My thoughts on evolution

[Chuck_H]

I’d like to respond, but would you mind running future posts through a spell checker before posting them? It will make your argument more cogent if it is not replete with misspelled words.

Petrus

You miss an excellent chance. Even with the mispellings (on all of our posts, so mea culpa). the thread alone illustrates how “mutations” mispelled words can definitively carry forward information.
A rsoe by any ohter nmae wloud sitll semll as sewet. looks terrible but my bet is that any mind on here (the selection process) knows exactly what I typed.

 

[Chuck_H]

Nor is it necessary to reduce God to needing to slowly evolve His creation until He gets it right. One can only look at the world and see how ludicruous it is since most every living thing in existence is dependent on all the other living things in existence in their proper forms for their maintenance and survival.
most removed for brevity)

NTOT, There is no necessity. The evolutionary process is so perfect it means that God’s creation at any moment of time is absolutely perfect for its conditions. Just as we see the wonder of an extant biome and how it meshes so well together (until the developers mess it up) we see the same phenomena time after time where the geological/fossil record is good enough to study. What else would we expect if evolution is a process thought of by God to meet the physical challenges and changing planet bios must deal with.

 

[The_Barbarian]

IN short, couldn’t have happened. There is a simple equation

p2+2pq+q2 (p2 and q2 should be taken as squared).

In fact, it was Punnett, (of Punnett square fame) who first demonstrated this fact.

This formula has been used to show that if a population is heterozygous for an allele it will take more generations than can be counted to get rid of the q allele since most of the q alleles will be in the heterozygous population (2pq).

I teach this in 8th grade with a simulation using different colored beans. Students are always surprised that natural selection rarely eliminates harmful recessives completely. lt just drives them down to a level that rarely produces homozygotes.

BTW, I use a variation of Punnett squares to show why the Hardy-Weinberg principle works. It’s fun to show them the square first, and watch (for those kids in algebra) the lights come on as they realize it’s just a binomial expansion.

Driving the allele to extinction requires extremely heavy selection pressure or even a bottleneck in the population. Such selection is rarely successful since every organism carries thousands of such alleles and there is a cascade effect that makes the whole organism unsuccessful.

As you probably know, it’s one of the reasons why populations reduced to very few individuals tend to go extinct, regardless of what we do to save them.

 

[Chuck_H]

(most removed for brevity)
One cannot conclude by finding these fossils that they were fakes of animals that never existed that were planted (it is curious why that argument is even being made). It only shows that there were once living creatures to which the fossilized remains belonged to. If one finds a pile of sheep bones and a pile of goat bones next to them for example, there are number of conclusions one can come to. But that it is evidence of progressive development is not one of them. I had asked for evidence (I have never seen such) of an instance where an elbow joint developed where there previously was none. I was shown drawings of two different creatures. I remain unconvinced that the one developed into the other, but that they are two totally different creatures.

 

[Chuck_H]

In fact, it was Punnett, (of Punnett square fame) who first demonstrated this fact.

I teach this in 8th grade with a simulation using different colored beans. Students are always surprised that natural selection rarely eliminates harmful recessives completely. lt just drives them down to a level that rarely produces homozygotes.

BTW, I use a variation of Punnett squares to show why the Hardy-Weinberg principle works. It’s fun to show them the square first, and watch (for those kids in algebra) the lights come on as they realize it’s just a binomial expansion.

Driving the allele to extinction requires extremely heavy selection pressure or even a bottleneck in the population. Such selection is rarely successful since every organism carries thousands of such alleles and there is a cascade effect that makes the whole organism unsuccessful.

As you probably know, it’s one of the reasons why populations reduced to very few individuals tend to go extinct, regardless of what we do to save them.

Thanks for name. I could not remember Hardy weinberg to save my life. The equation was there, the neuron that held the name died yesterday.

 

[drpmjhess]

You miss an excellent chance. Even with the mispellings (on all of our posts, so mea culpa). the thread alone illustrates how “mutations” mispelled words can definitively carry forward information.
A rsoe by any ohter nmae wloud sitll semll as sewet. looks terrible but my bet is that any mind on here (the selection process) knows exactly what I typed.

Thanks, Chuck – I get exhausted after reading hundreds of pages of student papers, and perhaps unduly irritated by sloppily edited work. Mea maxima culpa! Analogously, you as a geneticist might feel irritated by reading a paper that was full of genetic mistakes, and yet whose author wanted to be taken seriously. (Or a mathematician reading a paper full of basic errors in arithmetic.)

Petrus

 

[drpmjhess]

As you probably know, it’s one of the reasons why populations reduced to very few individuals tend to go extinct, regardless of what we do to save them.

Hence the genetic impossiblity of a single parental “Adam and Eve” pair?

 

[vern_humphrey]

Hence the genetic impossiblity of a single parental “Adam and Eve” pair?

Actually not.

The idea that there were only two genetically-compatible humans is one thing. But it is quite possible that we all have, somewhere in the myriad of great-great-etc.-grandparents the same couple.

 

[buffalo]

Hence the genetic impossiblity of a single parental “Adam and Eve” pair?

This would be a problem. It is clear and consistent Catholic teaching we are descended from one pair. If this were true then one would have to concede a supernatural special creation of man by God inserting him in the timeline.

 

[drpmjhess]

Actually not.
The idea that there were only two genetically-compatible humans is one thing. But it is quite possible that we all have, somewhere in the myriad of great-great-etc.-grandparents the same couple.

Vern, Alec (or Hecd2) has argued in previous threads that the minimum complement of hominids to avoid a genetic bottleneck was 10,000 individuals. I defer to the geneticists on this questions (Chuck – what do you think?).

Theologically I don’t see a problem interpreting “Adam” and “Eve” as an ancestral group, if that is what genetics calls for. It doesn’t militate against creation, or original sin, or redemption – all those doctrines can be interpreted in a way consistent with the science.

Petrus

 

[buffalo]

Vern, Alec (or Hecd2) has argued in previous threads that the minimum complement of hominids to avoid a genetic bottleneck was 10,000 individuals. I defer to the geneticists on this questions (Chuck – what do you think?).

Theologically I don’t see a problem interpreting “Adam” and “Eve” as an ancestral group, if that is what genetics calls for. It doesn’t militate against creation, or original sin, or redemption – all those doctrines can be interpreted in a way consistent with the science.

Petrus

But, the snag is again - Eve coming from Adam and the Church’s consistent teaching on it. Again, the syncretism that is necessary to deal with this.

Why don’t we just say it and get it over with - Science tells us more truth that Revelation ever could. We now can now dispense with the “old” thinking and now we have no need for the Church at all. All this posturing that unless evolution is accepted means people will leave the Church rings hollow.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Why don’t we just say it and get it over with - Science tells us more truth that Revelation ever could.

The Catholic position is that truth cannot contradict truth. Science is limited in what it can tell us. And the Church does not teach science.

We now can now dispense with the “old” thinking and now we have no need for the Church at all.

Fortunately, we don’t have to pick one truth over another. You don’t have to dispense with the Church to accept reality, and you don’t have to dispense with reality to accept the Church.

All this posturing that unless evolution is accepted means people will leave the Church rings hollow.

YE creationism makes atheists. And how we think about that fact does not change the fact.

 

[buffalo]

The Catholic position is that truth cannot contradict truth. Science is limited in what it can tell us. And the Church does not teach science.

Fortunately, we don’t have to pick one truth over another. You don’t have to dispense with the Church to accept reality, and you don’t have to dispense with reality to accept the Church.

YE creationism makes atheists. And how we think about that fact does not change the fact.

You missed the snag. You have to dispense with the teachings about our first parents. That is a huge problem.

Right - faith and reason cannot be opposed for they flow from the very same God.

 

[Chuck_H]

Vern, Alec (or Hecd2) has argued in previous threads that the minimum complement of hominids to avoid a genetic bottleneck was 10,000 individuals. I defer to the geneticists on this questions (Chuck – what do you think?).

Theologically I don’t see a problem interpreting “Adam” and “Eve” as an ancestral group, if that is what genetics calls for. It doesn’t militate against creation, or original sin, or redemption – all those doctrines can be interpreted in a way consistent with the science.

Petrus

The present day genetic diversity among all human groups plus the total fixation of “founder” genes (skin color, some facial formation) place the human radiations well before anything biblical. I think this has come up before in history since the presence of indigenous people in South America and aborigines in Australia made some in the magisterium to question if they even had souls. Lets not forget that one of the purposes of Mary’s appearance to Juan Diego was to forever settle the souls question. It’s too bad she couldn’t do the same for the aborigines but they were under Anglican and Presbyterian dominance and an appearance and miracle by Mary might have taken away their free will to be protestants. (this is pure conjecture and should not be taken as a statement of theology)

While I bow to Church doctrine as it stands. I must admit that it is not impossible that one day the Church will revise its Eden doctrine simply because it (the doctrine) cannot stand against reliable data. There is something of a move in that direction already in that Rome concedes the reality of evolution at all. This that implies that man is biologically ascendant not descendant.
This doesn’t mean that man didn’t need saving by any means or that we couldn’t have fallen spiritually. Both are evident throughout history and archeology.

 

[Chuck_H]

Barbarian - here’s couple of more books you might want to read to learn more about the idea of natural selection both as regarding scientific proof and reasoning.

Icons of Evolution - Jonathan Wells
Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds - Phillip E. Johnson

From my research much of the information you present as fact is inconsitent with current scientific understanding. The reasoning part is another question; often when authors speak of natural selection they take its truth as a given and then proceed to “prove” it, as in the tautological definition of homology for many Darwinists. The point here is mainly that by deciding ahead of time what they believe to be true, many avenues are cut off. The facts are made to fit the theory rather than vice versa. Read Icons, you might like it.

I will be charitable. Phillip E Johnson is simply ignorant of biological systems. Look in any high school biology text book and you will see the table for codon wobble that lets almost all first letter mutations have no change at all. Most second letter mutations either do not change the amino acid being coded for and results in a like amino acid being coded for that doesn’t change the character of the protein or enzyme activity.

Comparing the codon wobble system to information theory is simply ridiculous. If word processors worked the way genetics worked you would still be able to read the work after several changes.

 

[Chuck_H]

Every once in a while I cast all caution to the wind so here goes.

If I think the science of evolution changes anything in the Church it is this. Male sacredness is just crud when evolution gets done with it. female gender is the preferred body type and if anything interferes with that delicate trip to male formation, the developing embryo/fetus reverts back to female gender. female is the first morphogenetic type seen in multicellular organisms while male gender shows up much much much later. Females are guarded better than males during their entire life cycle biologically, better immune systems, better fat distribution. While fertilizations are 50/50, live births are already 1:0.75 in favor of females and by the time reproductive age is reached the ratio is almost 1:0.6 so males are definitely the weaker sex. Females have stronger parenting behaviors than males. Females make better nurturers.
If God took any body’s rib it would have been Eve’s in the biological book. Male has always been the throw away sex and paid the price.
Females have always scared males to death since when a male bleeds they die while it seems to have no affect on females (no moaning about cramps ladies).
If Sacred Scripture tells us anything about gender it is that women stayed while men ran so there is little wonder why early church leaders felt the need to tell women to sit down and shut up. No one wants to be reminded of weakness.
When Jesus was asked about divorce He told the pharisees that “Moses, because you were a stiff necked people gave you divorce but I tell you…” I would have to say the same thing about His being male because we were and still are a stiff necked people.

You may massacre me now.

 

[buffalo]

Every once in a while I cast all caution to the wind so here goes.

If I think the science of evolution changes anything in the Church it is this. Male sacredness is just crud when evolution gets done with it. female gender is the preferred body type and if anything interferes with that delicate trip to male formation, the developing embryo/fetus reverts back to female gender. female is the first morphogenetic type seen in multicellular organisms while male gender shows up much much much later. Females are guarded better than males during their entire life cycle biologically, better immune systems, better fat distribution. While fertilizations are 50/50, live births are already 1:0.75 in favor of females and by the time reproductive age is reached the ratio is almost 1:0.6 so males are definitely the weaker sex. Females have stronger parenting behaviors than males. Females make better nurturers.
If God took any body’s rib it would have been Eve’s in the biological book. Male has always been the throw away sex and paid the price.
Females have always scared males to death since when a male bleeds they die while it seems to have no affect on females (no moaning about cramps ladies).
If Sacred Scripture tells us anything about gender it is that women stayed while men ran so there is little wonder why early church leaders felt the need to tell women to sit down and shut up. No one wants to be reminded of weakness.
When Jesus was asked about divorce He told the pharisees that “Moses, because you were a stiff necked people gave you divorce but I tell you…” I would have to say the same thing about His being male because we were and still are a stiff necked people.

You may massacre me now.

:tsktsk: That is exactly the syncretism I speak of.

 

[Chuck_H]

:tsktsk: That is exactly the syncretism I speak of.

The thread asked for thoughts

 

[buffalo]

The thread asked for thoughts

Harmonious thoughts.

 

[Chuck_H]

Harmonious thoughts.

They are quite harmonious in a biological sense and in a sociological sense. That some may view them uncomfortably I have little control over. Being adults and of good character they may argue as they wish.