Evolution vs Creationism

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I look at Intelligent Design as a cross of Creationism and Evolution. The demands of modern Science means that the simplified synopsis of the creation process contained in Genesis 1 is no longer enough for the needs of humanity. At the same time, the "Godless" random model provided by the theory of Evolution also sounds too implausible. Intelligent Design, while still in the realm of Philosophy or Theology, suggests that what Geology, Astronomy, and Evolution teaches us was all overseen by an "Intelligent Designer", or "God" to the Christians.

 

Bow before the great and holy Flying Spaghetti Monster! Would that you could touch his noodly appendage!

 

Sorry, got my Thermo Laws mixed up. It's been a while since I went through them in order. The problem with us already being slag is that we can measure entropy (indirectly) and it isn't infinite. The other, of course, is that we ourselves are ordered systems, along with things like stars, plantets, molecules, etc. If entropy were infinite, none of these things could exist. It's kind of like, "I think, therefore I am." If we were not, we wouldn't know it, but since we are, we do.

 

I don't mean to start a fight but is creationism (or intelligent design) taken seriously anywhere outside the United States? I'm genuinely curious as I always thought previously that it was purely a US phenomenon. Maybe the diverse membership we have here can answer that one.

If you mean by creationism a belief that we were created by another being, then yes, I am a Christian who would follow the tenets of the faith and believe that God created the Universe. I do not have any particular beliefs on how he created the Universe. I can't see how we'll ever know what caused the beginning (caused the Big Bang by the most popular scientific theory). Unless of course He comes down one day and tells us.

I would be strongly opposed to Creationism as it is currently espoused. It seems to be a movement to shoehorn religion into schools under the guise of a science. But I can't see how it's anything of the sort. Creationism is based on the premise that if there was an 'all powerful being that could do anything' than that being could have created the world. Of course he could have. He/she/it can do anything. But we can never prove nor disprove it. Furthermore, we can learn nothing useful from it. I would actually feel that Creationism is demeaning to my religion. It seeks to teach merely a tiny facet of my religion, one which most would deem unimportant. And it does so in a fashion that makes it look absurd, leaving it open to ridicule.

Evolution is a basic bedrock of science, as proven as any theory of its ilk can be. We do not understand it fully but the parts we know fit together. We can roughly trace the path of evolution through fossils and we can generally see the advantageous reasons why life evolved in a particular way. The Economist carried a good article over Christmas on evolution explaining why human thinking/ behaviours, not just physical characteristics, can be found to have evolutionary roots. These are ill understood but could provide valuable information for the future as trying to mold society against our inner natures could lead to conflict. As an example, there are much stronger Darwinian advantages for a male to succeed in his career than for a female. This means expecting men and women to earn equal amounts on average may be flawed. A British study indicated that wage differentials were tiny for the category where both sexes gained by advancing in their careers (I don't think this study should be taken as authoritive, merely indicative).

 

I totally agree, hence what I said about creationism and evolution being metaphors for each other (not sure if it makes sense!). Maybe each 'day' in Genesis is a simplistic way of describing a stage of the evolution of the universe. 'Let there be light' - the initial big bang.

As to it being taken seriously outside the USA, it really is. I know people here who would absolutly refuse to even attempt to understand the big bang theory on the basis that it is blasphemous.

 

I think it's safe to say that nobody in here thinks that evlution is random as in 'completely arbitrary'.

Mutations are random, survival isn't. It's not the 'survival of the whatever' after all. There are...tendencies, at any given time and circumstances any given organism which will proliferate the best under the said circumstances will do just that until the carrying capacity of the environment has been reached.

 

Good point. Afterall, the human race has stopped evolving, we use IVF which means that any genetic faults that can cause infertility can be overcome and passed to the next generation (not that depriving anyone of the chance to be a parent is a good thing). We use drugs to treat illness and we have no natural predators anymore. We've pretty much overcome the survival of the fittest thing by stopping anything that can reduce the herd size

 

Iku, if you're refering to my "minus the randomness" bit (don't remember exactly what I said, and I'm too lazy to look it up), I was refering to mutations. Evolution, the scientific theory, says that survival of the fittest filters out all the unusable mutations and only allows the useful ones to be passed on, but whether that useful one is feathers or fur (assuming both would work) is random. When dealing with an omnicient, omnipotent being, however, there is no such thing as chance or 'random'. The stages of life as we know it were planned out from before the beginning. They may have been planned out as a developmental sequence that relied on certain laws and processes, I have no problem with that, it's how God did everything else after all, but the steps were all planned out before anything started, so no 'random' in that sense.

Silvery, your metaphor thing makes some sense, and I've frequently thought along the same lines, but I'll stick to my literal fusion of 6 days and billions of years using General Relativity. It's just to elegant to ignore.

 

Not necessarily. I studied systematics and evolutionary biology. People make the mistake of thinking that 'survival of the fittest' is absolute in all circumstances, but it's more complicated than that, and mostly less extreme. It's more like 'survival of the fit enough': When an organism develops a deleterious mutation (harmful, not beneficial), they suffer a reduction in fitness level, but this doesn't have to be significant enough to cause their gradual inevitable extinction. In fact, most beneficial mutations arise from the combination of a number of deleterious ones, so without the 'survival of the fit enough', evolution would be much slower. Many circumstances influence the success of a population. For example the 'founder effect'; those who came first have a denser, larger population, allowing them to be more successful, while a smaller population in their midst, even with a significantly beneficial mutation, cannot succeed in reaching sufficient numbers to outcompete the large population. If a mutation offers better protection against predation, then a temporary low in the numbers of predators may prevent the new population from gaining benefits, leading them to go extinct before predation can increase again.
A lot of mutations are in regions of the genome that we don't even use, so these mutations are mostly neutral, until they (re)activate the code for an enzyme, which can again be beneficial, deleterious, or neutral.
Evidence that a low level of mutation is seen as positive, can be taken from DNA mechanisms: Doublechecking of DNA repair, replication and regulation is strongest in sites where the DNA codes for essential proteins, while it's much easier for mutations to manifest themselves in non-coding regions. The nature of the nucleobases (A, C, G, T) we use in DNA allows for mutations, and if this was a weakness in DNA storage, it would have been replaced by a better system. During fetrilization, a process called chromosomal crossover occurs, allowing for new combinations of the genome, which will give rise to new mutations - if this wasn't sometimes beneficial to the organism, it wouldn't occur. In fact, the whole reason we have sexual reproduction, is to enhance the results of mutations by 'testing' them in new combinations. Or as Wikipedia says:

 

Evolution is fact, mythology is mythology. I dont take a literal reading of any scriptures, I know that Shiva doesnt literally ride Nandi and doesnt literally have sex for thousands of years with Parvati and doesnt literally smoke cannabis for thousands of years either. It is just mythology, just made up stories that have nice meaning, but that meaning is separate from the vehicle used to convey the spiritual message.

The evidence for evolution is staggering. But this doesnt stop people, such as my aunts husband (not my uncle, he died) telling me silly things like 'Evolution is just a theory, it isnt fact'. He got really fired up over it on Boxing Day talking to me about it, and I mostly just smiled, nodded, and said ok a lot because I was tired and I didnt want to offend my family. I could have told everyone that human chromosome 2 formed from a head to head fusion of two separate great ape chromosomes, I could have told them about the useless muscle we have in our knee that in other great apes is used to flex the toes the same way as you would flex your fingers, I could have told them any number of things as well...the evidence for evolution is overwhelming.

There is evidence of recent human evolution in East African pasturalist cultures, similar to the evolution of the Funnel Beaker peoples of Northern Europe. Both the groups from Africa and the descendants of the Funnel Beaker peoples are lactose tolerant. But, the mechanism for their lactose tolerance is different, which is why scientists were unable to detect the mutation in the African populations until recently. Unsurprisingly, the time that the mutation in the African populations originated was at the time when cattle was first domesticated in the area. The reason why it was undetectable before was because scientists compared the genome sequence of Northern Europeans with Eastern Africans and found no match, however, while the mutation occurs in the genome at the place that codes for the lactose digesting enzyme in the Europeans, the African mutation is before the area that codes for the lactose digesting enzyme, and yet the results are identical. More info here:Study Detects Recent Instance of Human Evolution

 

Nataraja, evolution is a theory because we don't really know how it works yet, and we know it. Like I said, I believe we've got the basic principle right, but there are some serious timing issues to be dealt with. Random mutation shouldn't consistently happen in quick, drastic spurts and then be mostly absent for long periods of time. The fossil record currently indicates that this is true for macroevolution, which suggests there are other mechanics involved. I'll agree the general idea is pretty much fact, but the actual scientific theory is far from a law.

As for taking scripture literally, I do, as I have said, and I always try to reconsile literal scripture with scientific law. I have yet to find a sure incompatability.

 

Firstly, there is no such thing as macroevolution, or microevolution. There is evolution, just evolution, no macro or micro, because all macro is just lots of micro, which over long periods of time is macro...

Secondly, what you are pointing out is punctuated equilibrium, which is one of the competing models. Also, mutations happen quickly in times of ecological stress, and various other environmental stresses. Natural selection simply acts on those who reproduce the most, because they who make the most babies are generally those who are better at requiring resources.

Thirdly, we know how evolution works, hence it is a theory. If we didnt know how it worked it would be the hypothesis of evolution, not the theory of evolution. You cannot say that atomic theory and the theory of gravity are 'theories' because we dont know how they work, we have a very clear understanding how atoms work and how gravity works...this same reasoning applies to evolutionary theory. The amount of pure speculation in evolutionary theory is almost 0%, the rest is almost 100% educated intelligent reasoning based on a) evidence, b) testability, c) ability to make predictions, d) etc etc.

Yes we do, we have an ever increasingly clear understanding of how, why, when, etc, evolution occurs and what the mechanisms of evolution are. Life is complex series of chemical reactions that respond to the environment, that is all it is...chemical reactions responding to the environment. Of course Ive simplified it here, but the principle holds true at every level of biological inquiry.

 

A theory is 'science fact'!

People make the mistake of thinking that a theory is something unsure. In language, the word 'theory' is used when people mean 'hypothesis'. There is no 'fact'-level that an intangible process like evolution can achieve. Facts are measurable empirical data, nothing else. Science uses facts to test hypotheses, in the hope of elevating them to the level of a theorem. Theories are the basis upon which further research is done. For the layman, theories are 'science fact', but I say this only to make it understandable. The theory is the highest achievable level in the scientific method. Ugh... wikipedia explains it better than me, again.

 

Couldnt have said it better myself...

 

This thread is deeply offensive to me as a rational atheist who likes science.

The theory of evolution is exactly that - a theory. Not a fact. It could be a dozen other things and a dozen other influencing factors we don't have a clue about. Now, does creationism get even close to evolution's credibility? Obviously not.

But a bigger issue here is that science is bandied about as something that can provide absolute facts. It can not. Not even close. Science is the falsifiable theories most accurate to our current setting and a lot of people - even so-called "scientists" (Big Bang, String Theory... heck, most of Astrophysics) - seem to forget.

And when you build additional theories upon these "facts", using them as stones in your house, it is a rickety shack indeed. Science is supposed to be questioned, and not blindly followed. If it's handwaved away saying "only a learned scientist could understand it" - you're dealing with faith, not science. And that is something I really utterly hate.

Science is our best understanding of the world around us. Not absolute facts. Astrophysics is a particularly bad offender here, because we don't have means of observation far enough to get much in the way of real data, so a hypothesis is built upon a hypothesis and then promoted to theory just for being internally consistent.

And oh, Foppish Idiot? First Cause? Either you abandon causality and end up in a place science cannot take you, or follow causality 'till forever. Either way, the First Cause is something left up to faith - call it God, science doesn't care. Science cannot explain how it all started, science cannot explain the meaning of life, and science cannot say if there's a god or not. Science cannot tell you right from wrong, and science doesn't particularly care about the color of your clothing. All this is left open by science.

Because, eventually, science is hypothesis and theory, experimentation and observation. Not truth nor righteous.

And anyone taking it as such is doing a disfavor to us all.

 

Actually, I believe that the "Big Bang" preceded Genesis 1. My aunt explained it this way--every big bang she's ever seen or heard usually made a mess, not anything useful. The Big Bang left us "matter unorganized" from which the heavens and the earth were formed...

If I remember correctly, it's a theory is as much as it's not understood to 100% satisfaction. It's true, but not fully understood. In fact, if God did oversee the process, it will NEVER be fully understood until the Millenial reigh of Jesus Christ as mentioned in the Bible...

 

Not true, we are still evolving. Humans have significantly evolved since the Neolithic. However, to truly have some nice evolving going on we need an extinction event, a bottle neck, and then an expansion into newly opened ecological niches.

Untrue, the big bang is nothing like any sort of big bang that will occur on earth. Your aunt obviously isnt a physicist. Matter is self arranging due to the many forces in action. I dont know the specifics, but I could easily ask my flatmates as they are all physicists to get a proper answer. Matter is just energy condensed to a slow vibration, the energy released by the big bang. This has nothing at all to do with evolution, which solely concerns itself with how populations adapt to the environmental changes they experience.

I wouldnt go about insulting your god like that if I were you, because any god that was controlling evolution was drunk or on crack. I certainly wouldnt want to pray or worship any god that designed human knees, or decided to arrange the nerves in the human face the way they are. Humans, like all organisms, are flawed simply because there is no designer other than the environment. All the organisms alive today are the lucky ones, extinction is the norm.

OK...so to clarify. Evolution is not: the origin of the universe; the big bang; the mechanism that started life on this planet (or any other planet); evil; guess-work...etc. Evolution is: the theory of the diversity of life on the planet; well supported by insurmountable evidence; testable; not evil; not controlled by your imaginary friend/s.

 

@coineineagh: Durr...Well, yes, not necessarily. I'm not making the mistake that 'suvival of the fittest' would mean the survival of the one absolutely perfect organism. Competition for resources is included in the carrying capacity of the environment. Every other organism is included in the environment. For instance, we all know that getting a pure culture isn't just something that happens by itself. Everywhere in this planet filled with life there's competition for resources. The theory of evolution takes this into account.

On mammals any organism that gets into a runaway arms race is in a path that leads to extinction. Cheetahs are a wonderful example on mammals. A layman might consider them to be one of the 'fittest' living mammals in the planet because of their superb hunting skills and the velocities they reach, but this is not so. Highly specialized organisms are the first to go extinct when there's fast changes in the environment.

 

Not to mention that they have low genetic diversity as a result of going through a bottle neck relatively recently, with the rate of inherited genetic disorders being quite high. Another example of evolution favouring individual fitness and being unfavourable to population fitness.

 

Uki-Turso, I only saw an opening to add a bit more elaboration, I wasn't trying to correct you, or imply that your understanding of evolution was wrong.

The main problem between evolution and creationism, as many of you are aware, is the nature of the 'driving force'. Christianity has always maintained the belief that our natural surrondings came into being by God's will. It was His influence and intentions that created the world we live in today, and all of life is proceeding by God's plan. He created man in His image, and only human will is free for us to influence. Now when evolution emerged as an hypothesis early on, it was clear that this diametrically opposed the concept of a divine overlord bending reality to His will. God doesn't have a plan for all things, and He doesn't work in mysterious ways. No manner of rationalization would explain away this inconsistency. Charles Darwin became known as 'the man who killed God', and most religions have openly opposed the concept of evolution. In the States, this denial has carried on to this day, but it is leading the USA to become out of touch with the modern world.

It's like how embarassed the pope was, when it was discovered that the world wasn't flat. The Bible, being an astrological literary hybrid, was written by people who probably knew this. But the pope had guaranteed people that the world was flat, so boy did he look silly when it turned out to be round. The theory of evolution is much much harder to rationalize, because almost every story in the Bible is about a sentient, all-powerful being, who is in control of all aspects of existence.

I saw a video on YouTube about how energy is eternal, and that it must have existed before the big bang. I guess that if you want to see energy as God, then I can agree with that. It´s just that I can´t agree with the reasoning behind *why* this energy is sentient in origin.


All the existing empirical evidence supports the evolutionary theory, and indicates that nature has no 'sentient will', but is in fact the result of chaotic behaviour within an extremely complex system (chaos isn't random). I don't feel disappointed that there is no sentient driving force behind nature, but I do recognize why many people feel they need to believe this. Change in mentality is something gradual, and I hope one day, that you will join us too. John Lennon's Imagine puts my feelings about this into words perfectly.