Not really.
Only if there wouldn’t be suffering and brutishness in the natural world, only among humans.
It was them that went against god’s word. Why is the rest of creation suffering as well? No it was designed from the start to be brutish, why else design a lion?
Can’t you see that a lion is the perfect shape for lying down with a lamb?
Most commonly used is the Evolutionary Species Concept, but there are others, like the phylogenetic, essentialist, nominal, etc. I know you might find that hard to swallow, as it might seem a bit tautological, but [URLhttp://www.mun.ca/biology/scarr/2900_Species.htm]here is a nice link.
Rassin’ frassin’ grumble grumble. Link.
Oh, the lamb was supposed to *get up again *?!?
Look, the specs clearly don’t state any of that. How were we supposed to know you have an aversion to blood.
We had a meeting and we all agreed to stick with this ‘eat or be eaten’ modus operandi. Right?
We can’t go back now, after billions of years into the process, and start again from scratch, with single cells.
But that doesn’t solve the problem in the slightest! It also evades my point. Think this through, please! Your new contention can only mean that after the Fall, your addle-witted, incompetent, and despicably evil monster of a God destroyed all evidence of any intelligently “designed” creatures that had previously existed and left the evolution of life entirely to chance and natural law (i.e., standard evolutionary theory) – BECAUSE: All life that we see in the entire Universe is horrendously flawed and is so sloppily, stupidly, and incompetently “designed” as to FORCE you and us to STILL conclude that the God you believe in MUST either be irredeemably evil or utterly stupid.
If you maintain your belief in a deity that created life on Earth, you are STILL a vile blasphemer. How do you sleep considering the deep hatred of God your beliefs require you to hold?
The position of many evolutionary creationists is that God created organic life through a process of evolution. Withe regard to Adam and Eve (modern man), one belief is that they were born into previous hominid families with a small mutation of genetic code, causing significant physical differences, associated also with a new relationship with God.
Does this seem a tenable position to you guys?
Perhaps. Better would be to assume that “Adam and Eve” are a parable, and that God simply imbued the newly evolved humans with a soul when he thought they were ready.
bodswood, I’ve been lurking in this thread for a while, without much to say that hasn’t been said better by people who know what they’re talking about, like Darwin’s finch or David Simmons.
However I do have one small request. Would you please answer Priceguy’s question: What would it take for you to believe in evolution? Many people have carefully, patiently, and more or less politely explained evolution, cleared up misconceptions, and steered you to informative websites. Yet you still resist. So what standard of proof do you want? Please make this explicit.
If the answer is “nothing will ever make me believe in evolution”, that’s fine, but I think people should know this so they can decide whether or not to continue debating you. If “nothing” is not your answer please say what is so people can decide whether the burden of proof you require is something that can possibly be met.
Also as long as I’m here I would Like to recommend the book Abusing Science, The Case Against Creationism by the philosopher Philip Kitcher. It’s probably the best book I’ve read on the subject. It may not be in print.
Larry, I still have concerns about natural selection as the instrument for speciation as well as about the fossil record (though I think this is a secondary issue, whereas natural selection is a primary issue).
As I understand it, natural selection functions to weed out unfit creatures since most mutations produce inferior offspring. Although a few mutations have been scientifically observed that are beneficial, for the theory of evolution to be true, there must be a fantastic number of creative mutations that produce new kinds of offspring which are better suited for survival, and therefore are favoured by natural selection. This seems highly improbable to me.
Regarding the fossil record (a secondary matter as already stated), even many evolutionists concede that most new species (and genera) appear in the record suddenly, and are not led up to by gradual and continuous transitional sequences.
Read Darwin on Darwin’s Finches. In a nutshell, suppose there are a group of finches who eat small soft and easy to eat seeds. These birds breed up to the limit of that fool supply and behond (Malthus’ thesis). Survival is a powerful driver and some birds with slightly longer bills are able to dig grubs out from under tree bark. They survive and pass that longer bill trait on. Some birds have stronger and bigger bills and are able to crack and eat the harder seeds. And so on. Because each group is suited to its food supply they don’t intermix much and when they do their offspring could be at a slight disadvantage because they are not as good as others in their specialized diet niches. As time goes by each group mutates and changes to track its particular source of food as that also changes over time and with enough time they can easily be at least as far apart as hoses and donkeys.
I’m not sure your last statement is entirely accurate. My understanding is that in the horse, for example, there is a pretty complete chain of fossils of eohippus (if that’s the right name) right up to modern horses. Of course each change in the chain is a step change. So there are examples of gradual change. Not many of them because of the exacting requirements that must be met in order to make a fossil.
I appreciate your answer, bodswood. So the main problems are natural selection and the fossil record, with the former being more of a concern than the latter. Again, I’m going to leave the facts of these issues to posters who know more than I do.
However that wasn’t quite the question I asked, and I think Priceguy asked.
I didn’t ask what specific issues were troubling you in evolutionary theory. I asked what standard of proof you were looking for. Since you got specific with the issues and I was less than clear in my last post let me rephrase.
If I’m trying to prove to you that I have a cat, I don’t have to work very hard. I could send you a picture of the cat, or, if you were really distrustful and I had a lot of time and money on my hands I could fly you over here to look at my cat.
Evolution (or, more specificaly natural selection leading to speciation) isn’t like that. There’s nothing I can point to and go “look, there’s some evolution happening right now!” in a way that will remove all doubt from the matter. Evolution, like all scientific theories, is an inference from observations to the best explanation. (an oversimplification, but let’s not get bogged down in epistemology.) Ultimately, after enough observations have been made and enough predictions verified and enough difficulties resolved a theory can be called “true.” There is no magic moment when this happens, but rather a gradual accumulation of certainty.
Also, to make things more difficult alot of this depends on taking other people’s word for things. I’m not a biologist and haven’t even read that deeply on the subject. However I do know how science works, with its multiple checks and tests.
I know that Darwin himself had concerns about his own theory, and was honest enough to state them. He did not know how traits were passed to offspring. This had to wait for genetics. He was troubled when Kelvin showed that the sun could not have been burning long enough for evolution to produce the natural world. Now we know that the sun burns by nuclear fusion and has been around for billions of years.
When I read of the phenomena that evolution explains, how it has resolved its own difficulties, and how it ties together all life on earth, I am absolutely convinced it is true.
But you are not. So my question is, what are your standards of proof? What sort of arguments would convince you that natural selection leads to different species?
If it is simply too unbelievable to you that this should happen, again, that’s your right, but I think it would be ethical for you to say that so people can decide whether to keep on trying to convince you. If there is a burden of proof beyond which you would accept the theory, what would it be? What sort of observations would it take to show you that speciation can occur through natural selection?
Again I’m going to leave the technical matters to more qualified posters. But I think you could help them if you said what you were looking for.
Sorry about the rambling nature of this post.
And, by the way, Darwin’s Finches seem to have been one of the keys that started him on the path to his theory.
Why, he wondered, should God have created a whole cluster of closely related birds, designed for particular diets, and then sent them, after the Biblical flood, only to the Galapagos Islands where their partular died is found?
Now is the time to bring in “But with our limited minds we can’t possibly question God’s methods or purposes.”
There do not have to be “a fantastic number” in any given generation. The reason that the number seems fantastic is that we are seeing the results of over 3.5 billion years of activity. Nature can do a lot of weeding out based on errors and still have a lot of beneficial mutations in a timespan that long.
As to your second point, you seem to be deliberately ignoring the actual statements made in regard to the “sudden” appearance of species (and you are definitely ignoring very specific statements regarding the reality of “transitional species”).
Considering the extreme unlikelihood of any dying plant or animal (or representative of the other Kingdoms) leaving any fossil, the “sudden appearance” of species in the fossil record is exactly what one would expect. We have fossils from those periods, locations, and situations that explicitly favored the creation of fossils. To create a fossil, one needs a dying body, covered nearly instantaneously in an anaerobic substance that can later be compressed to rock. Given all the adverse conditions opposing such a situation, we are most likely finding fossils in the sediment left in very specific ecologies and landscapes (which would explain why we can find a lot of similar fossils from some periods and rather few from some other periods).
People have criticised me for basing my rejection of (or at least scepticism about) evolution on gut feelings. The scientific method, being based on (observations) > hypothesis > tests > new hypothesis, seems to me to be unequal to the task of corroborating the theory of evolution, because the tests are not up to the task. Once natural selection is assumed, how can we be sure that the tests are not tainted by the fact that they will merely confirm the assumption?
Not being a scientist means two things: 1) I struggle with some concepts and run the risk of spouting rubbish, 2) (highly improbable, in fact virtually impossible, though perhaps not more so than the theory of evolution would have appeared in 1650) I am placed to see things which those that carry the scientific baggage will never see.
My question for you guys is can 2) be discounted entirely?
After all, evolution is based on random processes without an intelligence?!
Kind of. Yes, the mutations are random. But, whether a certain animal survives is not random. Animals survive because they’re well suited for their environment. Those who survive pass on their genes.
You’ve got a couple conceptual misunderstandings up there.
First: the role of natural selection. Contrary to how it is often described, natural selection plays a dual role in shaping populations. One of those is its guise as Grim Reaper, culling the weak and affirmed and ensuring that those nasty detrimental mutations don’t make it into the population in large numbers. The oft-neglected role, and the most important, is that of creator. The true creativity in evolution does not lie in the mutations, but in natural selection. You see, those individuals which possess variations which, however slight, allow them to out-compete their fellows will be more likely to pass the genes which resulted in those traits on to future generations, thus increasing their relative freequency within the gene pool of the population. This is adaptation, plain and simple. Over time, the general trend in the population will be such that the “better” genes are favored (though note that what is “better” is dependent on the here and now, not on what might be, or what was).
The other misconception is as relates to the nature of variation. It is not necessaary to be born with some brand new, super-splendiforous mutation which makes you “special”. Indeed, were it the case that such was necessary, then mutation itself would become the creative force of evolution, while natural selection could only serve to kill off those less fortunate.
Rather, as mentioned, the difference need only be slight, and is a natural result of the existing variation. Some organisms will be slightly taller, some slightly shorter. Some animals slightly faster, some slightly slower. Some have slightly better eyesight, or better smelling, or better hearing, or whatever. Depending on the environment, individuals which vary in the direction which best allows them to outcompete their fellows will dictate the trend in the next generation, and so on. So, the next generation tends to be slightly faster, or taller - or shorter, or whatever. This does not mean that every individual has suddenly made a quantum leap, but rather the overal structure of the population has changed slightly, from, say, 10% who are able to run at 50mph instead of 45 mph, to say 15% who are now able to run slightly faster (very general example). Most of the time, this change is gradual. The eons slowly tick by, and the population changes over time. If you look at the population at time t=0 and compare it to the population at t=several million years later, the gradual accumulation of selection will result in the later poulation often being very noticeably different from its ancestors. However, sometimes, the change is not so gradual.
For much of the Mesozoic, for example, we see a trend in increasing size in non-avian dinosaurs. Bigger was better. But, at the end of the Cretaceous, something happened. All the big guys on land bought it, and only the little guys survived. Suddenly, being little was better. All those little rodenty-looking mammals which were kept small because they couldn’t compete with the big dinosaurs suddenly found they didn’t need to compete with anyone! The environment had changed, and natural selection now operated to favor those little guys; the rodenty-looking mammals continued on and eventually begot us, while the big dinos were simply no more (though some little, feathered ones did make it through…).
This is related in part to what tomndebb noted - fossilization itself is a rare event, and certain environs are more “fossil friendly” than others. Sea shores or lake shores are good. Forest floors are bad. Theres a reason why all the best fossils come from sedimentary rocks. Another reason is related to my Mesozoic example above. Sometimes, change is sudden and catastrophic. The depositing of geological sediments usually takes a lot of time. But often evolution outpaces the depostion of these sediments, and the speciation event is completely missed in the fossil record. Small populations in a new environment will likely change rapidly, as they must, lest they become extinct; they must either adapt quickly, or perish. These bursts of rapid speciation occur in a geological blink of an eye (but, in reality, may still take many thousands of years). Once (if) the population stabilizes and achieves a suitable size, the pace of overall change slows dramatically. A larger population is another determining factor in the likelihood of fossilization - so, we seem to see these forms suddenly appear in the fossil record, even though they were around al along. It’s only once the population reaches a sufficient size to increase the odds of at least some being fossilized that we begin to find them, and by then they are relatively stable - that is, they don’t appear to change much, if at all. We see, then, periods of stasis, in which species appear static in the fossil record, punctuated by periods of change, in which new forms appear suddenly, and without gradual intermediate forms. The explanation that I gave for this pattern is, of course, what is known as punctuated equilibrium. Critics say it sounds awfully convenient as a means to explain away the “missing” fossils, but it does fit perfectly with what we would expect, given the nature of speciation in the first place. And, as Dave Simmons pointed out earlier, we do have numerous instances of fossil transitions, despite the shortcomings of the fossil record - forms which, were evolution completely untrue, we would have a great deal of difficulty in explaining.
I would think natural selection would be the first aspect of evolution to be understood and accepted, not the last.
You see it every day. Reports of ‘super bugs’ being resistent to penicillin or anti-bacterial agents is solid proof that natural selection ocurrs.
As I said in my previous post, super-bugs are an example of observed natural selection. All bacterium that can survive the pesticide survive and reproduce.
Many of the posters in this thread, including myself, are not scientists either. Never took an advanced biology course or physics etc. I don’t see how your #2 follows from not being a scientist.
What sort of things do you see from not being a scientist that I’m missing? 
(ps I’m sure you meant 1850, not 1650 above…
)
Thanks for that, DF. I appreciate the time and trouble you took.
The fossilisation stuff is quite simple to appreciate. Conditions need to be right, etc. However, I can’t quite get my head round what you wrote in this paragraph:
‘The other misconception is as relates to the nature of variation. It is not necessary to be born with some brand new, super-splendiforous mutation which makes you “special”. Indeed, were it the case that such was necessary, then mutation itself would become the creative force of evolution, while natural selection could only serve to kill off those less fortunate.’
Isn’t it the case that, *at any time * that a mutation occurs, it will be brand new? ‘New’ is an objective category that I can understand.
On the other hand, ‘special’ or ‘super’ is an evaluative, subjective category, and I don’t quite follow. To me, any change leading for instance to the creation of a (proto-)wing, where a wing or (pre-)proto-wing had not existed before, appears pretty amazing, super or special.
I confess that I still have trouble grasping the concept of natural selection, although I have now read much about it. Indeed, I have been focusing on it in my reading and thinking related to evolution, as it appears to be the lynchpin of the theory.
I seem to have been ‘cursed’ with a poor ability to grasp abstract notions, as well as the habit of saying ‘I don’t get it’ whenever I, well, don’t get it.
Does something analogous to N.S. operate in another sphere of life. What generic word best decribes N.S., e.g. instrument, enabler, facilitator, switch?