Deputy Dog
And today's raspberry for childish petulance goes to you.
Looks like your about to find out that if you don't agree with this guy, you don't have "adequate knowledge" or you are involved in a conspiracy!
I think you need to take a deep breathe and get over the fact science is not like discussing your favourite band.
You can think Westlife are the best band in the world. As you are making a subjective decision you are right - for you. Someone with 16 Degrees in music could not prove your opinion wrong. But then you couldn't prove their's wrong either.
Someone who enters a discussion on evolution and shows they don't even know what evolution is by how they define it is just being arrogant or foolish if they don't take the time and trouble to learn about a subject they want to discuss.
You would probably laugh at someone who knew virtually nothing of cabinetry who tried to tell a experienced cabinet maker how to make a cupboard, if by doing so they revealed their lack of knowledge. You would probably think they were making a fool of themselves. If the cabinet maker pointed out the person was talking utter rot you'd consider it a fair comment
Yet if someone who knows virtually nothing about an academic subject tries to tell someone who has studied the subject they are wrong about something to do with that subject and by doing so they reveal their lack of knowledge, you apply a different set of rules. If the person with the academic knowledge pointed out the person was talking utter rot you rush to defend then speaker of rot. Not that Science101 is speaking rot, but it is how you behave.
I think you resent the fact people have to do some work to have a worthwhile opinion in academic subjects. Why not try to be more objective and accept facts are not always as you'd like them to be? Or if you can't act like an adult refrain from entering discussions on subject you are ill-informed?
What those environmental factors have done is bring about a situation where (to quote SJG I think) 'evolution becomes aware of itself' by means of the 'chance' evolution of sentient creatures. By 'chance' I mean it could have been different under differing conditions. Obviously evolution has no awareness, as it is a process, but awareness of the process arises all the same.
Maybe it's because you feel insecure if you don't understand something, and instead of trying to understand it you strike out? You seeing the above comment as double talk seems a good example;
- Evolution is not an entity, it is a process
- It is a process that produces organisms
- Before sentient organisms arose the process was still there but it was unknown as there is nothing there to 'know' it
- When sentient organisms arose then it becomes possible for the process to become 'known'
- Thus one can metaphorically say 'evolution becomes aware of itself' to describe such a situation as such organisms are a product of evolution but it's a metaphor so doesn't imply evolution suddenly becomes an entity capable of having self-knowledge
Simple really... and even if I doubt your lack of scientific knowledge as regards evolutionary biology, I don't doubt your intelligence, just your willingness to apply it in certain areas where you don't like the conclusions.
Science 101 has already proved they know an awful lot more about the subject that most people I've had the pleasure of discussing it with here. But at the end of the day, science involves facts. If Science 101 wishes to move an opinion of theirs to the realm of fact it needs evidence. There is no evidence I am aware of that would prove that the impression evolution has a goal is anything more than an illusion of perspective.
Raindrops don't aim, but over time they typically hit the ground anyway.
Organisms don't have goals to become other organisms, but over time they typically become other organisms anyway
Paralipomenon
Einstein believed in Intelligent Design.
That makes me wince. You are ascribing to a dead person a belief in a hypothesis that had not been defined when he died, and by doing so are associating him with many negative aspects of a contemporary movement he had nothing to do with and might well have nothing to do with.
There are plenty of statements by Einstein about what he believed that one can use without resorting to a claim that is at best a bit of a stretch and at worst deceptive, although I am sure you have no ill intent in doing so.
I also doubt very much if he would continue to state in the style of a scratched record 'irreducible complexity' long after such a hypothesis has been refuted, and as this is almost defining behaviour for many believers in ID, to lump him with such is paying him no compliment.
"I believe in Spinoza's God, who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a God Who concerns Himself with the fate and the doings of mankind."
Brian, Dennis (1996), Einstein: A Life, New York: John Wiley & Sons
Spinoza believed everything is interconnected within one gigantic system and that this system and everything it contains is "God." Thou art god, I am god, that there rock is god, etc..
That is pantheism, not ID. ID requires a creative entity with no origin. Believing "the sum of everything that exists = god" is VASTLY different
"If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffman (eds) (1981). Albert Einstein, The Human Side. Princeton University Press, 43.
Seems he saw divinity in structure and the process by which it came about, not in an entity as is required of ID, as this quote confirms;
" ...neither the rule of human nor Divine Will exists as an independent cause of natural events."
Einstein, Albert (1940), "On Science and Religion", Nature 146
I also have to say that Einstein was a great physicist but I am unaware of his qualifications or knowledge in the field of either biology of evolutionary biology. Such a claim (Einstein believed in ID) is rather hackneyed argument from authority and as such is fallacious. It's a bit like quoting a cabinet maker's opinion on crop rotation.
While I will never downplay how amazing the universe is and all the life as we know it, I feel the only way a creator will be discovered is by trying to disprove him. Continue to seek knowledge under the assumption that one does not exist or you risk seeking with blinders on.
This I agree with.
Science101
But since I have heard evolution being called "undirected", "unguided" and with no "goal" the same thing applies the other way too.
Apart from the small fact that as there is no proof it is directed, guided or goal-orientated, stating the contrary is quite reasonable.
We will end up arguing semantics,
You say that like it's a bad thing
but that's kinda necessary for us to do.
Yup!
In the case of the word "goal" we're kinda stuck reconciling it due it having been used on the science side.
Eh? By whom? And if so, what if? 'Race' has been used in science, but it doesn't mean it's normal definition is scientifically defensible.
I Would need proof that there is no goal anywhere in evolution to claim there is no goal at all.
Like someone might say they need proof of no god anywhere in the Universe(s) to claim there is no god at all? Not having a go, just exploring your thinking; you will be aware one could substitute any supposedly mythological unproven entity for god.
Whilst the statement is true, one can also say if there is no provable god, tooth fairy or goal in evolution in all the study of those entities/subject areas, one can carry on acting as though there wasn't one, although keeping a open mind to new evidence is always a good idea.
I also wrote a program that uses the evolution algorithm to evolve sentences and it worked great. I discovered that there was a goal, to write sentences.
You didn't discover there was a rule. You wrote a program, and the rules within that program (which you put there) ended up making sentences. How can you discover something that you knew you put in there?
You could equally write a program that generated random non-repeating number strings where each increment in the number of digits was also a Prime number. You couldn't claim you discovered the goal of the program was to produce increasing long number strings with no repetitions and where each result was a Prime number as you'd made that the goal of the program in writing it.
The robot program has no goal; you see it working as a goal. Thus my point about evolution only having goals from certain perspectives
Obviously organisms have behaviours that allowed them to survive as those without such behaviour were not able to pass their genes on. But that doesn't mean they have a goal to survive. Even the drive to pass on genes is not a goal, it's just things without it aren't here
My point here is that in response to claims that evolution has no goal, I probably have more evidence that there is a goal,
With respect, no you don't.
You have a program you made which can produce words by applying rules you built into the program.
Even if you created a program that made random rules and applied 'natural selection' by only allowing the variants which made rules that resulted in 'almost' sentences to survive and then apply new rendom variations to that set of rules to make a second generation of programs, from which you'd again select the best 'almost sentences', repeating the process until you had a program that made real sentences, the program/s has no goal. You are defining the goal from you perspective.
Saying the fact that an organism (or program) that survives has rules that allow it to survive and thus a goal to survive is ignoring the fact that those which don't have rules that allow it to survive are not there to illustrate how there only appears to be a survival 'goal' on account of only things which can survive surviving.
But I'm primarily self-taught in college level science I'm not connected to "academia" so I lack what I guess we could call it's indoctrination so I'm more free to challenge the textbook ways of seeing things.
I am largely self-taught in evo bio, although I did study to be a science teacher at University. Having experienced both I would say claims of 'indoctrination' are not really credible... in fact they do more to discredit you. Without any proof of error on the part of 'science' you are attacking the credibility of it with a sweeping claim of bias. That is so unclassy.
What you might be experiencing is the fact on a science course at University one thing you should get driven through your brain is scientific rigour. Some things are scientific, some fail the definition. Scientists recoil from unscientific stuff being inserted into science like people going to church recoil from someone in a devil suit with a turd on their head. It 's just WRONG.
Someone with a understanding of scientific rigour is not so much indoctrinated but 'suffering' from very high standards of belief. The 'text book way of seeing things' is what reduces error in science, by rejecting anything which lacks scientific rigour.
And yes, yes, they laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Coco the clown. Galileo could PROVE the establishment's belief was wrong.
Most people complaining about the bias of the scientific establishment cannot prove what they are claiming, yet are making their failure the fault of the scientific community.
It's like someone going to a club where you can get in with a duck under one arm, and making out it is the fault of the club they are not allowed in because they have a chicken under one arm.
This is a very enjoyable thread by the way, thank you.
