If it works, it lives and gets to reproduce. If it doesn't, it dies.
That's pretty much it, although Darwin is pretty clear that anything that helps an organism reproduce will also result in its characteristics being pssed on.
It always baffles me (and Darwin is pretty clear about this, too) that people see and reap the benefits of the things Darwin describes (pedigreed dogs, cows bred for their size, etc) and yet don't think that the theory holds water. Although the specifics of it have been fine-tuned over the years since 1858, it's still the most viable of any other theories. And it's certainly better than saying pixies did it.
Quote:
Humans are complex lifeforms, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we are the destination of evolution.
Actually, Darwin pretty explicitly tries to distance himself from ANY claims about evolution and teleology. It was LeMarck who did that, and it didn't work out very well. All Darwin really says is that these small mutations over long periods of time (and he's probably wrong about the time-scale) can explain variety. Now, he *is* pretty flakey at times, and if you read a bunch of Romantic poetry about nature (especially Wordsworth) and then turn around and read Darwin, it becomes clear that he's got some odd ideas about "nature." For instance, throughout Origin he consistently says things that amount to "nature has the best interests of the species at heart" and "nature will take care of things." It's not really all that much of a problem for his theory, but it does indicate his biases. And he is, in the end, very much a creature of the Victorian period, which means that he's got tremendous faith in the inherent goodness of progress. This doesn't mean that he sees humanity as the top/end/acme of all this. Just that progress is good. And one of the neat things about his theory is that, because he doesn't propose an "end" to it all, it's little more than a description of a never-ending progress.
I think that if the theory evolution is to be taught as an explanation to our existence, it must also be shown that there are many major holes in it. Evolution does occur, but you have to be realistic about the places where it does. It occurs in species with enormous populations, and rapid life cycles. By enormous I mean quadrillions of members. This pretty much puts you into the realm of insects and bacteria. When you start talking about more advanced species you do run into the problem of increased mutation rates leading to extinction. Also you have to deal with the problem of minimum complexity of life. That is another really sticky point for any evolutionary theory. Its tough to rely on a theory for education that struggles to account for life, and the which also does not seem to follow the data for evolution.
As far as Christians embracing science. I believe that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. I believe that the universe started with a big bang. Bolth of those beliefs are very well founded in scientific discovery. These discoveries don't conflict at all with the Bible. I personally think that some of the Christians that believe the world is only 10,000 years old need to maybe re-think their position a bit in light of experiments such as COBE and the work done on relativity. Its interesting to note that Einstein's theory of general relativity is one of the most verified theories in all of science. I have heard that it has been verified even more than Newton's three laws.
[B]Um, no. I think he's laughing at the bit were the Catholic Church executed Galileo. (They didn't. He wasn't.)
Galileo died a very old man (especially for that time) under house arrest after he was "persuaded" to recant his work.
Apologies, my error. Where did I get that from???...probably mixing it up with Giordano Bruno. And he wasn't executed for astronomical "heresies" oh well...
...and his middle finger can be seen in all its shriveled glory on display at the Museo di Storia della Scienza telling the Church to f**k off for all of eternity.
That's pretty much it, although Darwin is pretty clear that anything that helps an organism reproduce will also result in its characteristics being pssed on.
It always baffles me (and Darwin is pretty clear about this, too) that people see and reap the benefits of the things Darwin describes (pedigreed dogs, cows bred for their size, etc) and yet don't think that the theory holds water. Although the specifics of it have been fine-tuned over the years since 1858, it's still the most viable of any other theories. And it's certainly better than saying pixies did it.
Actually, Darwin pretty explicitly tries to distance himself from ANY claims about evolution and teleology. It was LeMarck who did that, and it didn't work out very well. All Darwin really says is that these small mutations over long periods of time (and he's probably wrong about the time-scale) can explain variety. Now, he *is* pretty flakey at times, and if you read a bunch of Romantic poetry about nature (especially Wordsworth) and then turn around and read Darwin, it becomes clear that he's got some odd ideas about "nature." For instance, throughout Origin he consistently says things that amount to "nature has the best interests of the species at heart" and "nature will take care of things." It's not really all that much of a problem for his theory, but it does indicate his biases. And he is, in the end, very much a creature of the Victorian period, which means that he's got tremendous faith in the inherent goodness of progress. This doesn't mean that he sees humanity as the top/end/acme of all this. Just that progress is good. And one of the neat things about his theory is that, because he doesn't propose an "end" to it all, it's little more than a description of a never-ending progress.
Cheers
Scott
You think people don't understand the difference between manipulation of a trait and the entire creation of a new trait?
If you are a bacteria with a light sensitive spot. How does it suddenly become something closer to an eye? All the pieces of an eye must be present for it to work propertly. Likewise before DNA was well known about we could just jump the gap here with regard to how it turned out. Now we know that it wouldn't be a mutation in just one spot of the DNA chain. Heck just the color of eyes has several genes attached to it. You have whole chains of DNA that would need to "mutate" in just the right fashion.
People think simplistically and think, oh one small change and hey, I'm an X-man. But in reality DNA does not work like that. The biggest challenges to evolution are going to be from biochemistry, not religion.
If you are a bacteria with a light sensitive spot. How does it suddenly become something closer to an eye? All the pieces of an eye must be present for it to work properly.
You claim in another post to know the theory "better than most", yet your understanding of scientific method and the theory of evolution is severely flawed.
I doubt you would pass a grade school test on the subject, based on the lies you are repeating in this thread.
Have you ever even read a book on the subject? If you had, rather than sourcing your arguments from crackpot religious fundamentalists, you would have realised that every single one of your arguments has been definitively refuted time and time again.
If you're truly interested in doing anything other than preaching to the choir, then you may want to do some reading:
And as to your specific question about eyes (which is such an old saw, I'm sure you must be trolling--or badly misinformed about your own level of knowledge):
Quote:
Organs of great complexity can arise by slow degrees. A suitable sequence of events has been found, and there are numerous sea creatures alive today whose eyes are stages in that sequence.
It has been calculated that a complete fish eye could have evolved in less than 350,000 years, with almost no mutations. Something that easy should have happened many times, and in fact, taxonomists think that eyes have evolved more than 40 times.
You claim in another post to know the theory "better than most", yet your understanding of scientific method and the theory of evolution is severely flawed.
I doubt you would pass a grade school test on the subject, based on the lies you are repeating in this thread.
Have you ever even read a book on the subject? If you had, rather than sourcing your arguments from crackpot religious fundamentalists, you would have realised that every single one of your arguments has been definitively refuted time and time again.
If you're truly interested in doing anything other than preaching to the choir, then you may want to do some reading:
And as to your specific question about eyes (which is such an old saw, I'm sure you must be trolling--or badly misinformed about your own level of knowledge):
You aren't being serious are you? You must know that on a biochemical level that finding things that happen to show a sequence regarding possible eye formation and then somehow proclaiming them to all be connected is the height of stupidity.
Quote:
Darwin then went on to describe how some simple animals have only "aggregates of pigment-cells...without any nerves ... [which] serve only to distinguish light from darkness." Then, in animals a bit more complex, like "star-fish," there exist "small depressions in the layer of [light-sensitive cells] -- depressions which are "filled ... with transparent gelatinous matter and have a clear outer covering, "like the cornea in the higher animals." These eyes lack a lens, but the fact that the light sensitive pigment lies in a "depression" in the skin makes it possible for the animal to tell more precisely from what direction the light is coming. And the more cup-shaped the depression, the better it helps "focus" the image like a simple "box-camera" may do, even without a lens. Likewise in the human embryo, the eye is formed from a "sack-like fold in the skin."
I suppose that I could say human females are likely to evolve pouches in their fronts like kangaroos. I mean they already keep the child there protectively during the previous 10 months. The child fits there and the mothers hips are designed to take the weight. Other mammals already have pouches, etc.
Yet if I suggested this in seriousness it would be laughable because there is much more to a woman having a pouch then just a hole in the front of her.
The leaps you make here, based off of the most basic external observations are astounding. You are willing to jump from different species in different classes and do so because why? Because it is convenient? It might help with your belief, but keep your religion to yourself. I was not asking for a fossil record because eyes are obviously soft tissue that don't survive.
I am saying that on a biochemical level it isn't just manipulation. It is profoundly more complex than the silly little explanation you posit there.
As for your "computer model" about eye generation.
Quote:
In his recent book, River Out of Eden (Basic Books, 1995), Richard Dawkins points out how Nilsson and Pelger set up a computer model of evolving eyes to determine if a smooth gradient of change exists from a pigmented eye spot to the camera eye with a lens and cornea, and how long it would take such a transformation to occur. They employed pessimistic figures for the amounts of change possible per generation -- giving their model only 50% "heritability" (many human traits are over 50% inheritable), and chose pessimistic values for the coefficient of variation (how much variation there typically is in a population). And they determined that Darwinian evolution could produce a good camera eye in less than a half a million years! That's a mere "blink of the eye" in geologic time!
You don't understand the leap of logic here? The prejudiced pre-belief that brings about the intended results?
The computer program is "given" all the parts to make a good eye from the onset. You don't call that a little bit of a prejudice of belief? The computer model just had to adjust the parts and pass on the best adjustments to the next generation. This again is manipulation of existing traits with a computer and no external factors.
They also conveniently gloss over how those generaltions of animals with all the "imperfect" eyes manage to get by for half a million years when they can't see. Again a little leap in logic I do not care to make. The computer program pre-supposes that they would not be killed off completely by another organism.
Again when you take this to the biochemical level. When you think that the photo sensative spot is made of a cell that processes chemical reactions on dozens of different ways, the level of complexity sky rockets. When you consider how each one of these proteins had to "evolve" without chemical interference it becomes even more complex. When you consider that they need receptors and a means of evoking change at the other end of the chain of their reaction, it becomes even more complex. Evolution does not explain this level of complexity.
See it isn't that the lense just happens to have the wrong curvature for that generation. What happens to the complex cascade of chemical factors beyond that lense that have to work perfectly to process the chemical changes that occur in sensing that light.
Evolution works well on a large level, saying if you put to big dogs together you are likely to get a bigger dog. Yet if I asked if you if you put a big dog and a big human together what would you get, you would scoff. The reason? Well their DNA won't combine. Chemistry is a zero sum game. Evolution cannot explain things on the cellular level and even with a basic understanding of DNA we can see that the two would not combine. Even if we pounded them against each other 100 million times over 100 million years.
That is the point, chemical reactions do not have such logical leaps. We are all made up of millions of chemical reactions. Your eyes right now do not just have a lens and retina, etc. They have do not even just have rods and cones. They have millions of chemical reactions occuring just to read this text. They must be the right chemicals, have the right receptors, etc. This adds profound level of complexity to your hey the eye can manage to focus in half a million years if I give it a few basic, nonchemical parts argument.
Now I would also challange you and anyone else to find a single post in this thread where I have mentioned religion. You cannot get past setting up the strawman of religion. I am not advocating, nor even arguing a religious answer to any of these questions. Evolution breaks down badly on the cellular level. To say one animal survived better than another because its blood clots better is as elementary as saying the earth is flat. To understand the dozens of chemical reactions that must occur and explain them is much harder. It is also something evolution does not explain. I have said that this fact should be taught in school. I have not claimed a young earth, Noah's Ark or any other such nonsense, nor that they should be taught in school. Leave your prejudice at the door and address what I type, otherwise you are arguing with yourself as a form of mental masterbation.
Trumpet, there wouldn't be an entire generation of animals with eyes that don't work because those organisms that have the poorly developed eye WILL NOT SURVIVE. Only the favorable mutation would. Think about it. Now, let me tell you that I don't believe that the current iteration of evolutionary theory is going to be the last. We still need to gather more information and refine it. However, your arguments against it are pretty much copied word for word from a site with an agenda such as biblephysics.
The number of coincidences that make up our current universe for example are to numerous to be plausibly ignored. As a result cosmologists are pondering the multiverse theory. I'll quote a nice article from that creationist rag, Scientific American.
There is speculation that not only there other universes that don't have the huge number of attributes that just happen to be so friendly to life like ours happen to be.
There is further speculation that not only are there other universes with different attributes but that they run parallel to ours and even split apart based off of decisions and attributes what appear to be coincidences aren't necessarily, etc.
actually, when you think about it there's nothing special at all about our fitting so well into our universe.
the universe comes first, and has a set of very specific parameters. life evolves within said universe. the life that does well in this universe can't help but be tailored to match the eviornment that it exists in. if it didn't it would die, or something that was a better match would come along and wipe it out.
the only way i'd be impressed with the universe matching us perfectly would be if we came first, and found a universe that fit us perfectly. it only makes sense that we fit the universe we came from.
kind of like looking for a habitable planet somewhere else. of course the Earth is a perfect match, that's where we're from. now finding another planet like it will be impressive, but i am not at all surprised that we match up well with the planet of our origins.
that said, my final thought on the general subject is this. why can't biblical passage and scientific theory match eachother just fine in this case. the bible has many passages that aren't literal. when it's said that God created the Earth in seven days, and goes over each step, how are we to know that each day isn't millions or billions of our years. it's a day to God. that could be anything to us. and the weird part is, if you look over the order in which God creates the Earth, it is approximately the order in which we think things came along according to evolution, starting with the forming of the planet.
for those with a good knowledge of science, read through the section in Genesis, only with the mindset that the "days" mentioned within could be any number of years. see if it doesn't match up a bit better then.
Evolution breaks down badly on the cellular level. To say one animal survived better than another because its blood clots better is as elementary as saying the earth is flat. To understand the dozens of chemical reactions that must occur and explain them is much harder. It is also something evolution does not explain. I have said that this fact should be taught in school.
I was taught that evolution can't or doesn't yet explain everything. Who isn't taught that?
that said, my final thought on the general subject is this. why can't biblical passage and scientific theory match eachother just fine in this case. the bible has many passages that aren't literal. when it's said that God created the Earth in seven days, and goes over each step, how are we to know that each day isn't millions or billions of our years. it's a day to God. that could be anything to us. and the weird part is, if you look over the order in which God creates the Earth, it is approximately the order in which we think things came along according to evolution, starting with the forming of the planet.
Alcimedes you hit the nail right on the head. That's exactly what I think happened. Instead of 7 literal days, it was 7 ages. I think people are a too literal on that fact. We use day with a great amount of flexibility. For example "back in the day of the dinosaur" or "in the days of the Romans". We all know that by day we mean era. Also Genesis was written in Hebrew, where the hebrew word for day does have a lot of different meanings.
As far as earth being "designed" for us, you have to look at how incredbily special our solar system is. There are so many parameters that are tuned to have life on earth that it makes it unlikely there is life anywhere else in the universe.
Trumpet, there wouldn't be an entire generation of animals with eyes that don't work because those organisms that have the poorly developed eye WILL NOT SURVIVE. Only the favorable mutation would. Think about it. Now, let me tell you that I don't believe that the current iteration of evolutionary theory is going to be the last. We still need to gather more information and refine it. However, your arguments against it are pretty much copied word for word from a site with an agenda such as biblephysics.
Under the computer program he was proposing it is likely that multiple favorable and unfavorable traits would occur with regard to the eyes. They let the computer pick the eye that was more capable of focusing and it "survived" and passed on its better eyesight.
Using this model it took half a million years to get an eye that focus properly. In the meantime had a lot of eyes that just couldn't see and so yes that is was my contention they shouldn't have survived. But because it was a computer model, they did survive because they had 1% less terrible vision than the other progeny. That is the bias I was addressing.
They are starting with a predetermined destination and seeing how long it would take nature to get there. This fallacy is committed often in evolutionary theory and is simply dismissed with, well it must be the destination because that is what survived. Real life is not this simplistic. Humans have a range of vision even in modern day. Some are near or farsighted, etc. We have determined what 20/20 vision is by using a norm. They are taking a norm and working backward with it. While the reverse is true. They take the norm and have the computer model determine which off-spring are closest to it and they survive. In nature though this just isn't so. Likewise in the early stages there are no norms, there isn't even functionality. Those animals wouldn't survive because they couldn't see by any true measure. Again we aren't even close to the true complexity. What types of proteins would be transmitted by cones that have adapted to unfocused or semi-focused light for 100 generations. When you change the focus, you change the proteins activated, you change the receptors that are necessary to process those proteins, you change the type of cells and proteins in the optic nerve carrying those signals. It goes on and on. It is too simplistic to just say, it does because it does. It is akin to religion only instead of God they trust Nature.
actually, when you think about it there's nothing special at all about our fitting so well into our universe.
the universe comes first, and has a set of very specific parameters. life evolves within said universe. the life that does well in this universe can't help but be tailored to match the eviornment that it exists in. if it didn't it would die, or something that was a better match would come along and wipe it out.
the only way i'd be impressed with the universe matching us perfectly would be if we came first, and found a universe that fit us perfectly. it only makes sense that we fit the universe we came from.
kind of like looking for a habitable planet somewhere else. of course the Earth is a perfect match, that's where we're from. now finding another planet like it will be impressive, but i am not at all surprised that we match up well with the planet of our origins.
that said, my final thought on the general subject is this. why can't biblical passage and scientific theory match eachother just fine in this case. the bible has many passages that aren't literal. when it's said that God created the Earth in seven days, and goes over each step, how are we to know that each day isn't millions or billions of our years. it's a day to God. that could be anything to us. and the weird part is, if you look over the order in which God creates the Earth, it is approximately the order in which we think things came along according to evolution, starting with the forming of the planet.
for those with a good knowledge of science, read through the section in Genesis, only with the mindset that the "days" mentioned within could be any number of years. see if it doesn't match up a bit better then.
That is a bit too assuming. The thing that is nice about science is that it can test these assumptions. They can find out small characteristics that have huge overwhelming consequences. They can input what if gravity were .00005% stronger or what if the charge of a proton were .00003% more.
When they attempting even the most slight adjustments the universe literally cannot function as it does. It is so prevelent that this is why the multiverse theory has been put forth. Scientists in good conscience cannot say, well it just happened this when literally every variable turned out just right. The multiverse says that there are numerous other universes where the results did not turn out like here. Most of these universes would not be usable, habitable, or even measurable since they do not follow our physical and natural laws. They are thus undetectable and by sciences own admission must be accepted pretty much on faith.
I posted a link that you quoted in your reply a search on multiverse will turn up more material.
The thing I'm really curious about : how do creationists deal with other creation myths?
I've seen quite a few pseudo-scientific arguments brought forward by creationists to shatter the trust in the theory of evolution, but how do they try to refute Buddhist or Hindu (insert any other religion) creation myths?
For some reason a pisssing match between different schools of creationism seems to promise tremendous entertainment value...
When they attempting even the most slight adjustments the universe literally cannot function as it does.
the problem with discussing this fact with people who dont do science all the time is that there is a recognised understanding that if something cannot exist it will not be observed, ie a universe whose gravity varies by 1/r^2.1 is unstable, in fact the only universe where a force that pulls inward the way gravity does has to have this force vary by 1/r^2 to be stable. now this is where people throw in: 'what is the coincidence of that -- there must be a god...' but if it wasnt that way we wouldnt exist and we wouldnt observe it so big deal if it is that way, it has to be for us to even see it let alone quantitate it and put it on paper -- it suggests nothing of a deity at all, but the mere fact that if a large carnivorous creature consumed you parents before they reproduced, then you wouldnt even be arguing this point.
but i fail to see the relationship of this with evolution.
The thing I'm really curious about : how do creationists deal with other creation myths?
I've seen quite a few pseudo-scientific arguments brought forward by creationists to shatter the trust in the theory of evolution, but how do they try to refute Buddhist or Hindu (insert any other religion) creation myths?
For some reason a pisssing match between different schools of creationism seems to promise tremendous entertainment value...
If your curious why don't you ask them in a thread in which that is the topic.
the problem with discussing this fact with people who dont do science all the time is that there is a recognised understanding that if something cannot exist it will not be observed, ie a universe whose gravity varies by 1/r^2.1 is unstable, in fact the only universe where a force that pulls inward the way gravity does has to have this force vary by 1/r^2 to be stable. now this is where people throw in: 'what is the coincidence of that -- there must be a god...' but if it wasnt that way we wouldnt exist and we wouldnt observe it so big deal if it is that way, it has to be for us to even see it let alone quantitate it and put it on paper -- it suggests nothing of a deity at all, but the mere fact that if a large carnivorous creature consumed you parents before they reproduced, then you wouldnt even be arguing this point.
but i fail to see the relationship of this with evolution.
It is because it is... sounds more like zen then science to me.
studying the evolution history is studying all the storie of living-kind : an infinite sea of knowledge. For the moment we only know a very, very small amount of it. From the few, that we know, scientist elaborate theories, and the most popular one was the evolutionnary one.
As the amount of knowledge is increasing each day, some elements came in contradiction of the theory. In this case, you make her evolve, or you change it for a better one.
Comments
Galileo died a very old man (especially for that time) under house arrest after he was "persuaded" to recant his work.
Funnily enough, Galileo gets all the Martyr of Science treatment when Kepler did all the grunt work of the math about orbital trajectories.
So anyway....
Screed
Did you know that Galileo died on the very day that Sir Isaac Newton was born? Kewl trivial trivia.
Damn, ena beat me to it. Ah well...
If it works, it lives and gets to reproduce. If it doesn't, it dies.
That's pretty much it, although Darwin is pretty clear that anything that helps an organism reproduce will also result in its characteristics being pssed on.
It always baffles me (and Darwin is pretty clear about this, too) that people see and reap the benefits of the things Darwin describes (pedigreed dogs, cows bred for their size, etc) and yet don't think that the theory holds water. Although the specifics of it have been fine-tuned over the years since 1858, it's still the most viable of any other theories. And it's certainly better than saying pixies did it.
Humans are complex lifeforms, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we are the destination of evolution.
Actually, Darwin pretty explicitly tries to distance himself from ANY claims about evolution and teleology. It was LeMarck who did that, and it didn't work out very well. All Darwin really says is that these small mutations over long periods of time (and he's probably wrong about the time-scale) can explain variety. Now, he *is* pretty flakey at times, and if you read a bunch of Romantic poetry about nature (especially Wordsworth) and then turn around and read Darwin, it becomes clear that he's got some odd ideas about "nature." For instance, throughout Origin he consistently says things that amount to "nature has the best interests of the species at heart" and "nature will take care of things." It's not really all that much of a problem for his theory, but it does indicate his biases. And he is, in the end, very much a creature of the Victorian period, which means that he's got tremendous faith in the inherent goodness of progress. This doesn't mean that he sees humanity as the top/end/acme of all this. Just that progress is good. And one of the neat things about his theory is that, because he doesn't propose an "end" to it all, it's little more than a description of a never-ending progress.
Cheers
Scott
As far as Christians embracing science. I believe that the universe is 13.8 billion years old. I believe that the universe started with a big bang. Bolth of those beliefs are very well founded in scientific discovery. These discoveries don't conflict at all with the Bible. I personally think that some of the Christians that believe the world is only 10,000 years old need to maybe re-think their position a bit in light of experiments such as COBE and the work done on relativity. Its interesting to note that Einstein's theory of general relativity is one of the most verified theories in all of science. I have heard that it has been verified even more than Newton's three laws.
Just my thoughts
Originally posted by sCreeD
[B]Um, no. I think he's laughing at the bit were the Catholic Church executed Galileo. (They didn't. He wasn't.)
Galileo died a very old man (especially for that time) under house arrest after he was "persuaded" to recant his work.
Apologies, my error. Where did I get that from???...probably mixing it up with Giordano Bruno. And he wasn't executed for astronomical "heresies" oh well...
he was executed by the Church.
...and his middle finger can be seen in all its shriveled glory on display at the Museo di Storia della Scienza telling the Church to f**k off for all of eternity.
Originally posted by midwinter
That's pretty much it, although Darwin is pretty clear that anything that helps an organism reproduce will also result in its characteristics being pssed on.
It always baffles me (and Darwin is pretty clear about this, too) that people see and reap the benefits of the things Darwin describes (pedigreed dogs, cows bred for their size, etc) and yet don't think that the theory holds water. Although the specifics of it have been fine-tuned over the years since 1858, it's still the most viable of any other theories. And it's certainly better than saying pixies did it.
Actually, Darwin pretty explicitly tries to distance himself from ANY claims about evolution and teleology. It was LeMarck who did that, and it didn't work out very well. All Darwin really says is that these small mutations over long periods of time (and he's probably wrong about the time-scale) can explain variety. Now, he *is* pretty flakey at times, and if you read a bunch of Romantic poetry about nature (especially Wordsworth) and then turn around and read Darwin, it becomes clear that he's got some odd ideas about "nature." For instance, throughout Origin he consistently says things that amount to "nature has the best interests of the species at heart" and "nature will take care of things." It's not really all that much of a problem for his theory, but it does indicate his biases. And he is, in the end, very much a creature of the Victorian period, which means that he's got tremendous faith in the inherent goodness of progress. This doesn't mean that he sees humanity as the top/end/acme of all this. Just that progress is good. And one of the neat things about his theory is that, because he doesn't propose an "end" to it all, it's little more than a description of a never-ending progress.
Cheers
Scott
You think people don't understand the difference between manipulation of a trait and the entire creation of a new trait?
If you are a bacteria with a light sensitive spot. How does it suddenly become something closer to an eye? All the pieces of an eye must be present for it to work propertly. Likewise before DNA was well known about we could just jump the gap here with regard to how it turned out. Now we know that it wouldn't be a mutation in just one spot of the DNA chain. Heck just the color of eyes has several genes attached to it. You have whole chains of DNA that would need to "mutate" in just the right fashion.
People think simplistically and think, oh one small change and hey, I'm an X-man. But in reality DNA does not work like that. The biggest challenges to evolution are going to be from biochemistry, not religion.
Nick
Originally posted by trumptman
If you are a bacteria with a light sensitive spot. How does it suddenly become something closer to an eye? All the pieces of an eye must be present for it to work properly.
You claim in another post to know the theory "better than most", yet your understanding of scientific method and the theory of evolution is severely flawed.
I doubt you would pass a grade school test on the subject, based on the lies you are repeating in this thread.
Have you ever even read a book on the subject? If you had, rather than sourcing your arguments from crackpot religious fundamentalists, you would have realised that every single one of your arguments has been definitively refuted time and time again.
If you're truly interested in doing anything other than preaching to the choir, then you may want to do some reading:
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html
edit: I want to draw attention to one piece in particular as a particularly lucid intro and overview of evolution and surrounding controversies--http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
And as to your specific question about eyes (which is such an old saw, I'm sure you must be trolling--or badly misinformed about your own level of knowledge):
Organs of great complexity can arise by slow degrees. A suitable sequence of events has been found, and there are numerous sea creatures alive today whose eyes are stages in that sequence.
It has been calculated that a complete fish eye could have evolved in less than 350,000 years, with almost no mutations. Something that easy should have happened many times, and in fact, taxonomists think that eyes have evolved more than 40 times.
from: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/eye.html
If you're truly interested in doing anything other than preaching to the choir, then you may want to do some reading:
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html
I would also recommend that anyone who's interested in this actually read all of the Origin of Species. It's a nice read.
Originally posted by stupider...likeafox
You claim in another post to know the theory "better than most", yet your understanding of scientific method and the theory of evolution is severely flawed.
I doubt you would pass a grade school test on the subject, based on the lies you are repeating in this thread.
Have you ever even read a book on the subject? If you had, rather than sourcing your arguments from crackpot religious fundamentalists, you would have realised that every single one of your arguments has been definitively refuted time and time again.
If you're truly interested in doing anything other than preaching to the choir, then you may want to do some reading:
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html
edit: I want to draw attention to one piece in particular as a particularly lucid intro and overview of evolution and surrounding controversies--http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
And as to your specific question about eyes (which is such an old saw, I'm sure you must be trolling--or badly misinformed about your own level of knowledge):
from: http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/eye.html
You aren't being serious are you? You must know that on a biochemical level that finding things that happen to show a sequence regarding possible eye formation and then somehow proclaiming them to all be connected is the height of stupidity.
Darwin then went on to describe how some simple animals have only "aggregates of pigment-cells...without any nerves ... [which] serve only to distinguish light from darkness." Then, in animals a bit more complex, like "star-fish," there exist "small depressions in the layer of [light-sensitive cells] -- depressions which are "filled ... with transparent gelatinous matter and have a clear outer covering, "like the cornea in the higher animals." These eyes lack a lens, but the fact that the light sensitive pigment lies in a "depression" in the skin makes it possible for the animal to tell more precisely from what direction the light is coming. And the more cup-shaped the depression, the better it helps "focus" the image like a simple "box-camera" may do, even without a lens. Likewise in the human embryo, the eye is formed from a "sack-like fold in the skin."
I suppose that I could say human females are likely to evolve pouches in their fronts like kangaroos. I mean they already keep the child there protectively during the previous 10 months. The child fits there and the mothers hips are designed to take the weight. Other mammals already have pouches, etc.
Yet if I suggested this in seriousness it would be laughable because there is much more to a woman having a pouch then just a hole in the front of her.
The leaps you make here, based off of the most basic external observations are astounding. You are willing to jump from different species in different classes and do so because why? Because it is convenient? It might help with your belief, but keep your religion to yourself. I was not asking for a fossil record because eyes are obviously soft tissue that don't survive.
I am saying that on a biochemical level it isn't just manipulation. It is profoundly more complex than the silly little explanation you posit there.
As for your "computer model" about eye generation.
In his recent book, River Out of Eden (Basic Books, 1995), Richard Dawkins points out how Nilsson and Pelger set up a computer model of evolving eyes to determine if a smooth gradient of change exists from a pigmented eye spot to the camera eye with a lens and cornea, and how long it would take such a transformation to occur. They employed pessimistic figures for the amounts of change possible per generation -- giving their model only 50% "heritability" (many human traits are over 50% inheritable), and chose pessimistic values for the coefficient of variation (how much variation there typically is in a population). And they determined that Darwinian evolution could produce a good camera eye in less than a half a million years! That's a mere "blink of the eye" in geologic time!
You don't understand the leap of logic here? The prejudiced pre-belief that brings about the intended results?
The computer program is "given" all the parts to make a good eye from the onset. You don't call that a little bit of a prejudice of belief? The computer model just had to adjust the parts and pass on the best adjustments to the next generation. This again is manipulation of existing traits with a computer and no external factors.
They also conveniently gloss over how those generaltions of animals with all the "imperfect" eyes manage to get by for half a million years when they can't see. Again a little leap in logic I do not care to make. The computer program pre-supposes that they would not be killed off completely by another organism.
Again when you take this to the biochemical level. When you think that the photo sensative spot is made of a cell that processes chemical reactions on dozens of different ways, the level of complexity sky rockets. When you consider how each one of these proteins had to "evolve" without chemical interference it becomes even more complex. When you consider that they need receptors and a means of evoking change at the other end of the chain of their reaction, it becomes even more complex. Evolution does not explain this level of complexity.
See it isn't that the lense just happens to have the wrong curvature for that generation. What happens to the complex cascade of chemical factors beyond that lense that have to work perfectly to process the chemical changes that occur in sensing that light.
Evolution works well on a large level, saying if you put to big dogs together you are likely to get a bigger dog. Yet if I asked if you if you put a big dog and a big human together what would you get, you would scoff. The reason? Well their DNA won't combine. Chemistry is a zero sum game. Evolution cannot explain things on the cellular level and even with a basic understanding of DNA we can see that the two would not combine. Even if we pounded them against each other 100 million times over 100 million years.
That is the point, chemical reactions do not have such logical leaps. We are all made up of millions of chemical reactions. Your eyes right now do not just have a lens and retina, etc. They have do not even just have rods and cones. They have millions of chemical reactions occuring just to read this text. They must be the right chemicals, have the right receptors, etc. This adds profound level of complexity to your hey the eye can manage to focus in half a million years if I give it a few basic, nonchemical parts argument.
Now I would also challange you and anyone else to find a single post in this thread where I have mentioned religion. You cannot get past setting up the strawman of religion. I am not advocating, nor even arguing a religious answer to any of these questions. Evolution breaks down badly on the cellular level. To say one animal survived better than another because its blood clots better is as elementary as saying the earth is flat. To understand the dozens of chemical reactions that must occur and explain them is much harder. It is also something evolution does not explain. I have said that this fact should be taught in school. I have not claimed a young earth, Noah's Ark or any other such nonsense, nor that they should be taught in school. Leave your prejudice at the door and address what I type, otherwise you are arguing with yourself as a form of mental masterbation.
Nick
The number of coincidences that make up our current universe for example are to numerous to be plausibly ignored. As a result cosmologists are pondering the multiverse theory. I'll quote a nice article from that creationist rag, Scientific American.
There is speculation that not only there other universes that don't have the huge number of attributes that just happen to be so friendly to life like ours happen to be.
There is further speculation that not only are there other universes with different attributes but that they run parallel to ours and even split apart based off of decisions and attributes what appear to be coincidences aren't necessarily, etc.
actually, when you think about it there's nothing special at all about our fitting so well into our universe.
the universe comes first, and has a set of very specific parameters. life evolves within said universe. the life that does well in this universe can't help but be tailored to match the eviornment that it exists in. if it didn't it would die, or something that was a better match would come along and wipe it out.
the only way i'd be impressed with the universe matching us perfectly would be if we came first, and found a universe that fit us perfectly. it only makes sense that we fit the universe we came from.
kind of like looking for a habitable planet somewhere else. of course the Earth is a perfect match, that's where we're from. now finding another planet like it will be impressive, but i am not at all surprised that we match up well with the planet of our origins.
that said, my final thought on the general subject is this. why can't biblical passage and scientific theory match eachother just fine in this case. the bible has many passages that aren't literal. when it's said that God created the Earth in seven days, and goes over each step, how are we to know that each day isn't millions or billions of our years. it's a day to God. that could be anything to us. and the weird part is, if you look over the order in which God creates the Earth, it is approximately the order in which we think things came along according to evolution, starting with the forming of the planet.
for those with a good knowledge of science, read through the section in Genesis, only with the mindset that the "days" mentioned within could be any number of years. see if it doesn't match up a bit better then.
Originally posted by trumptman
Evolution breaks down badly on the cellular level. To say one animal survived better than another because its blood clots better is as elementary as saying the earth is flat. To understand the dozens of chemical reactions that must occur and explain them is much harder. It is also something evolution does not explain. I have said that this fact should be taught in school.
I was taught that evolution can't or doesn't yet explain everything. Who isn't taught that?
that said, my final thought on the general subject is this. why can't biblical passage and scientific theory match eachother just fine in this case. the bible has many passages that aren't literal. when it's said that God created the Earth in seven days, and goes over each step, how are we to know that each day isn't millions or billions of our years. it's a day to God. that could be anything to us. and the weird part is, if you look over the order in which God creates the Earth, it is approximately the order in which we think things came along according to evolution, starting with the forming of the planet.
Alcimedes you hit the nail right on the head. That's exactly what I think happened. Instead of 7 literal days, it was 7 ages. I think people are a too literal on that fact. We use day with a great amount of flexibility. For example "back in the day of the dinosaur" or "in the days of the Romans". We all know that by day we mean era. Also Genesis was written in Hebrew, where the hebrew word for day does have a lot of different meanings.
As far as earth being "designed" for us, you have to look at how incredbily special our solar system is. There are so many parameters that are tuned to have life on earth that it makes it unlikely there is life anywhere else in the universe.
Originally posted by BR
Trumpet, there wouldn't be an entire generation of animals with eyes that don't work because those organisms that have the poorly developed eye WILL NOT SURVIVE. Only the favorable mutation would. Think about it. Now, let me tell you that I don't believe that the current iteration of evolutionary theory is going to be the last. We still need to gather more information and refine it. However, your arguments against it are pretty much copied word for word from a site with an agenda such as biblephysics.
Under the computer program he was proposing it is likely that multiple favorable and unfavorable traits would occur with regard to the eyes. They let the computer pick the eye that was more capable of focusing and it "survived" and passed on its better eyesight.
Using this model it took half a million years to get an eye that focus properly. In the meantime had a lot of eyes that just couldn't see and so yes that is was my contention they shouldn't have survived. But because it was a computer model, they did survive because they had 1% less terrible vision than the other progeny. That is the bias I was addressing.
They are starting with a predetermined destination and seeing how long it would take nature to get there. This fallacy is committed often in evolutionary theory and is simply dismissed with, well it must be the destination because that is what survived. Real life is not this simplistic. Humans have a range of vision even in modern day. Some are near or farsighted, etc. We have determined what 20/20 vision is by using a norm. They are taking a norm and working backward with it. While the reverse is true. They take the norm and have the computer model determine which off-spring are closest to it and they survive. In nature though this just isn't so. Likewise in the early stages there are no norms, there isn't even functionality. Those animals wouldn't survive because they couldn't see by any true measure. Again we aren't even close to the true complexity. What types of proteins would be transmitted by cones that have adapted to unfocused or semi-focused light for 100 generations. When you change the focus, you change the proteins activated, you change the receptors that are necessary to process those proteins, you change the type of cells and proteins in the optic nerve carrying those signals. It goes on and on. It is too simplistic to just say, it does because it does. It is akin to religion only instead of God they trust Nature.
I don't trust the deity of Nature.
Nick
Originally posted by alcimedes
actually, when you think about it there's nothing special at all about our fitting so well into our universe.
the universe comes first, and has a set of very specific parameters. life evolves within said universe. the life that does well in this universe can't help but be tailored to match the eviornment that it exists in. if it didn't it would die, or something that was a better match would come along and wipe it out.
the only way i'd be impressed with the universe matching us perfectly would be if we came first, and found a universe that fit us perfectly. it only makes sense that we fit the universe we came from.
kind of like looking for a habitable planet somewhere else. of course the Earth is a perfect match, that's where we're from. now finding another planet like it will be impressive, but i am not at all surprised that we match up well with the planet of our origins.
that said, my final thought on the general subject is this. why can't biblical passage and scientific theory match eachother just fine in this case. the bible has many passages that aren't literal. when it's said that God created the Earth in seven days, and goes over each step, how are we to know that each day isn't millions or billions of our years. it's a day to God. that could be anything to us. and the weird part is, if you look over the order in which God creates the Earth, it is approximately the order in which we think things came along according to evolution, starting with the forming of the planet.
for those with a good knowledge of science, read through the section in Genesis, only with the mindset that the "days" mentioned within could be any number of years. see if it doesn't match up a bit better then.
That is a bit too assuming. The thing that is nice about science is that it can test these assumptions. They can find out small characteristics that have huge overwhelming consequences. They can input what if gravity were .00005% stronger or what if the charge of a proton were .00003% more.
When they attempting even the most slight adjustments the universe literally cannot function as it does. It is so prevelent that this is why the multiverse theory has been put forth. Scientists in good conscience cannot say, well it just happened this when literally every variable turned out just right. The multiverse says that there are numerous other universes where the results did not turn out like here. Most of these universes would not be usable, habitable, or even measurable since they do not follow our physical and natural laws. They are thus undetectable and by sciences own admission must be accepted pretty much on faith.
I posted a link that you quoted in your reply a search on multiverse will turn up more material.
Nick
I've seen quite a few pseudo-scientific arguments brought forward by creationists to shatter the trust in the theory of evolution, but how do they try to refute Buddhist or Hindu (insert any other religion) creation myths?
For some reason a pisssing match between different schools of creationism seems to promise tremendous entertainment value...
Originally posted by trumptman
When they attempting even the most slight adjustments the universe literally cannot function as it does.
the problem with discussing this fact with people who dont do science all the time is that there is a recognised understanding that if something cannot exist it will not be observed, ie a universe whose gravity varies by 1/r^2.1 is unstable, in fact the only universe where a force that pulls inward the way gravity does has to have this force vary by 1/r^2 to be stable. now this is where people throw in: 'what is the coincidence of that -- there must be a god...' but if it wasnt that way we wouldnt exist and we wouldnt observe it so big deal if it is that way, it has to be for us to even see it let alone quantitate it and put it on paper -- it suggests nothing of a deity at all, but the mere fact that if a large carnivorous creature consumed you parents before they reproduced, then you wouldnt even be arguing this point.
but i fail to see the relationship of this with evolution.
Originally posted by amyklai
The thing I'm really curious about : how do creationists deal with other creation myths?
I've seen quite a few pseudo-scientific arguments brought forward by creationists to shatter the trust in the theory of evolution, but how do they try to refute Buddhist or Hindu (insert any other religion) creation myths?
For some reason a pisssing match between different schools of creationism seems to promise tremendous entertainment value...
If your curious why don't you ask them in a thread in which that is the topic.
Nick
Originally posted by billybobsky
the problem with discussing this fact with people who dont do science all the time is that there is a recognised understanding that if something cannot exist it will not be observed, ie a universe whose gravity varies by 1/r^2.1 is unstable, in fact the only universe where a force that pulls inward the way gravity does has to have this force vary by 1/r^2 to be stable. now this is where people throw in: 'what is the coincidence of that -- there must be a god...' but if it wasnt that way we wouldnt exist and we wouldnt observe it so big deal if it is that way, it has to be for us to even see it let alone quantitate it and put it on paper -- it suggests nothing of a deity at all, but the mere fact that if a large carnivorous creature consumed you parents before they reproduced, then you wouldnt even be arguing this point.
but i fail to see the relationship of this with evolution.
It is because it is... sounds more like zen then science to me.
Nick
As the amount of knowledge is increasing each day, some elements came in contradiction of the theory. In this case, you make her evolve, or you change it for a better one.