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Mythicalbio
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No. I am pretty indifferent to it. The most important thing is living a moral life. Truly, all other things are secondary.
Do you believe in evolution?
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fredystairs
Guest
I have a question concerning evolution and reproduction. The very earliest creatures reproduced by splitting in two. The latest most complex creatures reproduce by sex. How did this process come about? How did a species evolve from splitting into two, to requiring sex to reproduce?
Please understand that it not my intention to “stir the pot” as it were. I’m genuinely interested in seeing what evolution says about this.
Pax
Please understand that it not my intention to “stir the pot” as it were. I’m genuinely interested in seeing what evolution says about this.
Pax
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Mythicalbio
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I was thinking about this yesterday, and thought about how it is similar to God and opposition in the universe (see Jacob Boehme, on divisions and the trinity and opposites). I didn’t come up with any scientific answers though.
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pearleaf
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Science is not a matter of belief. Religion is.
A claim about the workings of the natural world which appeals to God over natural causes should be rejected. God cannot be definitively and objectively proven or disproven, and so the existence or non-existence of God (and which God) is an assumption. An objective claim must make use of the fewest possible assumptions, since everyone’s assumptions are bound to be different, given different cultures, upbringings, etc., and who’s assumptions are to be considered true?
If the discoveries of science contradict the assumptions of religion, the religious assumptions are what need corrected in view of science, not the science in view of religion.
More often than not, I fear, people let their assumptions get in the way of understanding things, and so things which contradict their assumptions “don’t make sense” and “must be false”.
A claim about the workings of the natural world which appeals to God over natural causes should be rejected. God cannot be definitively and objectively proven or disproven, and so the existence or non-existence of God (and which God) is an assumption. An objective claim must make use of the fewest possible assumptions, since everyone’s assumptions are bound to be different, given different cultures, upbringings, etc., and who’s assumptions are to be considered true?
If the discoveries of science contradict the assumptions of religion, the religious assumptions are what need corrected in view of science, not the science in view of religion.
More often than not, I fear, people let their assumptions get in the way of understanding things, and so things which contradict their assumptions “don’t make sense” and “must be false”.
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Dan123
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It doesn’t sound like stirring the pot
There’s plenty of research out there if you want better explanations but gene transfer is a pretty common feature of even pretty simplistic life that we would not generally describe as ‘sexual’. One thing to realize is generally a species developing an ability and requiring that ability aren’t the same event. There are plants and animals today which can reproduce sexually but also can reproduce asexually. Once we realize if that’s possible now there’s no reason to think that wasn’t true of early life.So if a simplistic species of cellular life could reproduce asexually, but cold also share or receive genes with others of its species, over a long period of time it could potentially lose the ability to asexually reproduce. The species could then find itself with certain members specializing in transferring genes and others in receiving genes. And ultimately that’s what sexually reproducing creatures are, members of the same species where one specializes in creating young and the other in gene transfer.
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rossum
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If I roll a fair die six million times I will get approximately one million rolls of six. A better statistician that I can also give you the confidence interval expected. Even random events are to some extent predictable. Yes, there is a random element to evolution, but parts of it are predictable. For example, it is easy to predict that the proportion of people with genetic resistance to Covid-19 will increase in the human population. That is the effect of natural selection.
Some (name removed by moderator)uts to evolution are random, others are not. The filter of natural selection is not random. Every single one of your ancestors for trillions of generations, all the way back to that first just-about-alive cell has succeeded in reproducing. Every single one. Not one failure. That is trillions of generations of successful reproducing. That is how strong a filter natural selection is: zero failure rate. Generation after generation of success without any failure.
That is a very powerful influence shared by all contemporary life.
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rossum
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Start by looking at horizontal gene transfer in bacteria. Sexual reproduction started as a more organised and efficient version of HGT. Initially between equal individuals. Then some individuals started to specialise in egg production perhaps as a hermaphrodite species or changing role at different times. As the mechanisms and machinery became more complex so it was easier to specialise for a lifetime, rather than try to do both or to change from one to the other.
This started early, as all the options after HGT can be seen in both plants and animals. I’m not sure what range of options fungi cover. Ask a better biologist than me.
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Bill_B_NY
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Evolution claims to have an explanation of the origin of human beings. Not just material bodies. Now, if evolution claims that human beings are only material bodies, then evolution is false. If evolution claims it can explain the origin of human beings without reference to the immaterial soul, then evolution is false.
Either way, the idea is wrong.
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Bill_B_NY
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This assumes that evolution and common descent from bacteria to humans is true. I do not accept that assumption.
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Bill_B_NY
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We assume that it is predictable, but we have not been able to show it.
We could, for example, show a bacterium evolving into a single celled organism. That shouldn’t be too difficult to do since we could control the environment and induce mutations. But that hasn’t happened - far from it.
Evolution has to explain the development of all life on earth with mostly random elements. They may have some predictability but the randomization makes the values of order, purpose, symmetry and function – all the more impossible (for me) to accept as the outputs of evolution.
The origin of human beings is something where God has a direct causal presence. That’s why evolution is different from other sciences.
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Rau
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And you are certain that you can recognise that causal presence?
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Bill_B_NY
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The Holy Church has taught me the truth on this matter.
God creates directly, ex nihilo, the human rational, immortal soul. It is not the product of physical, material evolutionary processes.
A human being cannot be explained minus the presence of a soul.
Evolution claims to have the explanation for the origin of humans, but that explanation does not include the origin of the human soul (directly created by God).
Therefore, evolution is false.
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Mythicalbio
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Then use theistic evolution, which the Church allows. Obviously godless evolution is false, but the Church does allow for theistic forms. The Church doesn’t sit with falsehood.
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Freddy
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There’s a new thread on evolution?!
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Mythicalbio
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It never ends
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Rau
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Ah, I see. So your objection to the theory is that it does not address the soul? Aside from that, you could live with it as an explanation for the evolution of the physical forms of plants and animals through the ages?
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rossum
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Your understanding of evolution is incorrect. Science deals with the material, not the immaterial, such as the soul.
Different religions have different versions of a soul (or equivalent). Do you have any evidence to show that evolution attempts to explain the origin of the Hindu atman, how it passes from lifetime to lifetime (sometimes in humans, sometimes in animals) and how it eventually merges into Brahman?
Science leaves all those religious questions to theology.
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rossum
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It is not an assumption, there is a great deal of supporting evidence.
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rossum
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You have not been reading the scientific literature. There are plenty of predictions from evolution:
So, God did not have a “direct causal presence” in the origin of the universe and cosmology is fine without mentioning God. You might want to rethink you attitude to a great deal of science. Or are you trying to tell us that God did not create the universe?
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Roguish
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A valid question. It’s importance is lost on most.
Time is a pure quantitative construct. It is not a concept or an abstraction. Man does not perceive time, nor does he measure it. There is no such thing as a “sense of time”, or of “time passing”. And that’s not because time is silent. It’s because it does not exist.
Man does perceive rhythms: the swinging of a pendulum, night and day, winter and summer. Cycles. But time he must mentally construct by counting such cycles. There is no other way to arrive at “time”. And when man forgets how many cycles he had already counted, time is gone. Irrecoverably lost. Not died or decayed or misplaced, but simply vanished. Unlike length or weight, it cannot be re-measured — because it was never a measurement to begin with. Of what could time be a measurement?
To speak of time that “happened” or “passed” or “took place” in the absence of man is illogical in the profound sense of that word. A pure mental construct does not apply to a world not inhabited by the (pathologically) mental creatures that construct it.
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