Is this a summarization of Assmann’s actual ideas? Or your own guess about how an “Egyptian hypothesis” might look?
Got it. You make a good case. Now, is this “Zoroastrian hypothesis” generally accepted amongst the experts?
Again, keep in mind that any talk about the reason for a particular evolved trait is unscientific. Natural selection doesn’t have a goal in mind; it’s just that the mutations that work better tend to hang around longer than the ones that don’t.
Fruit didn’t evolve in order to do anything, strictly speaking; it’s just that seeds that were surrounded by something tasty tended to get scattered more than seeds not surrounded by something tasty.
This is exactly the same dynamic as applies to carrots: plants that grew above a tasty root tended to get their seeds (more specifically the seeds of close relatives) scattered more than plants that didn’t grow above a tasty root.
Finally, chiles are actually an awesome example of this principle. At some point some of these little red fruit mutated with a chemical, capsacin (sp?), that simulates burning for the nerves of mammals but not of birds. As a result, those chiles with this chemical tended to be avoided by mammals but not by birds. The birds ate these particular chiles, flew around, and pooped out the seeds, scattering them much more widely than the seeds of the chiles that lacked the chemical.
If we were to look at it teleologically, we’d say that the chile evolved heat in order to be eaten by birds, not mammals.
Certainly true; the only defense – and Stephen Jay Gould mentions this – is that it’s easier to express. It’s a linguistic short-cut. Horses are evolved “for speed.” Yes, no, and sloppy. But who wants to add 2,000 weasel words to every post?
(Well, other than weasels. Deucedly articulate little stinkers!)
Yeah, but you can’t get a simple yes or no out of them.
Agreed on all counts. I’m being pedantic here because in this case, I think the use of the shortcut is obscuring the similarity between what goes on with fruit and what goes on with carrots.
It is a quibble on top of a quibble. If we were discussing evolution, I’d have been more careful.
As for carrots, I don’t know about other rabbits, but the one I owned liked the leaves and was not the slightest bit interest in the root, quite unlike Bugs.
In fact, McGee says that the familiar orange carrot was developed in Holland in the 17th century. The root is used to store nutrients to let the carrot survive the winter and bloom again the next year, quite unlike fruit. Exposure of the root to sunlight, or damage, causes it generate alcohol, as well as a bitter defensive chemical. (p. 307). So, please let me know how they are similar in the sense of encouraging seed distribution.
Hard to say. Historians and archaeologists will tend to write something like, “While this emblem bears some striking similarities with late Iron Age medallions from the Kush region, further research would be needed to make any conclusive statements.” When an author says something like this, I’m pretty sure that his intention is for you to read between the lines as him saying, “Egypt owned this shit and y’all are going to have to get pretty creative if you think you can dispute it.” They’re not big on making bold statements in bold words.
I think the only thing that non-religious academics would be willing to say in a straightforward manner is that the Israelites were polytheistic until the 7th century, though it is likely that practices of monolatry started before that point. Dependent on era, the form of their pantheon almost certainly varied, but we cannot conclusively say if Yahweh was ever listed below any other deity. Zoroastrianism appears to be the oldest attested (mostly) monotheistic religion and certainly affected the Jewish religion, but minus greater archaeological evidence than has currently been found, the Biblical history must be preferred.
I haven’t heard of it and the dates don’t look convincing, as Latro points out. By the 900 BC - 700 BC era where we would expect to see something like this cropping up and influencing others, the Egyptian empire was not particularly prosperous nor influential, and they were still sticking to the traditional pantheon.
John DiFool writes:
> Yes, Cecil is God, in response to your question…
Cecil is the result of an experiment sixty-some years ago to produce a super-baby who would grow into a super-genius capable of answering all questions. Shortly after he reached maturity, the scientists who had created him decided to ask him some questions to see how close they had come to their goal. The first question they asked was “Is there a God?”. Cecil answered, “Now there is.”
It’s very simple. When farmers choose which seeds to distribute, do they distribute the seeds of carrots whose relatives produce big fat sweet roots, or the seeds of carrots who produce (or whose relatives produce) small skinny bitter roots?
Doesn’t matter because, as I noted, common orange carrots were intelligently designed. Just as Darwin said.
Do you agree that intelligent design is just another form of natural selection? If not, why not?
Arguing they’re different seems to me akin to arguing that airplanes aren’t subject to gravity.
I think it was a joke by Voyager.
[QUOTE=Voyager]
Doesn’t matter because, as I noted, common orange carrots were intelligently designed. Just as Darwin said.
[/QUOTE]
No, to both of you. Darwin described the selective breeding of domesticated animals and plants as artificial selection, not intelligent design. Intelligent design is just a term created as a thin mask for creationism.
[QUOTE=Left Hand of Dorkness]
There is no such thing as artificial selection.
[/QUOTE]
It’s a term that goes back to Darwin actually. He coined the term, in fact:
[QUOTE=Charles Darwin]
Slow though the process of selection may be, if feeble man can do much by his powers of artificial selection, I can see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the co-adaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature’s power of selection. We are profoundly ignorant of the causes producing slight and unimportant variations; and we are immediately made conscious of this by reflecting on the differences in the breeds of our domesticated animals in different countries,—more especially in the less civilized countries where there has been but little artificial selection.
[/QUOTE]
There’s natural selection, performed by nature with no purpose or goal in mind; and there’s artificial selection performed by intelligent creatures, which does.
Well, intelligent design of the form Darwin mentioned does use unnatural selection. However direct genetic engineering would also count as intelligent design.
Clearly seeing selection accelerated by human intervention helped Darwin with the development of his great theory.
Well, obviously the term intelligent design had not been coined yet.
Intelligent design has been taken over by creationists in order to make their drivel seem less religious. But intelligent design violates no natural laws. The reason it makes sense to reject it (and the Raelians believe in it as done by space aliens, not deities) is that there is no evidence it ever happened, and no structures which can’t have evolved from natural selection and normal mutation. Behe, after all, accepts that most structures evolved naturally, at least when he is talking to the non-creationists. I believe he was trying to find a place where God was required to give a little nudge (he failed) and sold out to the kooks for fame and fortune.
The Flood violates the laws of physics. The creation story does to. Intelligent design as an alien could have practiced it does not. Which of course does not mean it happened.
The term was, but if you aren’t aware of how much Darwin was involved in plant breeding and animal husbandry, both by observing breeders and doing it himself (until they caught him at it to quote Tom Lehrer) you don’t understand much about how he developed his theory. Creationists have given intelligent design such a bad rep that it seems some people act as if you were talking about a miracle, not something humans have done for a long time.
As far as I know the term as applied to living things being deliberately designed was coined by the creationists. The non-religious terms would be things like artificial selection, genetic engineering, selective breeding, bioengineering, etc; not intelligent design.
My point is that it unnecessarily privileges intelligence and consciousness. Just because we have a point to our interactions with other organisms that’s a bit more farsighted than, say, the interactions bees have with other organisms doesn’t somehow take us out of the game; in the end we’re just another species interacting with organisms in a way that leads to certain traits in those organisms being emphasized and other traits de-emphasized.
Yes, but what we are doing is with the express intent of changing a species to have properties we want.
Which is intelligent design. We have intent, the bee or plant hasn’t.
As I said, I think that privileges intelligence, makes the mistake of thinking that takes us out of the game.
It doesn’t.
Natural selection is a fundamental principle of the universe, and although we might intend to make certain changes, all that means is that our preferences become part of the environment in which carrots live. Those carrots that are best suited to their environment (i.e., they’re sweet and juicy) will reproduce more than those that are less suited to their environment.