Sticking a fork in Natural Selection (Introduction)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Wednesday, December 07, 2011, 23:33 (4735 days ago) @ David Turell

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence —it’s a lack of evidence. I would say the same thing then that I have said before: We don’t have enough evidence to come to a conclusion. Our knowledge would be incomplete. I ask the question again, how is the snapshot view of the fossil record false? What reason(s) do we have to accept that for a few instances in history, everything we know about life mysteriously suspended and some other process took over, other than the traditional stimulus-response nature of evolution? How is the idea wrong that the reason that the gaps are there are because we simply haven’t been lucky enough to find these transient forms?

You and I will never solve this one. You look for luck and I don't think luck is an issue. Not after hundreds of years looking, and now when we really know where to look and with the most advanced techniques the big pre-Cambrian blank remains.

No, I don't look for luck. I look for answers.

There's 148M km^2 of land. My guess is that perhaps 5% of that land has exposed Cambrian & Precambrian rock. Of that land, how much has been explored? How many life forms have ever existed?

Further, it's entirely possible that precambrian life was too soft to be preserved. How common are soft tissue fossils from even 65MyA? EXTREMELY rare.

You're content to go ahead and make decisions based on the fact that in perhaps 150years of modern research of 4.5By of history, we've explored all there is to explore. To put that in perspective, the total amount of time we've been practicing modern science is:

0.000000033% of the age of the earth.

What kind of secrets still lie in wait for us?

The big difference I think between you and me, is that I hold these two truths about science as sacred:

1. It's much easier to be wrong than right in science.
2. Perhaps more importantly, we don't know what we don't know.

#2 should be emphasized more than the first.

I value knowledge. Even modern physics--though it works--doesn't even for me make it to the level of knowledge. We know our models work, but we can never know that our models are true to fundamental reality.

Which model is correct for atoms? Points? Waves? Strings?

I think you may have fundamentally misunderstood exactly how deep doubt runs in me...

--
\"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.\"