Thanks to everyone for the explanations and comments.
Hello from SoHo.
Throwing this one into the mix again: Assume for the moment, that evolution, however you understand it, is wrong.
That leaves the tricky problem of how you organise all the evidence we have into a theory, without arriving back at evolution.
See, to repeat an earlier post, ID/creationism, doesn’t win by default. It’s not enough to have an alternate explanation. You need an alternative theory. An alternate organisation of the evidence.
Do you not wonder why there isn’t one?
Sevvie, while my enemies are sleeping, I’m going to tell you a little secret. I feel a lot of the creationist folk cobble together decontextualised quotes from various sources. Some of their websites give me the creeps.
There do exist various doctrines of creation (I agree that they can hardly be called theories), such as young-earth (I don’t believe in that), gap-theory (re-creation after a disaster), and age-day (separate acts of creation over a long time span).
Of these (all pretty unlikely), I instinctively favour age-day. It may take a bit of time to wean me off it, I’m afraid, since every time I look at the natural world (stick insect, hamster, etc.), I just can’t accept that they’ve evolved from a common (to their own kind) progenitor.
I’m just incorrigible, I suppose…but please keep it to yourself.
bodswood, answer one question that several people have asked you: what would it take for you to accept evolution? What kind of evidence would we have to provide?
PG, since, according to talkorigins, ‘there’s nothing in the theory of evolution which says an intermediate form…has to go extinct when a line of descendents evolves’, are there examples today of prior forms (of mammals, say) co-existing with current forms?
Yeah sure there are. The grey wolf form of Canis lupus still exists alongside the derived Chihuahua form.
I should have been more precise. Forms that belong to different species?
Well we can look at various European pipistrelle species that are clearly different species but very closely related, so closely related that they were deemed to be the same species until a few years ago. It’s a safe bet that one of these species is almost identical in form to the common ancestor, but of course we can’t tell which one. As you can see there are huge difficulties and improbabilities associated with trying to prove that one of two species has retained the same form, but it’s very likely to be the case.
Does genetics hold the key? Do scientists working in this field hope to be able to develop tests to enable them to establish which is the prior form when such coexists with a more modern form?
bodswood, the ‘prior form’ does not stand still in time. Imagine you’ve got a species of dogs on an island. The island breaks in two due to a volcano, or something.
So you’ve got two islands. Over time, the population of dogs on one island goes through some changes to cope with their new lava-covered island. The dogs with very hairy and thick-skinned feet can run over the jagged lava and tend to survive. On the other island, there’s not as much lava, but there’s little fresh water. The dogs which can survive on less water tend to survive.
After many many generations, you’ve got two different species that tend not to breed, or not to be able to breed: the tough-foot dogs from one island and the never-thirsty dogs from the other island. Which of the two here is the ‘prior form’?
The most likely candidates for being ‘prior forms’ are the dogs fossilised in the ash of the original explosion. Neither of the modern forms is more ‘prior’, so to speak, than the other. For that reason, we’ve got chimps and we’ve got men, but we don’t have our common ancestor around, and neither chimps nor men can be said to be more primitive than the other.
The problem is Bodswood that you are confusing form and species. There is no reason why a pre-existing form has to go extinct when a new form derives form it as is evidenced by the fact that grey wolves are still going strong. However speciation takes a long time and mutations tend to occur at a reasonably constant rate. In the time it takes for one population within a given species to become a clearly different form and species the other population will also have accumulated the same number of mutations. That means that both populations will be just as genetically divergent from their common ancestor. That means that it’s probable that an original form (phenotype) of an animal will still exist but that the organisms with that form will be no more the same species as the original than is the new form.
While there is nothing in the theory of evolution that says that pre-existing species need to vanish when a new species arises form it the odds of it managing to remain the same would be astronomically low.
Bodswood it might help if you think about it via a language analogy. Both Italian and French evolved from Latin. However neither Italian nor French are the language form which the other derived. Latin was obviously a perfectly effective language and there was no reason that it couldn’t have survived forever, yet despite that it continued to evolve into modern Italian even in Rome itself. There is nothing in the theory of linguistics that said that Latin had to vanish when French evolved from it but the odds of a new language evolving while the old language stays static is are very low indeed.
Similarly the odds of a new species evolving while the old species stays static is are very low indeed.
Canis lupus and Canis domesticus are different species.
Isla domestic dogs, grey wolves and dingoes are now all classified as C. lupus. Same species. Even back 10 years ago before the switch the domestic dog was C familiaris, not C. domesticus.
Granted that the dividing line between species is not always clear-cut, it is nonetheless drawn at the ability to interbreed, or, to cover cases like mules, the ability to interbreed without producing offspring that are sterile.
Thus, the domestic dog and the wolf used to be considered separate species, “canis familiaris” and “canis lupus”, but the dog is now regarded as a sub-species of the wolf species “canis lupus familiaris”.
No kidding? [Walter from The Big Lebowski]I did not know that.[/WFTBL]
I see I was also confusing Canis familiaris with Felis domesticus.
:o
Wrong with a capital W, but species concepts are an entirely different can of worms, and discussing them will only serve to further muddle the issue at hand. Suffice it to say that the Biological Species Concept (ability to interbreed) is quickly becoming antiquated in the eyes of modern biology.
Carter, G.F., 1971. Chapter 9. Pre-Columbian
chickens in America. In: Riley, C.L., J.C.
Kelley, C.W. Pennington, and R.L. Rands,
editors. Man Across the Sea. Problems of
Just to add to what Isla has said. Wrong. That has never been the dividing line between species. While it is true that an inability to breed will sperate two population sinto species immediately the ability to interbreed doesn’t preclude speciation. Wolves and jackals, cattle and bison, blue and humpback whales. All interbreed int the wild and produce fertile offspring but all are indisputably diffeent species.
The problem is Bodswood that you are trying t argue against evolution, a scientific theory, using a theological concept of species ‘kinds’ tht doesn’t exist and if it did exist would falsify evolution immediately.
Ilsa and Blake, thanks for the clarification. What definition of ‘species’ are scientists running with today?
What boggles my mind is that you can sleep or even live at all with the belief that some intelligent entity so grievously screwed up life, the universe, and everything on purpose! I’m not being sarcastic or snide or trying to be cute or anything: I am soberly and entirely serious.
This is a frighteningly unforgiving universe and life is, as Hobbes put it, nasty, brutish, and short. The idea that Earth’s life was deliberately created is one of the most thoroughly and obscenely blasphemous ideas I can possibly imagine. How can you hate your God so utterly as to believe that? What dark depths of contempt you must hold for your God!
Considering the vast number of incredibly stupid and ignorant “design” flaws in all living things, how can you stay sane while believing that all forms of life – most especially Homo sapiens – were created deliberately? The only possible way to sustain such a belief is to also believe the creator(s) was/is either a miserably stupid, inept deity or was a monstrously evil sadist, bent on unleashing as much pain and sickness and death as possible out of some sick lust to see things suffer!
How can you live with yourself and believe such things? For if you deny evolution or some other uncaring, unintelligent force, the facts force you to believe exactly that.
(As an aside, I do want to commend you for the courteous – if not always very responsive – way you’ve handled yourself in this rather long and patience-trying debate. Kudos to you on that score.)
Ambushed, most Christians (whether or not they believe in evolution) also believe in the fall. This would explain the suffering and brutishness in the world.
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.”
But thanks!
But this doesn’t make sense either, since God engineered the fall too.
And I wish to repeat my question: what would it take for you to accept evolution? Can you imagine something that would do that?