Why you should think that the Natural-Evolution of species is true

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So you’re having trouble with the claim that a bacterium ended up as Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe. I can’t imagine why - it’s perfectly rational:)

Furthermore, this is strong empirical evidence that such a transformation is possible - the ancestor of a sausage-dog was a wolf and bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics.
 
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Aloysium said:
The average IQ of humanity has been dropping, irrespective of the growth that is attributable to better nutrition and public health measures. According to one study which measured brain reaction time, since Darwin’s day it has been falling by one point a decade.
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But there are always exceptions to the rule. For example, in the last decade, my IQ has risen from 8 to 11.
 
Edgar said:
the ancestor of a sausage-dog was a wolf and bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics.
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These reflect the capacity of organisms for diversity and the reality that while individual creatures exist as a unity in themselves, like we do here perceiving, thinking, feeling and acting as one person, they are participant components within a larger system that is the environment, to which they contribute and which in turn, allows for their existence.

This capacity for diversity is built in. What may call mutations are expressions of the wholeness of life-in-the-world. In multicellular animals this ability to participate in an ever-changing environment, encompasses the entire range of their being - from the atomic properties that underlie the structure and physiology of each individual cell, to the complex inner environment of tissues and organ systems that they form, to the body, which from one cell developed into the many, in health all working together, psychologically structured to fit in naturally with other forms of life which exist around it, within the solar sytem which fuels these processes.

But it doesn’t stop here, as we see in the dachshund, whose presence in the world, as such, is directly linked to the human psychology that moulded its current appearance through successive generations. The flowering of life is an artistic project. We see this evidence in the variety of birds, such as the peacock and various wrens, which reveal the intrinsic beauty of nature, to be appreciated by those who can see. In part this involves an understanding of how these creatures might see one another as they strive to acheive an ultimate image in a mate that has been set in their hearts as an instinctive behaviour. We also note, in their ritualized mating behaviour, the growing complexity of being as we move up the hierarchy of existent things. In the instinctive social behaviour of animals, we have revealed to us aspects and variations of the emotional world, which we share.

So what we have in reality when speaking about living beings, are things that have an existential/spiritual dimension, to varying degrees one that is psychological, as well as having a physical presence. The soul of the thing is what fundamentally makes it what it is, subsuming within it, components which would have their own being in themselves, but united in the creature as it is given its form and being by a transcendent mind.

The good news reveals that the creator of all this wonder is God. The Ground of all existence is Love, Relationality, personal, perfect and good. Understanding nature within the context of Christian cosmology, we come to know how all this originated in an Eden, fell through an original sin commited by humanity, the crown of creation in the first man, and how through the Way that is the incarnate Son of God, all journeys, with the grace of the Holy Spirit, towards final union in the Trinity.
 
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buffalo said:
No one wants to deal with this:
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If Eve was cloned from Adam then it halves the genetic diversity of the initial true human population. That increases the requirement to interbreed with the surrounding not-quite-human, but biologically compatible, population. If not then you will have great difficulty reaching the observed levels of diversity in modern human genomes. At some loci there are thousands of alleles, not two. And there are loci where we share more than two (and more than four) alleles with chimps and bonobos.

rossum
 
Eve was formed from bone and flesh from Adam’s side after Adam was put in a deep sleep. Science cannot confirm this.
 
rossum said:
If Eve was cloned from Adam then it halves the genetic diversity of the initial true human population.
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I don’t think that Eve was just cloned from Adam. God copied one X-chromosome from Adam and made another, but different X-chromosome for Eve.

I believe that Adam himself did not evolve, but was especially made by God from inorganic matter in the same way that He made the first living cell. This means that Adam’s X and Y chromosomes were also especially made, and did not come from the lower hominins. In addition, I believe that Adam and Eve were not made in the womb of a hominin, but were made adults from the beginning.
 
rom said:
I believe that Adam himself did not evolve, but was especially made by God from inorganic matter in the same way that He made the first living cell. This means that Adam’s X and Y chromosomes were also especially made, and did not come from the lower hominins. In addition, I believe that Adam and Eve were not made in the womb of a hominin, but were made adults from the beginning.
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God tells us that He made living organisms from non-living matter: “Let the earth bring forth…” Therefore the lower hominins were made from earth. When Genesis described the making of true humans it omits a step. We can interpret earth → man as earth → hominins → man. Is that interpretation valid? Yes, because we can easily see that the Bible sometimes omits intermediate steps when it describes lines of descent. See Mark 1:1
This is the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah the son of David, the son of Abraham
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That omits a lot more than one intermediate step. Jesus was not a direct son of David, nor David a direct son of Abraham.

rossum
 
edwest said:
Eve was formed from bone and flesh from Adam’s side after Adam was put in a deep sleep. Science cannot confirm this.
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Merry Christmas to you!

Yes, science cannot prove nor disprove it.
rossum said:
God tells us that He made living organisms from non-living matter: “Let the earth bring forth…” Therefore the lower hominins were made from earth. When Genesis described the making of true humans it omits a step. We can interpret earth -> man as earth -> hominins -> man. Is that interpretation valid? Yes, because we can easily see that the Bible sometimes omits intermediate steps when it describes lines of descent. See Mark 1:1
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: First of all, Merry Christmas! I know you are Buddhist, but when I say “Merry Christmas,” I also mean I want to share my joy and happiness with you.

Yes, of course, you can interpret it that way as well. But the reason I believe that Adam and Eve did not evolve from the hominins is because God made a special act for them when He said, “Let us make man to our image and likeness: and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.” (Gen 1:26) The “image and likeness” is primarily in the soul, which gives man his fundamental dignity. But I believe that the body shares in the dignity of the soul because it is the whole man, not just the soul, that was made into God’s image and likeness. In fact, at Christ’s Second Coming, when the body is reunited to the soul, the body will also have characteristics similar to that of the soul itself, like immortality, being able to pass through closed doors, being able to travel at the swiftness of thought, etc.

What I said above is not dogma but my personal belief. If you were Catholic and want to believe in the evolution of the human body, you would be free to do so.
 
rossum said:
If Eve was cloned from Adam then it halves the genetic diversity of the initial true human population. That increases the requirement to interbreed with the surrounding not-quite-human, but biologically compatible, population. If not then you will have great difficulty reaching the observed levels of diversity in modern human genomes. At some loci there are thousands of alleles, not two. And there are loci where we share more than two (and more than four) alleles with chimps and bonobos.

rossum
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Most of us are well aware of that dogma and how in this, as in other instances, it fails to address reality. There is another way of understanding who we are and our orignins.

Processes involving DNA and associated proteins are responsible for the mixing of genetic information during the formation of gametes, thereby contributing greatly to the diversity we see in different kinds of living beings. These are ordered and very finely tuned. The variety of qualities were built into the first human being. Before corruption set in, sexual reproduction, which further added to the diversification within the various kinds of multicellular life forms, following the original sin, aided in mitigating the consequences of random mutations of the genetic code which provides the order to the body. While the disorganized information on one chromosome would be unable to produce the result that had been intended, there would be another to take over the function.

The fundamental reality of persons is in their being, a wholeness containing the totality of psychosomatic structures which allow for the expression of human existence in the world. The idea that Eve was cloned from Adam is speculation, an attempt to force reality into what little science knows. Eve’s creation, as is our very own, a mystery.

What has been revealed is that she was made from Adam’s “rib”. All humanity has arisen from one human progenitor who was brought into existence by God. As we are formed from the “living matter” that are human gametes, Eve came to be from the living matter of Adam. The thorax is on the outside of our bodies, and the symolism is that we are each made as a self-other, to be complete and made whole again when united in love. It is said that God created mankind male and female, so it would be in that original act of humanity’s creation from one being that the sexes emerged, each remaining individual and existing in relation to the other, united in love, divided in sin.
 
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1 Corinthians 15:45

New International Version
So it is written: “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.

New Living Translation
The Scriptures tell us, “The first man, Adam, became a living person.” But the last Adam–that is, Christ–is a life-giving Spirit.

English Standard Version
Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
 
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buffalo said:
Common design is a better explanation.
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So why are bat wins different from bird wings and pterosaur wings different from both?

Common design can explain both similarities and differences. What you need to show is a way to falsify your hypothesis of common design.

To help you, here is how Darwin said we could falsify his theory:
If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.

from Chapter Six of Origin.
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rossum
 
buffalo said:
Common design is a better explanation.
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I think it is more accurate to say “Common Designer is a better explanation.” Two very different organisms will obviously have very different designs, but they can have a common Designer, which would explain the similarities in their design.

I think that the similarity in the "alphabets" (base pairs) of the DNA among organisms does not necessarily prove common descent. It could also be due to the fact that the gene codes of different organisms have the same Author (or Designer). Every organism has its own unique genetic code. But if it is the same Author who wrote the genetic code of each organism, it would not be surprising to see the same "language" being used in writing the unique genetic code of each organism. Imagine the genetic code of each organism as a "software code." Just as a computer programmer uses the same "subroutine" for processes that are similar for different programs, the Author of the genetic code of each organism could use the same nucleotide sequences for portions of the code that relate to functions that are similar in different organisms. So, some sequences of the nucleotides will be similar for organisms that will live under the same conditions, for parts that will perform the same functions, or for enzymes and acids that will produce the same proteins. Therefore, the similarity in the DNA sequences of different organisms, such as between apes and humans, does not need to be explained exclusively by descent from a common ancestor. It could also be explained by the fact that there was one Author (or common Designer) who wrote their gene codes.
 
rossum said:
To help you, here is how Darwin said we could falsify his theory:
If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.
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Individual creatures have been brought into existance as themselves. The structures that go into forming what they are must be for the good of their kind of being. At the same time they require an environment to provide the basic materials that they incorporate into themselves and to act as the stage where they manifest their existence. They are part of that environment, made up of other creatures which do likewise, each playing their role in its maintenance as it changes in time. All this is the result of an Act of creation from Eternity, bringing about each moment such as this very one, from the beginning to the end of time.

I could say that to falsify this view one would have to prove that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of itself, but what we are talking about is the mythos that describes our world to ourselves. While based on some truth, they have nothing to do with proof. Faith in God and an understanding how creation fits in with His will has to do with knowledge, realization or enlightenment as a Buddhist might say, or revelation as one who understands that reality, as any beloved, cannot be taken but must reveal itself.
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