For the alternative theorists:

[paddoboy]

yes, the mechanism seems sound, reasonable and logical.
the EXPLANATIONS seems to fit.
.

But you still doubt it?
If you pop outside and find your cat/dog squished up on the road, with tyre marks over the mess, what are you going to logically assume?

 

[Trippy]

the proof however is almost totally lacking.

The proof has been served up to you on a silver platter more than once.

i'm quite positive you have taken statistics.

WTF does this even have to do with anything?
Yes, I've studied Statistics, I've also studied Calculas, Physical Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Organo-metallic chemistry, analytical chemistry, aquatic chemistry, paleontology, structural geology, crystalography, crustal fluid flow, sedimentology, stratigraphy, quantum mechanics and relativity.

What does any of this have to do with anything I have said here?

you know, the only REAL reason we don't get to the bottom of this is because of this "creationist" BS.

No, there are better reasons.

 

[leopold]

But you still doubt it?

yes, because i know how variables can correlate to each other without being connected, something you don't seem to understand.

 

[paddoboy]

yes, because i know how variables can correlate to each other without being connected, something you don't seem to understand.

But the science community in the main do not?...and you do?
sheeesh!

 

[Yazata]

I don't believe that evolution, at least evolution in the interesting biological sense, is directly observed.

it hasn't been.

I wasn't arguing against the truth of evolutionary theory. I think that broadly speaking, evolutionary theory is true. In fact, I think it's one of the greatest intellectual advances of the last 200 years.

I was arguing against what I believe is bad philosophy of science, namely the claim that 'evolution is a fact' immediately following the claim that 'facts are observations'. The obvious inference there is that 'evolution is an observation'. But virtually all of the evolution that seemingly gave rise to the species observed today happened long before human beings were making scientific observations. In fact, most of it happened before human beings even existed.

What evolutionary theory seems to me to be is an explanatory model that makes sense of a huge and constantly growing body of evidence, ranging from paleontological discoveries to comparative genomics.

the fossil record doen't support it and no lab results has proved it.

I think that the fossil record strongly supports it. What's more, there's a huge flood of new corroborating evidence flowing in as we speak from comparative genomics, the comparison of gene sequencing results from diverse taxa. In fact, the present time can perhaps be thought of as the 'golden-age of evolutionary biology', precisely because of that coming together of diverse lines of inquiry. There are other strands in play as well, for example evolutionary theory is currently syncretizing with developmental biology in the new field of evolutionary developmental biology, or 'evo-devo'. Evolution happens at the level of genes and gene frequencies in populations, and genes find much of their phenotypic expression in fetal development.

(As I suggested in an earlier post, punctuated equilibrium might naturally fall out of evo-devo, since even small changes in particular genes might have sudden and dramatic phenotypic effects if they alter the course of fetal development.)

Philosophers of science call the phenomenon of multiple strands of inquiry all pointing to the same conclusion 'consilience'. It's a very strong and convincing indicator that scholars are on the right track.

the ONLY observed evidence that supports evolution is that species adapt, that's it.

Something along those lines might arguably be true if we restrict our discussion to actually watching evolution happen in real time. (That's what I was arguing about with Grumpy.)

But I would argue that the vast bulk of our evidence isn't direct observation of evolution happening while we watch at all (with all the natural selection stuff prominently labeled of course). It's indirect evidence of evolutionary events that took place in the distant past. That evidence includes the fossil evidence, evidence from the different genetic inheritance preserved in diverse taxa, and so on. Evolutionary theory looks more like an conceptual explanatory model that pulls together a whole collection of seemingly discrete and unrelated jig-saw piece observations and turns them into something like pixels in a single growing picture of the history of life on earth.

then answer me this:
why did arrowsmith contact all these other websites about the alleged misquote instead of going straight to the horses mouth ("science") and getting to the bottom of it?

That's your issue, not mine. As I said in the other thread, I don't think that the Ayala issue is particularly important, or even very interesting.

 

[leopold]

No, actually, it doesn't, because I don't regard it in the same light as you and because I have actually studied paleontology.

there is a difference between studying and taught.
studying is actual hands on, you know, actually undersanding and knowing the subject.
being taught something is relying on someone elses word.

so, what does this mean when someone chimes in here and says "hey, look at all these wonderful transitional fossils we have".
what are you going to tell them trippy?

 

[origin]

so, what does this mean when someone chimes in here and says "hey, look at all these wonderful transitional fossils we have".

It means that they have wonderful transition fossils?

 

[leopold]

I wasn't arguing against the truth of evolutionary theory. I think that broadly speaking, evolutionary theory is true. In fact, I think it's one of the greatest intellectual advances of the last 200 years.

maybe.
there are other possibilities.
it could be that life and the universe is so far out of our league that our puny human minds will never understand it.
in quantuum physics, life might be the "substance" that contaminates time.
the real problem with evolution is a lack of imagination, the inability to see "the other side", and of course creationists standing at the door ready to do the chop suey.

I was arguing against what I believe is bad philosophy of science, namely the claim that 'evolution is a fact' immediately following the claim that 'facts are observations'. The obvious inference there is that 'evolution is an observation'. But virtually all of the evolution that seemingly gave rise to the species observed today happened long before human beings were making scientific observations. In fact, most of it happened before human beings even existed.

hmmm . . .
this doesn't explain the progressing complexity of the record.

What evolutionary theory seems to me to be is an explanatory model that makes sense of a huge and constantly growing body of evidence, ranging from paleontological discoveries to comparative genomics.

i think the biggest problem with evolution is a lack of "transparency".
there just isn't the people that breaks all of this down so the "common man" can digest it.

I think that the fossil record strongly supports it.

not according to the article i found, it's alluded to in several places in that article.

Evolution happens at the level of genes and gene frequencies in populations, and genes find much of their phenotypic expression in fetal development.

i'm of the opinion science does not know how evolution happens or they would have modeled it by now.
it's one thing to say it, quite another to make it work.

Philosophers of science call the phenomenon of multiple strands of inquiry all pointing to the same conclusion 'consilience'. It's a very strong and convincing indicator that scholars are on the right track.

yes, and the danger here is "circular reasoning", interpreting the results in regards to the current theory without considering other possibilities.

That's your issue, not mine. As I said in the other thread, I don't think that the Ayala issue is particularly important, or even very interesting.

it wouldn't be if "science" wasn't so respected.
respect is earned, not given away.

 

[paddoboy]

maybe.
there are other possibilities.
it could be that life and the universe is so far out of our league that our puny human minds will never understand it.
in quantuum physics, life might be the "substance" that contaminates time.
the real problem with evolution is a lack of imagination, the inability to see "the other side", and of course creationists standing at the door ready to do the chop suey.

.

The first point is no more then a cop out. It still does not invalidate the most obvious scenario with regards to life just being the result of a chemical reaction at its most fundamental level.


And ditto for the second.

Life from non life is the only option. [Ignoring the almighty deity concept]

 

[Aqueous Id]

there is a difference between studying and taught.
studying is actual hands on, you know, actually undersanding and knowing the subject.
being taught something is relying on someone elses word.

On the other hand if you dismiss the mountains of scientific evidence used in advancing through the curriculum Trippy just listed, then you've committed a far worse intellectual offense than the very improbable case you're worried about. You seem to be operating under the fiction that formal education includes no actual empirical experience. You sound like you have no lab or field experience in the physical sciences, and you're assuming a lot about the basis for a formal education in science which is nothing like you imagine. Far from it. From day one the student is challenged to validate and verify the lecture material through empirical testing. Otherwise they would call it English or something else.

so, what does this mean when someone chimes in here and says "hey, look at all these wonderful transitional fossils we have".

Suppose for a moment there were far fewer fossils known. Would anything change? No. The fact of even just one fossil is more than enough evidence about the nature of our geologic and biologic past. You sound like you've never done any gardening--you never found a rock with a fossil imprint? For someone so skeptical of the thoroughness of university empirical research, it's ironic that you don't speak to the empirical evidence yourself.

Does "transitional fossils" include plants? This question always seems to hinge on the evolution of animals (and usually excluding all but the zoo animals). You seem to have a very narrow perception of the scope and diversity of all the forms discovered so far. Even the lowly primordial bacteria have left "skeletons" of a sort (see below). Were they plants? Animals? Transitional? Does it even matter, once we've isolated them to the eons in which they dominated the Earth? What do you suppose happened next, that fully formed lions, tigers and bears just magically appeared out of thin air?

There is no realistic explanation other than evolution. It really doesn't matter whether some animals are hooved, or whether they live in shells or whether they move around by wiggling a flagellum. All that matters is that every form--plant, animal or otherwise--arrived here through progressive changes to the progenitor DNA. It only seems to matter to the creationist that one animal form (human) is known to have evolved from apelike progenitors. That isn't even science. It's manic denial.

So what difference does it make to you whether or not there are zero transitional fossils, or hundreds, or thousands, or even billions?

 

[Trippy]

there is a difference between studying and taught.
studying is actual hands on, you know, actually undersanding and knowing the subject.

I have actual hands on experience, it's impossible to complete geology without doing field geology.

being taught something is relying on someone elses word.

That's not what being taught means at all.

so, what does this mean when someone chimes in here and says "hey, look at all these wonderful transitional fossils we have".
what are you going to tell them trippy?

"Awesome." Why? Because I know that if they have studied paleontology then I know that, unlike you, they understand what a transitional actually is.

On the other hand every fossil is transitional.

Tell me something - the alien paleontologist I mentioned. Do you think they would come to the conclusion that there was one extant species of H. sapiens sapiens? Or do you think that theu would come to the conclusion that there were five? (Asiatic, Negroid, Causaoid, Indian, Mongoloid).

 

[Write4U]

Facts and theories are two different things. Facts are the observations, theories try to explain what is observed. Evolution is a fact that can only be denied by those totally ignorant of the current knowledge of those observed facts, or by someone with mental problems or other impediments to accepting reality. Theories, on the other hand, are only as good as our understanding of the cause of observed facts, they are always subject to revision given new facts or better understanding and no scientists claims they are infallible.

So, to summarize, facts are undeniable by rational actors, while theory is always provisional. Evolution is a fact, it is undeniable given the copious observational evidence, the theory explaining the cause of that evolution(the Theory of Evolution)is constantly being argued(mostly in the details in our time). Grumpy

Elegant and succinctly expressed!

 

[Grumpy]

Yazata

I was arguing against what I believe is bad philosophy of science, namely the claim that 'evolution is a fact' immediately following the claim that 'facts are observations'. The obvious inference there is that 'evolution is an observation'. But virtually all of the evolution that seemingly gave rise to the species observed today happened long before human beings were making scientific observations. In fact, most of it happened before human beings even existed.

And, as I have pointed out, you are wrong. Evolution has been directly observed in real time in both the lab and in Nature. Evolution is an observed fact, deal with that fact or stop bloviating. Yes, we have much evidence from the past, but we also have copious evidence of evolution's occurrence in the present, in the lifetime of a single researcher. That includes speciation. Can you bring yourself to deal with real facts as opposed to your uninformed opinions?

Nylon was first developed in 1935, yet a new species of bacteria exists able to live on byproducts of the process that did not exist until Nylon started being manufactured in Japan after WW2.

"In 1975 a team of Japanese scientists discovered a strain of Flavobacterium, living in ponds containing waste water from a nylon factory, that was capable of digesting certain byproducts of nylon 6 manufacture, such as the linear dimer of 6-aminohexanoate. These substances are not known to have existed before the invention of nylon in 1935. Further study revealed that the three enzymes the bacteria were using to digest the byproducts were significantly different from any other enzymes produced by other Flavobacterium strains (or, for that matter, any other bacteria), and not effective on any material other than the manmade nylon byproducts."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria#cite_note-1

IE an entirely new species of bacteria in just 30 years, with new and unique enzymes not found in any other bacteria. That is why evolution is an observed fact. In addition, species exist today that did not exist long ago, they evolved from other, different species that no longer exist. If you go back in the fossil record about 400 million years, no species alive at that time had a single bone in their bodies, they had not yet evolved. So, the fossil record shows that lifeforms evolved, IE evolution occurred. IE Evolution is a fact.

I can give many examples of observed evolutionary events, in the lab and in the wild. The fact that evolution has been observed cannot be denied by rational actors, only by those ignorant of the evidence or resistant to facts that contradict their beliefs, which are you? Ignorance is easily fixed for those who are rational, for believers, not so much.

And extrapolating from facts to form theories is an entirely separate thing from observing the facts. Facts are the world's data, theories are explanations of the cause. Facts are what, theories are why. Facts don't change, theories are only as valid as their ability to explain all the relevant facts. From Darwin on, biologists have always emphasized the difference between the fact that evolution occurred and the theories that try to explain that fact. Yet you don't seem to understand the difference, even though you seem rational. leopold and others are resistant to facts because of their belief based world view, they reject uncomfortable truths that contradict those beliefs. Are you similarly hampered? Your belief that evolution is not a fact is wrong, do you accept new data? Can you discard your old invalid belief? If not, then you are in the same boat as all other believers, even if what you believe is closer to the truth you cannot change your belief given new data and you can't be a real scientist or even understand what science actually is. That is the reason there is no faith or belief in science. Scientism is an oxymoron. That's why belief and science are two diametrically opposed paradigms for looking at the world, but one is valid, the other is not.

Grumpy

 

[leopold]

and so it goes.
all i wanted is some honest answers to the article i found, but i never got them.
what did i get instead?
"science" being a "pop sci" rag, you know, not really important.
me being called a creationist, paranoid, delusional.
even one poster said "what does it matter if we don't have any transitional fossils".

yeah, i can see why no scientist would EVER attempt to dissent against evolution, EVEN IF THEY HAD THE GOODS.
a clear cut lesson easily taught and learned by others.
evolution has little more than "fear of reprisal" to stand on.

remembering facts are immutable:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110127141657.htm
you couldn't pay me enough to NOT teach a "fact" i knew to be true.

 

[paddoboy]

and so it goes.
all i wanted is some honest answers to the article i found, but i never got them.
what did i get instead?
"science" being a "pop sci" rag, you know, not really important.
me being called a creationist, paranoid, delusional.
even one poster said "what does it matter if we don't have any transitional fossils".

yeah, i can see why no scientist would EVER attempt to dissent against evolution, EVEN IF THEY HAD THE GOODS.
a clear cut lesson easily taught and learned by others.
evolution has little more than "fear of reprisal" to stand on.

remembering facts are immutable:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110127141657.htm
you couldn't pay me enough to NOT teach a "fact" i knew to be true.

The cry of the conspiracy brigade!

 

[Write4U]

and so it goes.
all i wanted is some honest answers to the article i found, but i never got them.
what did i get instead?
"science" being a "pop sci" rag, you know, not really important.
me being called a creationist, paranoid, delusional.
even one poster said "what does it matter if we don't have any transitional fossils".

Well, its not like they are just lying all around us now is it. That we find hundreds of thousands years old fossils is remarkable to begin with and is the result of tireless research at promising sites by dedicated scientists.

yeah, i can see why no scientist would EVER attempt to dissent against evolution, EVEN IF THEY HAD THE GOODS.
a clear cut lesson easily taught and learned by others.
evolution has little more than "fear of reprisal" to stand on.

Well, ask the religious people who asked a few questions during the time of the Inquisition, or today in Iran. Check this out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jeY9vx7oi0

remembering facts are immutable:
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110127141657.htm
you couldn't pay me enough to NOT teach a "fact" i knew to be true.

Agreed that 100% is an unattainable certainty, but imho 99.99% seems sufficient. Moreover:

The results have implications for when and how birds originated -- a topic under some debate -- as well as for the study of evolution in general. "In a broader sense, I think that our research speaks to an understanding of how groups of organisms, which are perhaps dominant today in modern ecosystems, get to that point," Makovicky, said. Birds, for example, evolved from humble beginnings into the diverse group we know today. The early bird, therefore, may indeed have gotten the worm -- or the insect or seed -- but not much else.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140527214911.htm

Early bird
"Sunrise fingers wake the dawn,
sparrows pecking at the lawn
to catch the early worm"
w4u

The further back in time the fewer and more devolved species, an exact reversal of growth in history. Any disruptions in this natural function is through a catastrophic planetary event. But arriving at the beginning, we end up finding single celled amoebas and algal mats from which all the diversity of life sprang. Any number of different amoebae might have been precursors to basic species from which all animal life on earth has evolved. Ferns evolved during that epoch. Their structures are pure fractals and were very early means of growth and reproduction by duplication, later replaced by greater sophistication. The fern is an example of a surviving "old one".

The evolution of plants has resulted in increasing levels of complexity, from the earliest algal mats, through bryophytes, lycopods, ferns to the complex gymnosperms and angiosperms of today

.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_history_of_plants

I find the fact of evolution to be an intellectually acceptable proposition in all respects, including panspermia. Moreover, there is no evidence that it did not so happen and I have never heard an acceptable alternative proposition.

 

[leopold]

Chemist and five time Nobel nominee, Henry "Fritz" Schaefer of the University of Georgia, commented on the need to encourage debate on Darwin's theory of evolution. "Some defenders of Darwinism," says Schaefer, "embrace standards of evidence for evolution that as scientists they would never accept in other circumstances." Schaefer was on the roster of signers of the statement, termed "A Scientific Dissent on Darwinism."

The numbers of scientists who question Darwinism is a minority, but it is growing fast," said Stephen Meyer, a Cambridge-educated philosopher of science who directs the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture at Discovery Institute. "This is happening in the face of fierce attempts to intimidate and suppress legitimate dissent. Young scientists are threatened with deprivation of tenure. Others have seen a consistent pattern of answering scientific arguments with ad hominem attacks. In particular, the series' attempt to stigmatize all critics--including scientists--as religious 'creationists' is an excellent example of viewpoint discrimination."

www.reviewevolution.com/press/pressRelease_100Scientists.php

 

[Yazata]

I hate to say this becasue it will draw the fire from a great many people but: i'm beginning to believe we are dealing with an atheist agenda here.

I think that I'd prefer to call it 'scientistic'. Many laypeople, often atheist but many others as well, treat science as if it was kind of a religion. Its their source of infallible Truth, the rock to which their worldview is anchored.

Therein lies your problem......You have already admitted you are a "God supporter" and then to somehow see this as an Atheist type agenda, confirms the agenda that you are burdened with.

This current battling looks like a collision between two worldviews whose supporters are convinced are both infallible and incompatible.

This is about observational evidence that confirms evolution.

There's a great deal of that. I don't think that it proves the truth of evolutionary theory in an apodeictic sense, but it does render it highly probable in my opinion.

This is also about the overwhelming supported certainty, that life had to have evolved/arisen from non life.

I expect that probably happened, but it's just speculation at this point, because nobody really knows how life originated.

This thread is also about how those that have an alternative hypothesis should conduct themselves, and abide with the logic of the scientific method and peer review.

I think that arguments against various forms of scientific orthodoxy are interesting and oftentimes educational. They can be the occasions for real creative thinking.

But I agree that the constant battling between the champions of 'alternative' crank theories and the righteous defenders of the catechism are disruptive on the mainstream science fora. I still think that moderators (that's you Trippy) should move threads like this to 'alternative theories'. That forum is down there, so why not make use of it? I kind of picture that forum becoming the heart and soul of Sciforums, the no-holds-barred place where scientific orthodoxies are attacked and defended. That kind of dynamism often stimulates lots of creative thinking. It will certainly keep everyone fired up and will guarantee that the forum gets lots of participation.

I don't really know what kind of discussions the mainstream science fora should host, but that's another question.

 

[Yazata]

And, as I have pointed out, you are wrong. Evolution has been directly observed in real time in both the lab and in Nature.

Adaptation certainly has been observed in the case of fast-reproducing organisms like bacteria. The idea that it's Darwinian-style natural selection at work is likely true, but it seems to be an inference.

Evolution is an observed fact, deal with that fact or stop bloviating.

The origins of virtually all of the species on earth haven't been directly observed by human beings, let alone by scientists. What contemporary researchers have instead is a huge pile of often seemingly unrelated evidence, such as fossil bones from the Gobi desert or gene sequencing data on tube-worms. Evolutionary theory provides a coherent model that makes sense of all of that data and starts converting the myriad of data points into pixels in the picture of the history of life on earth. That allows researchers to start hypothesizing about what as-yet missing parts of the picture might look like and so far at least, new data coming in has tended (generally-speaking) to verify many of those hypotheses.

And extrapolating from facts to form theories is an entirely separate thing from observing the facts. Facts are the world's data, theories are explanations of the cause.

Facts are the way the world really is. Observation reports report what people believe the facts are. Facts aren't true or false, facts just are. Reports of observations are expressed in some human language and they typically are either true or false. In other words, facts and observation reports aren't the same kind of things. That's important, since it makes it possible for particular observation reports to be wrong.

Your belief that evolution is not a fact is wrong, do you accept new data? Can you discard your old invalid belief?

I never said that evolution isn't a fact, in fact I went to some effort to discuss it.

Evolution is a fact if that's the way that the universe actually behaves. (In other words, 'factuality' isn't a mysterious property of some specially-annointed subset of 'scientific' language that somehow renders particular statements inerrant.)

Evolution in the sense of 'change over time' is almost certainly true of how the universe is.

Evolution in the sense of 'change over time is due to purely natural causes' is more of a metaphysical belief. I'm not sure how anyone can possibly know something like that. I do accept it as a heuristic principle though, as a methodological principle that says that natural science should proceed by seeking this-worldly explanations.

Evolution in the sense of 'biological speciation explained by natural selection' does seem to be increasingly probable in my opinion. (I believe that it's true.) It's clearly supported by a massive body of evidence. (Though not without a great deal of thinking and inference in most cases.) But it clearly isn't a religious-style infallible and inerrant doctrine. Science isn't revelation.

That is the reason there is no faith or belief in science. Scientism is an oxymoron. That's why belief and science are two diametrically opposed paradigms for looking at the world, but one is valid, the other is not.

You don't think that evolutionary biologists believe that evolutionary biology is true? You obviously believe that it is. I'm not criticising that belief, I share it. I'm just pointing out that it's a belief.

 

[Grumpy]

leopold

what did i get instead?
"science" being a "pop sci" rag, you know, not really important.

So the only important thing I have posted is a brain fart due to my Alzheimer's and forgetful old age. Got it. It has, of course, deligitimized everything else I had to say just like the supposed quote from Aayala reported by Lewin deligitimized every published paper that scientist had ever written that said the exact opposite. And you call this thinking. Right.

Humans are fallible, that is only a problem if those fallibilities are unable to be corrected due to the empty headedness(or one chock full of non-sense beliefs, which is worse)of that fallible human. My head is emptier today than it was yesterday, tommorrow will be worse still. My conflating the journal Science with the now dead pop-sci rag of the same name was a mistake, one I acknowledged just a few posts later, we can't get you to acknowledge your brain farts at all. The misquote of Aayala in Science seems to be all you know about the subject. And you got that one dead wrong.

Yazata

I think that I'd prefer to call it 'scientistic'. Many laypeople, often atheist but many others as well, treat science as if it was kind of a religion. Its their source of infallible Truth, the rock to which their worldview is anchored.

I guess those who's worldview is based on belief cannot even see any other way to think. There really are differences in the brains of believers and those like me who couldn't believe if I wanted to. That is the only explanation I can see for you not being able to understand that science is a different basis for seeing the world. So you must sully science by falsely painting it as a belief system as well to lower it's explanatory power and the quality of it's truths to the same level of belief you use, so you won't feel so bad about being so wrong on so many things.

Faith and belief(even in authorities)has no legitimate place in scientific inquiry.

Truths do not come from on high, they are not handed down, unquestioned and untested, from any authority, that would be a religion. Truths(at least scientific truths)are built from the ground up, observation by observation, rigorously questioned, tested and confirmed, subject to others checking your work at every step. If it survives that gauntlet it is accepted as provisionally true, but it will always be subject to falsification given new evidence. That is why teaching critical thinking is more important that teaching facts to be learned by rote.

I was lucky, I was taught to think for myself, to question everything, to find out for myself what the truth is. Unfortunately, religions indoctrinate the youngest children to believe in the authority paradigm, it ruins their critical thinking from an early age and most never escape from those bonds on their ability to question the pronouncements of those self proclaimed authorities. Even some that do reject the absolute BS those authorities proclaim are still crippled with the belief based world view and think, like you, that all world views are the same. Well, Einstein, an authority figure candidate in science if there ever was one, STILL has his work being tested every single day, one hundred years after he published his work. Not much of an authority at all, it seems. Would that we could do the same with the pronouncements of every self proclaimed spokesman for unevidenced deities. Yeah, they are just alike. Right.

Grumpy