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Comment by lotsofmangos | Hacker News Reader

One way of thinking about it is mathematical, and is the nearest you will get to a positive proof.

If you have systems which can propagate copies of themselves imperfectly and that have a varying environment to contend with that has effects on their ability to propagate, then the subsequent copies of those systems will undergo an evolution of forms with a selection bias.

Mathematically you can demonstrate this pretty conclusively.

Then all you really need to do is demonstrate that there are systems in the physical world that meet the set of criteria required for evolution to occur and you can then be pretty sure that evolution is occurring.

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"Evolution is a fairytale for grown-ups. It is useless" Pierre P. Grasse, leading french biologist

"Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con men, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution we do not have one iota of fact." T.N. Tahmisian, physiologist for the Atomic Energy Commission

"Evolution is baseless and quite incredible." Ambrose Flemming, president, British Association for Advancement of Science

I can found hundreds other quotes like these made by famous scientists.

Beneficial mutations do not exist, therefore, evolution of the living is unproved. There is no species that could stand as an intermediate between man and anything else. There is in nature zero intermediate state between bird's feathers and anything else. Evolutionnists have no clue how to explain the origin of the cetacean.

Evolution is a complete hoax, it has not been thrown to the trash can just because of the alternative theory that is left if evolution disappears. And you know what it is.

it has not been thrown to the trash can just because of the alternative theory that is left if evolution disappears. And you know what it is.

Well, given you are invoking the support of Pierre P. Grasse, I guess you mean the evolution of forms through heritability of acquired characteristics.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/ce/3/part11.html gives more context, describing Grasse as one of the last Lamarckists. Quoting from that link:

> Grasse also stated in the most unequivocal terms: "Zoologists and botanists are nearly unanimous in considering evolution as a fact and not a hypothesis. I agree with this position and base it primarily on documents provided by paleontology, i.e., the history of the living world

> The authors of The Revised Quote Book lifted Grasse's phrase, "the myth of evolution," out of context, trying to deceive others into believing that Grasse was doubtful of evolution even though he stated he "agreed" with the "nearly unanimous" scientific consensus that "evolution" was an historical scientific "fact." Grasse simply disagreed with explanations of exactly "how" evolution occurred. He felt the "how" part was not a "simple, understood, and explained phenomenon."

And as for Ambrose Flemming, that's reaching back to the 1930s. Fleming helped establish the Evolution Protest Movement and was an active creationist.

I would also like to point out that several old scientists not believing in evolution has no bearing on the trueness of evolution.

I actually read about cetaceans a while ago.

It is thought to be a relative of the hippopotamus: http://www.innovations-report.com//html/reports/life-science...

Given how difficult it is for fossils to be preserved it should be expected that we aren't going to find them for 40-50 million year old ancestors that could definitely prove the origin of modern day animals.

Whether one believes biological evolution or not, one can always download a program for testing generic programming algorithms and see programs evolve with one's own eyes. Evolution definitely is intelligence borne of pure randomness. You could make some code evolve to list out values for parabolas, for example. Check this video out, someone used evolution to produce an AI playing tetris: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nklY5lFZAY

Ok, a little self experiment for the unbelievers.

Take your food out of the fridge. Heat it up, it will kill of any bacteria.

Now instead of eating it, put it back in the fridge.

Repeat for a week. You won't get ill, because the bacteria won't evolve to a heat resistant strain. Right....?

Pierre P. Grasse did believe in evolution, just not the real kind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Paul_Grass%C3%A9#Neo-Lam...

that's according to wikipedia... i suppose satan could have edited it to trick us all though.

i suppose satan could have edited it

Is that another pseudonym of Grant Shapps?

> Beneficial mutations do not exist, therefore, evolution of the living is unproved. There is no species that could stand as an intermediate between man and anything else. There is in nature zero intermediate state between bird's feathers and anything else. Evolutionnists have no clue how to explain the origin of the cetacean.

If you're going to go on the offensive trying to tell me what many years of science seems to be honing in on (a reasonably understood theory of evolution as a means of understanding life and biodiversity on the Earth), you should really cite some peer reviewed papers or books, or some sort of sources, rather than pulling quotes out of thin air.

As a side note, I think if you look at the work of many mathematical biologists, like Stuart Kauffman, I think the conclusion that's slowly being drawn is that evolution and the genesis of life are potentially more inevitable than not for sufficiently complex chemical systems. Once you get at the mathematical root of evolution, I remember being sort of amazed that Darwin's theory of evolution in a very basic raw form sort of falls out, much like atomic orbitals when applying Schrodinger's equation to the atom. Interested readers are referred to one of Kauffman's excellent books for those not very well versed in the intersection of statistical mechanics and genetics, such as: http://www.amazon.com/At-Home-Universe-Self-Organization-Com...

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