My 2 cents on Creation and Evolution

[Xevious]

:cool:

Evolution is a wonderful idea. It's very elligant, beautiful, and certanly has large bodes of evidence in it's favor. I myself find it very compelling, but I have to admit I have lots of glaring questions reguarding how it works and wether or not it really works. Understand that I am not saying Evolution is false, just that their are lots of reasons why people, including a semi-silent but persistant underground of non-creationist scientists are unconvinced of it's entire truthfulness.

No one has ever seen an animal species evolve into another one. Oh sure we see a given microbe and plant species improve on itself, but we have not seen in animals any kind of species transmutation within the lifetime of science. We have used genetic manipulation to activate dormant genes in flightless birds to cause them to grow teeth. We have seen black moths survive in coal soot over white ones because of their natural camoflage. We have seen birds in the galopogus islands grow larger bills as an adaptation to food supply due to a massive fire. But, in each of those events the species did not "evolve". When the factory was shut down, the number of black and white moths returned to normal, and in the Galopogus finches, the beak sizes eventually returned to normal.

On the other hand, micro-evolution does happen. Species do indeed adopt to enviornments or diseases. But, that has nothing to do with wether or not those given animals or plants can still suscesfully interbreed with given members of their species. When Europeans came to North America and many Native Americans did indeed get wiped out by their diseases, that does not mean that the Europeans could not interbreed with the Native Americans. Though the Native Americans were not adopted to European diseases, that does not mean that they were not genetically compatible with the Europeans.

The big stumbling block for Evolution in my mind lies not in adaptation, but in reproduction. In human reproduction and in the reproduction of all live-birth animals, the mothers body is very intollerant to forign organisms. This means that the genetics of the offspring cannot be differnt from hers species wide by anything less than very tiny fraction of a percent. Otherwise, her body will reject the offspring through miscarrage, and if she does not the offspring will not be viable. Downs syndrome, mental retardation, and other similar disorders are examples of what happens when the genetics of a human child are abnormal. If we existed in a state of nature, predators would pick off such weakly ones in no time if their mothers did not abandon them.

My 2 cents.

[James R]

<i>The big stumbling block for Evolution in my mind lies not in adaptation, but in reproduction. In human reproduction and in the reproduction of all live-birth animals, the mothers body is very intollerant to forign organisms. This means that the genetics of the offspring cannot be differnt from hers species wide by anything less than very tiny fraction of a percent.</i>

Your argument falls down because you assume that all mothers have "static" genomes. You assume we start with genome A, which can carry a baby with genome B (a little different) but not one with genome C (because it will be rejected).

But what if mother A produces baby B, and then baby B is capable of carrying baby C (even though A could not)? Baby C goes on to produce baby D etc. Eventually, when we look at baby Z, we discover that A and Z could not interbreed. It seems that a new species Z has evolved from species A.

[Chagur]

Welcome to Sciforums.

If I give you 1¢ back, will you leave? :D

Take care, and enjoy. ;)

[Xev]

Great. Now newbs will confuse me with a creationist poster.

*Hides in shame*

a semi-silent but persistant underground of non-creationist scientists are unconvinced of it's entire truthfulness.

Viva la resistance. :rolleyes:

No one has ever seen an animal species evolve into another one.

You've heard of fossils, right?

If we existed in a state of nature, predators would pick off such weakly ones in no time if their mothers did not abandon them.

Evolution by natural selection disproves evolution? What have you been smoking?

Welcome to sciforums, btw.

[Joeman]

I thought you two might be related. I thought she might be some sort of derivative of Xev, but not anymore after reading her post :D

[Xevious]

With reguards to my genetics argument, your pointing out correctly that Genome A, B, and C are indeed a transmutation. However, you are not taking the genome of the father into account. As long as the females are mating with other members of her species, her genetics will remain normal for the species. Darwin argued that they must live as part of a seperate population, which will interbreed certain characteristics through local genetic closeness. The problem is, nature does not allow that to happen either.

The world's Cheeta population is in serious jeopardy because they are all very close genetically. Because no "new" genes are being introduced, the Cheetas have a very high mortality rate amoung it's young. Evolution demands however, that the genetic closeness of the Cheeta population would be spurring evolution because of interbreeding of close genes. However, that is not what's happening. Cheetas are dying out. Clearly, genetic closeness kills a species, not improves it.

[MRC_Hans]

Sigh

What happens is that two large populations get separated somehow. This needs not be a physical separation, it could also be part of the population feeding on something different. We see this all the time, but normally the two populations dont diverge permanently, it could happen however.

This species division, however, is partly arbitrary. While we can all agree that girafees and moths are different species, the case is much more complex with others. Take horses and donkeys; they can interbreed, but the offspring is not normally fertile; one day, though, a fertile mule might appear. Among fish, especially fresh water fish, many species can interbreed if their habitats come in contact.

All this is damn futile anyhow. Try to look at it this way:

You see a mountain before you. You cannot understand how that mountain has come into existence, and the explanations you get from learned people are incomplete and not entirely coherent. Which conclusion do you draw:

a) Since the learned people cannot explaint it, the mountain is not there.

b) The mountain is clearly there, but it seems the learned people dont know everything.

The mountain I'm talking about is the mountain of evidence that evolution happened: Fossils, the whole family tree of interelated species, the adaptation we see everywhere, the entire genetic system we have quite recently discovered. All findings support that evolution has taken place and is still taking place.

So there are a number of things we cannot explaing in detail? What of it? We cannot explain a lot of things about how the Earth is functioning, does that lead you to doubt its existence??

Hans

[James R]

Xevious,

Your introduction of a distinction between males and females absolutely no impact on the validity of my previous argument.

As for the Cheetas, inbreeding tends to make a group more susceptible to disease and the like. I don't know why you conclude that evolution should be "spurred" by inbreeding. Perhaps you could explain that for me.

[Xevious]

You and I both know inbreeding causes birth defects and other abnormalities. We see it in our own species and in others all the time.

[Adam]

And as we can see from the real world, rather than spurring sudden evolutionary changes to help the species survive, that inbreeding is just killing off the species.

[James R]

<i>You and I both know inbreeding causes birth defects and other abnormalities.</i>

Yes. And that should spur evolution...how exactly?

[Pugget]

Are we confused yet?

Inbreeding is more likely to give rise to genetic defects... but it can also double the potecy of desirable traits. Study how it worked out in the royal familes of Europe with hemophila in Victoria's line. Keep in mind that inbreeding is carefully used by animal breeders in an attempt to get recessive, rare traits to be expressed, such as albinism.

To say it spurs speciation wouldn't really be accurate. What spurs speciation is isolation of populations, and differing environmental pressures that cause nature to "select" different traits for continuation.

Although humans shun the thought of breeding with relatives, it is not always as deadly as it is said to be. It is detrimental over time, however. Variety is not just the spice of life -- it is the main dish. Learn about meiosis and sexual reproduction on the molecular level, and you will see how awesome a power it is. Not only independent assortment of chromosomes, but crossing over, mutations (of various types)... it's enough to make me want to read that chapter in my biology book I "liberated" all over again!

And this variety is what drives change in sexually reproducing organisms. No two are 100% the same... it's natural that one may be the better model, to breed with another better model, and hope that their offspring can be better yet.

Or so I think. Was that wordy or what?

[Pugget]

Downs syndrome, mental retardation, and other similar disorders are examples of what happens when the genetics of a human child are abnormal

I missed this the first time.

Down's syndrome and often mental retardation are caused by errors in meiosis. Sometimes sister chromatids do not separate and the sex cell has an extra chromosome or two, or it is missing one or two. Many serious disorders are of this nature. The disorders are not encoded in DNA and passed on, but are caused by chance errors in cell division. Down's syndrome can not be eliminated or increased in the population as far as evolution's mechanism's are concerned, unless some people are somehow genetically coded for more cell division errors.

Just nitpicking.;)

[Xevious]

It's true that more desireable traits can become more dominant due to inbreeding. However, at what cost? Those individuals often tend to have other traits that are detrimental, or they have mental instabilities. The actions of the Royal Families is evidence enough of that. Maybe they stayed in power a while, but eventually they were swept out of power by the masses, and they did indeed become more and more unstable with each generation.

The Dog petigree business is in serious trouble because of inbreeding. Their is tons of info on that subject.

[MRC_Hans]

However, the discussion of inbreeding is entirely irrelvant to the discussion of evolution.

Hans

[overdoze]

Not entirely. Humans have a very low genetic variability given the time our species has existed (when compared to other primates, such as chimps for example.) It has been conjectured that at some time near its origin, our species teetered on extinction. That means our ancestors at least at that one point in time did a lot of inbreeding.

Inbreeding helps combat the problem of genetic dilution. For example, even if a mutation arises it is less likely to take hold if the population is large and varied because every time during reproduction it only has a 50% chance (if dominant) and a much lesser chance (if recessive) of being passed on to progeny and spread to the point that it becomes common in the population.

For humans (and immediate ancestors), this is prevented by the fact that historically they lived in relatively small, tight communities -- so there must have been much more inbreeding than there is today. Only with relatively recent technological progress can we have large concentrations of population supporting themselves and/or being in contact with other, remote populations.

[Xevious]

If your inbreeding and getting genetically closer, the new DNA can only be introduced by random mutations, which augment survivability. I see where Darwin's thinking was going, but I don't believe that nature allows this to happen. What your talking about is microevolution eventually adding up to macroevolution, and reproduction so far does not allow this to happen. Extreme changes of DNA which would add say a 3rd eye for example are rejected by reproduction because they are not at all normal for the species.

[le coq]

"No one has ever seen an animal species evolve into another one. "

I got something for you to smoke. Then you'll see.

Seriously, though-

go read something by Karl Popper or something about logic and argumentation in general, and what fallacies are. Read about something called Hempel's Raven. Then you'll take care not to use such statements like "no one has ever seen..."

Xevious, you seem to not see a similar property in adaptation on a micro level, and evolution, which is a macro-level phenomenon that occurs over billions of years. On the net you can find a timeline of the earth's history, as elegantly posed by Carl Sagan as a single calendar year, that civilization and all their observations of finches arise only in the final seconds before midnight of December 31. Life comes along in late September or so (beginning of the fiscal year), but that's a lot of weeks to make some changes in management before posting first quarter earnings- sorry my metaphor client got stuck on my editor here. So, getting back to billions of years, that's a big laboratory. Plenty of time for lots of species to develop, and, alas, die out, even through inbreeding. Every species is an experiment, a test, a hypothesis, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they are considered a failure upon extinction, it's that they're no longer relevant to the ecosystem. I wonder much the same about our own species. I don't know if you're taking an ID tack or outright creationism, but prepare to be crushed if that's the case. You seem to know a thing or two about evolution and biology. Now go learn a third.

Le Coq

Check
http://www.upfromdragons.com/01mirror.htm

[le coq]

Originally posted by Xevious
With reguards to my genetics argument, your pointing out correctly that Genome A, B, and C are indeed a transmutation. However, you are not taking the genome of the father into account. As long as the females are mating with other members of her species, her genetics will remain normal for the species. Darwin argued that they must live as part of a seperate population, which will interbreed certain characteristics through local genetic closeness. The problem is, nature does not allow that to happen either.

The world's Cheeta population is in serious jeopardy because they are all very close genetically. Because no "new" genes are being introduced, the Cheetas have a very high mortality rate amoung it's young. Evolution demands however, that the genetic closeness of the Cheeta population would be spurring evolution because of interbreeding of close genes. However, that is not what's happening. Cheetas are dying out. Clearly, genetic closeness kills a species, not improves it.

I can't leave this alone, there's so much rich material.

". As long as the females are mating with other members of her species, her genetics will remain normal for the species. "

Huh? You're interchanging plural and singular concepts here...
What does "remain normal" mean?
A daughter is always genetically different from the mother. A genetic line can bend, but if it ever breaks (as in the case of a mule, or an offspring of normal parents that is born sterile or with a wildly mutated genome that won't find purchase), it doesn't continue. As days go by, my dirty vegas, the line may be far and away very different from earlier generations. We may not be able to mate with early homo sapiens with procreative success. Given enough grant money, I'd give it a shot, but I would say with good probability that I could go far enough back that I would find a great-to-some-power grandmother that I won't be able to have kids with. But I bet I could have decent kids that could make it most of the way through public school if I were to procreate with, say, my great-great grandmother. Where am I going with this? You tell me. I forgot.

Cheetahs, who appreciate being spelled with an h, are dying out because of a declining gene pool. This means that there isn't enough variety in the species, and so the inbreeding of cousins and sisters are closing in on themselves, because their habitat is closing in. It's like being at a trading card convention and most everyone has all the same cards. It's a bum convention. The market has been saturated, and rarity and true variety has been depressed. Almost all species have to expand to a sustainable volume and territory, and most eventually split and travel for distant lands, and take divergent paths genetically. Some go past the current limits of territory and volume, overpopulate, and die off back to sustainability or even worse. Some are prevented from propagating to these limits for whatever reasons (asteroids, bulldozers, etc.). The plight of cheetahs may have something to do with human-induced factors. In any case, there is a delimiting point that a species cannot exist under, in terms of variety of genomes, to continue propagation for an indefinite amount of generations. Cheetahs have most likely slipped under this point, and may not return.
RIP, dudes. Some of us will represent.

And nothing in Evolution "demands" a declining gene pool to spontaneously "phoenix" itself out of a jam. It doesn't rule it out, though.

Le Coq

[Xevious]

"Science is not only about fact but orientation -- who and what we are. We are part of the universe, an instance of life, and an individual expression of what is still only partially understood - the phenomena of mind and consciousness. What is the relationship between us here -- question asking and fact seeking intelligent beings -- to this much larger story of all things? The cosmic mirror aims to put you in touch -- here we seek to stop you reading this book as yet another about science and instead get you to see your hidden self. You - here as you breath and reflect -- are history from the Big Bang, the formation of the Earth, the origin of life and the varied stages of biological existence that led to you. But you need to see - that other self in the mirror."

All you have to do is read the 1st paragraph and see what science is from the prespective of the author. It's about seeking a spiritual connection with the universe and with life around us. It's about finding a wonderful meaning in everything you see, and how you are a part of that. Wow, that sounds like a religion.

[Xevious]

Your guessing you couldn't interbreed with your ancestor based on wether or not you are genetically compatible with them. If they are a member of your species, they are genetically compatible. That's the definition of species, end of story. Your statement is most unscientific.

[le coq]

"Science is not only about fact but orientation -- who and what we are. We are part of the universe, an instance of life, and an individual expression of what is still only partially understood - the phenomena of mind and consciousness. What is the relationship between us here -- question asking and fact seeking intelligent beings -- to this much larger story of all things? The cosmic mirror aims to put you in touch -- here we seek to stop you reading this book as yet another about science and instead get you to see your hidden self. You - here as you breath and reflect -- are history from the Big Bang, the formation of the Earth, the origin of life and the varied stages of biological existence that led to you. But you need to see - that other self in the mirror."

I'm sorry, who are we quoting here? I see no mention of spiritual anything. This secular humanist understands wonder and amazement in the universe and its observable properties without jumping into an Imaginary Friend Club.

Le Coq

[le coq]

Originally posted by Xevious
Your guessing you couldn't interbreed with your ancestor based on wether or not you are genetically compatible with them. If they are a member of your species, they are genetically compatible. That's the definition of species, end of story. Your statement is most unscientific.

The point I was getting at (and to which I thought I had arrived) is that evolution states that we came from species that are not we. I, fait accompli, should have a great-to-some-power grandmother, but she would be of unlike genetic compatability, and yet we would still look alike enough to not mistake one another for members of different genera (we might even be attracted to one another). Species, as a practical definition, delineates creatures from one another in coeval terms, but it's more difficult to differentiate them from one another in ancestral terms. When two types of creatures cannot produce offspring, they are of different species, yes, continuation of story. If I came from homo habilus (i.e., a particular ancestor of mine that happens to be what we'd call homo habilus), does that make us part of the same species? At what point did that "break" occur? I'm hypothesizin' that it's not (in the case of every species' ancestry) a discrete rift, but a slight bend over a long time. I believe that was my point. However, the steps are small and gradual. Every generation is a tiny iteration in a long chain. Now, if we can't agree that we all came from ancestors with genes incompatible to us today, then we really don't have a scientific course of discussion to follow from here.

I apologize if my statements seemed a little ad hominem, but I was attempting a gentle ribbing, rather than outright ridicule. At least you're not as bad as some people, like - I dare not say his name, but it started with a t and ended with ruthseeker, who had not the slightest grip on logical argument. I say "had" hopefully, as in hopefully he's gone for good...

Le Coq

[le coq]

"We may not be able to mate with early homo sapiens with procreative success. "

Yes, here was my mistake. A categorical one, a semantic one even, but the gist of my larger argument, I would argue, is scientific. Definitely not "most unscientific." Right?

Le Coq

[Xevious]

That was what I was questioning. Yes, that is the statement you made and what's why I was tossing your argument out the window. Differnt genera is another question, but the chatch is that even that is debated amoung scientists, at least in the case of neanderthals / cro-magnon. For all we know, you would have to go all the way back to say Homo Erectus before you found someone you couldn't interbreed with. I'm degressing, but at that point your talking about a differnt species still.

(BTW - why would you find the incompatible ancestor attractive ewwww! - Sorry, had to tease you a bit on that."

"Now, if we can't agree that we all came from ancestors with genes incompatible to us today, then we really don't have a scientific course of discussion to follow from here."

Does this mean not beliving in Evolution is unscientific? Just because it is the concensus of the majority of the scientific community does not mean that one can disagree IF they believe they have sufficient naturalistic reason. I believe I do, and it's okay if you don't agree. One thing you may not be realizing is that if you look historically, some of the most horrible mistakes in Science generally did have wide agreement (concensus) and were considered fact. Just because Evolution is the ONLY theory which explains nature's origins in a non-theist point of view does not mean it should be blindly adheared to. Your statement too connects to something else I would like to mention.

"I'm sorry, who are we quoting here? I see no mention of spiritual anything. This secular humanist understands wonder and amazement in the universe and its observable properties without jumping into an Imaginary Friend Club."

God as an onipotent does not have to be involved in order for spirituality to be involved. God is, in the strictest and widest sense, the mystic force which makes everything in the universe work as we want to believe it. It doesn't matter if someone says "God created biodiversity." or "Darwin created biodiversity." In either case, one is looking for an answer to the age old question "Why are we here? What made us? What is our place in the grand scheme of things?" These are very religious questions, and wether or not God is involved, the author of that article you gave me is seeking the answer to religious questions in science. Last time I checked, science was not about such deep philosophial issues. When you go down that path, you allow yourself to become attached to theories which greatly appeal to you personally and shape your philosophy on how the world works, and if those ideas should be disproven, your entire worldview may be utterly destroyed. Thus, in the name of being impartial, no scientist can really afford to attach such deep meaning to his emperical beliefs.

[kmguru]

Some humans think they came from monkeys (the evolution thing). But the same humans will get very upset, if they find out that the universe is a conscious entity that is responsible for its own growth and living...(under the right conditions as with a seed or egg)

Or would they?

[Xevious]

I originally was talking about why I don't believe Evolution's current model jives with me because of animal reproduction. But yes, it became a philosophical discussion in the end - that is perhaps the biggest reason why both sides on this debate are so darned strong. It has to do with a lifetime of values and beliefs and whole worldviews.

[kmguru]

There is another area, no one talks about. As a non-biologist, I would like to bring it up....

Humans create antibodies, blood cells and other chemicals in their bodies whose mechanism is fairly well known. If someone would ask, how the bone marrow knows when to make the blood cells etc...ultimately the answer would be that we are made that way and all these things happen due to our DNA as opposed to plant DNA that does not have blood but similar activities takes place.

So, the root of life as we know it rests in DNA code. When we extend this scenario to the planet or the universe - what if there is a DNA type code that governs the creation itself?

And if we go by that code, changes occur not by chance but through that code just as antibodies are not manufactured by chance but through a predetermined recipe that comes from the DNA code.

I arrived at this conclusion after reading "a new kind of science" by Stepehn Wolfram.

my 2 cents to add here....

[overdoze]

Originally posted by kmguru
So, the root of life as we know it rests in DNA code. When we extend this scenario to the planet or the universe - what if there is a DNA type code that governs the creation itself?


Also known as the laws and constants of physics, combined with initial conditions.


And if we go by that code, changes occur not by chance but through that code just as antibodies are not manufactured by chance but through a predetermined recipe that comes from the DNA code.


If the universe is deterministic, then every instantaneous snapshot of the universe can be thought of as a "DNA code" for all the snapshots that follow. Of course then you have to live with bizzarre consequences. For example, this very text has been predetermined from the moment of universe's birth and probably for all time before that.

[kmguru]

Originally posted by overdoze
If the universe is deterministic, then every instantaneous snapshot of the universe can be thought of as a "DNA code" for all the snapshots that follow. Of course then you have to live with bizzarre consequences. For example, this very text has been predetermined from the moment of universe's birth and probably for all time before that.

That could be very likely. On the otherhand, there could be localized randomness that provides minor variations in the landscape. And if we have multiple dimensions with sub-conditions, then there could be variations of sciforums on other dimensions too....

Bizzarre?...my head hurts just thinking about it....:D

Thanks

[overdoze]

Originally posted by kmguru
Bizzarre?...my head hurts just thinking about it....:D


:D

Note to self: must get drunk, immediately! ;)

[le coq]

Originally posted by Xevious
That was what I was questioning. Yes, that is the statement you made and what's why I was tossing your argument out the window.

You didn't toss it out; you had a misunderstanding based on my misuse of the term homo sapien to mean an ancestor who might be incompatible for reproduction. And then you made the common logical mistake of not understanding the rest of what I was saying and assumed it was all wrong.

"Now, if we can't agree that we all came from ancestors with genes incompatible to us today, then we really don't have a scientific course of discussion to follow from here."

Does this mean not beliving in Evolution is unscientific?

Yeah, pretty much, which I'll get to after this...

Just because it is the concensus of the majority of the scientific community does not mean that one can disagree IF they believe they have sufficient naturalistic reason. I believe I do, and it's okay if you don't agree. One thing you may not be realizing is that if you look historically, some of the most horrible mistakes in Science generally did have wide agreement (concensus) and were considered fact. Just because Evolution is the ONLY theory which explains nature's origins in a non-theist point of view does not mean it should be blindly adheared to. Your statement too connects to something else I would like to mention.

Just because certain paradigms in science were held by the majority of the scientific community that are now disproven has no bearing on current consensus paradigms. It proves that a large group of people can be wrong about something, and this can still be the case. Methods of experiment and scientific analysis are getting more rigorous every day, so the possibility of major paradigm failure is getting less as we move into a technologically advanced society.

Evolution is not "blindly" adhered to. Evidence from all specialties support (and contest and refine various aspects of) the theory every day. Please read the following article from Scientific American, which can argue a lot better than I can against the moronic attempts of Creationist bunk:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000D4FEC-7D5B-1D07-8E49809EC588EEDF&catID=2

"I'm sorry, who are we quoting here? I see no mention of spiritual anything. This secular humanist understands wonder and amazement in the universe and its observable properties without jumping into an Imaginary Friend Club."

God as an onipotent does not have to be involved in order for spirituality to be involved. God is, in the strictest and widest sense, the mystic force which makes everything in the universe work as we want to believe it. It doesn't matter if someone says "God created biodiversity." or "Darwin created biodiversity." In either case, one is looking for an answer to the age old question "Why are we here? What made us? What is our place in the grand scheme of things?" These are very religious questions, and wether or not God is involved, the author of that article you gave me is seeking the answer to religious questions in science. Last time I checked, science was not about such deep philosophial issues.

You obviously didn't check well enough. Look up terms like cosmology, forensic anthropology, or paleontology for starters. Philosophy itself, when it operates without supernatural a priori axioms, is perfectly compatible with the logical methods of science, and vice versa. Science is greatly interested in those questions, and interested in proving the answers. Again, there is nothing in that statement (thanks for obliquely informing me that it came from the website I linked earlier; I hadn't memorized it verbatim, in fact I was using it more to illustrate Sagan's timeline) that implies spirituality or a "mystic force." I'm sorry, but those are not uniquely religious or spiritual questions.

Look, this is a science forum. Don't talk about God here, unless you can prove the concept, which you're not going to do on an internet forum thread, so don't waste our time. If you really must talk about God, please take it to a philosophy (or pseudoscience) thread.

Yes, you can have issues with certain theories within the grander paradigm of evolution, issues with some of Darwin's ideas or any other biologist or scientist in scientific history. Disproving someone's findings or weakening someone's ideas that have previously supported Evolution does not bring the whole thing down: it is not a three-legged stool. There is no one single strand that will unravel it. The earth is billions of years old. Dozens of disciplines operate on the principle that this is so. Nuclear reactors would not work if scientists could not count on certain equations and physical laws to hold up, the same laws that determine that the universe is old and so is our planet. We have fossilized remains, which take millions of years to get that way. There is no compelling scientific evidence that human beings just "appeared" on the earth in our present genetic form.

When you go down that path, you allow yourself to become attached to theories which greatly appeal to you personally and shape your philosophy on how the world works, and if those ideas should be disproven, your entire worldview may be utterly destroyed. Thus, in the name of being impartial, no scientist can really afford to attach such deep meaning to his emperical beliefs.

I would say the same thing about religious folk, and their beliefs. A good scientist, alas, can be religious. But a great scientist does not have empirical beliefs without proof. If an "idea" of his is disproven, then the original proof was not solvent, and thus a great scientist would understand. Albert Einstein could not believe in quantum mechanics becaue he thought the universe was a big clock that had been winded up, with a set of initial conditions and set of laws, and that the exact state of all matter and energy forever could be determined by rigorous calculation. Einstein's ultimate hangup was religiously expressed, ironically enough: "God does not play dice," illustrating his disbelief in subatomic processes as described by non-deterministic laws of probability. However, it was his work that changed the paradigm of physics from Classical newtonian models to quantum theory.

So, instead of digressing into all this grander stuff, how about we concentrate again on a particular of evolutionary theory that you find inconsistent?

Le Coq

[Xevious]

I'll give you that one. As I want to reitterate, I have never said I am opposed to evolution and that I totally disagree with it. I just see some problems with it. Their are plenty of inconsistanceies in the geologic record and plenty of examples of scientific fraud in the name of proving Evolution.

But, that does not disprove it either. As I have tried to say many times before, to me it's all an issue of people being so darned zealous they don't discuss it honestly.

I am glad however, to see you Le Coq are willing to discuss it honestly. I am going to take some time to carefully sort out some of my thoughts before I post again on the subject. That way, we can have a meaningful debate.

[le coq]

Cool. The 15 Answers article written by a creationist, linked in the other thread, tries to use fraud by scientists to support his stand against evolution. Recognizing fraud for just what it means to the overall data is important. There are problems with evolution, as far as describing the origin of all species with enough clarity to convince the general public. Some of the data is vague, and the strongest patterns are more easily comprehended in the field by the scientists there with their hands on it. It's difficult to explain these kinds of things to the lay person, with little training in rigorous logical thinking, who relies on charisma for trust in the source of information, and will tend to dismiss an entire explanation of something if any part of the data is unclear, time-consuming, or even wrong. It is even more difficult if the source of that aversion to logical thought is woven into a person's family and community structure, e.g., religion.

The way I see it, there's logic in explaining our external world, and then there is the logic internal to anything man creates. A Picasso painting, with eyes on the same side of the head, etc., makes sense. It has its own logic. Magritte's painting of a man looking into a mirror and seeing the back of his head, makes sense. Novels and books and even non-fiction, each has their own logic. That doesn't mean that they are necessarily "true," according to what everyone else can verify. Politics thrives on this misunderstanding. We tend to believe what we read, as long as it's written in a clear way that appeals to us. We don't like it when people lie to us, so we don't like it when Clinton lies to us. Does that mean he's a bad leader? Or a bad president? Are they the same? Does a leader need to be liked?

Science acknowledges error in measurement. It is the first thing addressed in all scientific lab courses in college. There is what we can measure, and what is the absolute truth. Nothing but what you measure can be used for data. But the absolute truth is supported by what can be measured. Religion and fiction are constructs that do not need exact measurements of external reality to convince the reader of its importance. The logic is internal to the work itself. Where philosophy began was to explain the external world in terms of itself, without supernatural explanations. In this way thinkers separated themselves from mere clergy. Science says that everything can be challenged, and scientific philosophy says that it should be. Religion says that there are some things that shouldn't be challenged, because it has been written down as true, from divine revelation. These things are true regardless of your ability to confirm them, but that you should believe in them without confirmation. Science holds that things are true regardless of our ability to confirm them, but that science is the explanation of these truths within a certain degree of error, and that the explanation should be in terms that everyone can understand. Nothing is divinely revealed, or priviliged to any one person. In a way, in what I think is interesting in political terms, science is the socialization of knowledge. No truth can be revealed from on high. What we know must be agreed upon as a conclusion with some degree of error by a community, and it must be based on what can be observed. True, this community tends to be exclusive based on intelligence, but I can think of worse methods to exclude people from access to knowledge.

Religion thrives on heirarchy, and power over the individual. I have lost a good friend, an old intellectual partner, to religious sentiment recently. It's a game, a club, it's structure and a source of comfort for people's lives. And yet the guilt it induces in people, for something as necessary as a divorce, is a construct people induce into their own lives of their own will. Of course, there is communal pressure to do so, but in the end it is still your own choice. If you're into some good philosophical reading (by a theologist), on the choices we make in human affairs, read Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse.

Man that's some good rambling.

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far.

John Le Coq