Inference and its role in NS (General)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Saturday, January 22, 2011, 19:01 (5052 days ago) @ dhw

MATT: I am in agreement that natural selection is generally a passive process. However I think we both might be arguing over semantics. If we agree that natural selection is the filter--then we really only care about what the output of the filter is.
> 
> This is a new dimension to our discussions: who says the output is the only thing we really care about? You have missed the point of both the theist and the atheist agendas! So let me spell it out for you. The dispute is over whether the complexities of life's physical mechanisms are too great to have arisen by chance. Natural selection is irrelevant to the design argument ... it's a perfectly logical process whereby what survives is that which is most suited to survival (hence your 14 stages of horse). It would be unreasonable to deny this. By making out that evolution and NS are synonymous, the atheist can therefore argue that any questioning of evolution is unreasonable. What Dawkins calls "organized complexity" is not created by NS, but by mechanisms for replication, adaptation and innovation, without which evolution could not take place and Nature would have no variations to select from. These mechanisms have so far proved to be too complex for us to understand, let alone reproduce, and so theists claim that they have been designed. If you reject the possibility of design, you have no choice but to put your faith in the ability of chance to create the mechanisms ... but the idea of "faith in chance" is anathema to your atheist: hence the strategy of trying to make NS (which has no bearing on the design argument) synonymous with evolution. Ah Matt, what happened to my fellow sceptic's scepticism?-lol... I always think "scepter" when I see the British spelling "sceptic."-Remember; I'm trying to offer arguments I remember coupled with what we're reasoning about Dawkins' views--which again--I haven't read. -I don't see this is rewording evolution; natural selection is the process that culls organisms that were unable to respond to some change. -"Natural selection is the process by which traits become more or less common in a population due to consistent effects upon the survival or reproduction of their bearers." (Wikipedia)-Traits becoming more or less common. In other words, evolution is natural selection. Without natural selection, we have no theory of evolution.-It's in the language of biologists; an event that begins the process is called "selective pressure." While the organism is under pressure, it must find a way to adapt, behaviourally or molecularly. From beginning to end, "Natural Selection" is the process by which the organism moves from its original state to some state in the future. Rereading some sections of some of my books, I'm less inclined now to agree that natural selection is passive. -You are arguing I think, that the actual changes that an organism undergoes is a separate issue from that of natural selection, however, an organism must be under pressure of selection before it can perform the process of changing. -Therefore, since no change happens without selective pressure, natural selection explains the whole of why organisms change. -My attachment here is: Only at a very high and unrefined level. We're still not at the stage of knowledge yet.

--
\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"