Creationism in the Philippines?

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A survey in the United States (U.S.) conducted in 2001 showed that no less than 45% of responding adults agreed that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10 000 years or so." They believed evolution played no role in shaping the world. For 37% of the respondents, divine initiative got things started, with no evolution as the creative means, thereby allowing both room for God and Darwin. Only 12% totally subscibed to Darwin's ideas.

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While I do not know if this is true or not, I wouldn't be surprised. The theory of evolution is something that takes many years of education for a person to grasp. Unfortunately, most people do not spend the time to investigate, learn, and do what it takes to really understand the theory. Unfortunately, people like to think that they know everything they need to know about a scientific theory by knowing the laymen's terms.Take quantum mechanics, for example. A few days ago I was debating with an English major. He claimed to know enough about quantum mechanics to know that it's "bullshit". It turned out that he didn't even know schrodinger's equation or what a wave function was. It would seem that arrogance out of ignorance aren't limited to non-college bound people.

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On the other hand, macro-evolution claims that major changes in the genes of organisms take place over a long period of time, allowing one species to evolve into another. This means some fish could evolve into insects, birds and mammals.

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While this statement isn't wrong, I personally think it is somewhat deceptive, whether the author intended for it to be or not.The most common misconception of the term macro-evolution is that a fish grows 4 legs and becomes a reptile overnight. Macro-evolution describes the result of micro-evolution over long periods of time. We can think of micro-evolution as taking a walk to the house next door and macro-evolution as taking a walk to the house 5 blocks away while stopping at every house.Now, my problem with that statement is when it says "macro-evolution claims that major changes in the genes of organisms take place over a long period of time...." Because it doesn't include the fact that major changes in the genes are a result a whole lot of little changes in the genes, this statement gives the false impression to your typical uneducated person that a fish could really become a reptile overnight.

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Of the two ideas, the former has been well-supported with scientific evidence. The latter, however, has become hotly debatable. Fossil records, which provide evidence for evolution, have fallen short of showing life evolving from one species to another. All they have shown are similarities of anatomy that led scientists to discern mysterious patterns among what Darwin called "closely allied" species, that is, similar creatures sharing rouighly the same body plans.

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The thing people have to understand about the fossil record is that it is nothing more than a collection of snapshots in time.Referring back to my walking from house to house example, a fossil is like taking a photo of yourself at house 11. Another photo might show you at house 46. If there are 200 houses, and you stopped at everyone of them, fossilization is like taking only 20 photos at random houses from house 1 to house 200.People have to understand that fossilization is a rare process. Only a small number of species, compared to all the species that ever existed, made it to the fossil record.We know that the dodo once existed, and yet we don't have a single fossil of them.

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This is the reason for the association of apes with humans. Paleontologists, however, have failed to dig up any fossils of species at intermediate stages of evolution and this problem has been known as the "missing link."

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What about the australopithecine?

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Not quite far removed from creationism, ID claims that intelligent causes are responsible for the origin of the universe and of life in all its diversity. it holds that certain things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. The ID movement includes a scientific research program for investigaing such intelligent causes and challenging naturalistic explanations of origins.

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In another thread, I mentioned sleep paralysis and how it used to be a supernatural phenomenon. Just because we can't explain something using naturalistic explanation doesn't mean we should label it as supernatural.My problem with the statement is that it makes ID seem like a valid scientific discipline, which it is not. Science is all about objectivity. Ask any scientist, in this case evolutionist, if he is willing to reject the theory of evolution, or at least natural selection, if tomorrow we find a true altruistic species and he will answer "yes". Ask an IDist if he is willing to reject ID if we find some kind of evidence that disproves ID and see how he answers you.Another thing about ID that makes it unscientific is that IDists have failed to lay out a set of theoretical evidence that if found would disprove the "theory".I can sight other examples of why ID is not a valid scientific theory, but you get the idea.And lastly...

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Defenders of the evolutionary theory maintain that evolution in action can be proven. They reason that evolution proceeds slowly -- too slowly to be observed by a single scientist within a research lifetime.

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Again, this statement isn't wrong but it isn't completely accurate. Scientists have observed many instances of speciation, both in plants and animal, in both laboratories and the wild. Evolution is not just proven, it is a fact.Having spent some time working in a genetics lab, I have observed evolution happening right in front of my eyes.The author makes it seem like the theory of evolution is something that scientists are unsure of. I also have a feeling, after reading it, that the author seemed to have hinted that the theory is faith-based.The author could have made it more clear that the theory of evolution is a well established scientific theory. Would people challenge the theory of gravity, germ theory of disease, or the theory of relativity? (Sometimes I wonder why not a single creo have challenged any of the other theories.)The author could have made it more clear that, just like every other theory in science, evolution has mountains of evidence that will require much more than a few finger-poking to discredit.Perhaps the author could have been a little more specific.

And I agree completely. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to think of a better easy-to-digest explanation for beginner either.How about this.I take a walk in a random direction and constantly changing my random direction. If I have a camera with me, I'll take random snapshots from where I started to where I end up at 10 years from now. After I am dead, others can look at my photos and try to determine where I had been. The more photos they find, the more accurate their map will be.Better? The better question is why not? If you keep having mutations after mutations after mutations over many many generations, what's to keep the future population from being so different than the original population that a rep from the original population wouldn't be able to reproduce an offspring with a rep of the same population in a distant future?

That's one way, yes. First of all, just because a pop evolves doesn't mean the future pop has an advantage over the old pop. It just means it is different.You are still thinking in short term evolutionary events. Try to think broader.If creature D has a mutation that gives him the instinct to go around killing babies of the other creatures within his own population, how long do you think his own genes will start flooding the population? Nope.If the daughter species has an advantage over the parent species in the same niche, then yes chances are that the parent will be outcompeted. But we have to remember that things don't have to change. If they are perfectly adapted for their environment, why must they change? This is IFF a mutation occurs at all that gives certain individuals a clear competitive advantage over others.How about you name some examples of some daughter species with a competitive advantage over the parent species that live in the same niche and we can go from there.This message has been edited by Resurrected Hector, 02-25-2005 04:49 AM

Yes, but most of which are neutral. We call them pseudogenes. Hang on a second. Where did I, or anyone else, say that a species is undergoing constant change? Neutral mutations are neutral mutations, period. No, I am not. I am simply stating that perhaps there hasn't been any mutation worth crowning by SN in these species. The problem is where do you draw the line between the old species and the new one? It's like trying to determine exactly where green is when you pour a yellow paint into a blue paint.Here is how you should think of it. Closely related species can interbreed, but they often result in sterile offsprings (ex: mule). If the horse keep changing in one direction and the donkey another, perhaps we won't be seeing mules at all in a few million years.

Oops

Actually, as I recall my high school biology text book (back when I was in the dark ages) used the terms micro and macro evo. I can't remember the contents, though.Can someone else verify this?

The problem I see is that the article was written for the purpose of easy-to-digest. Like I said before, the points made by the article aren't exactly wrong. They're just not the whole story. If the author wanted to make it more clear, he would have gone much more into detail. I'm not sure if the end result would be as easy to digest as the current version.Take the fossil record, for example. Does the average person in the Philippines actually know what fossil is? Heck, does the average person in the USA know what a fossil is?Now that I think about it, I don't think the author could have done that much more than what he wrote.