Natural Selection - not natural?

I found these statements concerning evolution/natural selection, from a creationist website. I am wondering what both evolutionists/creationists will make of the statements, in particular the second one, and what they think as to whether my own observations are correct/incorrect. "Although evolutionists state that life resulted from non-life, matter resulted from nothing, and humans resulted from animals, each of these is an impossibility of science and the natural world."Do they state that life resulted from non-life? I would say that this is a strawman personally. "Natural selection has these and many other logical inconsistencies: (a.) Although evolutionists say that organisms are suited for their environment because they evolved into it, being suited for the environment is much better explained by the fact that they were created for the environment rather than that they evolved into it. (b.) The fact that living things have similar patterns and design points to a common designer better than to a common ancestor. In fact, such variety in the world could not have been produced if we all come from the same ancestor. (c.) If we all come from the same ancestor, we would all be murderers and cannibals by the simple act of killing a cow. (d.) While small and undeveloped things do become grown and developed (a baby to an adult, a seed to a tree) it is also true that the small and undeveloped first come from the developed (a baby from its parents, a seed from a tree). The pattern of growth is circular not simply from the crude to the developed as natural selection proposes. (e.) Our needs exceed those of survival. Needs for love and friendship, for example, cannot be explained if all that we do is for survival. (f.) Order and interdependence in the world argues for a designer and against chance."This got me thinking that there is some sense to the above. In that, is it consistent with nature to say that undeveloped come from developed?But I also thought; Does evolution say that we come from undeveloped anyway? For example - human comes from neanderthal (developed). Surely the "natural selection" is acted upon the developed, and so - the creationist statement is wrong? I mean, creos say that the simplest of creatures are complex, but this statement suggests sepcies can be "crude" to "complex" all of a sudden??Is natural selection really from "crude" to "developed"?Isn't natural selection acting upon a developed? Call me silly, but the "circle" is not entirely done away with in evolution?While the present undeveloped coming from developed is surely and naturally observable and true, the "time" evolution takes isn't really taken into consideration in this statement is it?I mean, surely it's a little more complex than this. I could be wrong ofcourse, but at the outlook - it seems correct to say that creationism is consistent with the "circular" nature of, erm....nature. But is evolution really against it?Is it just me or has the author understood what he is talking about? These words and statements seem unexplanitory and vague.Here is the link to the creationist source.linkIsn't this "circle" (seed from developed etc.) consistent with the ToE? Doesn't this "circle" happen despite the slow changes in morphology?This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 08-09-2004 04:06 PM

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

MikeCan't read the black on blue text.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

"They"? Both creationists, believing scientists and out and out atheists all agree that life came from non-life. You know from the dust.How life arose is all anyone is disagreeing over.Using "evolutionists" in the quote is wrong however. Any biologist involved in evolutionary studies takes a living population as a given. They don't condsider where they came from.Chemists, however, might be the ones who start with the assumption that life arose by some chemical means from non living chemicals. What they do is then try to figure out how that could have happened.

I'll try to adress these points one by one. I hope the answers will be clear enough. Just a bit of a nitpick here. Evolutionists claim nothing about where matter originated from.
The final statement, that life from non-life and humans from animals is an impossibility of science and the natural world is just an unsupported assertion. How so? Surely in an environment which is dynamic and ever changing it would be folly to create static kinds (whatever that means) that could not possibly hope to adapt to the changes.Even more importantly, note that life is not perfect for its environment, only good enough to survive, something which is predicted by the theory of evolution, but has no real motivation if life was created as is. The patterns evolutionists talk about is the nested hierarchy of species, and this can in no way simply be reduced to a statement about similar design points, these patterns imply a common ancestor for all species, and in fact it is incredibly unlikely that we would see these patterns in life if it was sprung from an intelligent designer.
Take a look at the collected works of any singular human designer and tell me if you can recreate these objectively determinable patterns.Furthermore, wouldn’t we expect a common designer to use the same design for the same type of problems?
Surely we don’t see any human designers reinventing the wheel unless it is not good enough for the car they’re building?
Surely a programmer doesn’t rewrite thousands of lines of code to solve a problem if he’s already written the code once (especially, we wouldn’t expect him to use a different algorithm if the first one worked just fine)?
But we see just this in nature, the wheel has been reinvented over and over and over again. Similar problems have been solved with different designs. Figuring out why a designer would do this would require ad hoc speculations about the properties of the designer, while the theory of evolution is quite clear on why the wheel has been reinvented over and over again. Because it is random. Sure, it is directed by natural selection, but due to the fact that mutations are random we should expect different solutions to the same problem. So what if we are? The moral implications of a theory has no effect on it's validity. (though I’d argue that murder and cannibalism are both words defined within species. Murder for instance is the planned killing of a human being, by another human being, whether or not we evolved from a common ancest is not important to the definition of the words) I can’t really seem to wrap my mind around this argument. Is it trying to use the false analogy of babies coming from parents to suggest that everything underdeveloped needs to come from something developed? Or is there something else going on here?
The diamond structure can be said to come from the much cruder coal structure, surely there’s something quite wrong with the analogy, yes?Then again another question needs to be answered in order to adress this point. What exactly do they mean by developed and underdeveloped? Surely anything adapted well enough to its environment so that it can survive cannot be seen to be underdeveloped? (after all, what else is there to be developed for except for surival?) Love and friendship can be seen as the product of being social animals.
Being a social animal is clearly beneficial IMO.
I don’t require to hunt down my food, and if I need someone to cover my back, my friends are there. If I need medicine I don’t need to make it myself heck, I don’t even need to learn how it works, just that it does. In general many advances that help me (and my fellow man) to survive would not exist if it was not for the ability of human beings to trust the fellow man and create social bonds. It does?

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"tellement loin de ce monde..."

Okay, I'll take this rant as the official evolutionists view for now, untill Loudmouth arrives.One thing that I might diasagree with, is that no design can be seen, with this analogy of "re-inventing the wheel". I don't think I agree. I think we can see some "basic" marks of a designer (my opinion). Personally, I think it's at a basic level. For example - the eyes, ears, mouths, hearts, brains etc. These may be different - but to me it's the same basic "design plan".You could say "common ancestor for all species" - but then I could say - same thing boss, --> there's the design. I mean - to me, it's obvious there's a plan, despite with evolution occuring.PS. Ned, point noted. Jar/AdminNed - gimme the darn color codes so I don't have to type things like "gray".This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 08-09-2004 04:13 PM

But... I'm not saying you can't find points of similar design in life if you look for it.
What I'm saying is that evolutionists are not saying:"Look: Similar design! It must be a sign of common ancestry!"There are patterns of similarity to be expected if life did indeed evolve, but that would be very surprising indeed to find if life was created.

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"tellement loin de ce monde..."

try using "gold" for the color or put it is qs boxes.another option is that the system is "primed" to evolve similar designs, without needing to be involved in each step.{added by edit}other than that I think Kent pretty well covered it. This message has been edited by RAZD, 08-09-2004 05:10 PM

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

mike the wiz - is king - comfort his ego

Actually, you would expect similarity of many features justthrough natural selection. The problem with that postion is the assumption of a design plan. IMHO, what you are actually seeing is the direct result of randomness and the selection of natural forces.Let's look at the items.eyes Vision gives an advantage over non-vision. But there is no single design "EYE". Rather there are a whole host of different ways to incorporate sight into the survival matrix.ears As above. The critter that can hear has an advantage over the one that cannot and so has a better chance of surviving and reproduucing. But again, there is no single design "Ears". There are critters that hear throuogh their legs, there are once that listen in the low spectrum, ones that listen in the high spectrum, lots of different results.mouths See above. Even more variety here. No single common design mouth.There are ones where mastication is done with a raspy tongue, others with teeth, some with neither that prepare food externally and then suck it in.What you see are the results of random changes but common environmental pressures.The critters that can see, hear or eat have better chances than those that cannot see, hear or eat.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

ok ... now edit post #1 ... (ps - does that make you the king wizzer? or a satyr butt wizzer person?)

I don't assume a design-plan. I'm aware that the natural process explains it, and therefore - I haven't argued against evolution.I guess what I am saying - is that there is a basic package plan, these "eyes" and "ears" may have been results of natural selection - yet randomness?? I dunno. I still think there must be a fundamental "plan", even if not evidenced. But rather - I am saying that this can be "seen" in what is, regardless of how it came about.You could say that we are "chance" - but then, so is my answered prayers according to atheists.So what I am offering - is an opinion. That all "this" - through my own common sense, is a plan. TOGETHER with the universe and natural laws. Whether you reject this plan - your decision. However - I myself see design, in nature, in animals. If random mutation satisfies you then fair enough. But while I admitt that my opinion may be philosophy, I am trying to appeal to an open-minded person. For some people - love is happily explained through chemicals. If that satisfies you - fair enough. But I cannot ignore the "design" I see, regardless of events.So - yes, I don't assume a design through what I have seen. What I do - is conclude a design through those things which cannot be seen, looking upon that which can be. Knowing full-well that "how" these things have happened, can be fully explained naturally by scientists.This message has been edited by mike the wiz, 08-09-2004 05:52 PM

I thought post one is quite reasonable now??Is there anything else I could type instead of gray? How do you get a lighter or darker colour? I am positive Minnemoose used some whacky great number once.Now ye - comfort your kings ego! King wiz shall take a wife, don't make it be you man.

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"Although evolutionists state that life resulted from non-life, matter resulted from nothing, and humans resulted from animals, each of these is an impossibility of science and the natural world."

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Creationists complain because science states that the above are POSSIBLE, not impossible. First, humans are animals, we are in the Kingdom Animalia. Secondly, matter did not result from nothing, but rather a quantum fluctuation, a phenomena which we observe even now in the form of the Casimir Effect. Thirdly, science argues that life DID arise from non-life, such is the theory of abiogenesis. The law of biogenesis is only a general trend, a law constructed against spontaneous generation (which was the creation of COMPLEX life, such as maggots and eels, from inanimate material).

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(a.) Although evolutionists say that organisms are suited for their environment because they evolved into it, being suited for the environment is much better explained by the fact that they were created for the environment rather than that they evolved into it.

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My question is why is it better explained that the organisms were created to fit their environment. Our study of population genetics says otherwise.

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b.) The fact that living things have similar patterns and design points to a common designer better than to a common ancestor. In fact, such variety in the world could not have been produced if we all come from the same ancestor.

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What variety? We all make proteins from the same amino acids and we all use DNA, just as our first common ancestor did. What has changed since then is just modifications on the original theme, not a redesign. And they still haven't said why the variety we see today could not have resulted from evolution. They rely on the presupposition of the reader to stammer out "By God, they are right!!" without even having to put forth an argument.

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c.) If we all come from the same ancestor, we would all be murderers and cannibals by the simple act of killing a cow.

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As Kent mentioned, this is an intraspecies concept. We don't look at wolves as cannibals when they take down a deer. Cannabalism and murder have to do with the eating and killing of your own species.

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(d.) While small and undeveloped things do become grown and developed (a baby to an adult, a seed to a tree) it is also true that the small and undeveloped first come from the developed (a baby from its parents, a seed from a tree). The pattern of growth is circular not simply from the crude to the developed as natural selection proposes.

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This circular pattern is the pattern of reproduction, not evolution. Evolution is a mechanism that works by not allowing certain organism to reproduce or reproduce at a greater rate. Evolution acts through reproduction, but that by no means that evolution must follow the same pattern as reproduction.

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(e.) Our needs exceed those of survival. Needs for love and friendship, for example, cannot be explained if all that we do is for survival.

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Love encourages strong families and reproduction. Friendship encourages strong communities that can fend off competition. It is for survival.

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(f.) Order and interdependence in the world argues for a designer and against chance."

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Order and interdependence argue for order and independence. These two characteristics can arise through blind algorithms, especially within reproducing systems. Also, we see order in the geologic record in the form of concentrations of ores, radionuclides, etc. These are easily explained by normal physics and chemistry. I will agree that it argues against chance, but it doesn't rule out a system that limits randomness such as natural selection.

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Is natural selection really from "crude" to "developed"?

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No, it is a movement from crude to less crude, from developed to more developed. Evolution never stops, so there is never an endpoint, as is implied by "developed". If evolution were to continue for another 3.5 billion years, we may look back and call all current life "crude". It is bias on the part of the observer, that the world today is at a pinnacle it can never surpass.

Thanks. You articulated what I was trying to say. ALthough reproduction is circular, it was as if the creo was saying that evolution "breaks" this - or it seemed to atleast imply it. And - I mean, like you say, it doesn't have to be the same pattern.I guess he uses the present age as evidencing creation as favourite. I somewhat agree that we see the "consistency" and reproduction of the same things - unchanging. Surely you see that Loudmouth? Is it true that we breed many things yet we get different versions of that "thing". This always struck me as true. I find it hard to ask you though - will you be biased, or will you be honest.And so, I ask myself - is time evolution's key? Or is the creationist using it? I'm split.