My 2 cents on Creation and Evolution

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.

 

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"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

 

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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

 

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"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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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

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.

 

I know what you mean

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Note to self: must get drunk, immediately!

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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.

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

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

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.

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

 

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.

 

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