I know how they work, I just forgot to bold one of my statements in one of the posts, sorry about that.
Well, I don’t see anyone actually tried to answer the question as posed, most just answered the question you REALLY are asking - ‘how can you believe in an evolutionary theory that is not yet (if it ever will be) complete when the bible gives us a pat answer without all of that difficult research, theory building, theory falsifying, and followup theory tweaking’ (I’m sorry, I know that I’m putting words in your mouth, but in my experience, questions like the OP are generally not looking for a scientific answer to the question, they are just opening the door to the idea that since there isn’t a complete 100% bulletproof scientific answer, then the bible must be correct and all of those so called ‘scientists’ are just another religious sect who have beliefs that are just as unprovable as the creationists).
Here goes:
As a layman with a little training in science, I gotta ask - WHY would monkeys, dogs, etc NEED to evolve high intelligence? Humans already have that ecological niche wrapped up. The somewhat intelligent animals in question already fill an ecological niche. Our intelligence allows us to survive in almost any environment; we lack the physical characteristics that most other largish mammals have (sharp senses, claws/physical stregnth, fur coat, etc.), but our intelligence makes up for our physical shortcomings. It is our intelligence that allows us to adapt our environments to ourselves. Any other species showing these signs of intelligence, and going down the path to a more human-like being would immediately be in competition with us. In fact, some anthropologists now feel that at the ascent of homo sapiens, there was competition between h sapiens and other more closely related primates; in other words, our ancestors may also have been our competition, and we killed off the other species that had intelligence comparable to ours. Humans were the best suited to fill that ‘intelligent tool making animal’ niche, and the other tool making (or ‘intelligent’ primates died out - they couldn’t compete for the same ecological niche humans were also suited for (I don’t have an online cite, the ‘competition among early man/protoman’ is something I most recently saw in Discover magazine last month or month before). Note that the whole ‘evolutionary nich has been filled’ argument is mine (not that I think I’m the first that said it), so I can’t cite, it just seems to fit in with what I know of evolutionary theory. You tell me: Why would a chimp need to be smarter when the current chimps seem to be surviving in their ecological niche just fine?
As far as the why are humans the only species that get haircuts and build skyscrapers - well that is intellectual evolution at work. People have been around for a long time, and only recently have they been able to perform great feats of engineering. This is due to the evolutionary advantage of language (which is not unique per se, just unique in its compexity, which allows us to hand down very complex thoughts through generatoins). We aren’t the only species that grooms itself, but we are the only species with a language and therefore an industrial base to create things such as scissors. I’m guessing that early man was NOT that different from the last ‘almost-man’, but the layers of culture, religion, and civilization (which are outside of evolutionary theory as there is no genetic basis for any of the three) made modern man more different from the first h sapiens than the first h sapiens was from his last ‘nonhuman’ ancestor.
and just go to this link: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=165781
Here people are trying to answer a question along the lines you ask (that is, if you actually WANT to know the ‘evolutionist’ ideas about your question).
Thanks, but I’m not a Chief.
What other explanations, in addition to Creation, are you trying to find acceptability for?
Suppose you convince me that science and evolution are wrong. I have no reason to elevate Creation above other explanations. So, no you have failed to generate any “acceptability” for Creation, and are you sure you’ve gotten a hug recently?
I’m not sure that you do know how they work. You seem to be trying for this:
It would be better if you did this instead:
Properly managed, credit can be a valuable tool. Excessive or unwise use of credit can be very destructive, but borrowing to further one’s education can be a wise investment, and almost no one buys a house without taking out a mortgage. It’s true that lending to friends can cause problems, but lending to banks (by certificates of deposit) or to the government or corporations (by buying bonds) are often prudent parts of one’s total investment portfolio.
Well, people who spend all their time “looking out for number one” and never show any consideration for anyone else can certainly be “false” to others if they think it’s in their own best interests to do so.
Putting the other poster’s words, and only the other poster’s words, inside the quote bars is cleaner and will avoid confusion. Trying to distinguish your words with bold text isn’t really sufficient–what if the other poster has also used some bold in their post for emphasis? Also, the quote button automatically bolds the other person’s text (along with putting it in the quote bars and putting “Originally posted by _____” before the text); personally, I don’t like that feature, and usually remove the bold tags, but since it is the default, other people may tend to assume that the bolded text inside the quote bars is what the other poster said.
I am not trying gain acceptance for any one theory, as i have said. ANy theory other than evolution is fair game. There is no reason to elevate Creation, I never told you to do that. I specifically said that that was my uneducated, biased opinion, which means nothig in this thread.
This is a quote from you, franticmad, in the other thread.
So, by this you mean that you are willing to limit your chances of finding the truth, just so you can be amused by the search?
MEbuckner, you didn’t reply to my reply to your post about 9 posts up.
frantic, sorry, i did say creationism one time instead of including other religions. I didn’t mean to give the impression that i was fovoring one. SOrry.
:dubious: And… ? You are not entitled to a reply to every single post you make every time someone else replies to something you post.
You said:
What “truth” cannot be found right now? Human beings are descended from non-human primates; we are animals, related to all other animals on Earth. We have every reason to believe we can account for the appearance of such complex features of life as sensory organs, detailed camouflage , and all sorts of exquisite anatomical and behavioral adaptations by the processes of mutation and recombination of genes through sexual reproduction, and the action of natural selection (along with maybe some other mechanisms like sexual selection and genetic drift). As has been pointed out above by a number of other posters, the same process of biological evolution that produced spiderwebs, bird migrations, mimicry, pheremones, the dances of honeybees, immune systems, parasitism, symbiosis, birdsongs, peacocks’ tails, coral reefs, and on and on, could also have produced large-brained apes who use language, with allows for an explosion of cultural evolution resulting in haircuts, skyscrapers, sitcoms, symphonies, moonshots, etc., etc., etc. If you’re trying to claim anything otherwise, then far from making things as clear as possible, you are the one who is hiding the truth.
See, this is why I wanted you to reply MEBuckner, because I knew you had something to say. Good post. Sounds like you’ve got the history of mankind figured out to the “T”. Would you bet your eternal soul, assuming you had one, on your last post? Wait! Before you reply, read that question again, outloud, to yourself, with feeling.
Seriously, I am curious about these mutations you speak of. What kind of hard evidence do we have for these? I’ll lok for some on the web myself, but you might have some cites already, which would be cool.
In order to preserve objectivity in this thread, I must inquire into these things, so any help would be appreciated.
You got it, Jack.
I don’t believe in eternal souls. And even if I did, there are way too many mutually contradictory systems of saving same for me to lose any sleep over the claims of any one of them.
What evidence do I have for the existence of mutations? Yeah, by all means, look on the web, or better yet, get thee to a library and check out a book or two on basic genetics. Sheesh.
Quoted by MEBuckner: “What evidence do I have for the existence of mutations? Yeah, by all means, look on the web, or better yet, get thee to a library and check out a book or two on basic genetics. Sheesh.”
I meant useful mutations, such as the kind that would cause a race to excel. You know, the one’s you were talking about? Sheesh, your a smart person, read between the lines.
Here is a Christian cite about dogs: http://aig.gospelcom.net/docs/3562.asp
Dogs are bred a lot so this was cool to read about an animal who has had plenty of chances to excel from mutations. Let me know what you think of this cite.
I will attempt to locate a non-biased source now.
Which would only make your case even weaker. Remember those birds? Many are quite good at mimicing sounds. They do this because they are attempting to impress the ladybirds with their creativity and complexity. Rather like human artists. So maybe we’re not as unique as you think.
I can tell you what I think of it: rubbish. Take this for instance:
As is so often the case, this belies a complete misunderstanding of how evolution works. Lineages are nested; as such, whatever an ancestor is, all its descendants shall be also. Dogs beget dogs. Even if the dog lineage produced some other species, that species is, by definition, still a dog. We are considered primates and apes for a reason: our common ancestor with other apes was an ape, and our common ancestor with monkeys, et al. was a primate.
And what the hell is a “more doggish dog” anyway?
So what if Creationism is older than evolution? It still hasn’t produced a shred of evidence to support it in all that time. All it can do, and all it has done, is attempt to use dubious science and pseudo-science to attempt to discredit that which its proponents do not understand. You last link is a perfect example of this tactic.
Here’s a good cite: http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoHumBenMutations.html
This site is pretty much over my head, but i did seem to maybe catch on to something. For instance (the last example), this site says that a sample that had two certain genotypes were less at risk of myocardial infarction and that the odds of this happening by chance are slim. But why is this considered a mutation? What does this have to do with apes and humans. Sure, evolution is happening and species adapt from generation to generation to be better than the last, but is it causing us to change our “kind”?
THis site has a bunch of these kinds of examples: http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoEvidence.html
But the few i have read are not about changing, but just getting better. Such as this one:
These e.coli are better, but are they different? They are still e.coli. You say we came from apes, which are flat out physically different from us in almost every way except for general biology. So, while it is obvious humans adapt genetically for their betterment, is there evidence of us growing more upright, for example?
Can you give me an understandable example of a mutation that has changed our “humaness”?
Darwin’s Finch, i agree, that part of that article was flimsy and the whole article wasn’t very technical. But why not choose the best part of that article and try to describe why it’s unfoundational?
For instance, is this part of the article just pointing out a nonsense genetic inferiority or does it have a point with this fact grouped with the other examples?
Fuel, you should really sit down with a good, simple primer about evolution. You argue against it, but you just don’t have the concept down.
There is no direction to evolution except towards fitness. This doesn’t necessarily mean “how fit is it in the wild?” Evolution does not necessarily lead to more complex, smarter, more attractive, better smelling, or more athletic individuals. It follows only the arrow of fitness.
You don’t see beneficial mutations because you are not looking in the right places. As soon as you understand evolution, beneficial mutations pop up everywhere. The classical “superior race” picture that non-evolutionists always are looking for is not predicted by evolution.
Mankind is fit enough for the most part in most environments. The selection pressure from generation to generation isn’t strong enough to radically cause body shape changes or whatever. But if you look in environments where selection pressure has been big, for instance malaria ridden places, bingo, you see beneficial mutations. For instance the thalassemias and sickle cell anemia. But wait, you say – they causes awful disease. That’s only in the homozygotes who carry two copies of the gene. And simple genetics states that there are hundreds or thousands of times less homozygotes than the heterozygotes who carry one copy of the gene (and get the advantage). The homozygotes are largely irrelevant in evolutionary terms. Similar things are thought to have happened among populations in Europe with tuberculosis and cystic fibrosis carriage.
It is easy to find other examples. All groups of people who have lived for extended times in the tropics have dark skin color, and those living in higher latitudes have light skin color. Perhaps dark skin color is an adaptation to the selective pressures of skin cancer and severe sunburn in lower latitudes. Or perhaps light skin color is an adaptation to maximize light absorption under the selective pressures of rickets and osteomalacia. These are examples in humans. There are thousands of examples in the animal kingom, from fruit flies rapidly adapting to different temperatures and altitudes and food sources, from the Darwin’s finches on the Galapagos (hi Darwin’s Finch) having average beak sizes which change with the availibility and type of food sources.
Dog breeding is an interesting genetic phenomenon, but fundamentally differs from evolution and natural selection. It is a most decidedly unnatural selection (albeit incredibly strong selection) facilitated by extremely small gene pools leading to enormous amounts of genetic homogeneity within breeds. This is nothing like what normally happens in the natural world. Although I guess you could define dog breeding as part of the natural world, depending on your level of anthropocentrism.
man, i have forgotten the main part of my post… why we are so far ahead of any other species. No doubt evolution is at work, but why aren’t there some second runner ups that could conceivably knock us off our pedastles as rulers of the world?
Why don’t other species have their ancestors living with them like we do? Or are there?
We don’t have our ancestors living with us–chimpanzees are not our ancestors, they’re our cousins; Australopithecines and all the other, earlier members of Genus Homo are extinct.
So you are saying we have evidence that there is a creation story (which is sort of a tautology, since the fact that the story exists is evidence of its existence), but no evidence to show that it is true? And therefore it is on equal footing with scientific theories for which there is evidence?
