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The_Barbarian
Guest
It does. Nothing in science contradicts God, either.
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ricmat
Guest
Right. Just get some homo erectus DNA and compare it with homo sapiens DNA. It will absolutely positively with 100% confidence prove that homo sapiens might have possibly evolved via random mutations + natural selection from homo erectus.
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Oh, wait a minute. Nobody has any homo erectus DNA to share? Bummer.
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Dark_Warrior
Guest
Yes, very true, a good point and interpretation. but it doesn’t survive under evidence such as transitional fossils and the age of the earth.
I think these problems of eolution would go away if our schools just taught it without mixing popular atheistic opinon, anotherwords instead of saying that the first cell formed by blind, empty, accidental meaningless chance, they should just teach that it formed this way or that. atheists believe it to be chance, theistic evolutionists believe it to be the hand of God.
Either way doesn’t matter, for if God didn’t use evolution, and there were no evidence for it at all, people would still be arguing over who’s God created the universe. Like the evolution arguments, they would last forever.
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cpayne
Guest
But this wasn’t the OP, right? The OP asked how common ancestry of two currently existing species might be shown. The answer is, yep, DNA.Right. Just get some homo erectus DNA and compare it with homo sapiens DNA. It will absolutely positively with 100% confidence prove that homo sapiens might have possibly evolved via random mutations + natural selection from homo erectus.
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Oh, wait a minute. Nobody has any homo erectus DNA to share? Bummer.
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ricmat
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Common ancestry could be shown with DNA by tracing both back to an original ancestor. If you don’t have the DNA of the original ancestor, and the sequence of mutations from that ancestor to the two currently existing species, all is mere speculation.
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hecd2
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Nonsense - we’ve already dealt with this once before in this thread. Perhaps you might like to postulate a compelling hypothesis other than common ancestry to explain:
- a human and chimpanzee Vitamin C synthesis gene broken in exactly the same way in human and chimp,
- a large number of other olfactory genes broken in identical fashion in chimp and human,
- identical endogenous retroviruses in the same genomic location in human and chimp
- a large number of common transposons in the two species.
Alec
evolutionpages.com
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The_Barbarian
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What public schools do you think teach atheism. Names, please.
The origin of life is not part of evolutionary theory. And even abiogenesis (the theory you are talking about) doesn’t regard it as “blind, empty, accidental meaningless chance.” Science can’t address those questions.
That’s what they teach.
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Dark_Warrior
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Lol, I’m talking about text books that proclaim evolution operates by mere chance. That’s what is taught is evolution studies. Everything is chance.
If this is incorrect for you, well, awesome, but not my or many others I know experience.
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rossum
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Then those textbooks are wrong. Random mutation does indeed include a chance element, but natural selection is also a part of evolution and is most definitely not a chance process. Random mutations create variations in a population while natural selection selects those variations which are advantageous in that environment.
Evolution as a whole is not a random process, though it does include some random elements.
rossum
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ricmat
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My lack of a compelling competing hypothesis does not de-facto make your speculation correct. What an interesting but absurd notion for a scientist to come up with.
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cpayne
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The question might arise, How could this process involve random elements if creation comes from an all-knowing Creator? An interesting answer I’ve seen (from Stephen Barr in First Things, I believe) is that there is an analogy to the pages of a book. The first letter on each page is completely random and cannot be predicted, no matter how many pages of the book one has already read. However, just because the book includes random elements, that doesn’t mean the book itself occurs randomly or without a creator.
I like it.
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ricmat
Guest
Also, I forgot to mention. I’m not against common ancestry as part of an explanation. I’m against people saying that it is absolutely positively 100% true that evolution happens strictly by random mutations and natural selection over the time period of millions of years (infinite time not allowed) - with no outside “intelligent” influence of any sort.
The following is a serious request.
How about coming up with a time line showing species A (e.g. erectus) and species B (e.g. sapiens). Something more complex than bacteria that we can all relate to. How long did it take? How many generations did it take? What were typical population sizes? What mutations needed to happen? What is the probability of the mutations happening randomly? Could it happen in a million years (or whatever the current estimate is?)
Certainly these are reasonable questions. So there is very little data? OK - make what you think are reasonable (or even best case) assumptions and put together the time line and then if you think it’s still reasonable, we have something to discuss. If you can’t get from A to B even with best case assumptions, then you have a problem. No plan is a good plan unless the time frame works out. You should be able to defend your theory with a time line, and if anybody can do it, you probably can (if you’re willing). I’m open to this line of argument.
Certainly if the right mutations were forced to occur at the right place and time, and perhaps even in fortuitous combinations (none of which is random), then such an evolutionary process would have a much better chance of happening in a limited time (such as a million years). This is where I currently stand.
PS this message is primarily for hecd2, but others are welcome to chime in
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The_Barbarian
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I review science textbooks from time to time. Which textbooks say that evolution operates by mere chance? Name, publisher, and date, if you have it. Never saw anything like that, ever. After all, Darwin’s discovery was that it wasn’t by mere chance.
Name me a school district or University that teaches it is by mere chance. Never saw such a thing. That’s not a rhetorical question. Please tell us about these.
If you just heard the story from someone else, feel free to ignore my request.
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The_Barbarian
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Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1).
Cardinal Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, report of the International Theological Commission
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The_Barbarian
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There’s a bit of a problem with that. You see, it’s extremely hard to draw the line defining what is archaic H. sapiens, and what is advanced H. erectus. Combine this with the evidence that the evolution of anatomically modern man was by cladogenesis (some populations of H. erectus seem to have continued on for some time after H. sapiens appeared), and it gets complicated.
(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/species.html
Please read the page; it’s even more interesting than the graph suggests.
A few million, maybe tens of millions in some cases. We don’t have the census results. However, we do know that large species falling below a certain number, generally go extinct. So the evidence supports a few million for most of these.
The big one was for neotony. That resulted in brain sutures fusing late, with larger brain, repositioning of the skull over the spine, relatively longer legs and shorter arms, small face, and more gracile bones.
Much of this happened before anatomically modern humans appeared; the postcranial skeletons of H. erectus, particularly the late ones, are essentially those of modern humans. H. sapiens differs mostly in the further foetalization of the skull.
That would be 1.0. Already happened. Actually, our particular set of mutations are about as unlikely as you would be, given the genes of your great-great grandparents. You are stunningly unlikely, but you happened.
Yep. Gould once calculated the number of changes necessary for the increase in skull size in hominids, and showed that much less than a million years would be required. The rather great changes in polar bears from grizzly bears happened in perhaps 100,000 years.
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The_Barbarian
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You seem have confused “speculation” and “evidence.” Alec provided you with a number of compelling facts that show human descent.
Science is primarily inductive, drawing conclusions from evidence. This probably does seem absurd to you, but nothing else we do is as effective in understanding the physical universe.
This is perhaps the biggest obstacle for many people in understanding science.
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thenobes
Guest
Lets calculate how many chances homo erectus got to become homo sapiens or habilis or whoever.
2 million years @ 20 yrs per generation
5 generations per 100 yrs
50 per thousand, or, 50000 per million yrs
So we are looking at 100000 generations for 2 million yrs.
Each generation could produce, lets say, for sustaining the population, 10 offspring, of whom 2 would survive to maturity.
if 2 million people were in the total population, then approximately 1 million pairings would be available a generation.
So 100000 * 10 * 1000000 = 1 trillion chances.
peace
steve
2 million years @ 20 yrs per generation
5 generations per 100 yrs
50 per thousand, or, 50000 per million yrs
So we are looking at 100000 generations for 2 million yrs.
Each generation could produce, lets say, for sustaining the population, 10 offspring, of whom 2 would survive to maturity.
if 2 million people were in the total population, then approximately 1 million pairings would be available a generation.
So 100000 * 10 * 1000000 = 1 trillion chances.
peace
steve
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The_Barbarian
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I would still like to hear of textbooks or schools that teach evolution is pure chance.
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Dark_Warrior
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To the atheist, and to most atheists who are scientists, we are alive because of chance, an accident. there is no God, and we just exist to exist by random processess. There is no God behind evolution, it’s just a random working feature of nature that began by chance and accident. In any school, that is the impression to children. That life didn’t begn by God, but it evolved millions of years ago by chance.
I don’t believe that, I also aknowledge eolution, but in school this was my and my friends impression.
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rossum
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You are not an atheist, so it is strange that you know how atheists think.
As far as I am aware most biologists working in the field of abiogenesis do not think that life arose by “chance”. As with evolutin there was probably an element of chance, but there was also a large element of chemistry. There are large non-chance factors in chemistry. Water is always two hydrogen and one oxygen. That is not chance, it is chemistry. Abiogenesis is largely a chemical process and chemistry is far from being a purely chance process as any chamist will tell you.
There is no God behind any of science. There is no God behind the internal combustion engine. Do you want us to all switch to a horse and cart like the Amish? God is outside the boundaries of science, just as you do not find long discussions of the design of the Large Hadron Collider in theology books. Science works within a set of defined boundaries, and God is outside those boundaries.
False, and you know that it is false bacause I and others have told you that it is false. Natural selection, part of evolution, is not a random or accidental process.
I have taught in schools. In science classes I taught science and did not mention God. Nor did I mention the Civil War (History) or French irregular verbs (French). God was mentioned in religion classes. There are boundaries to different subjects and God is outwith the boundary of science. We do not expect to be taught plumbing in a theology class.
rossum
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