...blame Satan.Originally Posted by Darcy88
(FTFY)
...blame Satan.
(FTFY)
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
Gary Parker noted, "according to the neutral theory of molecular evolution much of the staggering variation in species is due to mutations that are either neutral or slightly deleterious.....Interestingly, says Kimura, the amount of variation within species is too great for selection models of evolution, but too little for the neutral theory".
That judgment seems a bit too harsh and glib. There are quite a few folks who do understand biological science and Darwin's theory of evolution
by means of natural selection but who also keep an open mind about the possibility of a Creator (i.e. God) as somehow involved in the origin
of life.
It does seem that Darwin's general idea that natural selection is the driving force behind the evolution of life forms is correct. It is really a very simple
idea, and it's remarkable that no one was able to come up with such an explanation before Darwin and Wallace figured it out in the mid-19th Century...
There have been many criticisms, by serious academic biologists, about the details of natural selection. Darwin felt that evolution depended on gradual changes,
and some critics point to apparent sudden changes as evidence that Darwin was mistaken. I don't see this as a refutation of the basic rightness of natural
selection. We now have a better understanding than Darwin did about the mechanisms of heredity, whether it occurs None of this new knowledge "refutes" natural selection
as the mechanism of speciation, whether it occurs "gradually" or "suddenly."
That is to say: once "living organisms" appeared on Earth, natural selection does a fine job of explaining how these organisms could have evolved. Natural selection requires only a few very simple things to "work." What you need are the following-- an organism capable of: 1) interaction with its environment; 2) replication...specifically the reproduction of "progeny" with inherited characteristics that are similar to their "parents;" 3) the possibility that progeny may not be exactly identical to their parents; 4) competition between organisms for environmental resources; and, 4) differential survival, based on items #1 and #4, such that some organisms, based on their characteristics, will do better than others at "survival," meaning that these "more fit" organisms will produce more progeny that survive and go on to reproduce themselves.
An interesting thing about natural selection is that it has been shown to work not only for living organisms and "real" environments, but also for such non-living things as self-replicating computer programs that exist only in electronic computers... To me this is a strong indication that the idea of natural selection is a powerful explanation of "life-like" behavior, whether we are trying to understand living organisms or "inorganic" computer programs.
The real problem for a complete understanding of "life" is figuring out how living organisms came into being from the inorganic matter that was available billions of years ago when the Earth was formed. There's been a lot of speculation about this, but we still don't know how this "abiogenesis" occurred. Knowing exactly how this occurred is the deep scientific mystery for those who want a "scientific" explanation of life. I haven't read "Darwin's Doubt," but I suspect that any doubt he had about his explanation would come down to his inability to come up with a good explanation for abiogenesis.
However, once scientists come up with a compelling explanation for abiogenesis, then the Wallace-Darwin idea of natural selection can certainly explain how live evolved on Earth. Lacking such a convincing scientific explanation for the emergence of life from inorganic matter, I think we might be able to excuse folks for hypothesizing that perhaps some supernatural agent (e.g. God) created the first "living things." At that point the Creator stepped back and let those simple critters evolve. This view would be similar to the Deist's idea of God.
That isn't "intelligent design". What you've described is how Catholic, Anglican and many other churches see the hand of god in creation - they accept evolution, but believe a creator god gave it the spark.
Intelligent design proponents are a very small, but vocal group of christians who believe the entire living world was designed by a god, without the benefit of evolution, which is anathema to intelligent design. If in doubt, you could try visiting the creation museum.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
OK. So is the author of Darwin's Doubt one of these "unscientific" ID'ers, or is he a scientist who is making an argument that God created life and allowed evolution to play out according to physical laws (that he also created when He created the universe? I really haven't studied the ID arguments very much, but I'll take your word that all ID proponents simply reject natural selection as having any explanatory role in organic evolution.
I guess that there is still room for good scientists to believe in God as Creator of the universe and of life. Scientists have certainly not disproven the existence of God. the point I was trying to make in my previous post was that we still have no compelling explanation for abiogenesis, i.e. the emergence of life from non-living matter. Darwin never concerned himself with this essential first step. His theory of evolution by means of natural selection begins with the assumption that self-replicating life exists.
Stephen Meyer is a rarity - a scientist who denies science to promote intelligent design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen...lligent_design
There have been a few actual scientists who promote ID, notably Michael Behe, of Dover fame. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Behe#Court_cases
ID and science are completely incompatible, so it's a bit confusing that some scientists choose to follow that path.
I agree with you on both counts: firstly that there is room for theists (including scientists) to see a creator causing evolution to begin, and secondly, that science has not (and almost certainly never will) proven the non-existence of god/s.
In terms of a creator god that sparked the big bang or evolution, you nailed it in the previous post when you likened that belief to deism.
As far as proving non-existence, Bertrand Russell called that a century ago when he posited a teapot orbiting Venus - it's hard to prove the non-existence of something, so very few scientists would bother trying. Occam's Razor and some simple logic takes care of that anyway.
Quite right again. Abiogenesis is one of the last refuges of the creator god, but the fact that we can't explain it doesn't bother me too much. It happened 4 billion years or so ago and we can't be sure what the chemical or climatic makeup of the planet was at that stage. The proof will come when we replicate living organisms for ourselves.
It's an interesting subject, but I see no need for the hand of a god in the process. I know one very respectable scientist who has an interesting theory to do with binary input of the sun being the driver of abiogensis. Each day, the sun rises and sets, so we have a binary input of 1,0,1,0,1,0. Then the days change length, so further input is added, and so on. At this stage, I can't say that's wrong, although it seems less likely than some of the options advanced.
The other complication is what constitutes life? Is a virus "alive" even though it may not have a lipid envelope? If it is, then what are prions? They are also pieces of replicating protein, but it would be a stretch to call it alive.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
Read the thread, why don't you, before commenting or calling some responses glib? The quality of the author's "science" is addressed at great length by some bright and informed people. What I initially said is borne out in the discussion.
I did read the posts. I also understand the science of evolution, and I understand the criticism of ID by folks like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers. I don't know much about the arguments of the ID'ers, except that they are considered to be scientifically ignorant.
My main point is that the Darwin/Wallace theory of natural selection seems to be almost certainly correct, for reasons that I mentioned in my previous posts. Natural selection certainly can explain the evolution of living things. The big unanswered question is how did a "living thing" come into being from "non-living" matter in the first place? It seems that all life forms now existent derive from a single ancestor, because all life forms we know of have the same 64-bit DNA genetic code for amino acid transcription....
Once we have a self-replicating life form it is no big deal to envision how natural selection would lead to he evolution of what Darwin described in his final paragraph of The Origin of Species:
“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
This indicates that Darwin himself accepted the possibility that the emergence of life from "non-life" was somehow "breathed" into non-living matter. The word "creator" was added in the second and subsequent editions of The Origin. Referring to a "Creator" really doesn't matter...the point is that Darwin didn't have a convincing explanation for the emergence of life from non-life, and neither has anyone else since Darwin (and that includes folks like Richard Dawkins).
I have no idea what sort of arguments ID'ers are using to claim that natural selection can't explain evolution. I accept that natural selection provides a very good explanation of how complex organisms, including ourselves, evolved. I also believe that it is acceptable for scientists to assume that the origin of life from non-life (abiogenesis) could be explained by God.
Darwin was certainly a very good and honest scientist. I have little doubt that he understood that his theory of evolution by natural selection could explain how from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
The sticking point is that crucial detail of that "simple beginning."
That mystery is something that the anti-ID folks, including Dawkins, have seemed to gloss over.
I don't think it's glossed over at all - the answer is always an honest "we don't know".
There's no shame in not knowing, but it isn't a good reason to call for a creator.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
I'm sorry but creationism does not deserve to be given equal weight as current hypotheses of abiogenesis. There is substantial experimental evidence and models that explain how life could have arisen from non-life, as opposed to no real reason other than faith to believe in a creator's interference. The answer might be a "we don't know," but we have a number of plausible ideas of how it could have happened.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Evolution has never stopped happening. It is happening right now. Humans continue to evolve. Mutations have never stopped, and happen all the time in all organisms. Finally, evolution is not a chance process. However, the opposite of chance is not design. So you show you have zero knowledge of evoution by this one short post.
The above was in response to this:
Seriously? You're using William Paley's watch on the heath argument? Holy ... cow.
Think about this: complex constructs made by people don't reproduce with variation under changing circumstances.
There's a video on the Web that shows how easily a wristwatch could evolve from prior parts, if the parts reproduced with variation and the environment tended to favor watches. It's a really a bloody cinch. The eye evolved with stunning rapdity.
You are completely wrong on all counts, and undoubtedly know nothing about cladistics or molecular biology.
This is a misrperesentation of biology and abiogenesis, and you don't know what you are talking about.
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