Simple. They are inherent ways of thought that cause a animal or person to react a certian way. This can be changed via genetics by mutating a gene which would cause a change in the way neurons and synapses are formed. These changed neurons and synapses may very well cause a change in inherent thought processes of the animal.
Since aggressiveness would be advantageous to a lion it would develop in a lion. Since a rabbit couldn’t possibly fight a lion it would be advantageous for it to instinctively run.
Then how come humans don’t have such instincts, other than reflex, if we were allegedly evolved from animals? Would it be easier for us to instinctively know about some things, such as the basics of civil order, as opposed of having to learn just about each and every single thing, and sometimes learning them wrongly?
And what is the likelihood that the many species of birds that do fly have the instinct of using their wings optimally as per their species?
Yes, David B., I am quite serious about the dangers of the heavy-handed active applications of the threory of evolution, including social Darwinism, in human life.
Ok, here is my humble 2 cents. Most of it is just humble opinion. I have nothing to back it up…just thought I’d throw my thoughts into the pot.
Humans do have instincts other than reflex. Of course, some instincts have dulled over thousands of years due to more technological advances. The instincts are still there, but they are dulled, or hidden by modern comforts.
We don’t need to instinctively know about the basics of civil order. Throughout the GRADUAL evolutionary process, our brains developed until we could function on induction and deduction processes, not just instinct. Lions cannot rationally think through aggressive acts, they must do or die, and quickly. However, humans DO usually have the time to think things through. Whether they are doing it correctly or not is a whole other matter…but the fact is they have the capacity of doing it.
Now, on God and evolution.
Christians believe that we have free agency to make our own decisions. I believe God gives us the oppurtunity to be on this Earth, and then we are left to either follow Him or not, it’s our decision. I believe He has a plan for us that he would LIKE us to achieve, but He’ll let us decide if we will achieve it or not. God doesn’t, as a general rule, interfer with our daily lives. So, wouldn’t it be contradictory (SP?) if God interferred with everything else?
I think that he simply set the wheels of life spinning, so to speak. He set up the conditions for life, and gave life a chance to flourish, and then let it take it’s own direction. Maybe horses were never meant to evolve into what we know them as today, but the conditions and the enviroment dictated what they would become.
I also believe that the natural laws of Science not only govern our Universe, but God is subject to these laws to. If what we know as hydrogen and oxygen always makes water than God must always make water with hydrogen and oxygen. You follow?
If one follows these lines of reasoning then one could see that God and science go hand in hand together.
Now, please don’t come back at me with scriptures and Biblical verses telling me how wrong I am. These are just my personal opinions, that is all. I’m not trying to start a debate or hijack this thread. =)
I believe that the development of instinct reflects that the quick development of that animal possessing it was much more urgent than many you realize. Instinct allows that animal to know what to do with what it has the second it is born. If it doesn’t, it dies. There can be no gradual process that goes towards developing instinct; I don’t think that the species have time for such a gradual process, unless it is isolated or have no natural enemies. For the others, there must be some form of established instinct at the beginning of the development of the species, otherwise that species goes extinct rather quickly and never fuly develops. That is one of the reasons why I believe that if there were any so-called changes from one animal to another, that change has to be radically done, both physically and mentally.
Ok…I think this how to answer capacitor…please correct me if I’m wrong…
Animals have the ability to adapt, even improvise to a certain extent. For example, maybe way back when early primates were leaving the jungles and going into the plains of Africa (Assuming they did this. If not, consider it an hypothetical) the primates that had the ability to stand up and run faster were the ones that were not killed and they eventually reproduced. The animals that could do this was mutants, freaks, if you will. These mutants were allowed to live longer then their fellow primates. The mutant genes were passed down through the gene pool. What started out as a mutant gene led to evolution, and that evolution led to the devlopment of stronger instincts.
Let’s imagine for a second that the primates who moved into the plains of Africa from the jungle had a natural predator that resembled a lion. Obviously the first creatures to leave the jungle would not know that the lion is their natural enemy. But eventually they figured out how to run from it, and the faster ones are the ones that reproduced. The running from predators began as neccesity, and developed into an instinct. In order to ensure the survival of the species, it HAD to become an instinct.
Animals born now have natural instincts. That’s obvious. But they don’t have ‘natural’ instincts just because. These instincts had to start and develop somewhere and from something.
But what works for a million years is not going to work forever. Let’s imagine that the lions got faster in response to the primates getting faster. The lions did not just one day become 10 times faster, they were bred that way. The primates that could keep up with the breeding did so, and reproduced more. The same works for natural instincts. And if they didn’t get faster, they died. There are millions of extinct creatures.
Ok, this could be all wrong, and I could be talking out of my butt. If so, sorry. And I hope the point I was trying to make came across.
I was under the impression that this is incorrect. Due to the inherent difficulty in proving a fact scientifically, Evolution is not a fact. It is a theory. Creationism is also a theory. The difference between the 2 is that Evolution has NOT been disproven. Am I correct?
Bored2001 stated:
I believe that Darwin never said this and it causes misconceptions because…
I forget the reasons here, could someone explain them for me? If I am not mistaken, of course.
Bored2001 stated:
Just because a trait would be advantageous does not mean it will develop. If a mutation were advantageous, then it would confer a greater chance of survivability to the offspring of the mutation and eventually this would lead to a change in all members of a population ( or the splitting into seperate populations ).
But isn’t mutation itself random?
Also 1 that no one brought up but has been bothering me.
Is there such a thing as devolution?
The tendancy is for life to evolve into more complex forms. But if simplicity were favored by enviroment then a species might change to become less complex, perhaps even to resemble an ancestor species. But this would still be evolution, correct?
I would apreciate any input on these questions.
I would also like to wish capacitor good luck. You are going to need it.
No, Pepper, you’re doing fine, especially with the “free will” & “setting the wheels in motion” stuff. I just can’t seem to get it into some fundies head, that by them saying the Earth & it’s history & ecosytems have all these big errors that show how wrong Evolution is, they are saying “God is incompetent”.
Pepperland, you explained on of my points very well. A change in an animal species is not gradual. It was originally a radical mutant that became the dominant animal in the region due to either that group being resourceful, or to drastic changes in the environment. If evolution starts the argument from that point, I may be swayed to believe in interspecies evolution. That can explain the missing gaps, because there may be none.
2sense: No, Evolution is a FACT, as much as the Earth rotates around the Sun & not the other way (despite what some Fundies & the Bible say). HOW Evolution works, ie the mechanisms, is the “theory” part. Eevn “Lamarkism”, altho nearly completely discredited, is a “theory”.
Yes, perhaps it would. However, you appear to be assuming that evolution is a directed process. Just because some characteristic would be advantageous does not mean that it will be produced by evolution. It must both be advantageous and be produced by a equence fo processes which include some randomness.
You’re a little off. Evolution is indeed a scientific theory, but the word “theory” does not mean the same thing in science that it does in everyday conversation. It does not carry an “untested and unproved” connotation. Although it is conceivable that the theory of evolution may be disproved, it is about as unlikely as disproving the theory that gravitation attracts your body to the Earth.
There are fundamental differences between the theory of evolution and “creationism theories”. There are many “creationism theories”, but few if any of them are scientific theories. Some of them are not falsifiable; it is inconceivable to disprove them in a scientific framework. All of them start with a dogma that is not to be questioned. Evolution may be questioned (although it’s sufficiently well-established that there’s littel benefit to be gained).
Who says we don’t? Have you ever been scared when somebody came up to you from behind and you didn’t hear them? Did you jump and feel your heart rate get faster? You didn’t sit there and think, “Oh, my, I’m scared,” you just got scared. That was an instinct. Now, after the initial fright, your rational mind kicked in and you didn’t take off running, but if you had been in another setting (say, the jungle) and it hadn’t been a friend behind you but a lion, you’d have run without thinking too much about it. Instinct. Humans have lots of 'em.
No, because “the basics of civil order” has changed so much in so few years that there hasn’t been time for evolution to really do a whole lot about it. Think about it – humans were living in small hunter/gatherer groups just a short while ago (on an evolutionary timeframe). Now we’re in huge cities. The basics of civil order are quite different.
The “likelihood”? Well, what is the likelihood that you can walk on two legs? What is the likelihood that a snake can slither? The ability to use body parts generally evolved with the parts themselves. If a snake was born that, for whatever reason, didn’t know how to slither, it likely wouldn’t live to reproduce. Evolution in action.
Yes, but why didn’t you answer my question? Specifically: "How many times do we have to explain to you that evolution and social Darwinism are two completely different things? What will it take to get this through to you?"
Have you ever watched any nature shows on TV? Sure, animals know something of what to do, but not enough to survive on its own (in many cases). That’s what parents are for in the cases of mammals, birds, etc. But since you claim humans have no instincts, have you ever seen a newborn baby? I mean, really newborn? They come out and want to suckle immediately in most cases. Know why? They aren’t thinking, “Hmmm. I’m hungry and new here. I’d better eat.” The reason is instinct.
Actually, they do – because those who do the best in genetic development of survival instincts have the best chance of passing that along to their children. None of this is happening in a vacuum, and they aren’t starting out at ground zero with nothing. It all happens incrementally, just like the rest of evolution. I’m sorry that you personally find it difficult to believe, but that doesn’t mean it’s untrue.
You can believe anything you want. You’ll still be wrong, but you can believe it. I’ve already explained this to you at least twice.
No, no, no, no! Jeez, man, how many times do I have to go over this? It’s not a single huge mutation that causes a new species. It’s a series of small ones. What part of this are you not getting? How can I make it any clearer?
2sense said:
Evolution is both a fact and a theory. It is a fact because it has been observed in nature. There are theories to explain how it has happened.
Not a scientific one. A theological one, perhaps, but then we’re using the same word (“theory”) with two very different meanings.
If there were some reason to favor less complex forms, it could happen, yes. For example, in locations where eyesight is unnecessary (dark caves, etc.), we see that some species have “evolved” blindness. They don’t need to see, and eyesight takes up some of their energy that could be better used elsewhere. So while in the “normal” course of evolution, better eyesight would be better, in this case, no eyesight is better.
Well, there isn’t an unbroken line from newt to man, considering that both are modern organisms adapted to the modern Earth, and that newts and humans split off from their common ancestor long before either species evolved.
Some more details about Darwin’s alleged deathbed conversion, from page 199 of The Survival of Charles Darwin: A Biography of a Man and an Idea, by Ronald W. Clark (publ. Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1985):
What about the differences in humans themselves? If we all descended from Noah and the ark people, then how do you explain the vast differences in the human race other than evolution. For example, Asians have distinctly unique facial features and very little body hair while Africans have have dark skin and very curly, dense hair. In 300 generations (I’m using very general numbers here, 6,000 years at 20 years a generation), you can account for all the varieties of people in the world without evolution in the time frame given? Mind you, this is from a small group of humans and a very short amount of time spread out over a vast area.
I’m with Daniel here, to limit God to your intrepetation of his creation and to your understanding of it would almost border on heresy. Heretic, isn’t what the church called that guy who said the earth wasn’t the center of the universe and all of God’s creation didn’t revolve around that? I forget his name, as he was just a scientist with crazy ideas that no one would believe and couldn’t be supported with the knowledge of the time. Galileo or something like that.
At least the church had the cahones to admit they were wrong, all be it a couple hundred years later.
As for instincts, every first year psych. student can tell you that all animals (including humans) have four basic instincts commonly refered to as the 4 Fs: Feeding, fighting, fleeing and reproduction. I love that joke!
Then where did the original instinct, the 4f’s, come from? Was it a random amino acid mixture from the primordal ooze that triggered the whole thing?
Or was it engineered? Remember, there are many more DNA mixtures that can prove catastrophic to the organism possessing it, than those that can rigger the 4f’s of instinct.
Flight or flee is the basic reflex choice. I mentioned that before. Humans have very few natural instincts in comaprison to even the chimpanzee, our allegedly closest cousin. Was it replaced by our reasoning process? If so, then how much mental capacity in an animal is related to instinct? Why is it still so relatively high in many animals today?
I grant that evolution can explain well the development of the physicality of the species within the species, and its interactions within and with the environment. But it has not totally established the emergence of one species from another, from plant to reptile to bird to mammal to human. Evolutionists even admit that the links that can establish once and for all is currently elusive.
For example, but for evolution in a transpecies level to be established, the process of transmuting one type of skin to another, must be established. One example is from scales of a reptile to feathers-under-flesh that is a feature of birds. Both are of different substances. Were these new substances made within the tramusted path, or did they come from different sources outside the animal? How can this morphing come about? It could be a reaction to an infection by an undiscovered bacterium that triggered the transmutaion for all we know. Or were there many paths that led to the transmutaion from reptiles to birds?
A tree is as good as the shade it gives, the habitat it provides, the strength of its wood, and its fruits. Unfortunately, Social Darwinism is a fruit that came from Darwin’s studies. So no I do not separate the two just as you don’t separate humans from rest of the animals in transpecies evolution.
