Evolutionism

Gisteron wrote: The 'designs' we find in nature for the most part are bad, incomplete or unnecessary and I can provide prominent examples, if needed.

Yes please...

Fine then, let's call them issues. I used gaps as a synonym and it may be that it was an incorrect usage. I apologize for the misunderstanding it caused. The point that Dawkins rarely admitted to any major ones or to the significance of any other ones remains. The point that the video made an emphasis on the little green men or on the scientific community's incomplete understanding of the abiogenesis event remains, too. As for the four questions you posed, there is probably one that really is a grand issue, thus I'll try and respond to each according to what I learned about the subject so far:
1. AFAIK and IIRC its both. Variation and selective pressure are enough to account for most of the major changes in and speciations of life forms. Random and rapid mutations are likely also contributing to the evolution of a species, although probably not as much and as often as variation alone. It is also conceivable that more rapid evolution would occur in adaptable species under extensive pressure (i.e. in times of crisis). Such time periods however are very detrimental to the population and more often than not lead to extinction or a population so small that the gene pool does no longer allow for high adaptability and an evolution as quick as it was before at least for the immediately following generations.
2. Diversity occurs under high selective pressure. It is not so much that entire populations diverge into different species, but rather that perhaps some variations inbetween aren't fit enough to survive the competition. On the other hand, if the environment is rich enough to allow for a multitude of rather similar species, their morphological diversity will not be as high. How this question relates to the Cambrian Explosion I don't quite grasp, so I apologize if my response so far doesn't address the question you actually meant to pose.
3. Variation, mutation, natural selection. New and complex features don't just come up for the most part. They evolve from simpler stages of themselves and variants that are slightly more beneficial to the individual are increasing its chances of survival and thereby the time the individual gets to pass on its genes that conveniently contain the blueprint for that slightly more advantageous variation of said feature. No mysteries here at all.
4. Generally speaking, no, there are no definite trends or goals to evolution. While natural and sexual selection are everything but random, variation within a population and mutations in individuals are and there is no feature that is being selected for in all circumstances. However, there are many instances of somewhat similar eyes evolving separately and independantly. It seems to be that a light-sensitive organ of that type is rather beneficial in many environments and it seems there are only so many sensible structures for such an organ. We know how and why they come about, but it is noteworthy that on our planet they evolved on several independant occasions, even if its no big mystery how and why they did.

Mareeka, that's my point. Peace of mind at the price of abandoning curiosity, honesty or let alone basics of logical thought, is not a peace worth having. That's the price you have to pay when claiming there is a supreme ethical good to be gained from world religions. That's the price you have to pay when trying to reconcile beliefs in magic with beliefs in reality. That's the price you have to pay when compromising a testible truth statement against your own feelings and will and then leave the issue behind. You may no longer have to wrap your mind between the two and work it out, but that is not a good gained - that is a good lost.

And now a few examples of bad "design" in nature for Brenna:
Unnecessary: The fifth toe of dogs, for instance. They have a fully formed fifth toe on each leg, with a claw growing out of it. These have no muscles attached to them and are useless at best and superfluous potential places for injuries after getting stuck somewhere or something of the sort. Same can be said of the vestigial clawed arms of emus, although, to be fair, since those are feathered, they are at least not as badly exposed as the dogs' fifth toes.
Incomplete: Just to keep digging from the top of my head, let's take the infamous laryngeal nerve of the giraffe, as Richard Dawkins so famously disected a few years ago. Its a nerve that has barely to have any considerable length from the brain to the voice box, yet it goes all the way through the neck to the chest and up again, missing the voice box by an inch on its way down. it makes a completely unnecessary detour of fifteen feet. Now, the worst thing that can happen is damage to the neck resulting in the giraffe losing its voice (which wouldn't happen were it not for the detour), so its conceivable why this intelligent design hasn't been too effectively selected against yet.
Bad: Let's take another rather famous example: The human eye. If someone is to argue that placing the film of a camera behind a wire salad and then lead the wires through a hole in the film, then I can only hope that someone is never going to be in the optics industry, but this is exactly the case with the human eye. The light-receptive cells are behind the nerve fibers attached to them and the fibers converge in a blind spot to go through the retina and on to the brain. In order to hit the retina the light needs to penetrate the nerve forest first. It is remarkable how well we can see nonetheless, but a creator would most certainly have done it better, be the creator even so dumb as a human.

And then of course there are the countless species that went extinct because of their unintelligent design. I know of no predator on earth that cannot digest human flesh. The only place we know of where we can reasonably survive is one single planet with limited resources most of which is covered by water, ice or desert each equally inappropriate as human habitat, and leaving its gravitational field going to space usually has negative effects on our health, let alone if we did so without the spacecraft we took so long to engineer.

Most of what we see looks every way it should not look like if it were designed by an intelligent entity and every way we would expect it to look like if it were bent and molded into shape by the cruel and merciless laws of physics or selective pressures for the case of life diversity. If a creator is responsible, he is a rather capricious and malevolent creator who takes enormous pains to make sure we have every reason to think there is none and to make us and our fellow life forms suffer as much as we possibly can. Now if that is the creator they are proposing - fine, I can't argue against that except for maybe the fact that there is nil evidence for even that type of creator.

EDIT: Keep it coming, guys, this is really motivating research

Gisteron wrote: 4. Generally speaking, no, there are no definite trends or goals to evolution. While natural and sexual selection are everything but random, variation within a population and mutations in individuals are and there is no feature that is being selected for in all circumstances. However, there are many instances of somewhat similar eyes evolving separately and independantly. It seems to be that a light-sensitive organ of that type is rather beneficial in many environments and it seems there are only so many sensible structures for such an organ. We know how and why they come about, but it is noteworthy that on our planet they evolved on several independant occasions, even if its no big mystery how and why they did.

Mareeka, that's my point. Peace of mind at the price of abandoning curiosity, honesty or let alone basics of logical thought, is not a peace worth having. That's the price you have to pay when claiming there is a supreme ethical good to be gained from world religions. That's the price you have to pay when trying to reconcile beliefs in magic with beliefs in reality. That's the price you have to pay when compromising a testible truth statement against your own feelings and will and then leave the issue behind. You may no longer have to wrap your mind between the two and work it out, but that is not a good gained - that is a good lost.

I seek to understand what you are saying . . .


Who has abandoned curiosity? honesty? and basics of logical thought?

Does it say anywhere in this thread that someone makes claims to a supreme ethical good to be gained from world religions?

By accepting a religious belief as substitute for scientific inquiry, curiosity is being abandoned. To ask "How do I confirm this?" instead of "What is going on?" is not curious, although to be fair, if one is going honestly about the former, the latter might follow.
As for honesty and logical thought, those two go together for the most part. What you basically implied in post #126732 is that creation and evolution are reconcilable beliefs in thousands of minds, and just to back you up, here is a quote from that post:

Many [of these 'Christ conscious people'] have joined creationism and evolutionism in their mind and are done with valuing one versus the other. A synthesis. They are at peace. They have compromised nothing.

And I disagree specifically with the last sentence. Yes, there are people living with a generally scientific mind and religious beliefs, some are even active in both. However, to reiterate what I said, this comes at a price. They are living one life in church and another one at work, having a double standards on truth claims and are genuinely inconsistent for that reason. Granted, they may be sincere with both and not realize how two-faced they really are, and this gap in self-awareness, by the way, is yet another price they have to pay to reconcile the mutually exclusive.
I'm not so much pointing fingers as saying that the idea that you can be both within and outside a box at once is in violation of the most fundamental and axiomatic rules of logic. The proposition itself denies all of human thought, let alone math, outright and cannot be effectively defended with or without any degree of honesty.

As for supreme ethics in world religions.. No, this was not made an explicit point although it was implied in the same post #126732, even if probably common ethics rather than superior ethics were meant, and for that matter, one might say why bother for the least of those ethics are good and those that are usually are also found outside of religion and in fact with or without being taught them as a child. So consider this not so much a rebuttal of the point you made (which was actually about fear of investigation) but rather a rebuttal by anticipation of a point that can potentially be meant, implied or made in the future within this discussion. And yes, the price one has to pay to claim that the religions are not only comparable but unitable and that any good ethics can be derived from that is pretty mucht he same: More sooner than later there is no honest way of arguing that position any longer.

Gisteron wrote: By accepting a religious belief as substitute for scientific inquiry, curiosity is being abandoned. To ask "How do I confirm this?" instead of "What is going on?" is not curious, although to be fair, if one is going honestly about the former, the latter might follow.
As for honesty and logical thought, those two go together for the most part. What you basically implied in post #126732 is that creation and evolution are reconcilable beliefs in thousands of minds, and just to back you up, here is a quote from that post:

Many [of these 'Christ conscious people'] have joined creationism and evolutionism in their mind and are done with valuing one versus the other. A synthesis. They are at peace. They have compromised nothing.

And I disagree specifically with the last sentence. Yes, there are people living with a generally scientific mind and religious beliefs, some are even active in both. However, to reiterate what I said, this comes at a price. They are living one life in church and another one at work, having a double standards on truth claims and are genuinely inconsistent for that reason. Granted, they may be sincere with both and not realize how two-faced they really are, and this gap in self-awareness, by the way, is yet another price they have to pay to reconcile the mutually exclusive.
I'm not so much pointing fingers as saying that the idea that you can be both within and outside a box at once is in violation of the most fundamental and axiomatic rules of logic. The proposition itself denies all of human thought, let alone math, outright and cannot be effectively defended with or without any degree of honesty.

As for supreme ethics in world religions.. No, this was not made an explicit point although it was implied in the same post #126732, even if probably common ethics rather than superior ethics were meant, and for that matter, one might say why bother for the least of those ethics are good and those that are usually are also found outside of religion and in fact with or without being taught them as a child. So consider this not so much a rebuttal of the point you made (which was actually about fear of investigation) but rather a rebuttal by anticipation of a point that can potentially be meant, implied or made in the future within this discussion. And yes, the price one has to pay to claim that the religions are not only comparable but unitable and that any good ethics can be derived from that is pretty mucht he same: More sooner than later there is no honest way of arguing that position any longer.

well i don't have religious beliefs, therefore, i can't see how substitution could be construed.

i don't have a clue how one could think that superior or supreme ethics is implied in the post you referenced.

I respect and accept your decisions whatever means for reasoning that are used.

Mareeka wrote: well i don't have religious beliefs, therefore, i can't see how substitution could be construed.

Fair enough. I was trying to address your words or what other people may interpret in them. Its not about anyone specific, its just things that I think are worth being said and if someone gains anything from reading them, that's good enough for me

i don't have a clue how one could think that superior or supreme ethics is implied in the post you referenced.

Agreed, it technically isn't in there. Again, its about the conversation and the ideas that have been or will be emerging within it.

I respect and accept your decisions whatever means for reasoning that are used.

Can't say I do the same, unfortunately. Sound reasoning to me is about as important as the end results. Better be a Muslim for good reasons than a Jaine for bad ones, so to say

*shuts the heck up to let others talk*

Brenna wrote:

Gisteron wrote: The 'designs' we find in nature for the most part are bad, incomplete or unnecessary and I can provide prominent examples, if needed.

Yes please...

http://youtu.be/cO1a1Ek-HD0

ok...

Maybe I am missing something; however, this is my $0.02.

Lets assume for a moment that all views are right, odd as it is.

Evolution is observable, able to recreated and a fact.

Now there are multiple creation stories. Which one you choose, doesn't matter. They are a point of view, most can be placed in parallel with evolution. For instance, Christianity has God creating everything in 6 days and resting on the 7th. Lets assume that God is real, now perception plays in. God may perceive millions of years as 1 day. There are many many different creation stories. The ones I have seen have only re-enforced my thought process.

Zanthan Storm wrote: ok...

Maybe I am missing something; however, this is my $0.02.

Lets assume for a moment that all views are right, odd as it is.

Evolution is observable, able to recreated and a fact.

Now there are multiple creation stories. Which one you choose, doesn't matter. They are a point of view, most can be placed in parallel with evolution. For instance, Christianity has God creating everything in 6 days and resting on the 7th. Lets assume that God is real, now perception plays in. God may perceive millions of years as 1 day. There are many many different creation stories. The ones I have seen have only re-enforced my thought process.

Sure why not? http://youtu.be/L9EVMzVQKTk

Zanthan Storm wrote: ok...

Maybe I am missing something; however, this is my $0.02.

Lets assume for a moment that all views are right, odd as it is.

Evolution is observable, able to recreated and a fact.

Now there are multiple creation stories. Which one you choose, doesn't matter. They are a point of view, most can be placed in parallel with evolution. For instance, Christianity has God creating everything in 6 days and resting on the 7th. Lets assume that God is real, now perception plays in. God may perceive millions of years as 1 day. There are many many different creation stories. The ones I have seen have only re-enforced my thought process.

There's nothing wrong with that explanation, on its face, however, it does have a major fallacy in it, that being it comes into things assuming there must be a god as espoused in the judeo-christian/islamic sense. In any given view of the world we should seek to maintain as few assumptions as possible.

God years. That's an interesting veiw to take. I like it.

Rickie The Grey wrote: God years. That's an interesting veiw to take. I like it.

I too thought in "god years"...

I ask my father, who studied in a seminary, this "6/7" day creation...

He responded with "How long is a day to God?"

Since then, and becoming a Jedi, this thought has recurred many times on trying to understand things....

How long is a day to god?

How long is eternity to a a mayfly?

Sorry, taking a hard turn from the OP at this point, haven't we? :lol:

I know when I write instructions I like to write the measurements in my own interpretation. Yesterday I guy asked for directions and I told him it was a mile North, but to me one mile North is five miles west.

I loaned this guy money and told him I'd pay him back in four days and he comes to me thursday and I'm like to me a day is 300 million years.

I was reading the side of my pancake batter yesterday and I was thinking wow this totally describes the creation of the universe. The flower is the stars and the eggs well that's the cambrian explosion. The frying pan is the heat from the sun adding energy to the earth. Of course it does seem like I'm just twisting things to make it seem like I'm trying to make it fight with something that has nothing to do with baking pancakes ,but hey that's what I believe.

Honestly though I'm glad christianity isn't true it would be really scary to know there is some sort of prankster god running around trying to fool people into thinking he might not be real.

creation is the view that our world must have been created. And that the being that created it himself did not need to have been created. Such a being is therefore beyond time and space... And has no "workshop" and doesnt take any kind of time (days or years) to create anything.

Rickie The Grey wrote: God years. That's an interesting veiw to take. I like it.

Is that like dog years?

Creation or not, creationism (as I looked up in both the Oxford and Webster dictionaries) supposes quite specifically that the the theory of evolution is incorrect. In fact, both definitions mentioned specifically the biblical creation mith and not others, although the first point in itself is enough to say the creationist position is wrong.

However, my comment was going to be about the biblical creation story that depicts rather explicitly on which day which thing is created and all of those are more or less spoken into existence and specially created. So while one can have a vague creation notion that includes modern findings of cosmology and evolutionary biology, suffice it to say that to that end the actual creation myth as it is being told must be disregarded or bent and twisted to make it sound like something it doesn't say, as Vesha illustrated. And of course there is also the problem that several cores of the Christian doctrine can only be logically explained and justified if a literal understanding of the Genesis accounts of creation and early history is being accepted. But, of course, for every event depicted in there we either have no way of verifying it as a part of actual history or we have every way to falsify.
But yes, that is creationism by definition. If we want to switch the topic and go on to talk about just believing in any creation notion that has been proposed, the superfluous and complicating assumption that they require to be taken on nil evidence is not a sufficient but a good reason to refrain from belief for the time being. The reason there is not a great (public) debate between the notion of any creation and science as much as creationism and science is that belief in just some sort of creation doesn't in itself carry the baggage of e.g. stories or conclusions we know to be false. So the opposition against creationism is mainly concerned with people who use their beliefs to make people or teach children to feel miserable about themselves or that since the earth was created to the disposal of our special position within creation, environmental politics should be no worthy talking matter. Of course teaching people to have faith rather than evidence also has other very very dangerous implications, too, but creationism as a movement is not unique in its promoting the values of certainty over curiosity.

So yes, creation (as an idea) and creationism are not the same and hardly even close to being the same. I think we ought to decide on what it is we are discussing here (beside evolution, that is) and not confuse ourselves or each other more than we need to.

Yes Vesha, I tell time in my own way....

"A few minutes ago" could have been an hour or more, even a day...

"Just the other day" is sometime within the last three weeks...

"Last week" could be anywhere in the last month or two...

Etc, etc...

My family realizes this, and has discussions accordingly...

Khaos wrote:

Rickie The Grey wrote: God years. That's an interesting veiw to take. I like it.

Is that like dog years?

I think you may be teasing, but, yea, a bit... lol...

Look at a dog...

We are there for there birth, and their death, to them, we are eternal... I used the mayfly because they can live and die in a few hours... Or as long as a day or two...

To a mayfly, if it has/had the consciousness to understand we exist, how would we appear? Several thousands of generations would appear and die and we would still be here... Eternal....

If we had/learn the consciousness to understand the force/god, it may not appear so... appear so mysterious... lol...

ren wrote: creation is the view that our world must have been created. And that the being that created it himself did not need to have been created. Such a being is therefore beyond time and space... And has no "workshop" and doesnt take any kind of time (days or years) to create anything.

Well, that sounds flawed... lol...

I could see where it would obviously mean the this is created by something, but to say that, that something wasn't created seems to be reaching, lol, never mind the workshop bit...

Interesting...

Consider these statements.

God wasn't created.

The Force wasn't created.

The Universe wasn't created.

Is one reaching but not another? What's the difference? Why?

Br. John wrote: Consider these statements.

God wasn't created.

The Force wasn't created.

The Universe wasn't created.

Is one reaching but not another? What's the difference? Why?

I personally believe The universe has always existed in one form or another and the force is movement/change. The concept of a god seems like a conductor in an orchestra. The problem to me is the music of life will play the same without the conductor. We are tiny spec in a otherwise lifeless cosmos. I would expect far more if this was a grand design.

We are there for there birth, and their death, to them, we are eternal

Or were just older... There is a chance that they dont percieve time differently, so much as just dont live as long.

My mother didnt percieve time differently from my father, she just got cancer and died sooner.

Now, we could argue that a dog or a mayfly doesnt measure time, but I am arguing that they do percieve it, and can understand it in regards to there own biology, such I can percieve the differences at 32 from 22.

A mayfly doesnt know it only has two days, as in 24 hours, etc, but I dont think that means it sees us( if if it even contemplates us at all) as eternal.

All conjecture though, as I cant question the dog, or the mayfly.

I would expect God, if he is God, to not need a million years to create, chances are, he would need less than a second.

Now, you might say thats a million years to us, but then, as I measure time, thats pretty slow for a deity.

I speak pretty fast, and apparently the Christian God spoke the world into being.

Now, I have to assume a deity can think, act,process, and even create on a timeline much,much shorter than me.

If he is working on roughly the same timeline that it took us to get to where we are, not only do I find that just a tad to convenient, but, I have to question the ability, and mental processes, of said deity.

Sucks we apparently got the one with ADD. :lol: