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Author | Topic: What i can't understand about evolution.... | |||||||||||||||||||
dwise1 Member Posts: 5949 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
I have considered the theory evolution, ... With all due respect: no, you have not. Instead, you have been fed a gross misrepresentation and -- to be honest and frank about it -- a pack of lies and deceptions which your "creationist" (in quotes because they also misrepresent believe in divine creation) and been told the lie that that is what evolution is. That this is the case is re-enforced by the rest of your post.
... and to me it just does not seem plausible, even practical. The reason why that is is:1. because you have never even learned what evolution is nor how it works, and 2. because the misrepresentation (AKA "lie") you have instead learned was devised to appear to be implausible. The distorted ignorance this imposes on you has a secondary effect of having you make public statements, such as your OP, which completely discredits you and your position among any who have any knowledge of the subject. Consider these three other things that appear implausible and how you would view them:
quote: quote: quote: "Ridiculous claims!", you say? Of course they are. But this is almost exactly what you and your creationist leaders are doing when they misrepresent evolution as you have done (and as we all know you had learned from your handlers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H"creationist" teachers).[in case you are too young and not geek enough, ^H is the back-space character used to delete preceding characters] Each of those "proofs" against those three things is easily disproven by a modicum of knowledge, including the practical knowledge that they do indeed work. Which is why everybody's response is to point out to you that very same fact about your own ignorant proclamation. Are you beginning to understand the reaction you're getting? We are trying to point you towards actual information, not the deceptions that "creationism" (formerly known as "creation science", but with every court decision it keeps trying to wrap itself into a different kind of sheep's clothing, the latest I heard of being "intelligent design", but now that's also been exposed as sectarian religious teachings so what's the new name of the deception?) has misled you with. Let's get one thing straight here. If you want to reject evolution, then fine, that's your choice. But you should at least reject it for good reasons, not for false reasons. And if you want to oppose evolution and present arguments against it, then fine. Just be truthful in your efforts! And, make your attacks against evolution itself and not against some phantom boogie-man that you only imagine. That last one may seem self-evident, and yet generations of creationists have persisted in attacking boogie-men and have refused to go anywhere near evolution itself. Why? Because they are only ever taught those boogie-men and never, ever, evolution itself! What is your goal here? To convince us of the error of our ways? How do you intend to do that with sheer nonsense? To disprove evolution? How do you intend to do that by avoiding evolution and only attacking figments of your imagination? Do you want to be effective in your war against evolution? Learn everything you can about evolution and forget that strawman misrepresentation that the "creationist" deceivers have taught you. Here's some scripture to guide you on your way:
quote: Integral, you are ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself. Therefore, you are certain in every battle to be in peril. It is imperative that you act to cure your ignorance. Here's a thought that I must share with you. Creationists rarely last. They have no evidence to support their position, even though they are told by their leaders that they have mountains of evidence. AOL took down all their webpages, so mine are no longer up. I told the story of attending a massive creationist debate in Long Beach, CA, on 28 September 1985 with a creationist from work. Dr. Henry Morris and Dr. Duane Gish of the Institute for Creation Research, the mightiest of the mighty in the creationist world, against Thwaites and Awbrey, two professors from San Diego State University who had themselves conducted a true "two-model" class in which they gave half the lectures and creationist speakers gave the other half -- they had to discontinue that class due to protests from campus Christian clubs. Anyway, as my co-worker and I were leaving that debate, he was almost in shock. He just kept muttering, "We have mountains of evidence. Why didn't they present any? They could have blown those evolutionists away. Why didn't they? We have mountains of evidence ... " He had been fed the same deception that you have, that they have vast amounts of evidence FOR creation, and yet they refused to present any of it. The obvious reason for their refusal is that they in fact do not have any such evidence. Why are they lying to him and to you about that? Because you would never dream to question them? Now here's the other side of the limited longevity of creationists that you do not want to hear. The dishonest ones will persist, because they can deny all the evidence. But the honest ones become ... evolutionists. Which is to say that they come to realize that evolution is right. Those honest creationists will learn what evolution really is and they will investigate creationist claims and they will learn that "creationism" has been lying to them all along. In several atheist testimonials that I have heard and read, a leitmotif to their loss of faith has been betrayal and having been lied to by their religious leaders. When you come to that point, consider this: your religious leader is only human, not divine, so when it turns out that they've been lying to you, why should you consider that as disproving God? Duh? What is religion? What is dogma? What is theology? Yeah! WTF is theology, anyway? It is fallible, human, interpretation of God. Duh? Is theology getting it right? Frak not! It's a fallible human attempt at figuring it out! When a theology gets it wrong (and whenever does it not Duh?!? Theology is a fallible human endevour!) then why immediately assume that that disproves God? Duh? "Creation science" is a fallible human theology which is not only fallible, but also completely and utterly falsified! Does the complete and utter falsehood of "creation science" "creationism" disprove God? Oh, they teach you that it does, but it doesn't. One of the things that you need to learn is that that is yet another lie that the "creationists" have taught to you. Edited by dwise1, : No reason given. Edited by dwise1, : No reason given. Edited by dwise1, : No reason given. Edited by dwise1, : No reason given. Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5949 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Ah! But will he listen?
I am beginning to wonder if this is how it's like for the Enlightened as they gaze upon those still mired in Maya (Hindu concept of "illusion" -- refer to "The Indian Life" in Hermann Hesse's "The Glass Pearl Game", AKA "Magister Ludi" ("Master of the Game")).
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5949 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
OK, here's some straight skinny.
Devolopment. That's when the zygote (I assume here that you are at least marginally familiar with basic biology) develops as an embryo into a fetus into an infant. OK? Do you follow so far? So, all that development is programmed into the genes. Right? Now, this is where I strongly deviate from Star Trek, because they definitely played very fast-and-loose with DNA. Most of the genome's effect on the development of the organism occurs during development, which is to say during gestation. So, what mutations will have any say in evolution? There are a lot of physical mutations that are readily apparant, but most of those are from external factors that affect development without affecting the genome (think thalidomide, if you are that mutation-savvy). The mutations that are evolutionarily interesting are those that affect the genome. Duh? They are four-fold, like:1. base substitution -- usually neutral, but could cause change 2. insertion or deletion of bases -- causes "frame shift" which is usually destructive 3. insertion of a selection of DNA. Usually destructive. 4. duplication or deletion of a section of DNA. Consider the existence of multiple alleles, for example for skin color and eye color and hair color. For example, Mutation #4 combines with Mutation #1 to create new genes. You keep the old functionality at the same time that you allow for new functionalities. Prime example is the evolution of lysozyme into alpha-lactilbumin; from my former page on Gish's false "Bullfrog Protein" claim page (no longer on-line because AOL's web pages have gone off-line):
quote: OK, Integral, think! Genome (AKA "the genotype") becomes the body (AKA "soma", AKA "phenotype") through development of the zygote into the embryo and fetus. All the mutations that have anything to do with evolution are purely in the genome. So, all we need for a new organism is a new genome, right? Vary an existing genome a bit and you could get a slightly varied phenome, right? Do you even know what I mean by "genome" and "phenome"? If not, then you desparately need to learn some extremely basic biology/genetics, right? I mean, basics so basic that they were basics back in the late 1960's. How do you create a new genotype that creates a viable phenotype? You start from an existing genotype and vary it a little. Now, some changes in the genotype create absolutely not apparent change in the phenotype and some changes create a large noticeable change. Whatever happens, there will be a range of diffent phenotypes created every generation and, assuming that there's some kind of optimal phenotype that will be selected-for, those closest to that optimal phenotype will be more likely to survive. Then those survivors will be the parents of the next generation, which will be different from their parents to a degree and those who are closest to the optimal will be more likely to survive to be the parents of the next generation. ETC. Duh? I have somewhere an article from a 1980 Science article describing Ellridge and Gould's initial "punc eq" presentation which depicts the subsequent generations are bell curves and that just seems to describe it so well. In that it's the successive medians of those bell curves that describes the "progress" of evolution. Duh? IOW, consider how life procreates. Not the X-rated specificates, but rather the population-level implications. In general, who survives to procreate? In general, what should happen each generation and how should that be selected against? That is how life works! Follow how life works and see what happens. My own private take on evolution is to look upon it as the side-effects of what happens on the population-level when procreation happens. Does evolution happen? Well, would you dare to claim that procreation does not happen? You wouldn't? I didn't think so. So if procreation happens, evolution must happen. And if evolution happens, then you really should consider dealing with it, right? Edited by dwise1, : No reason given.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5949 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Hey Percy, would quoting Darwin from The Origin of Species something like "I was wrong..." be considered quote mining? I've seen quite a few attempts to that affect. Or we could turn to the Bible, which does say (via quote-mining) "There is no God". Hey, if the Bible says that there is no God, then it must be true!
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5949 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
Wardog25, doesn't want to accept the fossil record in any way shape or form because Wardog25 believes that, "The Devil put them in the ground!" A creationist once tried to offer just such an argument, that Satan had fabricated and planted the fossils in order to fool us into not believing in God. I pointed out to him that Satan didn't have to go to all that work. All He had to do was to create a false theology that falsely teaches that such real evidence as the fossil record, the geological record, etc, disprove the existence of God (even though they don't). Then to make His job even easier, all he had to do was to give that false theology to a pack of religious zealots and let them spread the lie for Him. And (assuming His existence) that is quite obviously exactly what Satan did. And He didn't even have to tamper with the physical evidence; all He had to do was to trick believers into believing that the evidence would convince them that God doesn't exist and then just let the universe do the rest. Clever devil! Edited by dwise1, : corrected a misspelling Edited by dwise1, : Added to closing paragraph.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5949 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
so again, how can evolution and origin of life not go hand in hand in light of what you are saying I understand that you are saying they are separate issues, one being how species developed/evolved, the other, how life began and yet, if you follow the evolutionary chain, they all lead you back to an original source... what came before the original source? Consider an analogy. Within our solar system, the planets and miscellaneous objects orbit around the sun and moons and miscellaneous objects orbit around the planets. We have worked out the principles of orbital dynamics, which are based ultimately on gravity, such that we can study these orbits and make predictions about them as well as analyze the various interactions between different orbiting bodies. That is an entire area of study. But why are the orbits the way that they are? They weren't always there, but rather they had to have formed with the solar system formed. That is to say that the orbital mechanics of the solar system is the result of how the solar system formed. That is also an entire area of study. Now, do we need to know how the solar system had formed in order to plot the orbit of an interplanetary probe? No, we do not. Orbital dynamics in the present-day solar system can be approached quite successfully as a separate study and in the vast majority of cases is indeed approached as a study separate from the origin of the solar system. Would one be able to make the argument that since we do not fully understand the origin of the solar system, then we cannot predict the locations of the planets at some future (or past) point in time? Of course not, that would be as ridiculous as trying to discount evolution because we don't fully understand the origin of life. The two studies -- orbital dynamics and the origin of the solar system -- are related, especially since the fundamental physics of orbital dynamics would also apply to the origin of the solar system, but they are still two different areas of study that can be approached somewhat independently of each other. We can observe that life evolves and we can work out a lot of the mechanisms by which evolution happens. At the same time, we're trying to work out how life could have originated. Although they're related, they are still two different areas of study which can be approached independently of each other. Yes, we should expect some of the mechanisms of evolution to apply to the origin-of-life problem, but not knowing how life originated would still not affect our ability to study evolution.
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dwise1 Member Posts: 5949 Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
... evolution happens sometimes but not all the time ... But evolution does happen all the time. Both when a population changes to better adapt to a different or changing environment and also when a population resists changing in order to remain well adapted to an environment that isn't changing.
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