Is Darwin's Theory Of Evolution True? Part Two

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No, the higher leaves were immune to short-necked animals by being out of their reach. The relatively few longer-necked animals therefore had access to food that their competitors could not access, giving the longer-necked ones a survival advantage.
 
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This is one of the issues I have with the mythos of evolution, that nature is necessarily at odds with itself.

I see this as a result of the fall. We are intimately connected to the universe. Not only do we project our own values onto it, but as a result of original sin, everything changed.

The environment is whole, every individual component, all organisms, the geology and weather, all fit and influence one another. Life sacrifices itself in order to bring about the diversity we find. It may be a competition like athletics, but since everything comes in and goes out of being, it’s not truly a life and death struggle.

As eternal beings, we amplify the fear exponentially because it is in our nature to be always now. And, there can be no now that isn’t. We project our existential anxiety, the roots of which are in selfishness and lack of faith and trust in God, onto the universe.

But things did change in the world after the fall. As we made God secondary to ourselves, so too our obligation to this world and it’s creatures. They’re pretty much on their own. This is an exaggeration of course, painting a picture of the worst in humanity. There is much love in the world, and as the song says, it keeps it going round.
 
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Ender said:
Do you recognize it as an example of evolution? Given that the offspring have genetically mutated it’s not clear how else you could describe it.
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Yes, of course is is an example of evolution: a change in the genome of a population.

Repurposing an existing system/part for a different purpose is common in evolution. Human forelimbs have been repurposed from locomotion to manipulation.

rossum
 
benjamin1973 said:
Trees definitely do grow taller to gain resources and avoid damage, or they grow thistles. Evolution is often an arms race-- but a tree is much more limited in the nutrition at its disposal than a mammal, so in dry climates, a tree just isn’t going to be able to grow that big unless it’s very exceptional indeed.
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A process that purports to be able to give any creature any trait it needs for survival has a problem making a tree taller?
Really?
 
buffalo said:
He said “It was good” several times in these first verses.
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And he said part of it was “not good” in Genesis 2:18. That was presumably during day six, so it came after days 1 to 5, modifying what was said there.

rossum
 
Frankenfurter said:
The ‘thing’ itself (the species) is a dynamic process, not a static physical animal.
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Frankenfurter said:
The free-will that we have been given is infused into all of creation
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At the moment, I am engaged with a dialogue with another person. We are able to more or less communicate as members of the same human species. While it exists in Adam and in Christ, mankind expresses itself as the immediate reality of the person. We feel the reality of our individuality when we stub our toe and, although most would grimace out of compassion with us, we ourselves are the only one who feels it.

It seems clear to me that everything exists either as themselves or as part of something larger. Photons are particles or waves in a beam of electromagnetic radiation depending on how we have constructed an experiment to study them. Animals are individual beings characterised by a physical structure and physiology that allows them to express their instinctive nature. There is one very real animal which is an expression of a species. My view is that God creates species with the creation of the first couple that represents the particular qualities that the group will possess.

What is the reality of species is not necessarily congruent with what we believe it to be. We were given the capacity to name the animals, but our understanding is fluid.

There is a built-in adaptability to species that operates on different levels, from the structure and functioning of the genome and related processes to the creatures’ dreams and desires in seeking mates that reflect a particular vision of beauty as determined by God, who is Beauty itself.

As to free will, it is only we, among all beings with a physical dimension, who possess it. Atoms and molecules do what they do according to the nature of their being. Animals behave in accordance with their God-given instincts. That said, we as the crown of creation, through the fall, brought suffering not only upon ourselves, but to all living creatures. In Christ we bring it all into harmony within the beatific Vision.
 
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What I get out of your posted image, which was in response to that of a birds nest, is that different expressions of being tend to do what they do in accordance with their nature. If all the different quarks, leptons and bosons had not been brought together as atoms, you wouldn’t get that structure. Similarly, had organic molecules not been formed and integrated into a living being possessing instinctive perceptions, feelings, and behavioural traits, there would be no nests. I’m not sure this is the point you are trying to make, but thanks for making me think.
 
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benjamin1973 said:
No, the higher leaves were immune to short-necked animals by being out of their reach. The relatively few longer-necked animals therefore had access to food that their competitors could not access, giving the longer-necked ones a survival advantage.
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How could they out survive the short-necked animals when they have to wait thousands of years for their neck to evolve longer.
 
Evolution doesn’t “purport” anything. It’s a description of how traits interact with the environment to determine how likely they are to be passed along to future generations.
 
If everything was always 0 or 100%, that would be true. But if you look out your window or look at pictures of places around the world, you’ll see that weather is highly variable.
 
Nothing’s waiting for anything. The shorter-necked species has variability: some have longer necks than others. In times of shortage, those which have longer necks than the others (still very short compared to giraffes) will have a survival advantage and a reproductive advantage (i.e. by not having died). The survivors breed, and their offspring will tend to have slightly longer necks.

Now that some of the animals have slightly longer necks, there’s competition again. Among the slightly-long-necked animals, some have even longer necks. Next food shortage-- that advantage results in better reproductive fitness again.

This process continues: as the species’ neck length increases, there will always be some who have slightly longer than average necks, and they will have a reproductive advantage.
 
benjamin1973 said:
there will always be some who have slightly longer than average necks, and they will have a reproductive advantage.
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That’s how the story goes, but looking at pictures of the Serengeti, if one doesn’t have the good fortune of actually going there, one sees a great diversity of animals, large, small, stocky and lean, long necks and short, all living in the same environment.

Given that animals have instincts, doesn’t it make more sense that they are attracted to one another?

If one is fixated on fitness, the reproductive fitness would be in the “lookin’ good”.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

That does open up a whole new can of blind ugly worms. While some of the peripheral stuff would be random, the core is directed, designed, created.
 
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Reproductive fitness refers to all the traits which contribute to successful reproduction: health, selection by a mate, survival, etc.
 
I’m talking about the short-necked ancestors of long-necked giraffes.
 
rossum said:
Genesis 2:18
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18 Yahweh God said, ‘It is not right that the man should be alone. I shall make him a helper.’

19 So from the soil Yahweh God fashioned all the wild animals and all the birds of heaven. These he brought to the man to see what he would call them; each one was to bear the name the man would give it.

20 The man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds of heaven and all the wild animals. But no helper suitable for the man was found for him.

21 Then, Yahweh God made the man fall into a deep sleep. And, while he was asleep, he took one of his ribs and closed the flesh up again forthwith.

22 Yahweh God fashioned the rib he had taken from the man into a woman, and brought her to the man.

23 And the man said: This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh! She is to be called Woman, because she was taken from Man.

24 This is why a man leaves his father and mother and becomes attached to his wife, and they become one flesh.

25 Now, both of them were naked, the man and his wife, but they felt no shame before each other.

Genesis - Chapter 2 - Bible - Catholic Online

1 Thus heaven and earth were completed with all their array. 2 On the seventh day God had completed the work he had been doing. He rested on the seventh day after all the work he had been doing. 3 God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on that day he rested after all his work of ...
www.catholic.org www.catholic.org
 
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