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

[TheOldColonel]

Indeed. That is presumed.

 

[Techno2000]

Evolution is by design, not by accident. This is what I mean.

Evolution doesn’t need your god, its guided by Nature Selection.

 

[buffalo]

Indeed. That is presumed.

Evolution is intelligently designed. The driving information comes from where?

 

[LeafByNiggle]

From what I understand rossum, mutations in the DNA or genes are (essentially?) copying errors and so in a certain respect they might be considered random or chance like mutations. However, IMO, this is a nail on the coffin in the death of Darwinian evolutionary theory. I do not believe from any point of view that all the varieties of the kinds or species of plants and animals on the earth were the result of chance or randomness nor that any finely tuned organism is the result of chance processes. I find this to be against the very nature of the ‘reason’. It doesn’t make sense to me that your going to get order out of chance or chaos. The structure of the DNA in any given organism appears to be the material cause of the bodily accidental differences among the individual members of a given species of animal including humans or plant. But I don’t believe mutations result in substantial differences or the generation of substantially different species such as a fish, lion, or tree. We’ll have to agree to disagree on this one Rossum. Not that various or certain mutations might be considered random or chance like in a certain respect among the individuals of a given species and accidental material differences but that such a process is or may be the cause of all the varieties of animal and plant species on the face of the earth.

In other words, you don’t “believe” in evolution. We get it. Unfortunately you have not given anyone else reason to disbelieve like you.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

TheOldColonel:

Evolution is by design, not by accident. This is what I mean.

Evolution doesn’t need your god, its guided by Nature Selection.

Evolution, being part of creation, owes its existence to God, therefore it needs God as much as any other part of creation.

 

[Techno2000]

Techno2000:

TheOldColonel:

Evolution is by design, not by accident. This is what I mean.

Evolution doesn’t need your god, its guided by Nature Selection.

Evolution, being part of creation, owes its existence to God, therefore it needs God as much as any other part of creation.

My God is better than that…he doesn’t have to use Evolution to create anything.

 

[rossum]

The genetic disordered crayfish you keep bringing up may be called a different species but it remains a crustacean

Just as when humans descended from our ape-like ancestors we remained mammals. If you are going to discuss evolution then you need to learn how to correctly understand the levels of the nested hierarchy of life. To confuse a subphylum like crustacea with a single species is a gross error.

rossum

 

[rossum]

From what I understand rossum, mutations in the DNA or genes are (essentially?) copying errors and so in a certain respect they might be considered random or chance like mutations.

Yes, mutations are random copying errors. However, evolution is not random mutations alone; evolution is random mutation and natural selection. Natural selection is not random. It acts like a sieve, removing deleterious mutations from the mix. After selection the mutations are no longer random because they have been selected. It is those post-selection mutations that form the great majority of mutations we observe.

I do not believe from any point of view that all the varieties of the kinds or species of plants and animals on the earth were the result of chance or randomness nor that any finely tuned organism is the result of chance processes.

You are correct. Natural selection is not a chance process, so the overall effect of evolution is not chance. The mutations which exist today have gone through billions of generations of selection. In all those billions of generations not one organism failed to reproduce. Not one. Every one of your ancestors, all the way back to that original just-about-alive proto-cell, have succeeded in reproducing. We are all the product of a very long line of successes with not one failure among them.

I find this to be against the very nature of the ‘reason’.

You have mistaken part of the process: random mutation, for the whole process: random mutation and natural selection. You are criticising a part for not being the whole. Hence your criticism is irrelevant. It is correct as far as it goes, random mutations alone are incapable of producing life as we see it. But once natural selection is included then evolution, including both parts, is indeed capable of producing life as we see it.

rossum

 

[Wozza]

LeafByNiggle:

Techno2000:

TheOldColonel:

Evolution is by design, not by accident. This is what I mean.

Evolution doesn’t need your god, its guided by Nature Selection.

Evolution, being part of creation, owes its existence to God, therefore it needs God as much as any other part of creation.

My God is better than that…he doesn’t have to use Evolution to create anything.

So presumably He didn’t use planetary accretion to form the worlds we see. Presumably He doesn’t use gravity to maintain their orbits. Perhaps grass grows without the need for photosynthesis. Perhaps He had no call to use tectonics to form the continents. Maybe there’s no need for chemical bonds to maintain matter or nucleur fusion to keep the sun burning.

Maybe some people deny science only when it contradicts a fundamental interpretation of scripture.

 

[Aloysium]

Aloysium:

The genetic disordered crayfish you keep bringing up may be called a different species but it remains a crustacean

Just as when humans descended from our ape-like ancestors we remained mammals. If you are going to discuss evolution then you need to learn how to correctly understand the levels of the nested hierarchy of life. To confuse a subphylum like crustacea with a single species is a gross error.

rossum

This is the myth we have all ben taught. It comes across like being told that it is a grave error not to consider that a burned object has been dephlogisticated. We all know what to write on an exam paper, what the teacher would want to hear, be it physics, biology or political science. People may be told that they are learning how to think but repeating what one has been told will get the marks.

 

[Aloysium]

So presumably He didn’t use planetary accretion to form the worlds we see. Presumably He doesn’t use gravity to maintain their orbits. Perhaps grass grows without the need for photosynthesis. Perhaps He had no call to use tectonics to form the continents. Maybe there’s no need for chemical bonds to maintain matter or nucleur fusion to keep the sun burning.

It must again be repeated: evolution is a myth that utilizes science, leaving us with a distorted image of reality, to present a philosophical position and justification for modern society’s mores.

 

[Aloysium]

My God is better than that…he doesn’t have to use Evolution to create anything.

I don’t see how it could be done. Even if a placental animal might hatch from an egg, for which I see no need since the genetic transformation within the zygote would be nosimpler than creating the adult form outright, the reality is that organisms of one kind give rise to organisms of the same kind of being. Human beings bear human children regardless of their genetic make up. So the claim evolution that is responsible, perhaps not so much for the diversity, but for the growing complexity of life forms culminating in humankind, which is rooted in eternity and has the capacity to know and act with a free will is unreasonable.

 

[rossum]

What myth? That you cannot tell the difference between a single species and a whole clade?

You are making some very obvious errors in biology here. Those errors do not do your arguments any favours. Better to learn more so you do not reduce the impact of your other arguments.

To start with, you should learn that all scientific theories are provisional. Newton’s gravity was provisional and was replaced by Einstein. In turn Einstein will be replaced, likely by Quantum Gravity. The provisional character of theories is the strength of science. It allows errors to be corrected.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

I do know what to write in order to ace a modern biology exam. I don’t believe it. One of the telling signs that it is off the mark is calling a genetic anomaly a species.

Evolution is similar to popularizations of science like Schrödinger’s cat, which points out the error of interpreting the relationships found, in this case, quantum physics to objects in daily life. For the purposes of this discussion, it is the reverse, the misapplication of what we discover empirically to the reality that are living creatures, as if a cat were merely a collection of quantum events. Evolutionary theories are rudimentary attempts at materialistic and utilitarian explanations of everything, including phenomena that cannot be seen under the light of modern science - life itself.

By the way, it is hard to take seriously anyone who thinks he doesn’t truly exist, and that there is no ultimate truth. If this were the case, it is only opinion, and yours has been duly noted. After we die, we will see which one stands.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

LeafByNiggle:

Techno2000:

TheOldColonel:

Evolution is by design, not by accident. This is what I mean.

Evolution doesn’t need your god, its guided by Nature Selection.

Evolution, being part of creation, owes its existence to God, therefore it needs God as much as any other part of creation.

My God is better than that…he doesn’t have to use Evolution to create anything.

Genesis says he used clay to create Man. Why isn’t God “better than that?” He shouldn’t have to use clay. He could have made Man out of nothing. Ah, we see that God does not have the same sense of “better” as Man does. If God could use clay, then He could have used evolution. Personally, I think evolution is more inspirational than clay as a creation technique. So if God intended to inspire Man by the way He created us, He did the right thing by using evolution.

 

[Wozza]

Wozza:

So presumably He didn’t use planetary accretion to form the worlds we see. Presumably He doesn’t use gravity to maintain their orbits. Perhaps grass grows without the need for photosynthesis. Perhaps He had no call to use tectonics to form the continents. Maybe there’s no need for chemical bonds to maintain matter or nucleur fusion to keep the sun burning.

It must again be repeated: evolution is a myth that utilizes science, leaving us with a distorted image of reality, to present a philosophical position and justification for modern society’s mores.

Repeat it? Gee, Al. All your posts are nothing but repeating that same message. But don’t you think it nonsensical that someone would claim that God didn’t need to use one aspect of a specific scientific process but has no problem with all other scientific processes?

Planetary acretion? But you weren’t there to see it. You can’t duplicate it. It makes no predictions. It serves no useful purpose. It’s a myth promoted by atheists. God formed all the planets and stars instantly. He don’t need none of this ‘science’ business.

I hate using emoticons but if there was one showing a guy slowly beating his head gently against a wall…well, it would be applicable.

 

[rossum]

I do know what to write in order to ace a modern biology exam.

I beg to differ.

One of the telling signs that it is off the mark is calling a genetic anomaly a species.

The marbled crayfish reproduces, passing its DNA on to future generations. That is a biological species. Your personal opinion does not change anything. What you call a “genetic anomaly” others call a mutation.

including phenomena that cannot be seen under the light of modern science - life itself.

You are confusing evolution with abiogenesis. Darwin called his book, “On the Origin of Species”. He did not call it “On the Origin of Life and Species”. It is an error to confuse the two.

By the way, it is hard to take seriously anyone who thinks he doesn’t truly exist, and that there is no ultimate truth.

You are not the first to notice my former sig. The original source is Mark Siderits, “Thinking on Empty: Madhyamika Anti-Realism and Canons of Rationality” in S Biderman and B.A. Schaufstein, eds, Rationality In Question (1989). Dordrecht: Brill.

I have not read Siderits but saw the quote in a piece on Nagarjuna. The “Madhyamika” in Siderits’ title refers to the religious and philosophical school of Buddhism that Nagarjuna founded. I have seen the same quote again in other places in reference to the Madhyamika and Nagarjuna - it seems quite popular. The quote is intentionally paradoxical; paradox is necessary to remind us that words are insufficient when trying to describe the fundamental nature of reality.

For a philosophical discussion of Nagarjuna and reality see the web article Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought. The Siderits quote is at the end of section four:

There is, then, no escape. Nagarjuna’s view is contradictory. The contradiction is, clearly a paradox of expressibility. Nagarjuna succeeds in saying the unsayable, just as much as the Wittgenstein of the Tractatus. We can think (and characterize) reality only subject to language, which is conventional, so the ontology of that reality is all conventional. It follows that the conventional objects of reality do not ultimately (non-conventionally) exist. It also follows that nothing we say of them is ultimately true. That is, all things are empty of ultimate existence; and this is their ultimate nature, and is an ultimate truth about them. They hence cannot be thought to have that nature; nor can we say that they do. But we have just done so. As Mark Siderits (1989) has put it, “the ultimate truth is that there is no ultimate truth.”

After we die, we will see which one stands.

Been there. Done that. Got reborn.

rossum

 

[Aloysium]

Evolution is an illusion and could not be utilized to bring living beings into existence.

I am not sure what you mean by by God creating the planets instantly, but the entire universe is one cosmic symphony, happening in God’s eternal Now, beginning to end, through an act of Divine will.

I’m not beating my head against the wall. I am very aware of how indoctrination works and how self proclaimed skeptics are the least open minded of anyone one will meet.

 

[o_mlly]

We called them crawdads in Texas. Brought the critters back from LA in the trunks of our cars in coolers. Threw them into the kid’s swimming pool and told the kids to take out the floaters (we’re not scavengers, y’all). Wives would bring the brine pots to a boil, tossed in the survivors, wait for the critters to sing their last and, then, dig in. Never checked those critters for their sexual preferences; probably ate a few asexual ones over the years. Dang! If only I’d checked. I’d a got that new specie award thing instead of the German fella.

 

[Aloysium]

I beg to differ.

I’m actually a society certified smart guy in a field of applied science with the honourific and designatory letters that go with it. I may come across as arrogant at times, because in real life my opinion, obviously not about these matters but stuff that is practical, has monetary value. Just trying to engage in reasoned with discussions with others, and learn through the sharing of knowledge and wisdom before the ravages of time make it no longer possible.