Ambiguity-uncertainty-vagueness the key to resistance against the idea of evolution?

For what it's worth, I have suspected for a very long time that the reason many people embrace religious extremism and dogmatism is because of a great discomfort with ambiguity and uncertainty.It comes down to "I really WANT God to exist and for humans to be specially created, because the alternative is uncomfortable and unsatisfactory. Therefore, I believe God exists."It's about fear, with a liberal dollop of vanity and ego added.Faith more or less confirmed this to be true in a recent thread.

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I don't know about this ambiguity idea. Let's take a religious doctrine like the Trinity. That's rather ambiguous--one god or three? Some people who reject evolution have no problem accepting that.

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It's the ambiguity of the existence of God I'm talking about.

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And we might say that atheism is believed in for emotional reasons too.

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I guess, but I'm an Agnostic so I don't "believe" in Agnosticism.

Do you accept the fact that allele frequencies in populations change over time?

But if you have learned anything in the mutation thread you should have learned that what is considered "deformity" in some environments is actually an advantageous adaptation in another.The same is true with some diseases, with Sickle Cell Disease coming to mind. Sure, it causes anemia and other nasty symptoms but it also confers immunity to malaria, which is the more deadly of the conditions. People with Sickle Cell can live long enough to reproduce, while malaria kills lots of infants and children.And, lo and behold, we see SCD in populations which have been living for hundreds of generations in places where malaria is common.What is an undesireable disease in NYC is quite the reproductive advantage where there is malaria.

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Those are apparently quite rare occurrences but yes, very interesting that even in the process of deteriorating there are occasionally positive side effects.

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Positive in some environments, but negative in others.

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One can hardly call SCD an advantage, however, except in this negative sense that it happens to protect against malaria.

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Actually, people who have inherited the SCD mutation can get either a single or double version, depending upon the genetics of their parents.People with only one copy of the mutation enjoy all of the benefits of immunity from malaria but do not develop SCD. People with two copies develop the disease.What you must remember, is that from an evolutionalry standpoint, the only thing that matters to the genes is reproductive success from a population-wide perspective.Evolution produces "good-enough" design from a population-wide, gene-centerd perspective.

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As I understand it, all? or most? of these mutations confer their benefit by simply eliminating something the attacking disease or toxin needs in order to infect or kill the person or organism.

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No.Sometimes features are added, not just taken away.For example, thorns on a plant are a defensive addition.

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None of this challenges the idea of the Fall in any way that I can see.

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Well, we don't see "constant deterioration" or "devolution" or anything like that.We see only change. Sometimes this change can be seen as negative, sometimes positive, sometimes as having no effect.It all depends upon the environment, remember?Is it "better" for a population to have sickle cell disease which confers immunity to malaria and live enough years to reproduce, or is it better for the entire population to be completely wiped out by malaria in a few generations?This message has been edited by schrafinator, 10-12-2005 09:50 AM

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But if the choice is between two potentially lethal conditions, this just points up the senselessness of the idea of reproductive "success."

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Haven't you been reading?Malaria kills lots of children.The sickle cell mutation confers immunity to malaria.Not everyone in a population in which the sickle cell mutation is present has the disease (single copy). Those who do develop the disease (double copy) get it later in life, thus allowing them to reproduce beforehand and pass on the mutation.The reason these populations in malarial regions continue to survive is because of this mutation.The sickle cell mutation is a beneficial adaptation that can sometimes have a harmful side affect.

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Both conditions are deteriorations due to the Fall and both threaten the survival and wellbeing of the population. It is very hard to choose a "better" under such circumstances.

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OK, so are you saying that a population that dies out completely is better off than one that continues to survive?Seriously?And there is this from the last post. Do you understand now that it is not always a "loss":

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As I understand it, all? or most? of these mutations confer their benefit by simply eliminating something the attacking disease or toxin needs in order to infect or kill the person or organism.

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No.Sometimes features are added, not just taken away.For example, thorns on a plant are a defensive addition.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 10-12-2005 10:13 AM

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The subject is the PARTICULAR mutations that have negative effects on the organism itself although they have the positive effect of conferring protection against some other negative effects.

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Yes. But what is "negative" in certain environments is "positive" or even "neutral" if the environmental conditions change.You seem to want a mutation to always be considered one or the other, and that is just not at all how it works.Life is much more complicated than you want it to be, I'm sorry.

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We are not discussing the entire theory of evolution of positive defensive traits such as thorns (and how would you know whether thorns were added by mutation or simply a normal genetic variation in a species anyway?)

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The genes that code for thorns are the same genes that code for leaves, they are just modified. The same is true for flowers; they are modified leaves.The genes tell us a lot, faith.You REALLY need to define what you mean when you use the terms "mutation" and "normal genetic variation" because to me, they are one in the same.The only possible way to get any genetic variation is through mutation....unless you have some evidence to show me that some other process is at work.

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The situation of one disease condition being selected because it protects against another is VERY RARE.

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Sure.But remember, as I have told you several times already that most people with the sickle cell mutation DO NOT GET THE DISEASE.They have immunity from malaria and no SCD if they get one copy of the mutation. The problems only arise if people get two copies, and from a reproductive standpoint, they do just fine because they come down with the syndrome long past the time they would have reproduced anyway.From a population standpoint, this is a very beneficial mutation.

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Who wants either condition?

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It doesn't matter what the individual wants.What matters is the survival of the population.And since MOST PEOPLE WITH THE SC MUTATION DO NOT GET THE DISEASE but do get the immunity to malaria, most people in the population do just fine.

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We can be grateful if the protecting disease isn't seriously debilitating, as apparently SCD isn't always, but there are some situations where death indeed might be the preference to a life of exquisite pain or other debility.

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But if you have reproduced and passed on your genes, you have done your job for the population from an evolutionary standpoint.

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A Christian always chooses life but that kind of life is hard to wish on anybody. And unfortunately, a prediction from the Fall is that genetic diseases are only going to get worse as time goes on.

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Then why have lifespans and quality of life been increasing steadily over time in most parts of the world?Your prediction seems to be falsified already.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 10-13-2005 08:24 AM

Nothing offends you more, Faith, than being required to support your factual claims with facts.Jar's reply was not hateful and he is not stonewalling.You are the one refusing to do a simple thing like provide evidence in a science forum.

It's a science forum.

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I don't understand how a survey is scientific data. The participants may be lying.

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It is certainly "softer" data than, say, a blood test analysis, but it is useful nonetheless.I mean, if you reject surveys as scientific evidence, then do you reject the information in the national census?

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Definition of "soft science": psuedo-science.

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So the Cognitive Psychology PhD my husband just earned from the #3 Psychology program in the country is actually not a real scientific degree?

It's a good thing that you are not designing surveys.

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We just want to be clear that there is a difference between real science (hard science) and this stuff that parades as science, like psychology and sociology.

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So, maybe you'd like to critique this study and explain how it is pseudo-science.This message has been edited by schrafinator, 10-14-2005 02:16 PM

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You're right, Schraf. I couldn't understand a word of it, so it must be science.

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So what you really mean is that you don't know enough about psychology to even begin to understand a psychology research paper, but you are perfectly comfortable calling it "pseudoscience".Got it.

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If the evidence he studies is physical and isolatable, then it's science.

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I don't know what "isolatable" means. It's not a standard scientific term.Data is not physical. Data is information.