General

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

Clayton — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 05:04:59 GMT

@jared: Because action is choice of means in order to bring about an outcome. For an omniscient being, there is no choice, there is simply actualization of an already-determined outcome. This is like the difference between playing pinata with or without the blindfold - without the blindfold, there really is no such thing as "trying" to hit it, you just hit it. In our pinata metaphor, action is the selection of the bat, it is the swing, it is the reaction to being bumped by the pinata, and so on. It is the choice of means to attain a given end, not the end itself.

Clayton -

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

jaredsmith — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 04:49:42 GMT

So then something even more complex than God created Him? After all, God is posited to act and, as Mises points out, a truly Absolute being cannot act because action entails uncertainty (a lack of complete and certain information about everything). Thus, God cannot be the Absolute.

Clayton -

Curious, how does action always entail uncertainy, how is action always involved with a lack of certain information about everything?

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

Clayton — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 03:09:22 GMT

+1 Aristippus

This is one of the biggest points of confusion in the whole debate. Evolutionary biologists are first and foremost empiricists; they do not realize that they are pulling the carpet out from under their own feet. The evolutionary argument is wholly a priori and is based on an (abstract) inductive argument... two things from the same cause are simpler than two things from two, independent causes.

Clayton -

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

Aristippus — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 01:24:28 GMT

For those talking about 'evidence' for evolutionary theory, I hope you realise that it is a priori in the same way economics is. Assuming variation and heritability of traits existing in a scarce environment, how could natural selection not occur?

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

John Ess — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 22:19:58 GMT

It seems that the misuse and intentional ignorance about 'macro-evolution' is a creationist talking point. But not a good one, unfortunately for them.

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

Prime — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 02:18:17 GMT

My statements apply to both.

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

gotlucky — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 02:03:17 GMT

I'm not so sure you payed attention then. The origin of species is not about the origin of life. It is about the origin of species.

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

Prime — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:58:10 GMT

gotlucky:

There is overwhelming evidence that evolution by natural selection is the origin of species.

This is just simply not true. I sat through 8 years of this stuff being crammed down my throat in a state institution. I'm sorry, but there was no overwhelming evidence of anything. There may be random, patchwork, unrelated things, the vast majority of which are unprovable, that people use as the evolutionary gospel. You may dig up a tooth in Africa and some artist may design an entire skull based on it, but that is the type of "science" you hang your hat on, and then declare things to be factual. If this was a discussion on economics you wouldn't buy these arguments for a second.

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

Malachi — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:22:41 GMT

I'm pretty sure that "natural selection" is something of a truism. Those organisms that survive long enough to reproduce, produce offspring before they expire. These are the animals and plants we see around us, also their ancestors. This is not the same as macroevolution.

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

shackleford — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:19:00 GMT

gotlucky:

Prime:

Fair enough. In the context of this discussion it is assumed that evolution begins with abiogenesis (at least that was the impression I got). Is there any other theory of evolution that rejects intelligent design and does not begin with abiogenesis?

Well I think the most important thing to take away from this is that evolution by natural selection is separate from the origin of life and the origin of the universe. There is overwhelming evidence that evolution by natural selection is the origin of species. To dispute evolution because it may or may not explain the origin of life does a great disservice to the matter of evolution itself. There are plenty of theories that explain the origin of life, and evolution explains how that origin led to today.

I'm no biologist, but I believe what little I just wrote is consistent with modern biology. If anyone else knows better, please correct what I wrote or expand it if it is correct.

There is no evidence whatsoever for natural selection, macroevolution, or whatever you want to call it. Evolutionary theory is a poor hypothesis at best. You know Keynesianism is passed off at universities as being correct? It's the same for macroevolution.

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

shackleford — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 01:17:30 GMT

Neodoxy:

^

Because we have scientific evidence that this is the case whereas the other view is based upon estimation from a book filled with unreliable sources which can't account for a huge amount of the data which we have.

I'm in line with the OP. I think that talking about things like this is outside the scope of what LRC should be trying to do and what it is good at doing.

There's plenty of evidence that suggests the Earth is not billions of years old.

The data is all the same. It's the interpretation that's different.

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

gotlucky — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 00:24:40 GMT

Prime:

Fair enough. In the context of this discussion it is assumed that evolution begins with abiogenesis (at least that was the impression I got). Is there any other theory of evolution that rejects intelligent design and does not begin with abiogenesis?

Well I think the most important thing to take away from this is that evolution by natural selection is separate from the origin of life and the origin of the universe. There is overwhelming evidence that evolution by natural selection is the origin of species. To dispute evolution because it may or may not explain the origin of life does a great disservice to the matter of evolution itself. There are plenty of theories that explain the origin of life, and evolution explains how that origin led to today.

I'm no biologist, but I believe what little I just wrote is consistent with modern biology. If anyone else knows better, please correct what I wrote or expand it if it is correct.

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

John Ess — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 23:31:19 GMT

I mean it is a fact, once we understand what a fact is. Steven Jay Gould explains:

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"--part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science--that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."

Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to explain the mechanism of evolution.

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

Clayton — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:18:08 GMT

@Prime: Well, yes, there is an ugly, anti-religious mentality among most secularists, particularly the Reason-magazine types.

As for theorization regarding past events, I would suggest that the proper metaphor is not "faith" but "forensics." A forensic investigator looks at present evidence to attempt to reconstruct past events, at least, to give a plausible picture of possible past events. This is what we are doing in theorizing about the distant past of the Earth and the Universe.

Not that the establishment is doing such a great job of this, either. Read Velikovsky to see just how deficient modern science is in this regard.

Clayton -

Re: LRC should really not talk about evolution or Darwin

Prime — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 22:03:51 GMT

@Clayton

My issue here is not really with the age of the Earth per se. Even if we knew exactly, to the second, how old the Earth was, my point is that that changes nothing in respect to the theory of abiogenesis, evolution, whatever you want to call it. The fact that we can never know the scientific conditions from such a long time ago means that we must admit that our theories are always going to be what based on what I"m calling faith. Yet Christians are always looked down on becuase they believe in stuff that requires faith, that can't be produced in a lab. The hypocrisy is what frustrates me.