Do you believe in evolution?

[Yosarian2]

Am I allowed to answer this question seriously?

This is GD. Only serious discussion is allowed here. :seriousface:

[Yosarian2]

No its not on the curriculum. I had a couple of science professors talk about it anyways in 7th grade with his own time, but that was about it. My 9th grade teacher in biology never mentioned it, and after that I took 2 physics and 2 chemistry classes, and never really had an option to talk about it. I do know that a couple teachers talked about it anyways in class (mostly the AP/Honors teachers), and some didn't (mostly for the stupid people). Do people really teach evolution like, to every kid in other states?

Yeah, it's definatly supposed to be covered in some detail bio class, which every kid in NJ takes. I'm sure a few teachers kind of skirt the topic, but they're supposed to teach it at least.

[Yosarian2]

Adaptation does not=evolution though I think. The organism may change slightly to adapt, but it's never mutating into an entirely different virus or such. Just a different strain, right?

Well, I tell you one thing. A lot of viruses that have existed for the past several hundred years (smallpox, for example) simply can not have existed before civilization; smallpox only lives in humans, and as those who survive it get an immunity to it, it needs a large, fairly densly concentrated human population to survive; smallpox could not exist in nomadic groups of humans, it's not possible. Therefore, it must have evolved from an enterly different strain, an entirely different species, sometime after the development of farming.

[Yosarian2]

But there are still faults with the origin.

If chemicals produced it in the first place, why isn't it being reproduced today? Why can't we reproduce it?

We can reproduce it by creating conditions similar to ancient earth. It's been done in labratories; it's quite fast for amino acid chains to start forming. Now, the next step would be going from that to more complicated amino acid chains capable of reproducing themselves, which probably took thousands or tens of thosands of years on Earth, and no, we have not yet managed to reproduce that in a labratory.

I continue to feel like the generations is still something thats just going "BUT YOU CAN'T DISPROVE IT!"

Let me put it this way. Evolution, natural selection, the development of modern species from ancient ancestors, has been quite well proven, on a genetic level, on a biological, by the fossil records, by experements and studies. The actual details of the orgin of life is still a matter of some scientific speculation, sure, but that's a completly different issue then the question of how you get from the origion of life to the current diversity of life in the world.

Not only that, but alot of evidence points that the earth is not that old. Like the degeneration of the magnetic fields. Etc Etc.

Not quite sure what you mean by that...the magnetic field of the Earth is caused by the mostly iron core in the center of the earth and the intense heat in the center of the Earth, and while it will change over time in suble ways it's remained mostly stable for billions of years now.

Besides, the evidence for the approxomite age of the earth being around 5 billion years old is quite strong. Geology has very strong evidence of the age of the Earth. Using our understanding of nuclear fusion and extensive observations of the stars around us, we can figure out the approxomite age of the sun by measuring spetographically the ratio of hydrogen to helium, and comparing that to the ratio of hydron/helium present in the universe at large, because the heat from the sun comes from hydren being slowly fused into helium through physcial processes that are fairly well understood. We can see that there are other stars that are much younger, and stars that are older. Through our observation of of the moon and other planets, we know that there was a period about 3-4 billion years ago, after the planets were formed, when there were a lot more large chuncks of rock flying around the solar system, hitting plantary bodies, and leaving massive craters, then there is today. How old a specific crater is can be measured by how much metoritic dust has settled there. How long ago a specific rock was formed can be measured by measuing how radioactive certain elements present in the rock are.

I could go on, if you want; the scientific evidence for the age of the Earth and the solar system is quite extensive.

[Yosarian2]

2. God guided evolution, and the Story of the Garden of Eden was never meant to be taken so literally

Well, it's not necessary to think that God specifically guided evolution; one could just as easily say that God knew when he created the Universe that we would evolve.

[Yosarian2]

Well, it's not necessary to think that God specifically guided evolution; one could just as easily say that God knew when he created the Universe that we would evolve.

So a perfect being creates a universe where life develops based on the brutal struggle of natural selection? It doesn't make sense at all. But I suppose "God works in mysterious ways"

(shrug) Would you prefer to live in a universe where everything was created flawless and nothing ever changed? Sounds kind of boring to me. Life is change; that's what makes it so interesting.

[Yosarian2]

Absolutely I agree with you. Are you actually suggesting that the entire universe was made to be so wonderful

just

to please tiny lifeforms such as ourselves that appreciate diversity? That's very anthropocentric.

Your whole objection was antropocentric, or at least Earth-life-centric; you were suggesting that a perfect God wouldn't have made a universe where life on Earth developed through natural means like natural selection and such because you think that's "brutal". So, I disagree with your objection, and now you're trying to say that our preference about such things shouldn't matter? You are contradicting yourself.

I personally find the idea that there is no creator and that our universe came about by some fantastic scientific process we don't yet know about to be far more exciting, interesting and beautiful than the notion that it was created by some invisible hand.

Ok. What does your aesthetic preference have to do with anything, though?

[Yosarian2]

Indeed, what does preference have to do with anything? You can't debunk his argument talking about preferences and then turn around and say that his preference means nothing.

His whole argument was about HIS preference; he was arguing that a perfect God couldn't exist, because he thinks a perfect God wouldn't want to rely on natural selction, because he feels natural selection is brutal. In other words, he questions the existance of God simply because he feels the universe would be "better" if it wasn't for natural selection. That's an interesting argument, I suppose, but it's entierly based on his own personal preference for a less "brutal" way to create advanced life.

*blink* If God is perfect, God would not rely on natural selection

anywhere

. Natural selection is the brutal struggle of death and survival. There is nothing anthropocentric about this at all.

Why wouldn't God create a universe that would then continue based on natural principles such as natural selection? Why would you assume that God wouldn't want to create a universe where life would develop on it's own? Didn't you just agree with me that that kind of universe is simply more interesting then a universe where everything is unchanging?

[Yosarian2]

You were talking about how awful it would be to live in a static universe. I agreed with you and elaborated by talking about the beauty and wonder which I find in godless science. You raised the issue of a boring universe, I was merely pointing out that science is anything but boring.

Of course science is not boring. But that has nothing to do with the issue at hand here. Your whole argument was just that "God wouldn't do it that way", and I disagreed, I don't see any reason that God wouldn't.

[Yosarian2]

Well, it's not necessary to think that God specifically guided evolution; one could just as easily say that God knew when he created the Universe that we would evolve.

Part of the importance of the creation story is that God is a conscious decision maker in the process, and did not simply let things take their course. I do not think the concept of a guided evolution would have been terribly problematic to early believers - I

do

think a hands-off God would have been inconsistent with their (and my) understanding of God.

So, what's the difference between God guiding evolution on a day-to-day basis, and God specifically designing the Universe in such a way that, in his omniscience, he knew that we would evolve and come into existance exactally the way we did?

That's not to say that God is "hands-off" necessarally, I don't believe in a God that just started the Universe and then walked away, but when it comes to natural processes such as the development of stars from dust clouds and the evolution of life and all that, I don't really see a theological distintion between God designing the natural laws of the universe in such a way that those things would all happen, and a God who specifically caused them to happen one at a time. And, just from a scientific point of view, there's no reason to think the evolution needed direct guidence in order to work.

[Yosarian2]

So, what's the difference between God guiding evolution on a day-to-day basis, and God specifically designing the Universe in such a way that, in his omniscience, he knew that we would evolve and come into existance exactally the way we did?

If you impinge upon free will, I guess there's no problem.

What's free will have to do with it? This is all stuff that happened before there were any human beings, for the most part.

[Yosarian2]

Wait a minute, you're saying Moses didn't write all 5 of them or that he did?

He didn't.

[Yosarian2]

Earth is not a closed system, and you're completely misunderstanding the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Then again, you're probably doing so intentionally.

No, I'm afraid that entropy is considered by many creationists - especially those in the ID movement - to be the silver bullet for evolution.
_____

When you take a new pack of cards and shuffle it, it becomes more disordered (on average, obviously). Shuffle it again and it becomes still more disordered. Shuffle it a third time. Seriously, do. Then glance through the pack and see the lack of a pattern. Then deal out to yourself and two or three friends. Play "Cheat". Then, when a big stack has arisen, grab it (your friends will be annoyed at your disruption of the game but don't let this stop you) and look through it. It's not ordered, is it? Not perfectly. But it's a good deal easier to predict what's coming next than it would be with the thrice-shuffled pack you had earlier.

now, could someone who knows what they're talking about tell me if that's a good analogy or not?
With the cards being like genes or genetic sequences and survival over a course of generations being the game; order arises because that's where the "path of least resistance" lies; and that's what entropy really is, that things will follow the path of least resistance.

Like a river will become bendier (more complicated) as a simple result of water going faster on the outside of kinks and slower on the inside. Depositing on the inside and eroding the outside, causing big meanders in the river; wouldn't a face-reading of entropy claim that rivers should be straight? Same for fjords.

The thing is that entropy, the second law of thermodynamics, only applies in a closed system.

For example, in a closed system, if you start out with two things of different tempatures, the difference will tend balance out, until they're the same tempature; an ice cube in a glass of water, the ice will melt while the water it's in gets cooler until they're the same tempature. That's part of what entropy is. However, if you turn on the fridge in your kitchen, the inside of the fridge will get colder, and the rest of the room will get hotter! So, does that violate the second law of thermodynamics? No, because it's not a closed system; energy (electricity) is coming in from outside the system. When the coal plant burns coal to make electricity, it creates a lot of entropy (by turning the chemical energy of the coal into heat and electricty), so the entropy in the total system (house-refigerator-coal plant) increases.

It's the same with the Earth. It's possible for entropy on the Earth to decrease, but only because it's not a closed system; the sun generates vast amounts of energy by using nuclear fusion to turn matter into energy, and that increses the total amount of entropy in the universe. The entopy on Earth can decrease, so long as the total entropy in the Earth-Sun system increases.

[Yosarian2]

Right. There are probably a LOT of earth-like planets in the universe with pleanty of carbon and such chemicals and the right distance from their star to have liquid water, and that's probably all you need to have life develop.

Now, of course we don't know what the odds of life arising given the proper enviorment are, you can't do statistics with a statistical sample of 1, but there's no reason to think there's anything like the "1 in a google" odds Foolster picked out of thin air. The only real way to answer that question would be to go to a bunch of earthlike planets and see how many of them have life. Either way, though it dosn't really matter; even if the odds of life forming are very low, the universe is big enough that it's likely to happen somewhere.

The odds of life developing appear to be very small, judging by the fact we have not yet been contacted by an extraterrestrial species.

The Fermi Paradox (basically, "considering how common life should be, why haven't they found us yet?") is an interesting point, but it dosn't say really anything about the frequency of life in the universe. At most, it might say something about the frequency of intellegent life that dosn't destory itself or otherwise die off before leaving it's own solar system, and even that is subject to debate. Again, we can't know how common life is until we have a bigger sample size.

[Yosarian2]

Thew number was an approximate of something I heard somewhere. Or I had thought I had remembered from somewhere. My memory is most likely wrong. It seems beside the point anyway. It was not meant as a hard number (Though I suppose I should have said i was estimating.)

I understand that eclipses is hardly neccisery for life, but it is one more feature that shows up nowhere else that seems to have the sole purpose of being for the species on that planet's visual enjoyment. It's not a major proof, but a small thought.

...what does our visual enjoyment have to do with anything? If it was the other way around, you'd be saying "See, ours is the only planet without eclipses, and that's clearly just God helping us so we avoid the hassle of sudden unexpected darkness".

The problem is evolution (changes between speciies over millions and billions of years) is completely unobservable and unrepeatable. If you could give some examples of proofs, I'd appreciate it. I've never seen any particular proof that evolution is true and so that's why I'm having a hard time just accepting it.

Well, where do you think the MRSA germ that's now in all the news came from? It evolved, over the last few decades, as the straph germs that could survive the antibiotics we hit them with did so and spread, and therefore had an evolutinary advanage against the older version of the germ. That's a perfect example of natural selection in it's purest form; when the enviorment changes, examples of a species with certain adaptations that can better handle the new enviorment thrive and eventually become dominant. The more time passes, the more changes happen, and if you take the same species and put it into two different enviorments where the needs for survival are different, you will eventually get two different species.

Evolution, mutation, natural selection, and the genetic passing down of traits are all things that can be observed and proven quite easily by modern day science. No, we can't observe species over millions of years, but species with a much shorter lifespan then us, we can observe for many generations and watch as natural selection happens just the way Darwin described it in his theory.

[Yosarian2]

Fallacy of argument. You're making a supoosistion of argument for another person. Though I admit it is not a very large proof at all. (As I stated earlier)

My point was that you can't just take random things that are true, figure out how likely they are, and then say "you see, the situation we're in is incredibly unlikely!", because no matter WHAT situation you were in, you could make a list of random things that happen to be true and then make the same claim.

That is naterual selection you arer descirbing. I do beleive naterual slection exists. I have aboslutly no trouble with that at all. Unfortunitly you are making the leap that it COULD change things from one drasticly different species to another. How do you KNOW an ape can become a man eventualy? What i want is hard PROOF, not speculation.

Ok. What differences are there between us and other primates that you think can't be explained by natural selection?

Larger brain size and higher intellegence is certanly something gentetically based, and that can be genetically selected for; if higher intellegence was an advantage in the enviorement our ancestors found themselves in, then natural selection could easily select for that.

Many of the other superficial differences (Mostly hairless, walks more upright, sweats more, ect) can easily be explained by the fact that, unlike apes, our ancestors had to develop the ability to run for long distances on African suvanna in order to hunt; our upright position is a much better adaptation for that enviorment, while the lack of hair and extra sweat glands would be necessary to keep cool while running long distances in African heat.

And the only other main differences are those that provide a clear advantage to intellegent, tool-using animals; opposable thumbs and increased manual dexterity both make tool use easier, and developments in the throat to allow clear speach probably evolved along with language.

Not only is it possible things such as brain size, upright position, and opposable thumbs to develop over time by natural selection, you can actually look at the fossel record and see the different steps in development, as early hominds over millions of years slowly developed larger brains, walked in a more upright way, and became more like modern man.

[Yosarian2]

How do we KNOW the world is old?

Well, I kind of adressed this earlier:

Besides, the evidence for the approxomite age of the earth being around 5 billion years old is quite strong. Geology has very strong evidence of the age of the Earth. Using our understanding of nuclear fusion and extensive observations of the stars around us, we can figure out the approxomite age of the sun by measuring spetographically the ratio of hydrogen to helium, and comparing that to the ratio of hydron/helium present in the universe at large, because the heat from the sun comes from hydren being slowly fused into helium through physcial processes that are fairly well understood. We can see that there are other stars that are much younger, and stars that are older. Through our observation of of the moon and other planets, we know that there was a period about 3-4 billion years ago, after the planets were formed, when there were a lot more large chuncks of rock flying around the solar system, hitting plantary bodies, and leaving massive craters, then there is today. How old a specific crater is can be measured by how much metoritic dust has settled there. How long ago a specific rock was formed can be measured by measuing how radioactive certain elements present in the rock are.

Also, here's another point. The galaxy alone is 100,000 light years long. That means that light from the other side of our own galaxy has been traveling for 100,000 years before it got here. Other galaxies are millions or even billions of light years away, and we can see them. So, that means the light was created billions of years ago, and therefore the universe must be billions of years old.

Are there CREDIABLE cavemen you could point me to (Not Hoaxes, Donkeys or people with rickets)?

Eh? There's been any number of different species of humanoids that fossil evidence has been found from. Homo Erectus, our direct ancestor, actually spread from Africa throughout much of Asia before the more advance Homo Sapians evolved in Africa and then spread from there to replace it's smaller and less intellegent cousin. At the same time, Homo Neanthal had evolved in Europe, with larger bones and a heavier build to withstand the colder climate, but again was replaced when our more advanced Homo Sapiants ancestors spread into Europe from Africa. This is all documents in great detail in the fossil record, along with the stone tools that each species of humans used.

Where do the other parts in the flaggellem come from? From what I gather it is unexplianed where those extra (nessicery) parts come from, which defies evolutionary idea of "small steps.

That's an interesting question, still debated by scientists, and of course that's not exactally something that's easy to figure out. One theory is that it was actaully a matter of symbiosis, that the flaggellem was a symbiosis of another cell and a Spirochaete http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirochete type of cell.

It is easy to say "We're here, so we must have gotten lucky" But that is not a scientific method at all,

(shrug) Even if there is only a one in a million chance of intellegent life evolving on any given planet, then in the universe it should evolve somewhere, and wherever that happens, that life would sit up and wonder why it came into existance. If it's possible, then it should happen somewhere.

Again, I havn't seen it if it is there. Maybe I simply missed something and would appreciate anything that could help me understand it.
What you've said so far is proof that evolution COULD happen. What i'd like is proof that it is true, since you claim it is so obvious,

Well, like I said, natural selection can be observed today. Evolution, that is the change of a species over time, can be observed in the fossil record. You can actually see the species evolve and change. Looking into your own DNA, you can find it's great similarity to the DNA of primates. The mechinism by which DNA can mutate and be passed on is well understood, and we can even predict how long two species have been seperated based on the study of their genes.

[Yosarian2]

Eh, that article said some weird things. How can you blame Stalin's atheism for

anything

? He never even

claimed

to be motivated by atheism, he was just totally ruthless.

Eh...Stalin was pretty harsh on Orthadox Chritian believers because of his athiesm; or at least because he believed religion was anti-communist, which is almost the same thing. That's not the reason for most of the bad things he did though.

[Yosarian2]

Eh...Stalin was pretty harsh on Orthadox Chritian believers because of his athiesm; or at least because he believed religion was anti-communist, which is almost the same thing. That's not the reason for most of the bad things he did though.

Hmm...it isn't the same thing.

Stalin suppressed religion because it didn't suit him politically. I admit that, had Stalin been an Orthodox Christian, he would not have suppressed the church (that should be obvious), but that doesn't change the coincidental nature of his atheism. If religion had worked to Stalin's advantage, I very much doubt he would have cracked down on it in the way that he did. Indeed, in the Nazi occupation of 1941, Stalin used the Orthodox Church as a means of rallying the Russian people.

No, it's not just because it didn't suit him personally, or politically; it's becaue, like any good communist, he believed religion was the opiate of the masses and something that had to go in order for society to advance. Religion being bad was a part of his belief system he acted on, just as much as non-believers being bad was part of the belief system the Spanish Inquisitors acted on.

But anyway, we're straying from the point here, I think we already had this thread, heh.

[Yosarian2]

No, what he's saying is that Stalin didn't kill

because

he was an atheist. That is to say that he was atheist, and he also killed, whereas in events such as the crusades, the people killed

because

they were religion. That is to say that they killed in the name of their religion because they thought they were achieving a desirable religious goal (i.e. eliminating islam.) This is a pretty strong claim, imho.

And you don't think Stalin wanted to achieve a desirable religious goal; IE, eliminating religion?

[Yosarian2]

About Northern Ireland - yes, Seol, it's a very complicated situation with both political and religious causes. And yes, I'd even agree that it's more a political issue than a religious one. As for what caused what, well, you can go all the way back and say it was ultimately caused by the Pope not granting Henry VIII the divorce he wanted. The religious and political causes are clearly linked, and I think we both agree on this point.

I think it has absoltuly nothing to do with religious causes.

I mean, have you ever heard of an IRA terrorist shooting a Protistent minister because he dosn't believe in transubstantiation? No, of course not, because that's not what the conflict is about. The conflict is basically about two different societies, living inside one country; the differences are culture, ancestory, and questions about political power; religion is a small aspect of that cultrue, but not a major one really. Even if everyone in Northern Ireland converted to Roman Catholicsm, the IRA wouldn't be happy allowing it to remain part of Great Britian, because it's not really a religious conflict.

So in, say, Northern Ireland, what would it be like without religion? Well, there wouldn't be such a huge divide between the pro-English and pro-Irish, for one thing, because those labels, as I touched on with my Reconquista comments, are maintained by the religious differences. The English are Protestant and the Irish are Catholic.

Ok, so if there wasn't religion, people would just talk about "Irish vs. Scotch Irish" or something like that. The labels would be different, but nothing of substance would be.

What I'm trying to point out is that the reason they divide themselves

is

because of religion. Yes, the political issue is the one that actually matters to most people, but without the religious difference, the political issue would be a lot tamer, because the Irish and English identities would be a lot less clearly defined.

Eh...people will always find a way to differentiate between "us" and "them", between those like us and those unlike us. Language, natioanlism, skin color, ancestory, or religion. If there wasn't religion, I have trouble believing that would make the human race any less tribabistic. In fact, modern religion, such as Christianity, Islam, and Buddism, are some of the first social forces to attempt to trancend tribalism.

My point is simply that the labels and divisions religions create independent of their actual doctrines and philosophies are huge problems. Does it matter that Hezbollah is a Muslim organisation rather than a Christian one? Not in a philosophical sense, no. You could switch Christianity and Islam throughout the world and it would make no real difference overall. So you're right in that sense - Islamic fundamentalists are primarily an expression of political problems, like the fact that people in the Middle East aren't huge fans of Western nations for various reasons. But the fact that religion exists in general is what allows Muslim fundamentalists to exist. It exacerbates pre-existing problems greatly - there would still be problems without it, but the problems we have now could not exist without religion.

The labels and divisions are a problem, certanly, but I don't see any reason to think there would be any less labeling or divisons if it wasn't for religions. We'd just have found some other yardstick to use to figure out who's on our team and who's on the other team.