rlumley, I read through your link and skimmed most of the Baye's article linked in the article you posted.

I think it's a load of crap. For one thing, you have ignored my examples of ad populum that famously proved false (flat earth, geocentric universe). I am sure there are still enough flat earthers and geocentricists out there that you could apply Baye's theorem and come up with some quantity that is non-zero. But that number is meaningless since those theories are demonstrably false.

Besides this, saying "x physicists expect to find the Higgs boson with the LHC" is very different from saying "x people believe the aliens built the pyramids." There was evidence for the Higgs boson before the LHC was constructed. There is /no/ evidence for aliens building the pyramids.

In Plato's "Cratylus," Cratylus and Hermogenes (="son of Hermes") are talking about whether things have names inherently or if we designate words to mean specific things, and Hermogenes asks Cratylus, "Is your name Cratylus or do we call you that?" "My name is Cratylus." "And what about me?" "Well, you're no son of Hermes, even if all the world called you that!"
I think this highlights pretty well that even the Greeks did not believe in ad populum making anything true.

May I direct you to the witch trials and the religious wars post-Luther? Entire communities vilified individuals like Jean Calas and tortured him to get a confession, and then even without confession, killed him anyway. Ad populum was the /only/ evidence of his crimes, and there was strong evidence of no crime being committed at all (thank you Voltaire for taking up his cause!).

When the scientific community says "we think this might be true, but we don't have evidence for it," that really means, "we have some data suggesting this hypothesis, however unlikely, is probably true. If we could gather more data or test the hypothesis, we could promote it to a theory."
When my neighbor says, "I can't figure why the car won't start, been lookin' at it fer two days now, but I have a theory," I take him to mean, "I already exhausted most of my hypotheses that arise in this situation, and so I have formulated a hypothesis that, however unlikely, must be true."
When three million people say "we read a book that has been proven false in many areas that can be scientifically invalidated, but there's this one part that cannot be disproven, so we believe that one part no matter what science may say is probably more true, because we have faith, and faith is a fact," there is nothing to say to them. Ad populum is a great logical fallacy and not evidence at all. In any way. Even if the whole world believed it, that would not be evidence of truth, no matter what a theorem may say.

Okay, I decided to read through the first five pages of posts, and I couldn't get through page one without falling out of my chair in laughter.

If HC is the new TC, I am very, /very/ excited.

It has been said that "there is no place for God in science". It does not mean science is incompatible with religion - it only means that science attempts to explain given observations only with experimentation, not with faith. Many scientists are religious people. That does not make them less of a scientist.

Now those, who insist that religion is a scientific theory...I despise them. They mislead the public into thinking that somehow the laws of physics have equal standing to the word of a holy book when it comes to describing the physical state of the world. Cars do not move because the manufacturer prayed to God for divine power; it is because engineers applied the laws of physics to design it.

@ HC - You keep saying that we should teach every theory, but that is exactly the opposite of what science is. Science is about finding the ONE best explanation for empirically observable phenomena. Giving all the theories would be the opposite of that. Now in cases where there is no theory that fully or convincingly explains everything, we can discuss multiple theories and what observable phenomena they do and do not explain. And that's where my second reply to you comes in. You keep saying that evolution is a pretty loose theory. You're just factually incorrect about this. Evolution is an excellently airtight explanation. The support for evolution comes from tons of different fields of scientific inquiry, and they all point to the same conclusion. Everything from cosmology to geology to molecular genetics to immunology to paleontology to modern zoology and botany and mycology, just to name a very very small number, all support evolution by natural selection. You'd be hard pressed to find a better supported theory in all of science.

@ Mafia ''Evolution is an excellently airtight explanation.''

Of what exactly?

Of the current state of all the diverse forms of life on earth, and how it came to be.

No evolution by natural selection can say nothing about how life came about in the first place. To imply that this is the case is either a deliberate deception or ignorance on your part.

You're misunderstand. Assuming we have life of some sort as a starting point, evolution is excellent at explaining how it turned into the vast variety of life we see nowadays. Obviously evolution by natural selection does not deal with abiogenesis (the origin of life from non-life). However we do have a reasonable guess as to what early life might have looked like, and from that starting point, evolution does a great job explaining how all life ended up where it is today.

*You misunderstand.

Incidentally why exactly do you mention cosmology and geology in the context of evolution? Particularly, in the latter case, where you also mention paleontology?

Let's be absolutely clear on the limits of the theory, I am sure that you will agree that this can only benefit the debate. After all we would not wish to fall into the trap of advocating an ''evolutionism of the gaps'' would we?

@ Mafia This is what you said: ''Of the current state of all the diverse forms of life on earth, and how it came to be. ''

So let's be clear the ''it'' you employ refers to ''variety'', not to ''life''. You will understand my ''misunderstanding'' given that it is contained with in the same sentence as ''life'' and not in the sentence as ''variety''.

It is good, however, that we now finally agree that the theory has nothing to say on the origin/creation of life. That is a good boundary to establish, thank you, it is indeed a start.

Obviously there are strong links between geology and paleontology. The ability to determine the date of rocks comes from geology, and the ability to date fossils within the rocks is really just an application of geology, to find paleontological information.
Cosmology again in terms of the age of the earth, and both cosmology and geology are useful in determining what the earth was like millions and billions of years ago. Obviously what the environment was like when early life was adapting tells us a lot about what conditions early forms of life were adapting too. Very useful information.

I'm not at all clear on what you mean by "evolutionism of the gaps". Gaps in what? Evolution doesn't fill in gaps, evolution is a large part of the base structure of science, not just something to fill in.

@ ! Mafia palaeontology is a branch of geology! The cosmology application you refer to is nothing but palaeontology too.

In effect what you are doing is covering the same ground two or three times in attempt to portray the theory with explanatory power than it in fact has. Why not just limit your claims to palaeontology? This, in my opinion, reveals your bias.

Ummm, well the it in that sentence did refer to life, but what I meant by that was "how life came to be in the state it is today". And the variety we find in life is PART of that.

I also disagree that evolution by natural selection has NOTHING to say on abiogenesis. It certainly points us in the direction of what kinds of explanations for abiogenesis would be likely. The two concepts are very connected, it's just evolution by natural selection on its own is not sufficient to explain abiogenesis. Also I'd argue that by strictly defining the boundaries of what evolution can and cannot explain we unnecessarily hamstring the theory for no especially good reason. Thinking based in evolutionary theory can be very powerful, and might pop up to explain concepts in ways that will surprise us. I certainly don't want to arbitrarily rule that out.

Palaeontology is not a branch of geology. They're related sciences, yes, most are, but they're very different things. And cosmology is not palaeontology either. Just because three different sciences tell us the same thing, that doesn't mean that they're all the same science.

Also, those are just the reasons that it occurred to me to include them, not the only applications they have in evolutionary theory.

"In effect what you are doing is covering the same ground two or three times in attempt to portray the theory with explanatory power than it in fact has." - Actually what I'm trying to do is show how the same facts are supported in lots of different ways, which demonstrates an increased liklihood that they're correct. My point is that a single fact is correct, and I'm trying to show that lots of different methods, and fields of inquiry all point to the same conclusion.

Also your accusations of bias roll off me like water of a duck's back. Obviously I have an opinion on this, that doesn't mean I'm biased. I've debated with you far too many times to be sucked into this trap. I know you have your own intelligent designesque slant, but you're going to try and pretend you have no real opinion one way or the other, and you're just trying to get at the truth. Spare me the disingenuous claims of being impartial; all your convoluted attempts to argue me into saying something contradictory; and all your attempts to talk me into limiting my argument and just make your case for intelligent design so I can tell you why you're wrong already.

I can think of at least one example of a law that is more air-tight than evolution.
Conservation of Energy.
There has been no, not a single case, of a system in the Universe that deviates from this law by the slightest hint. The Law of Conservation of Energy is one of the few laws that have yet to be proven inaccurate in any way.

Wow, this got to 200+ posts fast, in under 12 hours...

"The Law of Conservation of Energy is one of the few laws that have yet to be proven inaccurate in any way."

Sorry to burst your bubble, Gobble, but Jesus disproved this one himself.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1871

@ Mafia you clearly have a lot of faith in the all embracing explanatory power of evolution by natural selection. Perhaps we all have a need to believe in something, didn't some atheist somewhere dredge this up?

I would, however, bring you sharply back to the rate limiting step of a particular DNA replicant failure or mutation giving a favourable advantage in a particular random and ever changing environment. All of your explanations and understandings on the matter need to be soundly rooted on you being able to sustain this assumption.

abiogenisis... evolution doesn't explain the creation of life on it's own, but it does give some good idea about the kinds of mechanisms which work.

you can see lots of interesting qualities in chemistry, (and life is just complicated chemistry - you're not going to claim that we have no theory of where chemistry came from next, are you?) when you look at crystals, for example, you get growth, you get simple crystal structures replicated themselves. This isn't even close to life, but it is a demonstration that basic chemistry, in the right environment can lead to life-like qualities.

The Miller–Urey experiment famously provides evidence that amino acids can spontaneously appear without the hand of god. Though we also have evidence, now, that amino acids exist in space - when you look at certain dust clouds, and read the spectra of the light coming from them, you can tell what chemicals make up the cloud. That amino acids have formed independently of planets due to exploding stars is just another example of chemistry doing things which are necessary but not sufficient for life.

Again amino acids do not life make. This time i will take a top down look, when we see prion disease in humans, we understand that on some level proteins evolve on their own. A prion disease is where a protein (produced by the body) randomly (or due to genetic malfunction) takes on a new and different conformation (shape, how it is folded) and then when it meets of proteins (in the body, and various cells) it will transform them (change their conformation into it's own) Now this is not evolution in the classic sense. But it is demonstration that proteins themselves can have some of the qualities of living systems. (proteins are not living, they are just complex string of amino acids, and we discussed the spontaneous generation of amino acids above)

Lastly we have the cell, that's a big one. Here we have a rather amazing problem. All of the above discussed ideas have required some environmental conditions to help increase the likely-hood that certain chemical reactions will occur, and by concentrating specifics chemicals into a cell you get a dramatic change in these conditions. It would really help the case if we could provide some evidence of cell formation... So what is a cell, well it is just an internal chemical environment which is kept separate from the external environment. And here's the kicker: http://www.ted.com/talks/martin_hanczyc_the_line_between_life_and_not_life.html

Proto-cells occur naturally. Not just in the lab.

The last point i will make takes a step beyond the proto-cell. Human cells have mitochondria - these sub-cellular structures have their own DNA, and replicate separately from the cell nucleus (and it's nuclear DNA) they are vital to the correct functioning of the human cell (and thus human life) because they act as power houses, producing the chemicals which the rest of the cell uses for energy. And they appear to have evolved separately and then migrated into the cell. This is amaze-balls! But it goes to show that interesting chemistry outside a cell can lead to even more interesting and complicated chemistry inside the cell.

Now none of this is a comprehensive theory of abiogenesis, it just shows that our current understanding of chemistry and evolution leaves a lot of interesting trends and qualities which make a theory of abiogenesis pretty close.

The qualities of non-living chemistry doing things which we only associate with living things really blurs the line and makes the idea of abiogenesis into a much more shaded and nuanced concept.

We may not be likely to find life on other rocks in our solar system - but we are virtually guaranteed to find interesting chemistry!

So yeah, seem my thread on gravity to answer this question

Mark Twain was rather good on excessive extrapolation in science:

''There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.''

1) Organisation/crystallisation does not meet any definition of life which I have come across. We have, for example, the differentiation of the rocky and gaseous planets or the seperation of isotopes in a mass spectrometer, or the formation of cubic/hexagonal crystals as a function of differing ionic radii. In the context of abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection so the heck what?

2) Organic materials, by definition, contain carbon. Organic chemistry is the chemistry of carbon. The definition of an amino acid includes the requirement for carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen, with a side group. Should it really surprise anyone that if you placed these ''ingrediants'' in a test tube in the correct proportions and gave them a kinetic push that they they form guess what.....an amino acid! In the context of abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection so the heck what?

3) The photocell experiment might illustrate brownian motion, osmotic pressure, charged surfaces etc, all good physical/chemical properties for sure. But in the in the context of abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection so the heck what?

4) What has the role/origin of mitochondria to do with abiogenesis and the theorey of evolution by natural selection?

Now if you know something of chemistry, or your teacher does, please explain to me the homo-chirality of cellular amino acids, in the context of your extrapolations?

@Fullofshite: 'Organisation/crystallisation does not meet any definition of life which I have come across.'

i never said it was definite life, in fact i said 'This isn't even close to life', my point, which you managed to miss entirely, is that chemistry on it's basic level leads to systems which can build upon each other, self-replicate or grow.

This is ONE of the qualities necessary (but not sufficient) for life. The fact is, in all the following cases we are talking about chemical systems, and guess what, there is nothing which neccesarily precludes the possibility that they will (given sufficient environmental conditions) be able to exhibit these 'life-like' qualities.

Infact we have a simple example of these QUALITIES in simple systems which use the same rules. Thus the existence of the same QUALITIES is not just possible, it is likely (given the environmental requirement)

Given that amino acids can exist... is one step in any theory of abiogenesis.

'What has the role/origin of mitochondria..' - the origin shows that multiple independently existing chemical structures can come together and form a symbiosis. That you don't need to have a fully functioning, self-replicating multi-celled organism appear all of a sudden, there are parts... perhaps this is a step too far, but the point is, ONCE you have proto-cells which provide an environment suitable for a particular chemical process it is possible to import from else-where structures which may be useful.

'please explain to me the homo-chirality of cellular amino acids' - not only am i not a chemist, i am also not a cellular biologist, nor have i either at hand.

As for my extrapolations, I can see nothing flawed within them. They are particularly interesting, and while not a theory nor even a hypothesis, they map out the kinds of processes necessary for abiogenesis.

@ orathiac
They say an awful lot more, for example, about the formation of sea salt in evaporating pans than they do about abiogenesis and evolution by natural selection.

''There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.''

@fulhamish, 'They say an awful lot more...' they what? homo-chirality or Organisation/crystallisation?

Your list of ''not quite there, better luck next time'' explanations for abiogenesis. Man you even forgot to mention the coding molecules themselves!