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StAnastasia
Guest
I’m not a robot. My genes do determine a lot about me, but I exercise some control over my genes as well. I am part of a population I’m not sure what you mean by “spontaneously generated.”
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StAnastasia
Guest
Yes. God has a purpose for nature.
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buffalo
Guest
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grannymh
Guest
Please note: I refuse to be one of a population of originally spontaneously generated, randomly mutated and naturally selected biological robots controlled by my genes.:kiss4you:
Blessings,
granny
We humans are so human
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edwest2
Guest
See the journal Evolutionary Psychology. Science is telling you that you do not exist. You are just a biological construct (an animal) whose primary function is to reproduce, perform adaptive behaviors and die. That’s it.
Any “higher functions” are purely the result of genetics, nothing else.
Peace,
Ed
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StAnastasia
Guest
I’m with ya, Grannymh!
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buffalo
Guest
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Brucegpope
Guest
Of Course!! That is exactly how I imagined him/her/It/ !
A photo/picture of God is just silly. If I may paraphrase Plato, he said said if People looked like horses God would look like a horse.
Bruce
A photo/picture of God is just silly. If I may paraphrase Plato, he said said if People looked like horses God would look like a horse.
Bruce
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StAnastasia
Guest
You propose an answer. I’ll tell you whether I concur.
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StAnastasia
Guest
So Bruce, you don’t accept that Jesus was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Aryan, just like in the Bible?
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buffalo
Guest
Figures.
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hecd2
Guest
I hope the good is continuing and becoming greater.
My point is that separate creation of Adam and Eve is only possible if we acknowledge that God created them complete with broken genes and retroviral insertions and so on, so as to make it appear, unmistakeably, that humans and chimps share a common ancestor, and that would seem to be a deceptive act on God’s side. Since you don’t want to think that God is deceptive, understandably, then you should conclude that humans are part of the natural world and that chimps are our cousins.
The specific evidence here, is not about similarity of genes, but about accidents that have occurred to break genes, that are identical in both species, showing that the accidents occurred in a common ancestor, no separately in humans and chimps.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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The_Barbarian
Guest
If you want to put the effort in to learn about this issue, and why you’ve incorrectly understood what it means, it might be good to first discover what we know about the way brains work.
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hecd2
Guest
So, that would mean that things are good because God commands them, not that God commands things because they are good?hecd2:
what was moral and immoral, or
- we wouldn’t *care *what was moral or immoral, or
- the difference between morality and immorality would not exist?
Looking at practical life, more and more “morals” are based on relativism. Thus, the only thing that would happen without God would be that the difference between morality and immorality would cease to exist.
I can see why this seems to be an oxymoron. Let me see if can clarify. I don’t think that the Church is an evil institution. On the contrary, with some tragic exceptions, the 21st century Church is, on balance, a good in the world. However, my point is that the Church has adopted views and supported acts in the past which are generally acknowledged to be immoral. I gave some examples.(As a parallel, I don’t believe that the UK is an evil state, yet it has done things in the past to blush for). In fact, in spite of the general benevolence of these bodies, Catholic Church and British state, they continue to act in ways that will be regarded as immoral in the future.
And why am I making this point? To emphasise the fact that, all claims to the contrary, the Church is no more wedded to absolute and unchanging morality than any other benign body. Not only has she actively promoted reprehensible things in the past, her views about morality have changed with time and circumstance. The Church is no more immune to relativism than any other individual or institution. Let’s not pretend that the Church represents some absolute and unchanging moral standard, because that is obviously not so.
Yes, we are each improbable, each precious. As Thomas Traherne’s infant proclaims:
When silent I
So many thousand thousand Years
Beneath the Dust did on a Chaos ly,
How could I Smiles, or Tears,
or Lips, or Hands, or Eys, or Ears perceiv?
Welcom ye Treasures which I now receiv.
From Dust I rise
And out of Nothing now awake;
These brighter Regions which salute mine Eys
A Gift from God I take:
The Earth, the Seas, the Light, the lofty Skies,
The Sun and Stars are mine; if these I prize.
A Stranger here,
Strange things doth meet, strange Glory see,
Strange Treasures lodg’d in this fair World appear,
Strange all and New to me:
But that they mine should be who Nothing was,
That Strangest is of all: yet brought to pass.
Alec
evolutionpages,com
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hecd2
Guest
It is the hypothesis, now pretty much accepted as correct, that humans evolved in Africa, and migrated to other parts of the world from there. All the evidence points to this although the process does not seem to have been a single simple migration. Rather it seems to be a number of migrations out of Africa and one or two migrations back.
The strong alternative until the last 15 - 20 years was the multi-centre hypothesis - where humans arose independently in a number of different places. In this instance, comparative genomics strongly supports the monophyly (genetic monogenism) of humans by supporting the idea that humans first evolved in Africa and then migrated around the world.
To some extent these concepts in ants and humans overlap, but obviously humans are cognitively hugely more complex than ants, having a theory of mind (ie the idea that others have cognition), abstract thinking and so on, so the evolutionary explanation needs to take that into account, which is done.
String theory is not discarded and is still the most likely candidate for unifying quantum mechanics and relativity. I think theorists need an experimental stimulus such as we should get from the LHC.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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grannymh
Guest
Continuation of reply to Alec’s post 327. First part of my reply is post 408
Dear Alec,
Your readable format is sincerely appreciated. Thank you. My first objective was to read your evidence for understanding.
I did get hung up about the alleles for humans and the DRB1 gene and ended up giving my preference for clarifying. The whole bit of sharing groups of alleles with apes was fascinating. Finding the date for divergence was to me an exciting discovery. At that point, I put on my philosopher’s hat and shared some of my early perceptions about evolution. Just so you knew my limited background.
The rest of the presentation was more difficult. Though I did jot down questions, they don’t have to be answered because I think it is possible to do a simple summary. Did I use the word simple?
The second objective was to look for answers to some of my own curious questions. I found that the genomic make-up of human beings was well established. Evidence suggests that there was an origin that pre-dated the divergence of the chimp and human lineages. I’m assuming that this origin would be the common ancestor. I never figured there would be a bottleneck.
My third objective would be to describe the common ancestor. There were papers that looked like they contained descriptions. However, I will rely on your evaluation of them as to how complete the description is and on what it is based. I have my own imaginative description of the common ancestor in that it would have to contain the genomics of both sides of the split.
(Am I using genomics right?) plus it would have some genes which would be its own characteristics, give it its own existence. It does exist, doesn’t it? Then there has to be something which precipitates the split. Or is the common ancestor only two halves stuck together with Elmer’s glue? (Sorry, but I couldn’t resist that image.
)
The bottleneck in the rest of your presentation is a new idea for me. I jotted down a bunch of questions, but again I think they can be easily summarized.
hecd2:
I’m having trouble with the bottleneck concept and the divergence action. What basically is a bottleneck during human evolution?
Were there a lot of common ancestors carrying the exact combination of genes that would spontaneously divide into humans and chimps? Yet, there are studies which show that humans and other primates carry similar genes. Would there be a common ancestor for each of the human/primate combinations?
Regarding the bottleneck, here are some studies: Are they totally compatible with each other?
Apolipoprotein C II:
Xiong et al, ‘No severe bottleneck during human evolution; evidence from two apolipoprotein C II alleles’, Am J Hum Genet 48, 383 -389
Nuclear genome:
Rogers and Jorde, ‘Genetic evidence on the origin of modern humans’, Hum Biol 67, 1 - 36, show that a modest bottleneck of 10,000 individuals is consistent with the data.
General studies:
Hawks et al, Population bottlenecks and Pleistocene human evolution, *Mol Bio Evol *17, 2 – 22 (2000)
Does the following study answer the question about the bottleneck stretching across continents?
Liu et al, A geographically explicit model of worldwide human settlement history, Am J Hum Gen 79, 230 – 237 (2006)
My fourth objective would be my impression. I don’t have one yet.
Blessings,
granny
All human beings are fascinating.
Dear Alec,
Your readable format is sincerely appreciated. Thank you. My first objective was to read your evidence for understanding.
I did get hung up about the alleles for humans and the DRB1 gene and ended up giving my preference for clarifying. The whole bit of sharing groups of alleles with apes was fascinating. Finding the date for divergence was to me an exciting discovery. At that point, I put on my philosopher’s hat and shared some of my early perceptions about evolution. Just so you knew my limited background.
The rest of the presentation was more difficult. Though I did jot down questions, they don’t have to be answered because I think it is possible to do a simple summary. Did I use the word simple?
The second objective was to look for answers to some of my own curious questions. I found that the genomic make-up of human beings was well established. Evidence suggests that there was an origin that pre-dated the divergence of the chimp and human lineages. I’m assuming that this origin would be the common ancestor. I never figured there would be a bottleneck.
My third objective would be to describe the common ancestor. There were papers that looked like they contained descriptions. However, I will rely on your evaluation of them as to how complete the description is and on what it is based. I have my own imaginative description of the common ancestor in that it would have to contain the genomics of both sides of the split.
(Am I using genomics right?) plus it would have some genes which would be its own characteristics, give it its own existence. It does exist, doesn’t it? Then there has to be something which precipitates the split. Or is the common ancestor only two halves stuck together with Elmer’s glue? (Sorry, but I couldn’t resist that image.
)The bottleneck in the rest of your presentation is a new idea for me. I jotted down a bunch of questions, but again I think they can be easily summarized.
Please note: I’m not after individual answers. Rather, I’m trying to picture what is happening. How would I draw it on a piece of paper? Maybe a time-line of stages? If there are stages?
I’m having trouble with the bottleneck concept and the divergence action. What basically is a bottleneck during human evolution?
Were there a lot of common ancestors carrying the exact combination of genes that would spontaneously divide into humans and chimps? Yet, there are studies which show that humans and other primates carry similar genes. Would there be a common ancestor for each of the human/primate combinations?
Regarding the bottleneck, here are some studies: Are they totally compatible with each other?
Apolipoprotein C II:
Xiong et al, ‘No severe bottleneck during human evolution; evidence from two apolipoprotein C II alleles’, Am J Hum Genet 48, 383 -389
Nuclear genome:
Rogers and Jorde, ‘Genetic evidence on the origin of modern humans’, Hum Biol 67, 1 - 36, show that a modest bottleneck of 10,000 individuals is consistent with the data.
General studies:
Hawks et al, Population bottlenecks and Pleistocene human evolution, *Mol Bio Evol *17, 2 – 22 (2000)
Does the following study answer the question about the bottleneck stretching across continents?
Liu et al, A geographically explicit model of worldwide human settlement history, Am J Hum Gen 79, 230 – 237 (2006)
Is this 10,000 individuals describing the idea of --the word is somewhere in someone’s post – humans descending from a bunch of common ancestors?
My fourth objective would be my impression. I don’t have one yet.
Blessings,
granny
All human beings are fascinating.
H
hecd2
Guest
Well there we go again - In fact, you didn’t ask a question. You remarked in post 330:
In good faith, I asked you some questions about what you think, to better understand the nature of your difficulty in reconciling my views, so that I could attempt to explain them to you. You have taken that as a trigger to attack a strawman of what I think.
Your interpretation, that my questions were an attack, borders on paranoia. For reference, here are the questions again:
Do you think that without God:
- we wouldn’t *know *what was moral and immoral, or
- we wouldn’t *care *what was moral or immoral, or
- the difference between morality and immorality would not exist?
How on earth can that be an attack? I don’t think that it is possible to discuss anything with you in a constructive way, so I am going to bow out. If you wish to continue to believe in the delusion that for atheists morality is *merely *the action of evolutionary processes acting on unintelligent matter, that love is merely a hormonal disturbance, that music is merely sound pressure waves and that people are *merely *a collection of quarks then you are welcome to it.
evolutionpages.com
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reggieM
Guest
Again, I was wondering about your views and you presented me with a multiple choice quiz. Your response followed with this:
So instead of discussing your own views, you divert the topic to what I’d call an attack – yes, that’s how I see it.
It is that, clearly. I do see that atheists don’t like to embrace the logical conclusion of their own position and therefore will propose some other kind of meaning or source to love and morality. But within the terms of atheistic-materialism, that is an illusion since evolutionary processes are the origin and driver of all of the developments in nature. It’s a fairly simple idea – it shouldn’t take a discussion of the Albegensian crusades to explain it.
According to atheistic-materalism, love is a product of natural, evolutionary processes. “Love” emerged from the same process that evolved a pool of bacteria into more complex organisms. For the atheist, love might be a pleasant feeling, but it is transitory and meaningless. Albert Camus explains it well in his famous lines:
“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know. I had a telegram from the home: ‘Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.’ That doesn’t mean anything. It may have happened yesterday.” (from The Stranger)
Actually, evolutionary-atheism might provide a bit more meaning than that given that there is a “purpose” for species to survive (for no reason other than enslavement to natural laws). But in the end it is the same. The love of one’s mother, or wife or children has a biological origin – as does everything in nature, according to mainstream evolutionary theory.
I can’t say that I was given any information at all to counter this view. Again, in giving a response about your own personal views, you ask me some loaded questions and then give the history of the crusades and the inquisition.
I do not see that as a response in good faith.
I’m sorry that you feel you cannot discuss these matters with me. Personally, I conclude that your personal views are irrational, inconsistent and impossible to defend – and thus are based on some kind of emotional wound (an ex-wife somewhere?) or hatred which has blinded you.
At the same time, when you offered your first reply with a bulleted list of questions, I could see your defensive posture. So, I don’t have difficulty reconciling your views any more. I can see that you’re willing to cover-up the problems inherent in atheistic-materialism. For that, I appreciate your response.
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rad314
Guest
I think that some people’s expectations for the March conference in Rome are too high. Specifically, there has been speculation that a new encyclical might result. Why should there be a new encyclical? What purpose would it serve? Encyclicals are concerned with religious truth. Scientific truth would enter into an encyclical only if that truth supported religious truth. (There is no encyclical on thermodynamics.) How would a declaration either in favor of or in opposition to human evolution further religious truth? Either way God remains the creator of all that is, visible and invisible. Either way Adam and Eve were the first ‘true men’, i.e. the first beings with immortal souls. Either way the Fall and Original Sin are real.
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StAnastasia
Guest
I don’t expect an encyclical out of the conference, but I look forward to a lot of great discussion. I don’t imagine there will be anyone there who believes that there was one single historical pair 6,000 years ago whose snack introduced death into the world for the first time. But I imagine there will be many who have an intense interest to interpret the symbolic language of “creation” and “original sin” and “fall” in light of what we now know about the history of life on earth.
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