1. Two More Fleas

Comment #145955 by robert s on March 18, 2008 at 12:05 pm

As Wooter mentioned the apparent absence of half-zebra/half-horse animals as a major point against evolution, can I mention the Quagga?

2. Fleas on the Horizon: In Defense of God

Comment #137990 by robert s on March 3, 2008 at 5:56 pm

How to Be a Good Atheist explains the five types of atheism

I'm guessing type 1 is the type that doesn't believe in any gods.

Anyone know what the other 4 are?

3. Why Darwin matters

Comment #129131 by robert s on February 18, 2008 at 4:36 pm

That was a goal-post shift worthy of wooter! Evolution is disproved because we haven't bred talking cows?

4. Why Darwin matters

Comment #129089 by robert s on February 18, 2008 at 3:53 pm

after all, people have been breeding animals for millenia.

Is that really the same thing?

In the wild, animals have sex and make babies. In captivity, animals have sex and make babies.

What makes you think this isn't the same thing?

5. Why Darwin matters

Comment #129065 by robert s on February 18, 2008 at 3:27 pm

http://richarddawkins.net/article,2215,Sprinting-down-the-evolutionary-highway,The-Star

So, because we control who we breed with and when, somehow that means the genes of people who produce more offspring will not have greater representation in the next generation?

6. Feb 12th: Happy Darwin Day!

Comment #128839 by robert s on February 18, 2008 at 4:24 am

I like the way woot unquestioningly accepts scientists' assertion that no two snowflakes are identical, but flatly rejects the idea of common descent in organisms.

And I love the idea that bees have to hold a prayer meeting before building their combs to ask for divine guidance.

7. Feb 12th: Happy Darwin Day!

Comment #128513 by robert s on February 17, 2008 at 9:19 am

Complexity requires a designer.

You keep saying this over and over and over again, but it's simply not true. The best you can say is that some complex things are designed. Perhaps your upbringing has been so sheltered that you've only encountered designed things.

People who get out a bit more know of many, many complex things that are definitely not designed. Who "designed" the Mandelbrot set (BTW, people will laugh if you claim Benoit Mandelbrot designed it!) Infact any non-linear system with feedback will produce complex behaviour all on its own. Depending on the exact parameters that behaviour might be random or it might have clearly discernable patterns (ever watched a lava lamp warm up from cold? its behaviour is random, but it definitely changes what it does as it gets hotter).

There's also this lie that evolution starts from the assumption that there is no God. (I like the kettle logic here - christians also like to claim that ALL of modern science derives from christianity!) Of course this is rubbish, Darwin and all the other scientists involved in the framing of evolution were christians - you simply couldn't participate in academic life in Victorian Britain if you weren't a member of the C of E - they started from the assumption that life is designed and discovered that this assumption is false.

8. Why Darwin matters

Comment #126371 by robert s on February 13, 2008 at 4:48 am

tO: robert s

You just click on the web page and check the reality yourself.

http://www.dhushara.com/book/evol/trevol.jpg

Thank-you, that is an absolutely gorgeous rendering of the tree of common descent. I can't see why you think it helps your case, though. In every case the organisms are obviously related to their ancestors by incremental changes. There are no sudden appearances of entirely novel forms created from nothing.

And it illustrates my point about the absence of logic in your comment about 'show me a worm evolve into a fish...' As you can see, fish did not evolve from worms. The worms are down low on the left ('worm' is a rather vague term, but the nematoda, cheatognatha and annelida would all qualify). The fish are up in the upper panel with the other vertebrates. The last common ancestor between fish and worms would probably have been a very simple multi-celled organism.

The evolution tree is a self-denial proof. How come millions of creatures can evolve from one another?

Can you expand on the 'self-denial proof'? I'm sure it's obvious to you, but I, and about a billion biologists, seem to have missed it.

What is the great mystery about evolution? When animals reproduce, the offspring are slightly different to the parents (are you identical to your father?). Over many generations the changes accumulate to the point where we call them a different species.

You say worm stopped evolving? Why? Who is the decision maker?

This is what I love about creationists. People are worried about the minutae of what Richard and the other experts say. They worry that creationists will use them as propaganda. But here's the truth - if you don't say what a creationist wants you to say to make his point, they will just make up a quote and attribute it to you.

So no, I didn't say worms stopped evolving. I even speculated about what worms might evolve into in the future.

9. Why Darwin matters

Comment #126152 by robert s on February 12, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Indeed there was a time when being a churchman was a handy and lucrative little number, not requiring any kind of true piety.

There was? When did this period end?

10. Why Darwin matters

Comment #126114 by robert s on February 12, 2008 at 1:19 pm

Well, I didn't know that. Which church was it and when did they do this?

The Christian Orthodox Church, for about 1,000 years starting in AD 300.

There's some interesting stuff about science and religion here

This brings me to one of the very few points I disagree with Richard on. In a debate at the end of last year, he commented that he wasn't impressed by the Christian claim that science had proved their claim that the universe had a beginning. They had a 50-50 chance of guessing right.

Of course, there's no 50-50 chance here. If the universe had be shown to be eternal, the Christians would simply claim that that proved them right. There's no scenario where they admit to being wrong.

11. Why Darwin matters

Comment #126108 by robert s on February 12, 2008 at 1:11 pm

134. Comment #125714 by wooter on February 11, 2008 at 10:49 pm

Have you seen a worm turned to be a fish? You do it in a lab then I will quit what I believe.

Sorry to rewind so far, but this comment is annoying me. I would critique the whole post, but not all of it is intelligible. The next 2 sentences are:

Forget about turning worm into a fish? Can you make a leg of an ant in lab through evolution?

Which I can't make enough sense of to interact with (how do you breed legs?).

wooter seems to be conflating two similar questions. "Did fish evolve from worms?" and "can worms evolve into fish?" The trouble is, of course, that the truths of these questions are independent. Fish could have evolved from worms, but modern worms may have lost the ability to repeat the feat, conversely, fish could have evolved from something different, but worms might have the ability, given enough time, to evolve into something we might call a fish. (As far as I know, the answer to both questions is 'no'. Fish didn't evolve from worms and worms can't evolve into fish, although they might be able to evolve into something that could occupy one or more ecological niches that are currently occupied by fish, given several million years and the right evolutionary pressures).

Given that wooter will, in all likelihood be dead before a several million year experiment could be run, his offer to change his beliefs seems a little hollow. (Given the general psychology of fundamentalists, I doubt that even if his conditions were met, any change of belief would occur. Some trivial rationalisation would be presented that would let him continue to believe his fairytale).

12. Why Darwin matters

Comment #126078 by robert s on February 12, 2008 at 12:47 pm

Now why would you assume that?

Because you, apparently inadvertently, made the preamble to what could be a valid argument against evolution by natural selection. One of the key predictions of that theory is that fitness can only go up, therefore, if organisms lost fitness by losing their ability to regenerate limbs, that would be a real problem for evolutionists.

However, reproductive fitness is a difficult metric to calculate, so I would guess that our distant ancestors gained something by shutting off their ability regenerate their limbs.

I note that reptiles and amphibians have a generally much lower metabolic rate than mammals. Perhaps with the higher metabolic rate comes greater risks of cancers. Shutting down developmental pathways early in life might have the effect of raising extra barriers to runaway cell division later on.

13. Exorcism undergoes a revival across Europe

Comment #125354 by robert s on February 11, 2008 at 9:22 am

It sounds like your typical anime plotline.

Specifically, it sounds like Claymore

14. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #124189 by robert s on February 8, 2008 at 4:06 pm

I wish all you so-called 'fans' would spell Ike's name right!

15. Inventor Doesn't Dare Say 'Perpetual Motion Machine'

Comment #124083 by robert s on February 8, 2008 at 10:04 am

The real test for claims of this sort is reproducibility. If someone else can construct a similar machine, then skeptics have a case to answer.

Putting on a dog-and-pony show, even for an MIT professor, doesn't mean anyone has to prove him wrong.

16. Are Darwin's Theories Fact or Faith Issues?

Comment #122568 by robert s on February 5, 2008 at 1:30 pm

IMHO, calling something a theory is not an expression of confidence. There are plenty of disproved theories (eg Hoyle's original Steady State Theory of cosmology) and plenty of currently untestable ones (eg String Theory).

Try reading 'theory' as 'mental model'. (Or, compare the concept of 'theory of music' with the practice of playing an instrument).

This usage makes the subject of the current discussion much clearer: Darwin's mental model explains how species change over time.

If you believe that species have changed over a timescale greater than ~10,000 years, then clearly you will have issues with Young Earth Creationism.

17. Sadly, an Honest Creationist

Comment #106801 by robert s on January 3, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Maybe Josh could add something, to either the thread page or the comment box to indicate that a six-month old thread has been brought back from the dead?

I'm not advocating closing threads, but it's weird having people arguing with posts from people who are clearly long gone.

18. Pope's exorcist squads will wage war on Satan

Comment #105386 by robert s on December 31, 2007 at 12:00 pm

it's like a Zeno's Paradox for the 21st Century.

Given that the Daily Mail and the Vatican contradict each other, which do you believe less?

19. Sorry to disappoint, but it's nonsense to suggest we want to ban Christmas

Comment #102236 by robert s on December 22, 2007 at 6:02 am

I was going to say it's a shame the Archbishop of Wales doesn't read the Guardian, but his comments so closely follow Polly's list of Christian lies that one can only assume that he did read the piece and used it as the basis for his speech.

20. Three wise men just legend: archbishop

Comment #101343 by robert s on December 20, 2007 at 9:00 am

Indeed, parthenogensis is not uncommon in vertebrates, although I don't know of a case of it being observed in mammals.

However, in species where gender is genetically determined, the offspring are always female.

21. Creation college seeks state's OK to train teachers

Comment #100770 by robert s on December 19, 2007 at 10:06 am

wooter: Sorry, it's probably me being dense, but it still looks to me like you're still equivocating abiogenesis and evolution. I'm sure you can't possibly so stupid as to regard such totally different things as the same, it's probably just my poor reading comprehension skills.

Could you please state clearly whether you want to talk about abiogenesis or evolution?

22. Creation college seeks state's OK to train teachers

Comment #100202 by robert s on December 18, 2007 at 11:32 am

wooter, your question conflates abiogenesis and Darwinian evolution. Perhaps you could rephrase it to remove this equivocation?

23. God rest you merry atheist

Comment #100042 by robert s on December 18, 2007 at 6:02 am

Has Libby Purves ever sung Jerusalem?

24. ...and another FLEA...

Comment #96418 by robert s on December 10, 2007 at 1:53 pm

Like the previous flea, he's forgotten to add bars to tell us which of the specks of light on the cover is the one that corresponds to the phenomenon discussed in the thesis. They all look like ordinary stars and galaxies to me.

25. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94762 by robert s on December 6, 2007 at 1:37 pm

Science is the search for concise explanations for phenomena. Therefore one shouldn't be surprised if a scientist offers an explanation in place of an argument (I'll admit to not entirely grasping the distinction you're making).

The non-existence of the gods in question is not a presupposition, the appearance that it is is simply a side-effect of parsimony (what steve99 et al are discussing). If a religion can be explained as simply humans doing what they do, then there's no evidential cause to posit a deity.

An example for emphasis: The electrical theory of lightning isn't an argument against Thor, it 'presupposes' the non-existence of the Norse deities. In addition to a knowledge of physics (and maybe a Van de Graaf generator), what should someone arguing for the motion 'lightning is a natural phenomenon' bring to the debate?

26. Ask The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins

Comment #94305 by robert s on December 5, 2007 at 8:16 am

Don't forget to start your questions with "how you answer this question will tell us everything we need to know about you..."

27. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #94302 by robert s on December 5, 2007 at 8:02 am

For now all we can do is enjoy the 'kettle logic' of theists who berate us for not believing in anything beyond the observable universe and for positing external universes as a hypothetical solution to the fine-tuning issue (via the anthropic principle).

No, there are exactly two universes, according to the theists. Thinking there are more or less makes you insane...

28. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93599 by robert s on December 3, 2007 at 4:11 pm

Tagred: Or have i missed some incredibly simple thing here?

Yeah, the sorts of problems the fine-tuning avoids are things like a universe that recollapses very quickly or blows itself up to enormous size. Obviously in either of those cases you don't get large-scale, complex structures.

Some of them are more subtle and cause problems with fusion in the cores of stars (without fusion not only do the stars not radiate energy, but they also don't synthesise heavy elements from the primordial hydrogen).

There are a lot of examples of that kind of thing, and it certainly does need an explanation.

ISTM that 'goddidit' doesn't explain much of anything, though.

29. Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza

Comment #93571 by robert s on December 3, 2007 at 2:15 pm

However parsimonous or otherwise they might have been, neutrinos and GR only became accepted as scientific fact once they had passed empirical tests - modifying NM to incorporate light being affected by gravity is much less parsimonious than GR.

30. Double-checking Dawkins

Comment #93324 by robert s on December 2, 2007 at 5:31 pm

spikie, that story is covered here.

31. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #92754 by robert s on December 1, 2007 at 11:51 am

Hopeful: What are you proposing to assert as the law (or laws) of evolution?

A scientific law should assert a single idea that is universally true. Obviously something as complex as the theoy of evolution does not meet that first criterion.

32. Papal encyclical attacks atheism, lauds hope

Comment #92437 by robert s on November 30, 2007 at 1:47 pm

What? This isn't a 'flea' thread?

33. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #91371 by robert s on November 28, 2007 at 7:23 am

You scurvy dog! 'Rope' was meant to be the common term, 'line' is another professional term (get Strappy to check his dictionary...)

34. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #91212 by robert s on November 27, 2007 at 4:14 pm

Scientists need to respect that they don't have ownership of words, and can't demand that everyone associate the same thing with "theory" as they do.

What? Where is anyone demanding that?

Most professions have a specialised vocabulary - ask a lawyer where he keeps his briefs! They use them to describe things that don't exist outside that professional environment, or where the general usage is not specific enough. For example, to a sailor, 'sheet' and 'halyard' both mean 'rope' but the different names mark a very important distinction between the functions of different ropes on a ship.

Quoting a dictionary saying 'sheet' is a kind of linen used on a bed will not help you work a sailing ship.

I note your abject failure to come up with a suggestion for a common word to replace 'theory' in its scientific context. I suspect that this is because there isn't one.

Whilst 'theory' is, indeed, an ambiguous term (what? you've never come across homonyms before?), 'scientific theory' is very clearly defined.

I'll reiterate my comment from before Ruht's appearance on this thread: the problem is not a failure to communicate on the part of scientists, it's the willingness of the creationists to lie.

35. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #89693 by robert s on November 21, 2007 at 2:16 pm

Can astronomers make artificial stars in a lab?

If they can't, then they can never prove their theory that stars are large balls of gas heated by thermonuclear fusion.

So much for Martin Rees's 'clear thining'.

36. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #88660 by robert s on November 18, 2007 at 12:17 pm

Sorry, I just don't think reverting to some kind of scientific baby-talk will turn out to be quite the panacea Thompson thinks it will. Infact given the level of lying involved, I wouldn't be surprised if changes being proposed were subverted to add to the paranoid ramblings of the creationists.

I doubt we could convince the creationists to observe any change in terminology, anyway. They're not going to acknowledge evolution as true - it's a bit silly to worship something that claims to have created things that arose through natural processes!

I think JFHalsey made a good point in the 'Judgement' thread - it's not that scientists are communicating poorly, it's that creationists have a monopoly on education in some communities and are using it to lie to the students.

All we can do is make sure that the science is as good as it can possibly be for those that choose to study it. Those that don't are out of our reach.

37. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #88652 by robert s on November 18, 2007 at 10:11 am

The 'fact' of evolution and the 'theory' of evolution are two different things.

The 'fact' is that the species on Earth today are not the same as those in the past, but developed from those earlier forms.

The 'theory' is a detailed conceptual model that explains the observed fact using the laws of nature as discovered by science. Obviously Darwin's insights about natural selection form a key part of that model.

38. 'Expelled' Movie: The Extended Trailer

Comment #88233 by robert s on November 15, 2007 at 1:39 pm

"If you were really a poached egg, you wouldn't have a shell, would you?"

39. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #88096 by robert s on November 14, 2007 at 4:02 pm

I'm not arguing the strength of the evidence, I'm arguing my idea of what a scientific law is. It seems to me it should be at least:

1) Universally true
2) A single idea that can be expressed in one sentence or formula.

ie. Conservation of energy is a law, thermodynamics is a theory. Saying they're the same thing isn't helping matters.

I'd be keen to see suggestions for 'laws' of biology that meet those criteria, because this comes up a lot.

40. Why Science Will Triumph Only When Theory Becomes Law

Comment #88091 by robert s on November 14, 2007 at 3:28 pm

I don't think this guy's grasp of scientific concepts is that much better than that of the people he's criticising.

What exactly is he proposing should be enshrined as a law, anyway? "Evolution" covers a huge range of ideas - common descent, genetics, developmental processes, pathology, etc, etc. You can't just say all that's suitable for assertion as a law.

It has to be something short enough to print on a T-Shirt.

41. Believing Scripture but Playing by Science's Rules

Comment #87219 by robert s on November 11, 2007 at 1:59 pm

However inconvenient it might be in this case, the only test for scientific validity is whether the evidence adduced supports the claims made.

If you're going to ban people from academic science (or deny them credit for their achievements in that field) for reasons other then lack of merit, who gets to decide what the other criteria should be?

How about if someone felt that black people are incapable of doing science? Or jews, or women, or communists? (These are hardly hypotheticals).

Even worse, if you ban people from doing science because they disagree with the current thinking, you'd be turning science into a dogmatic ideology - no-one would be able to criticize the ideas of Einstein, or Newton, or Plato without being expelled for heresy.

So props to all the academics who decided to recognise these loonies' actual achievements, even if the loonies themselves don't believe them.

It's not as if the whole creationism movement hangs on these cases anyway, they have plenty of diploma mills turning out 'Ph.Ds' that seem to be convincing their target audience.

42. I didn't know the FLEA CIRCUS was back in town!

Comment #85580 by robert s on November 6, 2007 at 8:45 am

why are they speaking English?

She's referring to the 'new atheists'.

43. Believe it or not, courtesy counts

Comment #84089 by robert s on November 1, 2007 at 6:27 am

Can I suggest 'propaganda' as a better word for 'sacred text'?

And did he really write periscope?

44. Help Counter the New Atheist Crusade to 'Evangelize' America!

Comment #79441 by robert s on October 17, 2007 at 9:07 am

Well, the literal meaning is 'spread good news', which doesn't seem so bad to me.

45. Help Counter the New Atheist Crusade to 'Evangelize' America!

Comment #79430 by robert s on October 17, 2007 at 8:42 am

I could understand them being upset about Heinlein, but Asimov?

46. Letters: Theology has no place in a university

Comment #74993 by robert s on October 1, 2007 at 9:58 am

Perhaps, as you think Dawkins' idea of what theology is is wrong, you could tell us what it really is? Does your friend's Ph.D include any real theology in addition to the studies you mentioned?

Or does the anthropology of religion really need its own department?

47. Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Comment #74201 by robert s on September 27, 2007 at 4:38 pm

Mathematics isn't science because there's no observational component. Maths and science are both types of philosophy, though, so of course there are a lot of similarities and one often inspires advances in the other.

My confidence that sqrt(2) can not be expressed as the ratio of two integers is on a completely different level to my confidence that Pluto exists or that matter is atomic. Even in the wildest Cartesian Demon scenario, there's still no two numbers that make root 2.

My point was that for scientific questions, 'proof' has a subjective element. Rather than trying to out-do the religious by claiming that our proof is better than theirs, we should make a point of expressing how confident we are in what we claim. The message in doing that is that having a contingent belief based on evidence is better than having certainty in a holy book.

Although when we do this, it does seems to go right over the believers' heads. Dawkins, the Fundamentalist Atheist, Prince of Certainty, qualifies all his assertions with very carefully chosen adjectives to indicate his confidence (eg: "Why there very probably is no God"), but those qualifiers don't seem to make it past the believers' filters.

Those qualifiers are vital, though, because once you regard proof as subjective, you can treat it as a proportion instead of an absolute.

It would be really interesting to see the discussion on the religious side run the same way - logically, shouldn't one be more convinced that Jesus lived than that he was born of a virgin? So far that kind of thinking seems entirely absent.

48. Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Comment #74184 by robert s on September 27, 2007 at 3:16 pm

How would you take the suggestion that scientists use the word 'proof' in a way that is more similar to the legal rather than the mathematical uses of the term? That is, 'a convincing set of evidences' rather than 'an irrefutable demonstration that carries complete confidence'.

49. Teacher: I was fired, said Bible isn't literal

Comment #74167 by robert s on September 27, 2007 at 2:05 pm

Bonzai, you seem to have Neptune and Pluto confused - Neptune was discovered in the way you describe, but Pluto is about the same size as the Moon and has no observable effect on the motion of Neptune. Lowell started the search for a ninth planet based on a perceived anomaly in Neptune's motion, but whatever the cause of that anomaly was, it certainly wasn't Pluto.

Similarly, whilst in principle a teapot has a gravitational effect, a teapot in space would be quite undetectable with current technology. (And, of course, undetectability is the point of Russell's argument - should someone develop a teapot detector, one would merely have to switch to something harder to detect to keep the analogy valid)

50. Critical Analysis of Case for a Creator

Comment #72286 by robert s on September 20, 2007 at 4:34 pm

Have you read A Brief History of Time? Maybe a little old now, but it gives you a feel for the issues involved.

Of course, no-one's understanding goes right back to the Big Bang itself. In addition to the time dilation effect you referred to, beyond a certain point (eg, when the whole universe is much smaller than the nucleus of an atom) conditions are so extreme that current physical models make no sense.

A theory of quantum gravity would push that horizon back, but given our current understanding, it does seem likely that the Big Bang is an insuperable obstacle to observation. It is neither possible for us to make observations of the cause of the Big Bang, nor for that cause to make observations or changes to our universe.