundation of matter–mass or inertia? then we feel the need of tests, whether they be comets or nebulae or laboratory experiments or bold questions as to the truth of received opinions.”

And,

” The popularisation of scientific doctrines is producing as great an alteration in the mental state of society as the material applications of science are effecting in its outward life. Such indeed is the respect paid to science, that the most absurd opinions may become current, provided they are expressed in language, the sound of which recals [sic] some well-known scientific phrase.”

Here is Locke:
(Locke defines “intuitive knowledge” as the human intellectual ability to discern agreement or disagreement of two assertions).

”Now in every step reason makes in demonstrative knowledge, there is an intuitive knowledge of that agreement or disagreement it seeks with the next intermediate idea which it uses as a proof: for if it were not so, that yet would need a proof; since without the perception of agreement or disagreement, there is no knowledge produced. ”
Locke; An Essay Concerning Human Understanding; Prometheus Books; 1995; p435.

Robert Boyle:

The Requisites of a good Hypothesis are:

That It be Intelligible.

That It neither Assume nor Suppose anything Impossible, unintelligible, or demonstrably False.

That It be consistent with Itself.

That It be lit and sufficient to Explicate the Phaenomena, especially the chief.

That It be, at least, consistent, with the rest of the Phaenomena It particularly relates to, and do not contradict any other known Phaenomena of nature, or manifest Physical Truth.

The Qualities and Conditions of an Excellent Hypothesis are:

That It be not Precarious, but have sufficient Grounds In the nature of the Thing Itself or at least be well recommended by some Auxiliary Proofs.

That It be the Simplest of all the good ones we are able to frame, at least containing nothing that is superfluous or Impertinent
.
That It be the only Hypothesis that can Explicate the Phaenomena; or at least, that do's Explicate them so well.

That it enable a skilful Naturailst to foretell future Phaenomena by the Congruity or Incongruity to it; and especially the event of such Experlm'ts as are aptly devis'd to examine It, as Things that ought, or ought not, to be consequent to It.”

These intellectual commitments to empirical, testable, falsifiable, replicable science precede Popper by nearly 300 years in the definition of knowledge as demonstrable and falsifiable.

And Feynman:

” It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.
Richard P. Feynman”

Albert Einstein:

” "No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong." - Albert Einstein”

Robert Oppenheimer:

” Science starts with preconception, with the common culture, and with common sense. It moves on to observation, is marked by the discovery of paradox, and is then concerned with the correction of preconception. It moves then to use these corrections for the designing of further observation and for more refined experiment. And as it moves along this course the nature of the evidence and experience that nourish it becomes more and more unfamiliar; it is not just the language that is strange [to common culture].”
'The Growth of Science and the Structure of Culture', Daedalus (Winter 1958), 87, No. 1,

Werner Heisenberg:

”It is generally believed that our science is empirical and that we draw our concepts and our mathematical constructs from the empirical data. If this were the whole truth, we should, when entering into a new field, introduce only such quantities as can directly be observed, and formulate natural laws only by means of these quantities."

And:

“It is true that in quantum theory we cannot rely on strict causality. But by repeating the experiments many times, we can finally derive from the observations statistical distributions, and by repeating such series of experiments, we can arrive at objective statements concerning these distributions.”

These standards are applied to all sciences, except evolution and cosmology (cosmology does NOT claim truth, or enforce beliefs; skepticism is not punished). Those endeavors which do not or cannot use these standards are not science. They are speculation, based on contingent facts taken from other endeavors which are, actually, really, empirical in nature. Evolution is not biology, but it borrows contingent factoids from biology, then speculates beyond those factoids, beyond actual contingent knowledge, in order to produce non-falsifiable stories about history. Evolution does not contribute to modern biology; evolution is parasitic on modern biology, and produces ONLY speculation. But evolutionists Special Plead for exceptions to all rules in order for evolution to be accorded respect which it does not deserve.

Mutation is not a primary cause; it is an undifferentiated and undefined general term for the effect (change) produced by a prior cause. Thus the undifferentiated term "mutation" has no actual useful, specific meaning until the details of the molecular change which actually occurred, its cause, and its consequence for the living entity that incurred the molecular change have been objectively established. Without that, only specious conclusions can be (and will be) drawn.

The black moth issue is a prime example:

Speculation #1: A mutation found in a non-coloration area of DNA is discovered. It is speculated to have caused white moths to turn black.

Speculation #2: Only 95% of the black moths even have the mutation. It is speculated that the scientists failed in their duty to find all the mutations.

Speculation #3: Only 95% of the black moths even have the mutation. It is speculated that a second unprovable evolutionary hypothetical process – convergent evolution – is the second cause for changing white to black.

The black moth issue contains one, and only one demonstrable fact (which has not even been non-falsified by objective parties); the single contingent factoid is this:

a mutation of unknown consequence has been reportedly discovered in 95% of the black moths, which is reportedly absent in the white moths.

To claim any consequence for this finding is completely outside of what is actually found, and any such claim is purely ideological, and not in the least empirical. Even the most timid dollop of skepticsm would agree with that. But in the ideology of evolution, such skepticism is vanishingly rare; in fact, skepticism is punished in those who have careers in either biology or evolution.

Evolution clearly falls into this realm of non-demonstrative speculation:

(1) Using co-opted modern biological contingent facts in order to:

(2) produce speculation about historical observations which are claimed to be caused by unspecified “mutation” and unspecified conditions of “selection” and/or other non-specific causes (multiple nonspecific causation for a single effect) in the pursuit of justification of a theory of creation by purely natural forces.

The fact that you call empiricism MY personal subjective standard, which does not apply to evolution, is irrational:

”You impose YOUR own subjective standards; that's what I was pointing out.”

And I showed conclusively that that’s crap."

No, you haven't; you just repeated what facts are, in general. And you added commentaries around it:

"Why is this so hard for you to get?"

A prime example; just some sort of passive-aggressive insult implying I don't get it, because it's too "hard" for me. But I get it, I am explaining it to you; telling you exactly what you get wrong and why, as patiently as I could.”

You do NOT get it. No. That's well demonstrated. You ignore what I say, and merely claim I have no right to say it because it is subjective/ignorant/wrong for unspecified reasons, when in fact it is evolution which is subjective SPECULATION-ONLY, APPEAL TO AUTHORITY, CIRCULAR, SPECIAL PLEADING and without any possibility of objective, independent demonstration for purposes of empirical generation of contingent knowledge. You ignore that completely and try instead to discredit that by attacking me. Your response is purely desperate rhetorical Ad Hominem, and no, you do not get it. By merely repeating the ideology, you prove nothing.

Here is an example of complete rejection of the application of rational processes as applied to evolution, by means of repeating unfalsifiable dogma:

”Evolution is both a Theory, as a set of explanations for the observed diversity of life, and a fact, as the observed mechanism of mutation and selection. So yes, evolutionary biology does produce what you are describing as valid scientific observations yielding contingent facts. It does not matter what YOU think should come after these [...] . The facts are what they are, not what observations some people would 'like' to see.

When asked for these facts, you provide either nothing (the usual offering) or you provide speculation. Which is the expectation, because there is nothing else in evolution which can be offered. Evolution is empty of objective demonstration. And then you make statements like the above bolded ideological dogma claiming that it is a fact that facts exist. But you also say the following:

” Now, this just-so story is nothing but a story, right? I cannot prove that this is what happened, nobody can. Because that's not the point.”

You are absolutely correct in this admission: Proof of the claims made by the “science” of evolution is not the point of the evolution “science”… but yet the claim for evolution is that it possesses Truth, Science, and Fact. This is your position. It requires severe Equivocation of the terms “Truth, Science, and Fact”, to hold such beliefs.

You are unable to apply a single quantum of skepticism to these speculations, much less question the axioms which are necessarily presupposed in order to support them. That is firmly established. So there is no point in having any further discussion beyond this point, because your response will be –- NOT to provide objective, reproducible, falsifiable facts (as you admit they don’t exist; facts are "not the point") –- but to make claims in dogmatic ideological form as you have done in the above, insisting that objective facts exist, somewhere, out there in the fog of undefined causation, in the mystical possession of the Priests of Evolution. And if the benighted skeptic like myself would just find these Priests of Evolution, prostrate myself before their supreme presences and profess advance belief, they might allow me into their ring of mystical knowledge, which to the benighted outsider appears to be total speculation. Somehow the scales of skepticism will fall from my eyes, and the speculations will become fully visible as the immutable objective FACTS that they really are in that special zone of invisible, magical reality, to the eyes of the Priests and True Believers, such as yourself. But FIRST, I am required to BELIEVE.

You say:
” Ok, but 'folks like myself' are actually caused by people like you! Not the other way around. Science moves on without input from people like you. The denial of evolution brings nothing to the table, provides no knowledge, no experimentation, no hypothesis, no novel ideas, really, nothing.

Of course, evolution does not provide any knowledge, experimentation, falsifiable hypotheses, or usable ideas, either, does it? Nor does it provide any means of prediction from fundamental (molecular) cause to effect (say from land mammal to whale), as does actual empirical science. That is the actual purpose of science, isn't it? And evolution cannot possibly ever do that.

On the other hand, Rejection of Falseness brings to the table a bright light shining on phony claims of truth, science, and fact – none of which are attachable to evolution. As a result, any light on the subject is attacked as "ignorance", while never producing any facts of which one could be ignorant.

”The only thing that does happen is that when people who understand evolution discuss it, some ignorant folk will inevitably bring up their skepticism of a well-supported scientific field and try to accuse the entire scientific community of fraud.”

This is a false accusation regarding any position taken here. It is a functional rhetorical LIE, in the form of a purposeful smear. Of all the sciences, only evolution is a fraud by virtue of its false claims attaching itself to truth, science and fact, and the bullying that it "must be believed". Modern Biology is a respected empirical, testable, falsifiable science. Evolution is a parasite on Modern Biology.

”Trying to explain why that skeptic is wrong can be interesting, and useful for others who are also unsure about what science found, over time.

But it is not, absolutely not the case, that you are the one who needs to have a 'Discussion Zone on Evolution' because others are trying to shove something down your throat. You decided to put yourself at odd with the scientific community. You are ignorant, you misrepresent facts, you are a radical skeptic, and you are the one who needs to prove his position. But you will not, because you cannot. Evolution is based on solid science that you deny. And that's the end of the story. You can then decide to keep being ignorant, and insult the critical thinking skills of those who do understand and accept BIOLOGY and the Theory of Evolution, or you can... well, there is no 'or', because we both know that's exactly what you will continue doing.”

It ‘s hard to misrepresent facts, when there are none. So the entire premise is false. And my position is clearly the case: evolution CANNOT provide objective, replicable, falsifiable empirical evidence for its claims regarding historical processes. Your claims just above do not falsify any of my claims; they merely assert more of your believer’s rhetorical dogma, and, of course, your constant insults. If you had “solid science”, you would have presented it long ago. You did not. Instead, you make empty claims, over and over, as if those sorts of claims are all the evidence which is needed to garner the respect you feel that speculation-as-"science" deserves.

Because I reject your belief dogma (speculation=science=fact=truth=immutable knowledge), you charge me with ignorance, radical skepticism, and lack of proof. I fully accept all three charges.

I remain ignorant of any substantive falsifiable empirical evidence for the Speculation of Evolution despite decades of looking for it;

I do assert a modicum of rational skepticism by subjecting evolution to the intellectual norms required of actual empirical sciences, and that places me into the radical category because skepticism is not allowed in the ideological cult of evolution - which must be accepted before even any discussion can take place;

and I do assert a lack of proof, specifically for evolution, a failure of evolution to which you admit, as it is “not the point” of evolutionary “science”.

Here's the last example I’ll discuss (again):
The claim that Genetic Drift (destruction of information as is clearly shown at the site) produces "evolution" is shown to be a Fallacy of Equivocation for the word "evolution" (taken traditionally to mean speciation into trees of life, not eradications of lineages). Your comment regarding how the difference got there in the first place shows that you don't believe it either, yet you defend it purely by yet another in a long line of Appeals to Authority. Such fallacies are all you ever actually provide. Genetic Drift does not generate new features. Genetic Drift destroys information. The site clearly shows that, yet it calls that destruction, “evolution”. A clear cut Equivocation.

I won't respond to your further comments on this subject, for the reasons given above, and which I summarize here:

a) there are no actual objective, falsifiable facts ever given;

b) you provide only false claims;

c) dogma and logical fallacies of Appeals (which are circular to fallacious sources) are the common responses.

e) Those are rigidly held, are repeated as if they are “fact” (another Fallacy of Equivocation), and not discussable unless they are first accepted as truths (otherwise ignorance, et. al. is asserted against the skeptic).

So this particular discussion with you is over. [I now notice that you are leaving anyway; go in peace].

My Conclusion:
The claims made above for support of evolution are anti-rational, prejudiced, logically false, rhetorical and not dialectic, and intellectually irresponsible for ignoring rational standards. They completely ignore the intellectual standards of empiricism, and Special Plead for exemptions to all such standards for evolution, because evolution cannot provide any replicable, falsifiable, objective knowledge.

Evolution News and Boos

‘Landmark study’ solves mystery behind classic evolution story

"The scientists found a single genetic variation in 95% of the dark moths that was missing in every pale moth they tested, they report online today in Nature. The mutation—the insertion of a portion of DNA that can “jump” to a new location within a genome—occurs within cortex, a gene known to affect cell division and egg development in fruit flies. “It’s surprising that it’s this gene, rather than something that’s more recognizably wing pattern–related or color pattern–related,” Saccheri says."

Really? So 5% of the dark moths do NOT have the mutation? And no one knows what that mutation actually does? So the mystery is "solved"? This is more bogus conclusions from what should be dispassionate science. They have NOT conclusively proved anything, because the data shows otherwise.

"Considering the differences between moths and butterflies—they’ve been following separate evolutionary pathways for about 100 million years—the fact that the same gene plays an important role in the wing coloration of both groups is an intriguing result, Holland says. He adds that the next step will be to find the mechanism by which cortex works. This latest addition to the peppered moth tale, he says, “is going to be in the textbooks for decades to come.”

Yes. I'm sure that it will be enthusiastically added despite not being the case.

Regarding Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker

The blogger-troll self-appelled "IM Skeptical" is making assertions at another blog:

IM Skeptical:

"- I have read the entire book. [Dawkins’ Blind Watchmaker] And I think you have entirely missed the point. Yes, people have an intuitive feeling that biological things are designed. But intuitions are often wrong. I suggest you read Coyne's Why Evolution Is True.[note 1] It describes many vivid examples of why that intuitive feeling doesn't bear critical scrutiny."

This person insists that speculation which is not testable or falsifiable is to be regarded as valid because it is loosely labeled as “science”. He says, “I’ll stick with science”, despite the failure of his sources to produce a single mote of objective knowledge in the form of empirical justification. The Dawkins book to which he refers is a splendid example of such sources. As shown below, Dawkins preaches rather than referring to falsifiable, testable concepts which are backed by empirical non-falsification.

Dawkins and the Eye
I love Dawkins assessment of the eye's development: What good is 5% of an eye? Dawkins spends 10 pages [p77-86] on the benefit of 5% of vision, assuming that there is a completely connected system, formed using 5% of the completed pathway. ”Without an eye you are totally blind. With half an eye you may at least be able to detect the general direction of a predator’s movement, even if you can’t focus a clear image.” It's like a bike path compared to a 12 lane highway, with both being complete and going to the same place. But that's, as David Berlinski points out, "the magician's age-old tactic of misdirection." The issue is not the percentage of an eye, it is the percentage of the entire sight systemic complex, from photon input to qualia of vision in the mind. Half and eye produces zero vision, unless there is a complete vision system from lens to qualia.

For example, five percent of an eye, then, would be an orb with a lens and nothing more; no receptors, to neural connections, no path to the brain, and most importantly, no qualia - no experience of sight. Or 5% of an eye might be the muscles and the movement of the orb, and nothing else; again no connection, no qualia, no sight.

I think Dawkins is not so stupid as not to understand this. I think the deception is purposeful sleight of hand – misdirection of an argument by arguing not about vision, but rather arguing only about part of the system. It is necessary to obscure the obvious conclusion that the development of the sight system cannot have happened one (not so simple) sub-system component at a time, accidentally and without purpose. A complete eye is useless without the other sub-systems which are absolutely necessary for any representative qualia to occur.

The facts surrounding negative mutations (which obliterate the probability of saved proto-beneficial mutations for individual components) are devastating to this simplistic argument. Those beneficial mutations would be nuked by negative selection of deleterious mutations long before a 100% complete vision system (even at 5% vision) would ever be produced.

On page 40, Dawkins compares the time allowed for evolution to produce an eye (actually a complete sight system) is “several hundred million years.” For comparison he notes the much quicker time in which humans have guided the evolution of dogs from wolves (falsified recently) into

“Pekinese, Bulldog, Chihuahua, and Saint Bernard. Ah but they are still dogs, aren’t they? They haven’t turned into a different kind of animal. Yes, if it comforts you to play with words like that, you can call them all dogs. But just think about the time involved.”

So Dawkins admits, grudgingly, that it is the Black and White Fallacy that he is invoking, but he goes ahead and does it anyway. There is no rational comparison between breeding wolves downward or upward within their own genome (micro-evolution within a species’ genome), and creating a brand new, highly complex vision system. The projected time of several million years is superficially a misdirection based in large numbers which relate to nothing which is pertinent.

This type of meta-narrative thinking is rampant in evolutionism. To make a simplistic, molecular-evidence-free speculation with less credibility than most science fiction allows the evolutionist to declare a “science”.

Bombardier Beetle
Another astonishing claim in Dawkins’ “Blind Watchmaker” is his assessment of the Bombardier Beetle [p87]. According to Dawkns, claims about the explosion chamber are false; there is no explosion when the two chemicals are added together. So there could be no “exploded beetles”. The real situation is that the chemicals do react violently in the presence of a catalyst. He concludes that since the two chemicals pre-exist in living creatures, then

“the bombardier Beetle’s ancestors simply pressed into different service chemicals that already happened to be around. That’s often how evolution works.”

And that’s it. That is the entire explanation Dawkins puts forth. It matters not that the complexity of the combination of chemicals, catalyst, and insulated fluid dynamic chamber with its jetted port and triggering mechanism has gone UP under his assessment. He has used misdirection again, and left the issue hanging as if he has solved it.

Complexity

”Organized complexity is the thing we are having trouble explaining. Once we are allowed simply to postulate organized complexity, if only the organized complexity of the DNA/protein replicating engine, it is relatively easy to invoke it as a generator of yet more organized complexity. That, indeed, is what most of this book is about” [p141]

That is certainly true, in both cases. When you presuppose the existence of something which you cannot prove, cannot see, cannot test, and THEN base your hypotheses for your remaining career-making theory, including the deceptions in this book, why, nothing is too hard to explain any more. Just presuppose its Truth. And presuppose the Truth of your conclusion right there in the premise..And that is, indeed, the concept underlying the entire book.

The Weasel Routine
For another example presented in the “Blind Watchmaker”, Dawkins designed a computer routine which would randomly select letters to be fit into the spaces occupied by the phrase, “methinks it is like a weasel”. Dawkins then found that within only a few generations, the phrase had been created from the random inputs. [p46-50] It took only 41 iterations, and 11 seconds. Dawkins claimed that this is a case for “cumulative selection” [p49], “in which each improvement, however slight, is used as a basis for future building”. He continues,

”if evolutionary progress had had to rely on single step selection, it would never have got anywhere. If, however, there was a way in which the necessary conditions for cumulative selection could have been set up by the blind forces of nature, strange and wonderful might have been the consequences. As a matter of fact, that is exactly what happened on this planet, and we ourselves are among the most recent, if not the strangest and most wonderful of these consequences.”

The world of programmers, engineers and rational seven year old nerds immediately pointed out the obvious flaws in the “weasel” program. First, the computer routine is teleological, in that it knows the answer in advance. So when a letter matches the predetermined answer, that letter is kept because the selection criterion is previously determined. This progresses until all the letters turn up and the correct letter for each position is kept, and the desired phrase is formed. Second, the entire enterprise is intelligently designed. So this routine is another misdirection; it does not even represent actual theories of evolution, and in fact goes counter to them.

Mutations
And the admitted necessity of accumulation of all the necessary components before they are asserted all together fails the test of rationality, first in the certain knowledge that the probabilities are so powerfully against this occurring, that they are effectively zero, because the creation of a series of interrelated organs requires many, many perfect information-bearing mutations to be absolutely correct and completely available. And most importantly, they would never survive long enough to accumulate due to modification by deleterious mutations which far outnumber any accidental organ-forming beneficial mutation.

If there were a smell test for evolutionary bull excrement, this would fail immediately.

For any of the claims in this book one might ask, “what is the material evidence which makes these claims into objective knowledge?” and the answer would be: none. Every claim is speculation without any hope of verification, validation or non-falsification. No claim is any more than the proverbial “Just So Story” which Stephen Jay Gould warned about. Bottom line, then, is that it is all imaginary, but is built up as a “rational case” for an unprovable hypothesis.

Thus it cannot succeed as representative of empirical science, because empirical science robustly provides the conditions for objective knowledge by providing testable, replicable, falsifiable deductive hypotheses which are independently verifiable, falsifiable and replicable with open data taken on the cause and effect being tested.

Evolution is a presumed effect of unknown causes (“mutation” is not a cause, it is a category of presumptive causes which are unknown) which cannot be objectively falsified, tested, or replicated. For example, creating all the phyla out of a single cell progenitor cannot be replicated, because the cause cannot even be estimated.

The real questions, those bearing on the actual, functional mechanisms regarding molecular-level changes are not addressed, because there is no knowledge to provide to the reader on that level. The entire thrust of evolution is couched in hierarchical meta-hypotheses, and never in specifics or particulars. There is nothing testable about Darwinian claims, nor about Dawkins’ attempt to justify them. Thus, not being falsifiable, the claims are found to be in the category of blind belief: fundamentalist religion.

Here are some issues and questions that should occur to any truly disinterested student of Darwinism and Evolutionism:

1.Mutations are subtractive [p169]. Modification of something which already exists necessarily deletes something which pre-existed. Some part of the genome is modified from A to B, eliminating or at least destroying the capability to produce A. So in this sense, all modifications are foremost destructive if they are not also additive.

2. Exactly what portion of the genome had to mutate, in order to produce an all new organ/system? I.e., where on the DNA did the modifications occur? Or is the information not in the DNA genome, and rather is contained elsewhere, as is much of the organism’s information?

3. How many bits of information are involved in the creation of the new organ? I.e., how much of the DNA had to be changed – correctly – and with correct intron/exons and other markers? If the information regarding the construction of a vision system is not found in the DNA, then where is it located?

4. What (exactly defined at the molecular level) was sacrificed in order to produce the new organ/system?

5. Evolutionist arguments are stuck at the level of the set of all possible mutations. And to the concept that DNA contains all the information, when it is known not to be the case. This set of all possible mutations is endowed with characteristics which are not measured or measurable, but are assumed for no reason other than science fiction. The invocation of “positive mutations” is undefinable at the actual level at which it supposedly occurs. The portion of the genome which was supposedly replaced is unknowable, since it is gone in the modern organism. It is more likely by far that the destruction caused by even a “positive mutation”, especially one of organic complexity, would outweigh the benefit of the “positive mutation”.

6. The proposed acquisition of multiple interdependent organic systems, along with their regulatory feedback systems and multiple language requirements for comprehensive control would mean a massive subtractive destruction of prior DNA. This makes the success of such an enterprise rationally impossible.

Further, the appropriate sudden acquisition of all the proper components of interdependent organ systems and their regulatory feedback systems with multiple appropriate languages which function together properly is rationally impossible. Further, any claims that gene-switching and epigenetic manipulations such as recombination [note 2] cause the creation of interdependent organic systems, feedback control systems, and multiple languages appropriate to each communication system are rationally impossible.

The standard response to this type of argument is the “Deep Time” plaint, which is made as if time were causal; time is not causal and the issue remains as the simultaneous creation of these organic systems due to build-up of saved beneficial mutations.

But, the deeper the time require to acquire and save these fortuitous mutations, the less probability that beneficial mutations, if they existed at all, would avoid annihilation by deleterious mutations.

The specific development of the interrelated cardio-vascular system, with the oxygenation and CO2 elimination function, and with the blood generation and filtration systems, along with the necessary metabolic and nutrient intake/waste output systems is massive complex. To believe that this all occurred due to saved up beneficial, correct information-bearing mutations to be expressed all at once is the concept which evolutionists must accept, as blind faith.

So this is the type of science which impresses IMS, and which he insists is valid and must be accepted; not to accept such irrationality has, in the past, caused IMS to go directly to Ad Hominem Abusive eptithets, such as science-denier, creationist, rather than to provide actual scientific, falsifiable, testable data in defense of the blind belief in evolution. And again, without such empirical justification, however conditional and fragile, the belief remains totally blind, blinded by science-fictional Just So Stories. If materialist evolution is to be believed, the argument for it must include, not more-meta narrative, but specifics of what happened at the molecular level (the effect), and the cause for that effect.

As it stands, there is neither a credible effect for evolution, nor any sign of a credible cause. It is merely a fantasy story built at the meta-narrative level, one which supports both many careers (with taxpayer funding) and the unprovable and falsified Philosophical Materialist worldview.

NOTES:
1. Coyne's fallacies are discussed HERE.

2. The following is a discussion of recombination:

“Whereas asexuals must move against selection to escape local optima, sexuals reach higher fitness peaks reliably because they create specific genetic variants that "skip over" fitness valleys, moving from peak to peak in the fitness landscape. This occurs because recombination can supply combinations of mutations in functional composites or 'modules', that may include individually deleterious mutations. Thus when a beneficial module is substituted for another less-fit module by sexual recombination it provides a genetic variant that would require either several specific simultaneous mutations in an asexual population or a sequence of individual mutations some of which would be selected against.”

This is found in a posting which purports to support recombination as a source of multiple mutation variation in a single step; Yet it does not explain how the “beneficial module” came into existence in the first place. Why should the expectation be that all the information for a working multi-organ system pre-exist in the genome, just waiting to be engaged in recombination? Even and especially if that involves some sort of shuffling action? So the recombination argument is not useful in defending Darwinism or any other form of evolutionary hypotheses.