Glen Davidson
Posts: 1100 Joined: May 2006
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[quote=REC,Feb. 21 2014,10:52][/quote] Quote | Which seem only tempered with the ludicrous: Quote | .. if you assume that a homologous structure or sequence is homologous because it is shared with a common ancestor, you can’t then turn around and say that the homology is evidence for the very thing you assume |
A very odd statement, particularly in reference to sequence similarity. We don't assume sequences are homologous, we demonstrate they are similar and test homology and common descent as models to account for that similarity. Right? |
What a moron. The point is that evolution predicts homologies that will be found if evolution is true, then those sorts of homologies are found. Indicating that evolution is what happened.
His pathetic circularity belies the history of homology and how it was recognized even before evolutionary theory was commonly accepted. Richard Owen did the work prior to his accepting evolution, and his definition of homology is the "same organ in different animals under every variety of form and function." Which is a ridiculous way to design life, and turned out to be predicted by the constraints of non-magical evolution.
But if you're just making shit up, the point of his appalling little fiction, just pretend that it's all circular and you don't have to confront what real science says.
Quote | Quote | Darwinism is certainly not the “only known theory that is in principle capable of explaining certain aspects of life.” |
What theory of science (especially haveing shed methodological naturalism, as Barry advocates) is the ONLY explainatory theory? It may be the most parsiminious, encompass the data the best, make the most testable predictions--but the only, exclusive of all others? WTF? Intellegent falling, angles pushing photons through the double slit? |
Of course, that's the whole point of falsifiability. The logical possibilities are endless, hence the only way evidence matters is if it is entailed by causes explicit in the theory. Darwinian evolution fails if homologies aren't found. ID doesn't, but then it also doesn't explain homologies (or anything else). All that they can do to pretend to explain homologies is to say that God could have done it that way--and so what? An unknown law could do it, multiverses could do it, aliens could be trying to trick us, whatever, homologies mean nothing outside of causal entailment.
Homology is entailed only by non-magical evolution (clearly magic has not been shown to have the same limits), only Darwinian evolution is falsifiable by the lack of homology, hence non-magic evolution is the only reasonable explanation for homologies.
Glen Davidson
-------------- http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p....p
Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of coincidence---ID philosophy
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