I am still confused, for the same reasons, but I can express them in your way - why do we need this nullable field again?

Basically, people fall into 3 main categories:

a ) religious - people who believe in (usually) one specific religion and reject all the other religions.
b ) atheists - people who don't believe in any supernatural beings
c ) agnostics - those who aren't sure...

Actually, c) group can be broken into 2 sub-groups; those who really aren't sure, and those who believe there's probably(!) something, but haven't picked a religion.

Over the history of humans, there's been probably millions of religions if you go right back to cave man days, so there are plenty to choose from if you want to.

I would further subdivide atheists. Some atheists simply don't believe in any kind of God, but they have no objection to other people believing in Him if they want to. But there are also atheists for whom atheism is a kind of religion and who feel they have a sacred duty to evangelise for the faith. My parents were atheists of the first kind and raised me accordingly. The first atheist of the second kind that I came across was my uncle Gustav Durup, who was so deeply religious in his atheism and communism that the French Communist Party wouldn't touch him with a bargepole!

Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennet are likewise atheists of the second kind and I find their fanaticism obnoxious.

I am unaware of Daniel Dennet but I don't view Richard Dawkins as religious or fanatical... simply passionately defensive. His life's work is in a field almost totally dependent on modern Evolution and he was suffered the sings and arrows of what seems to be a growing populace bent on returning to Bronze Age thinking exactly because of much of modern religion.

Does anyone suppose that anyone, say Elon Musk, would be as congenial as he is if some large percentage of questions he faced (even in Congress!) turned to "Is it even possible for heavier than air craft to fly humans through the air, and even if it turns out it is, should we?". We are experiencing large groups of people that deny the Earth is roughly round, that Earth is more than a few thousand years old, that Evolution exists but instead is an atheist con job, that Science itself is just a lie. Furthermore these groups are well-funded and determined to convert everyone or put them in jail or worse!

Sorry hazel, I don't find Dawkins obnoxious... overzealous maybe but absolutely needed. That a "cult of personality" authoritarian places like North Korea or some Muslim societies can actually continue existence in 2022 after the lessons gleaned from experience with such as Chairman Mao just boggles my mind, yet they not only exist, they proliferate. It's one thing to offend ones sensibilities. It's quite another to attack your thinking process, stifle your speech, control your body, or take your life. This is the very nature of this conflict.

I thought this might be an interesting place to post this thought-provoking article

https://science.slashdot.org/story/1...?sbsrc=thisday

I won't add any comment. When you look at the article, you'll find there's already 795 comments! The article certainly grasps a nettle.

The Scientific Method, despite Mr. Gobry's blurred conflation, is not religious. Some people, including some who practice Science, are. That's all. Science is not a bushel of apples, One apple cannot possibly destroy "the bushel". Mr. Gobry brushes shoulders with Far Right politically and is heavily in favor of organized religion having very substantial political power. Frankly and Historically, that's where the money (not to mention comfortable satisfaction) is.

There can be little effective argument that historically, religion, even, or maybe even especially, Organized Religion, served an important civilizing function. At one time Religion and Science worked mostly hand-in-hand (excepting such as Galileo who opposed sacred cow assumptions with actual evidence) but over time the loss of fundamental authority on Nature has caused most Organized Religion jealousy and negative reaction to try to maintain, and now recover, lost Authority. At best that is a zero sum game. Ultimately, assuming Humanity manages to survive, as long as Religion opposes the fundamentals of Science it must fail. It's a Fools Errand and actually something of a regrettable shame.

Frankly, I didn't notice that bit, and certainly missed any political implications for the US, and where people are positioned. It seems that once you can label someone as far left, far right, religious, extremeist, nihilist, it allows some minds to totally disregard everything they say, regardless of it's validity. Of course somebody will probably label me for saying that.

I enjoyed the comments on experimentally proven science, and how science now trending towards 'high priests' of not experimentally proved science.

"High Priests of not experimentally proved" is not commonly happening and certainly is not a trend. Such ideas come from people and publications, often actively anti-science (much like this thread), who have little or no understanding of rules of evidence or the scientific method and tend to view the world as utterly binary and extreme, as in either we know it all for certain 100% or it's 0%. They tend to have no grasp of preponderance of evidence and grades of certainty. The only things tossed around in science as worthy of discussion without experimental evidence are things like Black Holes for example that were predicted by theory and the relevant Mathematics many years before any data could be collected and was always labeled hypothesis or speculation.

Granted, and especially since powerful computers entered the math, that mathematical abstract proof so often turns out to be actually real, somewhat more weight is given to abstractions in which enough data exists to have tested mathematical formulae, it has never been called "fact" without test data based on actual observation and experimentation.

Please name one if you disagree and continue to think Science has lowered it's standards. If you can't name even one, perhaps consider not posting such unsubstantiated FUD just like the thread opener and now continuing even after the opener was proved to be misinformation. Scientists are not in a panic, Big Bang is not seriously threatened by any data let alone JWST and no credible scientists even attempts to claim as fact anything without stringently controlled testing and measured observation. Even scientific hypotheses must be based on data.

Ok, you're looking for this and I'm not starting.

How can evolution be experimentally proved? ? The one set of experiments I am aware of were the mutation breeding experiments in plants and animals, which comprehensively disproved evolution, but it's accepted anyhow by the high preists and called a "fact." The way I see it.

• I have little trouble accepting ages back to ≅2000 BC but credibility wanes with dates before that. No experimental proof exists, or is possible without a time machine or a lifespan well beyond ours.
• The fact that one skeleton/fossil {A] is deemed to be older than a reasonably similar one [B] does not experimentally prove that B evolved from A. Repeat that for every species under the sun. "Scientists" match up skeletons but ignore the weightier incompatibilities like blood types, bodily functions. They say reptiles evolved from amphibians. But amphibians have a soft shelled egg, fertilised externally, after it's laid. Reptiles have a hard shelled egg, fertilised internally, before it's laid
• While I'm sounding off, I never went for this stuff about Gondwanaland either, it all seems a bit incredible to me. It could be true, but where's the proof?
• In fact all the theories about ice ages haven't been experimentally proved either. They may qualify as working hypotheses, all of them, but only that.

Don't post answers, as I know you're itching to. You asked, and I answered. If you feel you have to answer something, answer the amphibian --> reptile point and I'll read the experimental proof - that's a promise.

What about the Russian breeding experiments with arctic foxes? They caught and caged a lot of foxes, ranked them for approachability and then bred selectively from the most approachable ones. Within a few generations, they had foxes that would come to the front of their cages and wriggle with expectation like puppies when they saw a human coming. But then something utterly weird happened. The tamest foxes started to produce young with floppy ears, kinky tails and white splodges on their coats: just the sort of features that distinguish dogs from wolves. I'd call that evolution in action.

Really? You want me to answer that? Give me a break. It could more likely have been the chemicals in the shampoos & aftershaves those guys were using - "The lynx effect." Have biological changes been proved?I'd call that sort of nonsense straws that you're grasping at.

Of course I am that's how actual discussion and debate works. business_kid despite the now documented fact that as soon as a discussion becomes difficult or uncomfortable for your fundamentalist agenda, you either bail or try to control the discourse. You apparently cannot handle dissent and have an anti-science agenda as part of your fundamentalist stance. To whit...

There are a vast number of experiments including many thousands of generations of a virus, chosen so that an original sample as well as periodic samples could be frozen for later comparison (especially as new technology becomes available) and the rapid advance of generations so that many could be viewed and examined in one human lifetime. Others were begun with other more common lifeforms as soon as Darwin published. NONE have EVER disproved Evolution. NONE. There are fine details of Darwin that were inexact, but no part that even begins to threaten the whole.

There is only one group of people who publish such anti Evolution nonsense and that is fundamentalist religion advocates who are so uneducated about the rules of Logic and Evidence they always fall into the fallacy of the "Two Model" assertion. That model assumes that there are only two possibilities - 1) Creation (that in itself seen only as that particular group defines Creation) and 2) Evolution - and further assuming that if one can disprove #2, #1 must be the winner. The entire assumption is invalid! You proving I am wrong doesn't prove you right or vice versa. Any argument stands or falls on it's own merit and why would anyone want it any other way?

In order as appeared above...

That you "have trouble accepting" any data from more than ~4000 years ago has zero bearing on reality since you are not expert in any appropriate field to my knowledge. Once again this Young Earth argument is not based on any Science whatsoever but only on some fundamentalist, literal interpretation of the Christian Bible. We HAVE "time machines" literally written in the rocks and in the stars as well as the laws of Physics. Saying no proof exists of time before 6,000-10,000 years ago is an outright delusion if not a bald faced lie.

Regarding the Fossil Record you don't understand or ignore the level of cross-checking that went on even as long ago as the 1700s and it has only intensified and improved (vastly so actually) since then. There are animals frozen in ice or in flood basins and tar pits etc that were mummified and not only is their DNA available but often the contents of their stomachs as well. Evolution has never been based on merely "A is older than B". You and other fundamentalist want to see it that way because you will literally cherry pick, overstate when it's convenient and understate or ignore when it's not with one goal in mind and it is not exploring Nature. You have one goal in mind and that is to maintain the sanctity of your views, ALL based on your supposed literal interpretation of the Christian Bible. Period.

FYI Ice Cores are another type of "time machine" with the written record, written by Nature I should add, of atmospheric content, plant materials, climate, etc dating back 800,000 years. Ice cores can come from the Arctic, the Antarctic, and from glaciers all around the globe. They all are consistent in displaying the attributes and timing of the several ice ages just to mention one area of data.



I post what I see fit to post, not what someone else wishes. Your only recourse in this thread is to delete my posts in their entirety if that is your wish since you started this thread or report me to moderators.. BTW isn't it interesting not one more word has come from you regarding the science of JWST since your thread opener which looks to me as exactly as I pointed out that despite your insistence on the Science, was simply to use what you imagine is Science to disprove Science in hopes of shoring up your religious belief system. It is exceedingly rare in ANY thread regardless of subject that you don't interject some religious statement. That is perfectly fine as you do have the right but it does describe your hierarchy of of what matters to you just as it does for all of us. I submit yours is almost entirely one dimensional entirely bent on maintaining the insular sanctity of your view of one brand of scripture... no more, no less.

As for the evolution of reptiles besides the fact that I am neither an archaeologist, paleontologist, biologist nor any of the several other organic sciences "ists" the information is freely available at whatever level you prefer from simple Wikipedia to scholarly papers in Nature, arxiv.org etc etc etc either online or at your local Universities and libraries. However I doubt that is within your "wheelhouse" as I'm willing to bet you are far more interested in "kinds" than "species" since that follows with most fundamentalists. Your being one of those that insists there was only one worldwide flood, "The Flood" as described in the Christian Bible, you must whittle down the numbers in order to possibly fit all "kinds" (by twos if unclean and by several if deemed clean) in an Ark smaller than say Madagascar.

Incidentally since cats were considered unclean, there only needed to be one male and one female. From that breeding pair ALL modern variations of "cat kind" (41 species of the Felidae family, which is classified into 92 subspecies as well as 14 genera) supposedly have evolved in less than 10,000 years. That's some SUPER Evolution there!

Please do correct me if I am way off base here, but I don't see any interest on your part in exploring any Science at all. You seem to me to be solely interested in what you view as the only valid interpretation of a 2000 year old compilation of guesswork and superstition with a little tradition thrown in for good measure. Anything and everything that you think is in opposition is either ignored or rejected, at any cost.

Minor correction here, it's about bacterial evolution, specifically E coli (assuming you're thinking of https://the-ltee.org/about/). Breeding viruses would probably be significantly more complicated since they can't reproduce without a host cell.

What experiments are you referring to? I tried looking up "mutation breeding experiments in plants and animals" and found stuff like

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/plants/...ation_breeding

Which doesn't seem what you were talking about.

To associate me with young earthers is a mistaken and mischievious comment which I have corrected many times but you insist on repeating. That's not error, it's malice.

I am listening for an answer to the Amphibians/Reptiles conundrum and ignoring all other noise, so there's no point in spamming the forum. You believe reptiles came from ampohibians? How?

Thank you ntubski for correcting my errant memory and ignorance in biological matters. it is sincerely appreciated especially the link.