Evolution for Dummies and Christians

"Chickens? I had an uncle once who thought he was a chicken. My aunt almost divorced him but we needed the eggs." Look, no offense, but I don't see how you can deny that you're an animal. You're not a plant, right? Nor a protist? Not an archeobacterium? Didn't think so.You eat the same food animals do; sometimes you even eat animals, probably. You sleep and have sex, and animals do those things too. Look if you can put a pig's heart in a human being, or use sheeps' insulin to cure a diabetic, which you can, then the difference between humans and your average animal is probably not all that great.Here, if you're so sure there's a huge difference, tell me which of these is the human cell and which is not:That's what I thought. Have you ever migrated halfway around the world on the strength of your arms with only the magnetic iron deposits in your brain to guide you? No? Then a whole lot of birds are doing something that no human has ever done. Are we unique? Sure. Are the the only unique animal? Hardly. So what?

An "animal" is any member of kingdom Animalia; these organisms are characterized by a metazoan form, feeding on other organisms as a sole source of energy, and eukaryotic cells that lack cell walls.Let me just check something - yup, humans are animals. Oh, I see. You're going to invent your own definitions for words. Gotcha. Evolution doesn't work like that. Even if we have unique abilities of reason and moral inspection, we're still merely animals who have those unique abilities. Any one of our closely-related primate cousins is capable of these feats. Pick whichever one you like. Well, how do any of us know that you're capable of rationalization? How do we know that this written post of yours is not simply the result of you imitating, via instict, the written communications of others?That's why your post is essentially circular reasoning. Because you assume that animals cannot reason or be moral, any example of animal reasoning or morality must simply be "instict" or "imitation" and thus, you know that animals cannot reason or be moral.Since the appearance of reason is all you need, apparently, to conclude that humans reason, the appearance of reason in some animals is proof that some animals can reason, as well.

Oh yeah? Then why doesn't he do it when you're not around?If cause and effect is all it takes to internalize a moral code, why can't that explain your internal moral code? What's the difference between training a dog not to poop and training a child not to steal?

Well, as far as I'm concerned my reply does answer all your other questions. Some indication that the process and results are different. But they aren't. The process of negative reinforcement is the same; and we know from studies of primates and other creatures that game theory more or less predicts the same "moral" outcomes among most species.Humans cooperate, but the also cheat. They follow the rules but break them when the advantage is clear. That doesn't indicate, to me, the presence of some kind of universal "moral law"; the fact that other extremely social animals form roughly the same sorts of ethics structures further confirms in my mind the entirely prosaic origin of human moral behavior.

What would lead me to conclude that they are different, other than an a priori assumption, based on no evidence, that humans and animals have fundamentally different brains? Not even animals operate entirely from instinct. And humans don't appear to have any instinctual moral behaviors, just socially-imparted ones. Allow me to direct you towards research on so-called "feral children", humans who developed without benefit of human society. How does that make any sense? Evolution explains the development of novel features - like social behavior - it doesn't mandate that all species be identical. Who said there's no right or wrong? Just because right and wrong aren't determined by a big sky man or some universal moral law, doesn't mean that they don't exist or aren't valid concepts to describe behaviors that are advantageous for human society as a whole.

The equivalent of a freshman-level college biology course, presuming that you paid attention, should grant you the familiarity you'll need to successfully grapple with the scientific theory of evolution.On the other hand if you're relying on what your teacher had to insinuate in high school, or what you think evolution says according to creationist sources, you're already hopelessly lost.

Yup. Those degrees are pretty much going to be useless in regards to this subject.Did you take any biology while you were at college? An intro-level course would probably be sufficient; mine was.

Certainly, but it's unfortunately true that these don't necessarily result from a degree in physics, or any other degree for that matter. And advanced study in mathematics is more likely, in my experience, to send folks down dead-ends of "specified complexity" and fake ideas about information than to a knowledgeable understanding of population genetics, bioinformatics, and other evolutionary fields appropriate for someone with a math jones.I think that both you and I would agree that an open mind best equips someone to learn about evolution; not an attitude of "if hundreds of scientists agree, they can't possibly be right."

Well, what do you believe is the proper response to expanding knowledge? Surely it's better to change your models when you get new evidence that they can't quite explain, then to keep asserting the same wrong things in the face of a steadily-increasing mountain of disconfirming evidence. Isn't it?Why is never changing your mind about something better? Isn't it better to be as right as possible at any one time, and then, when you learn something new, incorporate that into your thinking?What do you think it is that causes scientists to change their mind about something? Just whim? Or do you think maybe they only do that when they learn something they didn't know before?

For humans? Roughly 2 million years ago. By the way, the "magic point" is called "speciation." That's your argument? Evolution is wrong because you don't like sex with animals?

Well, the first hard and fast rule of biology is that there are no hard and fast rules (exception: this rule).

You can't have "interbreeding" unless you're talking about two different groups. Populations don't "interbreed" with themselves, they simply breed.Humans, being apes, are the decendants of other apes. No interbreeding of any human group has ever occured with any other ape group; the group called "human" only became human when it stopped being able to breed with other populations of apes. That's speciation.Species are not species because of their traits. They're species because of what members of their population can breed with. When members of a certain population of apes lost the ability to breed with certain other populations of apes, they became "humans."

The common ancestor did not have the traits of a human. It had the traits of itself. Only its decendants aquired the traits that we associate with humans, which they aquired via mutation. Huh? No, actually, he exists in Africa. It's a species called Sahelanthropus tchadensis and it's a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, known only by fossils. How would that be bestiality, exactly? Bestiality is a person having sex with an animal, not two animals having sex with each other. Unless you're proposing that the offspring is mating with its parents. If that's how it works in your family I suggest you need to talk to someone about it, like the police.