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The inaccuracies do not affect fitness, and could even be argued as beneficial as part of a social unit.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud

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The inaccuracies do not affect fitness, and could even be argued as beneficial as part of a social unit.

And that is an even sharper contradiction to your notion that "Natural selection would preserve genes which lead to an accurate understanding of reality", since you are now saying it does the opposite.

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It's all in reference to fitness. Our brains can calculate the trajectory of a spear quite nicely, but this ability is not affected by a belief in deities. Our ability to work as a group to herd animals is equally unaffected, and given the knowledge we have accumulated it seems that it is working quite well.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
How do you know the answers to any of these questions?

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I only know the answers in respect of one kind of ape: humans.

I don't know the answers in respect to other apes. Do you?

Do you think we have adequate access to the thinking processes of chimps and gorillas (or for that matter, dolphins, possibly the most intelligent non-human species) to come to any substantive conclusion on these questions?

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
Actually, our brains aren't all that good at calculating the trajectory of a spear - in fact, you could go outside and throw a spear right now at a rabbit or deer, and you will find it's much harder than it looks - it takes a lot of practice.

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That being said, even if our brains give us the capabilities you mentioned, nothing in throwing a spear or herding animals requires us to assess the nature of reality -

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so there is no reason from an evolutionary perspective to believe that the evolutionists assessment of reality is anymore reliable than anyone else’s.

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That doesn't change the fact that we have the innate talent to calculate trajectories of thrown objects. We have sports based on this very thing (e.g. baseball, cricket).

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Sure it does. You need knowledge of materials to make the spear. Knowledge of physics to make altatls. Knowledge of herding animal behavior. Lot's of stuff.

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The reason is the evidence. ERV's, transitional fossils, nested hierarchies, functional genomics, etc.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
At don’t doubt some are talented in this regard, but a large number aren’t (which is why star atheletes are a rare commodity)– and it is on the whole irrelevant to our assessment of reality, which would be a matter of why we believe we can do those things.

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Actually, that would be technological development and learning from experience, and imagination – certainly abilities we have, though again, irrelevant to our ability to comprehend reality vis a vis our beliefs about the world.

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Actually, significant portions of that ‘evidence’ happen to be the product of inferred belief, interpretation, and assumption.

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All of which have been shown to be unreliable.

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These certainly aren't the product of innate genetic ability or direct experience.

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I was in Seattle this last weekend. At the famous Pike Market they through a foam fish into the crowd. Just a microsecond after the worker threw the fish into the crowd the people in it's path had cleared out. They knew exactly where that foam fish was going, and instantly.

Gravity is a very big part of our reality. I don't see how it is irrelevant.

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The important thing is knowing when the throw out things that are imagined.

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Orthologous ERV's fall into a nested hierarchy regardless of our beliefs. The process of observed evolution produces a nested hierarchy, again regardless of our beliefs. Also, the whole point of science is to use the correct interpretations and correct assumptions which is part of our ability to understand our reality.

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How do you determine if something is unreliable? Isn't that the whole point of being able to understand reality? Discovering what is and is not reliable?

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They most certainly are. The reason that fleas can not do what we do is our genes which give us a big brain that stores experiences and analyzes them.

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
I don’t think projectile avoidance has anything to do with one’s ideas about ‘gravity’ – obviously a person wouldn’t need to take physics to avoid a projectile. A fly can do the same thing, but a fly really has no idea about ‘reality’, or have wrong or right ideas about God or where it came from – it just is.

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I am not sure what this means.

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Well, no, phylogenetics is a historical science and as such it relies heavily on assumption, inference, and preferences of the observer.

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One can’t rerun past events and find out how they actually played out, one interprets the data one has according to certain beliefs one has.

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If it is true that similarity means relatedness, then such trees have some validity – but the fact is we know that similarity does not always mean relatedness, and relatedness does not prove the mechanisms which produced those things which aren’t similar.

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Based on your acknowledgement that human perception is often fooled, there is little reason to accept that the evolutionary explanation of reality is any more certain than any other explanation; indeed there is less reason to do so.

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There is nothing in evolutionary thinking that leads us to conclude we can reliably discern reality vis a vis the nature of the universe

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Fleas don’t need to understand ERV's, transitional fossils, nested hierarchies, functional genomics, etc. to survive,

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and neither do humans

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– which is demonstrably true in that most of humanity now, and for most of history, had no knowledge of such things, and yet survived quite capably.

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ORIGINAL: Method

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
Actually, significant portions of that ‘evidence’ happen to be the product of inferred belief, interpretation, and assumption. All of which have been shown to be unreliable. These certainly aren't the product of innate genetic ability or direct experience.

They most certainly are.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize

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ORIGINAL: Method

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ORIGINAL: Jhud
Actually, significant portions of that ‘evidence’ happen to be the product of inferred belief, interpretation, and assumption. All of which have been shown to be unreliable. These certainly aren't the product of innate genetic ability or direct experience.

They most certainly are.

The volume of nonsense I read from evolutionists makes me wonder, how can anyone take this garbage seriously?

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize
The volume of nonsense I read from evolutionists makes me wonder, how can anyone take this garbage seriously? I suspect that Method is posting for the sake of posting with no regard to how fallacious his arguments are.

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ORIGINAL: drj11
Have you actually read Genesis?

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ORIGINAL: Method
Show me how my arguments are fallacious, or can you?

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize
I think the strongest evidence to suggest that many evolutionists know their arguments are nonsense is that they want students to be brainwashed with their naturalistic religion at the expense of taxpayers and they don't want criticisms and opposing views of UCD and other naturalistic philosophies being exposed to students at public schools. The reason they don't want their beliefs criticized and they don't want opposing views exposed to students is because they know that their views do not stand up to scrutiny. Method, if you are so confident that your arguments have merit in the face of scrutiny then you should have no problems with students being exposed to the strongest non - strawman criticisms and opposing views (ie: the ones we present in these forums, and you are free to also expose them to your alleged counter arguments). If your views really do stand up to scrutiny and make as much sense as you claim, then students should have no problem accepting your alleged arguments in the face of criticisms and opposing views. I think this is another valid criticism of evolution, it simply can't defend itself in the face of scrutiny so it resorts to maintaining itself by method of censoring anything that criticizes it as much as possible.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize
I think anyone reading this can see that they are fallacious. I am not going to waste my time trying to show someone who refuses to (or can't) understand basic concepts why his/her arguments are fallacious.

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I think you are smart enough to know that your arguments are fallacious, which makes me suspect that you are just posting for the sake of posting (as usual, in which case, there is no showing you that your arguments are fallacious, but others aren't stupid and they can see that they are).

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ORIGINAL: drj11
Bettawrekonize canned reply #7, ladies and gentleman.

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ORIGINAL: Method
Right . . .

And I can run a 3 minute mile but I just don't feel like doing it today.
I don't see how my arguments are fallacious. Please, show me where I am wrong.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize

I think the strongest evidence to suggest that many evolutionists know their arguments are nonsense is that they want students to be brainwashed with their naturalistic religion at the expense of taxpayers and they don't want criticisms and opposing views of UCD and other naturalistic philosophies being exposed to students at public schools.

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Method, if you are so confident that your arguments have merit in the face of scrutiny then you should have no problems with students being exposed to the strongest non - strawman criticisms and opposing views (ie: the ones we present in these forums, and you are free to also expose them to your alleged counter arguments).

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If your views really do stand up to scrutiny and make as much sense as you claim, then students should have no problem accepting your alleged arguments in the face of criticisms and opposing views.

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I think this is another valid criticism of evolution, it simply can't defend itself in the face of scrutiny so it resorts to maintaining itself by method of censoring anything that criticizes it as much as possible.

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ORIGINAL: Method
Why students? Are you afraid that your criticisms will be exposed for what they are by real scientists?

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You can't censor science that doesn't exist.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize
Are you confident enough with your arguments to exposed students in public schools who are exposed to evolution to both JHud's (and many of my) arguments and your own?

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I am confident enough in the validity of the arguments against evolution (that we have presented) to encourage public schools to to expose both sides and I think that once students are exposed to both sides many will believe evolution is nonsense.

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If you believe that God is in charge of gravity, and gravity can change at any moment, then it is a big deal.

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Is it or is it not important to know when to throw bad ideas out the window?

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Orthologous ERV's fall into a nested hierarchy regardless of our beliefs. Linnaeus had never heard of the theory of evolution yet he found that life falls into a nested hierarchy.

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It is not a belief that observed evolution produces a nested hierarchy. It is not a belief that orthologous ERV's fall into a nested hierarchy. It is not a belief that retroviruses insert randomly among thousands of insertions sites. All of these are observed facts.

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We observe those same mechanisms producing those very patterns. We observe that brothers and sisters share orthologous ERV's, and those ERV's are found in the parents genome. We observe retroviruses inserting into genomes. All of it is observation, not belief.

From those observations we state what we should expect to see if those same things occurred in the past. If those expectations are met then we tentatively conclude that those same mechanisms were in action in the past.

This seems to be a pretty solid interpretation assumptions to me. Where is the flaw?

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There is every reason to given the fact that expectations are met. There are observations which would indicate that evolution was not active in the past, and observations which would indicate that it was active. These observations are independent of beliefs. Do you really think that ERV's are orthologous simply because we will them to be?

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A complete misunderstanding of how reality works would lead to lower fitness. This would be selected against. There is every reason to believe that an evolved perception is a perception necessary for survival in reality. As with all evolved things it works just good enough to ensure survival so we must always check our understanding against evidence.

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And if they needed to?

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You have heard of medicine, have you not?

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And our increased ability to survive is biting us in the behind right now. Many populations are still having children at rates needed when infectious disease was rampant, infant mortality was at 50%, maternal mortality was at 10%, and the expected life span was in the 40's. You know, that time when we did not have the knowledge we have now.

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ORIGINAL: Bettawrekonize
Those "real scientists" are free to expose students to their arguments as well.

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So the answer is that you are not confident enough with your arguments to expose them to students in public schools. You know that your arguments are nonsense.