In defense of creationism(ish)

Great Debates
41

Fred Hoyle (Astronomer Royal) described evolution as ’ a fairy-tale for children’ on the grounds that it contradicts the Second Law of Thermodynamics (that systems tend to decay, not to greater levels of organisation).

Also the theory of evolution has afair old stab at explaining the Origin of Species, as Darwin very carefully put it, but not the Origin of Life. The spontaneous generation of the first living organism (as opposed to salts or molecules, which scientists like Dawkins always whitter on about when you ask this, hoping that you won’t know the difference) was so unlikely that it was impossible.

Secondly, the geological record shows amoeba and then the Cambrian Explosion - thousands and thousands of new critters with complex structures, shells, limbs, eyes etc with no intervening transitional forms between these and amoeba. Big, big, big problem for evolutionary theory…

Also no missing links/transitional forms for most species. Evidence is, thousnds and thousand of apes dying out. No evidence of evolving into humans. Notice when it comes to humans, how they always find one, never a group of skeletons… Or evena breeding pair. Funny that

Lost and lots of probs… Main one, no eveidence that evolution random. Vital if your underlying theory is that God does not exist (cf Dawkins ranting like a born-again evolutionist - what is he scared of? Bet he’ll live to be 350 out of sheer fear of dying…)

Of course, it certainly didn’t all happen in six days…

But then again, those ole Muslims, they’ve got their scriptural creationist theory too. And it seems it mentions the Big Bang, and relativity (‘And a day to Allah is like a thousand years to you’, ‘A day to Allah is like fifty thousand years to you’ etc or some such), as well as creation.

So they believe in Creation, plus Design (like the average Biochemist, I believe). So they’re laughing…

(Is that why we keep bombing them?)

42

Razor,

Kindly visit http://www.talkorigins.org/

Thanks.

43

Been there…debunked that. Earth not a closed system.

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Been there…debunked that. Evolution doesn’t deal with abiogenesis.

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Been there…debunked that. Cambrian Explosion represents first appearance of fossilizable hard parts.

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Been there…debunked that. Plenty of transitional fossils in the record. Fossilization rare to begin with.

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Been there…debunked that. Evolution isn’t random. Mutations are “random”; natural selection isn’t.

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At least you got that one right.

44

Is this supposed to mean something?

45

**Mutations are “random”; natural selection isn’t. **

So natural selection can’t be described as “random”? How is anything that selects against something or in favor of something else not random to the organisms involved? Otherwise, there would need to be some type of foresight for the organisms that made the cut.

46

“Random” in this context means that all characteristics or combinations thereof have an equal probability of being passed on to descendants. That isn’t the case in natural selection since characteristics that work against an individual’s survival are less likely to be passed on to than are those that increase the chance of survival.

47

Yes, I understand natural selection. I’m talking about the action of selection in my post above. The causative action of selection is random.

48

What model is that? Can you kindly provide a link?

49

I’ll email you a link or the best I can come up with, Urban Ranger. Not everything makes the internet. I don’t even know if our stuff is on the net. Believe it or not, there is a danger in blabing too much about how far along someone’s writing is. I’ll try for the link right now.

50

Razor, your argument seems cut from a Creationist screed against evolution; forgive me if I misjudge you.

However, there are a huge number of errors in your post, based on insufficient understanding of the subject. You are, in fact, correct that Darwinian evolution does not address the origin of life, nor was it intended to. There are numerous theories in molecular biology aimed at dealing with this issue.

Regarding amoeba>Cambrian explosion with no intermediates, do a web search on acritarch(s) and Ediacara fauna. Then take your results and feed them to whoever gave you that bit of misinformation.

Finally, petrifaction is a rare phenomenon. Large groups of animals have indeed been found, ranging from Marella in the Burgess shale to herds of bison, horses, etc. in the latest Pliocene. You are correct that human fossils rarely occur in groups, but the assumption is that humans lived in econiches that were seldom good areas for fossilization. Of the millions of pet cats and dogs that lived during the 20th century, how many do you think will be preserved for five million years? There are, however, several finds of hominids, ranging from Australopithecus afarensis to Homo sapiens neandertalensis where two or more different beings were preserved.

51

The mutations with which an organism finds itself are “random”, in the sense that there are numerous variables which affect how/when they occur. It is unlikely that one could predict with any accuracy what mutations will arise given a set of circumstances.

The same can not be said of natural selection. Given a set of environmental variables, one could predict a suite of adaptations which will allow an organism to survive. For example, in a very cold environment, organisms with some sort of insulation have a much greater chance of survival than do ones without. In this sense, the selection is not random, since the odds significantly favor one suite of mutations over another.

An organism may find itself well-adapted to a given environment when suddenyl the environment changes. Again, however, this is an equivalent situation: whatever genes the organism has at that time will determine its survivability. Such a change may seem random to the organism; however, the selection that follows will still be based on filtering out those organisms which are not adapted for the new conditions.

52

But that’s standing on this side of the fence, isn’t it. True “one” could predict. In fact, we could imagine made up creatures in our head and then make up an event in its environment that will change the conditions in the environment, forcing a selection one way or the other. But that’s not saying anything. What I mean is, for you and I, the ability to figure out the best way to go is only hindsight (after the event), and that we are human and can predict and reason things in the first place.

First, environmental conditions are normal for two organsims with nothing unusual going on in the environment. Lets go with finches on the island.

We have birds with different types of bills suited for different food sources. Neither bird knows a change is headed their way.

Then an environmental change happens. The results of this change reduces a food supply for one of the birds. It can’t eat the other bird’s food due to its type of bill and it can’t adapt quick enough to save itself, if at all. So it is being selected against.

But the thing is this: The change in the environment was random to the two birds, as you noted. It doesn’t matter how we look at it after the fact. The selection process begins with the environment. When the environment is unpredictable then for anything living in the environment, a change is random. Therefore the selection that follows is random. Only, once the random selection has been set into motion, it is no longer viewed by us to be random because it makes perfect sense.

But in this example everything is in place already. There is no active selection because no hairless, blubberless new versions of animals are going to be born from the existing, surviving population. Of course, unless there is a mutation or something that would cause one to be born from that population, but at which point it would be disposed of by the conditions, if not the animals themselves.

53

That’s simply not true. Just because an event happens at random doesn’t mean that what it causes is at all random.

Think of this: posts arrive to the SDMB at random time intervals. However, what happens to those posts is deterministic to the point that I will bet money that you’ll read this.

54

But you’re wrong ultrafilter, I didn’t read your post.

Yes, what happens to a post after it has been placed on the server can be one of two things. But that’s different because you posted with a purpose. The environmet doesn’t change with a purpose; it just changes.

55

No matter whether I (or everyone else) post on purpose or at random, post still arrive at the server at random intervals. Our intentions are invisible to the system, but the outcomes are not.

56

Everyone posts on purpose.

The environment of the board didn’t change without a purpose being involved at the very beginning. In nature, the environment changes without a purpose being involved.

57

Right, then. Consider Usenet, which is populated by both real people and spambots. The people post as we do, with a purpose. The spambots, having no intelligence, merely regurgitate whatever they are told to at random intervals (with no user intervention). Can they be said to post with a purpose? Maybe, but not the same way that the people do. In essence they’re posting at random.

Either way, the posts are entered into a database and displayed for those who wish to read them. From the point of view of the system, there is absolutely no difference between the posts of people and the posts of spambots. They are handled in exactly the same manner, and this manner is deterministic.

Note also that it’s impossible to predict with infinite accuracy when the next post will come through (from either source, I might add). This is what I meant when I said that posts happen at random, not that anyone is posting random drivel.

Of course, you can’t prove that you have a purpose for posting–but that’s a different issue for a different thread.

58

Everyone posts so that a message will be sent to the server and be presented visually, otherwise they’d stop wasting their time. Who wrote spambox? What was their purpose for doing so?

The system can’t be synonymous with the environment because the system is programmed to do ordered things exclusively, as in to present the posts visually and what not. Anyway, where the system handles them in the same manner is not how organisms and their environment work. The posts were pre-made to comply with a protocol as with Perl and CGI. In nature, the finches aren’t made for a future event. The finches aren’t designed to be posted.

59

Sorry, don’t buy it. The selection that follows is random if, and only if, given the same circumstances, a different outcome is just as probable - for example, if the other bird dies instead. If such a thing happened, clearly that would violate everything we know about natural selection.

The environment itself is not natural selection. The changes to the environment are not natural selection. The effect of the environment, or changes thereto, on the ability of an organism to reproduce is natural selection. If this effect were random, then any given mutation would have equal probablilities of being passed on to the next generation. That clearly isn’t the case: certain mutations are heavily biased against, given the prevailing conditions at the time.

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And that last sentence there is the key: if such a mutation occurs, through random happenstance, it is almost assured that the organism will not survive: the mutation will have been selected against. The effect of the conditions, not the conditions themselves, is what is given the name “natural selection”.

60

Anticay, DF is making a solid point here.

A system can be imagined that is completely deterministic. The input to the system can be completely random. But, the rules of the system can be applied to any random input and a result can be completely predicted.

Mutations, and changing environment are the random input, natural selection is the deterministic system.