The Truth About Evolution and Religion

You are aware that 30-40% of biologists are theists, right? Are you saying that hundreds of thousands of people who believe in a deity are all conspiring to advance atheism?Or could it be that they are promoting good science in order to train good scientists?

Because your religious beliefs have nothing to do with the accuracy of a scientific theory.

I'm combining both replies to one post.From Message 222: I don't believe you. Can you support this with an example or something? So what?A biologist wouldnt care because that's not how the mecanism proposed in the Theory of Evolution works. Its not just a random assemblage, there's non-random selective pressure involved too.That calculation is worthless.From Message 223: I can't speak for them. I suppose its because you're not worth thier time. You're an ignorant kook who thinks he's found something when he's got nothing.

Write them and ask if they wear their T-shirts tuck into their underpants. If you don't get a reply will then begin to grasp the shear profundity of the question?You haven't answered most points brought to you here. We must all be asking some really good question.

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"Mom! Ban Ki-moon made a non-binding resolution at me." Mohmoud Ahmadinejad

I'm sorry, I must've missed that, got a link to these "lessons"? I'll determine that myself when I see those "lessons". I very much doubt a university is lying though. I highly doubt that they say only natural selection explains complexity, but please, prove me wrong by linking to their "lessons". Nonsense, ID was thought up long after evolution. there's no need to discredit it for a university, that has already been done in the dover trial. Nonsense. University courses on biology do not even touch on such philosophical questions.

Because it's a nonsensical question, that's why. It's like asking "can this pipe help with a heart transplant" to a plumber. Of course they can. And I wouldn't be surprised of some actually will. First give evidence for a soul, then you can go running around claiming that humans must have souls. Oh yes, Kenneth Miller has such a hard time because he's a catholic and believes in souls, hasn't he....

Intelligent design consists largely of a set of mistakes about biology. It is bad science. This is where Miller and Behe disagree.

Because the question was so stupid.If biologists spent all their time pandering to the whims of every crank and looney with a bee in his bonnet about evolution, they'd never get any work done.Why the heck should they discuss biology with someone who hasn't been bothered to learn the difference between mutation and selection? Why should eminent scientists spend their time spoonfeeding you stuff the you should have learned in high school?Heck, why am I doing so? Go and buy yourself a book about biology and read it.

Hi Huntard, The links are
Evolution 101 - Understanding Evolution
An introduction to evolution - Understanding Evolution
The Process of Speciation See Message 181 ... of course UMich is not "lying" because that one page does not mention complexity ... ? (but then, neither does Berkeley).Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : clrty

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You are a laugh a minute, dkroemer.First you claim that no professional biologist claims that evolution explains complexity or common ancestry, and then as soon as you have evidence of a whole group of professional biologists -- the whole department of biology at the University of Berkeley for one -- that say what evolution explains, what is your response? So because Berkeley shows that your claims about complexity (even though they don't mention complexity) and common ancestry are false, you conclude that they are liars, anti-religious fanatics, involved in a conspiracy?I am curious why you think UMich is telling the truth - can you explain this in more detail?Both sites give you the same information about evolution. Here's some more from UMich:

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http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/..._life/complex_life.html

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• The history of life involves enormous change. Major life forms have appeared, flourished, and died out. Reptiles ruled the earth for nearly 200 million years. Yet, like most species and many life forms (families, orders, even phyla), the dinosaurs are gone, replaced by life forms that either were biologically superior, or just luckier. At some points in earth history many species went extinct in a short time. These are called mass extinctions, a topic we will revisit shortly.

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• Over time, life has become more diverse and more complex (although it can be argued that complexity lies in the eye of the beholder). The increase in the number of families of marine vertebrates and invertebrates throughout the Phanerozoic Eon illustrates this clearly (see figure below). The number of families of marine organisms has increased slowly over geological time.

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and some more:

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Evolution and Natural Selection

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Darwin’s process of natural selection has four components.

1. Variation. Organisms (within populations) exhibit individual variation in appearance and behavior. These variations may involve body size, hair color, facial markings, voice properties, or number of offspring. On the other hand, some traits show little to no variation among individualsfor example, number of eyes in vertebrates.
2. Inheritance. Some traits are consistently passed on from parent to offspring. Such traits are heritable, whereas other traits are strongly influenced by environmental conditions and show weak heritability.
3. High rate of population growth. Most populations have more offspring each year than local resources can support leading to a struggle for resources. Each generation experiences substantial mortality.
4. Differential survival and reproduction. Individuals possessing traits well suited for the struggle for local resources will contribute more offspring to the next generation.

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From one generation to the next, the struggle for resources (what Darwin called the struggle for existence) will favor individuals with some variations over others and thereby change the frequency of traits within the population. This process is natural selection. The traits that confer an advantage to those individuals who leave more offspring are called adaptations.

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In order for natural selection to operate on a trait, the trait must possess heritable variation and must confer an advantage in the competition for resources. If one of these requirements does not occur, then the trait does not experience natural selection. (We now know that such traits may change by other evolutionary mechanisms that have been discovered since Darwin’s time.)

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Natural selection is one mechanism among many within evolution.And then the fist link I gave you from UMich again:

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The Process of Speciation

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Biological evolution can be defined in two ways: as a result of changes in the genetic composition of a population with the passage of each generation (microevolution), or as a result of the gradual change of living things from one form into another over the course of time, generating species diversity (macroevolution).

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Species formation can occur either through allopatric (geographic) speciation or through sympatric speciation.

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Evolution explains speciation, and ...

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Speciation results in the splitting of an ancestral species into two (or more) descendent species. This process, continued indefinitely, results in a sequence of speciation events extending over great expanses of time, resulting in a branching tree of historical relatedness. Imagine if we had complete and certain knowledge of such a tree -- it would tell us the evolutionary relatedness among living things, the pathways of divergence, even the timing of separation.

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There are two ways to construct a phylogenetic tree (see Figure). We can use a "perfect" fossil record to trace the sequence from beginning to end, or we can use similarities and differences among living things to reconstruct history, working from the endpoint toward the beginning.

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In this course, we will not consider these two methods in detail. I introduce them to make the point that, ultimately, we want to understand how evolution produces not just two species from one but the entire tree of life. This requires that we make the transition from microevolution to macroevolution. To Darwin, and to modern evolutionary biologists as well, the answer simply is time. Given enough time and successive splittings, the processes that produce two species from one will result in the entire diversity of life.

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... speciation and evolution explain the "entire diversity of life" as we know it.Curiously, this is what I have been telling you for some time now ...Enjoy.

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Hi dkroemer, it's not really very difficult at all, Every organism known obtains energy from external sources, they are not a "closed system" and thus they do not violate the second law.Life - Wikipedia

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While there is no universal agreement on the definition of life, scientists generally accept that the biological manifestation of life exhibits the following phenomena:
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2. Metabolism - Metabolism produces energy by converting nonliving material into cellular components (synthesis) and decomposing organic matter (catalysis). Living things require energy to maintain internal organization (homeostasis) and to produce the other phenomena associated with life.
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A simple experiment: take any organism, deprive it of external energy and observe what happens.Enjoy.

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Perhaps they consider you to be a John A. Davisonesque crank, as I do. Have you ever run for governor of Vermont?Edited by subbie, : Tyop

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Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus. -- Thomas JeffersonFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers. -- Barack ObamaWe see monsters where science shows us windmills. -- PhatIt has always struck me as odd that fundies devote so much time and effort into trying to find a naturalistic explanation for their mythical flood, while looking for magical explanations for things that actually happened. -- Dr. Adequate

That is correct. The second law only applies to closed systems. However, it is not evolution that violates the second law. What violates the second law is the theory of natural selection. It does not violate the second law for one person at a bridge table to get 13 of a single suit. But it does violate the second law for all four persons to get perfect bridge hands.If four hands in a bridge game are perfect, the deck was not shuffled. The theory that there were four perfect hands by chance is irrational and violates the second law.

That is correct. I understand that a lot of layman think Darwinism explains the complexity of life. But biologists know better. When I put the question to Terrance Deacon (this conversation is on the internet) he tergiversated. He knew perfectly well from the context of my remarks that I was looking for an acknowledgement of the limitations of Darwinism. He let everyone think that the question of how life got so complex has been solved.

I'm sorry, did you just claim that an even division of the 4 suits in bridge was more statistically unlikely than any other arrangement? And in fact, impossible?I wish to gamble with you, sir.