The Eye: Evolution versus Creationism 1983
Sox2 writes "SciScoop is running a story about researchers in Germany who claim to have solved the "mystery" surrounding the evolution of the mamalian eye. The work, published in Science, goes some way to answering the issues raised in the "intelligent design" debate that has become the mainstay of creationist thinking."
Darwin got it right... (Score:5, Interesting)
The article is essentially saying 'we found the smoking gun'; that light-sensitive cells originated within the brain, and migrated slowly outwards to form eyes. Ergo, the famous Darwin reasoning 'any form of eye is an evolutionary advantage, and therefore given even a truly-awful eye you would expect it to develop over time into something useful' is at least plausible. Evolution at work within a large-enough population.
I remember reading in 'PCW' back when I was at school (20 years or so ago
Simon
Lets just get a few things out of the way, (Score:2, Interesting)
Evolution is a fact of life.
Deal with it.
Intelligent design? (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, I'm a proponent of the theory.. And while I'm not an expert on the official "intelligent design" theory, I think it's completely compatible with evolution.. (eg. evolution is the way the design is achieved).
If you ever... (Score:1, Interesting)
Then, when you bring up things in the bible that were not true, he says that part was not right.
So the bible is somewhat correct, and somewhat incorrect. It's the person reading it that gets to decide which parts are false. Therefore, the argument never ends, because they can simply say "Well, that part is not true.".
Re:This won't change their minds... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:History versus theory (Score:2, Interesting)
Prove what I ate for breakfast today last year.
Science can tell us how well we know the past, but it cannot tell us everything. I.D.--which is distinct from creationism--should be taught in schools, perhaps as an "anti-science" class that details the limitations of our rational evidence-only way of thinking.
At the least, it could give the students ammunition to shut down ignorant history teachers who believe the screed that half of the major figures in history were homosexual. Not that we have any way of knowing that they weren't, but we sure as heck can't tell that they were.
Re: inside-out vs outside-in (Score:5, Interesting)
The actual difference is that creationists take their personal beliefs as axiomatic and work from there, whereas scientists use observables to winnow out which beliefs are true and which aren't.
Re:Cue anti-religious, hate-filled rants (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides that, people are too quick to paint all religious folk with the same brush. My wife is an Anglican, and believes that "Christian science" and literalism are ideological suicide. Faith is faith - whether a Christian-concept God exists or not, there will be no proof, no evidence, real-world implication that it exists... and an abrupt "creation" doesn't seem subtle enough for that. The universe shuold be taken at face value, and religion applied to wonder about what exists outside of it.
Re:Arguing with a creationist (Score:2, Interesting)
Both sides have it wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
The creationists are wrong because they misunderstand their own religion. The key factor in religion is faith. It is not necessary to prove that God exists. In fact, that's missing the entire point. A true religious person will take the existence of God on faith, and will neither need nor desire to prove His existence.
The evolutionists are wrong because there is no reason to try to prove that creationists are wrong. Doing all of this work just to show that somebody's imaginary friend didn't create life seems a bit strange.
Re:Why Talk Creationism? (Score:3, Interesting)
(I also believe in evolution and a natural universe because it makes more sense scientifically, and I think that all the arguments that Creationists have are bunk. But that's just me.)
Re:Intelligent design? (Score:5, Interesting)
So I'd like to ask; Now that the role of (insert favorite deity here) has been reduced to such an abstraction, what purpose does he/she/it serve in the process, other than maintaining compatibility with what you were taught to believe as a child? At what point does chemistry become divine influence?
I mean, if you believe in creation, that's fine. If you believe in evolution, that's also fine. What does this hybrid belief offer other than a weak compatibility between religion and science?
=Smidge=
Re:Intelligent design? (Score:5, Interesting)
Its not compatible. The problem for 'intelligent design' is that much of the design is very unintelligent. For example, the design of the mammalian eye is awful - the nerves are in the wrong place, meaning we have blind spots. (If design were intelligent, we would have eyes like octopuses, which are far better). The are plenty of other examples of extremely bad design. Evolution is not about what's good; it's what's better than the competition.
Re:Evolution vs. Creationism (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Arguing with a creationist (Score:4, Interesting)
Having said that, the argument you make is a little misleading in other ways. The creationism part of the bible is in the Old Testament which is the "Jewish" part of the bible and was written before the ministry of Jesus.
Re:What absurd arrogance (Score:1, Interesting)
'If's have nothing to do with science, especially with a creator that necessarily leaves no physical evidence of himself, unless you count seeing his face in a burrito.
"Einstein rejected more than one theory on the premise that no God would have designed the proposed system - and he was right more often than not. Religion and science are hardly incompatible, except to those of rigid thinking."
Oh really?
"Some people might interpret (your letter) to mean that to a Jesuit priest, anyone not a Roman Catholic is an atheist, and that you are in fact an orthodox Jew, or a Deist, or something else. Did you mean to leave room for such an interpretation, or are you from the viewpoint of the dictionary an atheist; i.e., 'one who disbelieves in the existence of a God, or a Supreme Being'?"
Einstein's response: "From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and have always been an atheist.... I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our being."
Re:What I find most interesting about this... (Score:4, Interesting)
How does that challenge anyone's faith?
Some evangelical christians (not uncommon in the US) believe that the bible is the literal word of god. Therefore to say that life evolved over millions of years is in direct conflict with phrases in the bible that say god created the earth in 7 days.
Basically, there is really no arguing with such people. They believe the bible is the word of god because it says that it is the word of god. When faced with (il-)logic like that, you obviously can't use logic to change their opinions.
Hope this explains the beliefs of some Americans.
-Spyky
Re:Arguing with a creationist (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be nice though if the creationsists at least admitted that regardless of how things "actually" happened, there seems to be a pattern of evolution within the fossil record. Even if the world was only created in seven days, this puzzle was also created in the process, so why not try to solve it?
Re:No, it won't (Score:5, Interesting)
It is an easy thing to misunderstand genetics and think that, say, Mitochondrial Eve could have been Eve of the Bible, but thinking so would betray a lack of understanding about what these mathematical common ancestors mean.
Mathematically you can back-calculate that since you have two parents, and 4 grandparents and so on, that pretty soon you'd outnumber the past population, meaning everyone is inter-related. Picking different genes you can find out how long ago the common ancestor for that gene was, but it does not tell you that the common ancestor was the only human at that time.
You and your siblings share common ancestry through your parents, but there are plenty of the rest of us around.
Re:What's the Big Fuss (Score:4, Interesting)
The big fuss is that it still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability. Ergo, some of us don't believe in god because it's highly unlikely that he (she? it?) exists. Some would go so far as to say god _doesn't_ exist, but absence of proof is not proof of absence. As long as you (religionists) are willing to leave me alone, and not try to validate your beliefs via specious reasoning (ie, creation "science"), then there's no fuss. It's when people try forcing their beliefs on me and tell me that their way is the one true way that I start to get a little indignant.
Evolution verses Creationism is a red herring (Score:1, Interesting)
Anyway everybody should live a good life regardless if God exist or not. I don't liek the way the religions use his name as a form of punishment/reward psychology, and I don't like the way atheists are completely close minded. Live a good life, and don't worry about God or religion. Everything will take care of itself. That's the only true way!
Re:Please stop. (Score:2, Interesting)
Christianity v. Science in the late 19th century (Score:4, Interesting)
The late 19th century was a time of great philosophical and theological upheaval. This period was also one of the critical defining moments in natural science as a discipline. Geologists and biologists began to observe the earth more effectively and with greater rigor. Scientists began to assert the validity of their observational and experimental procedures as being concrete and repeatable. They began to see beyond Aquinas and the Scholastic tradition, and to make new conjectures about the chronology and functional characteristics of our planet.
What do these new scientific discoveries have to do with religion on a theoretical level? Who were some of the key players, and what did they do (if anything) to stimulate the 'conflict'? What did Christians think at the time? What did scientists think?
Gregor Mendel, Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, and Francis Bacon are names synonymous with the scientific revolution and the enlightenment. These men are famous scientists, astronomers, and thinkers who are in large part responsible for propagating the modern intellectual culture. In addition to being men of such intellectual merit, however, one more similarity exists between them that is often overlooked. Gregor Mendel not only discovered the essential principles of genotype and phenotype, but was also a Catholic monk. His experiments were conducted in the bean patch of his Augustinian monastery. Copernicus was the first to accurately portray a heliocentric universe, but he also held the office of canon in his cathedral chapter. Galileo, although often troubled in his work by reactionary church polity, made a well thought-out attempt to reconcile his new scientific discoveries with the Christian faith. Francis Bacon made sweeping pronouncements about how science should be carried out, and played a pivotal role in formulating our modern scientific culture. In his writings, Bacon addressed the need for God, and His role in the life of an intellectual community (Moore 1986, p. 322). The Baconian Compromise has influenced many generations of thinkers and scientists, and this understanding is still widely held today by many in form if not in name.
Christianity is often viewed as being opposed to science. In order to determine whether or not the conflict exists in fact, it is important to go beyond cultural ideas and stereotypes. It is necessary to look at the historical records of both the scientific community and the historical account of Christianity, the Bible.
Owen Chadwick, a notable church historian, found it to be important to discern the difference "between science when it was against religion and the scientists when they were against religion" (Lindberg 1986, pg.7). The general consensus among historians is that two texts have set the present tone for the hostility between the scientific community and the Christian faith.
John William Draper, in 1874, wrote a History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. Draper, the son of a Methodist minister, was highly successful with this book, in which he applied the traditional forms of Christianity to a new doctrine of science and metaphysics. In the preface, he pointedly stated that, "The history of science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other" (Draper 1874, p. vi). He frequently makes allusions to the battle of good, as human intellect, versus evil, as faith. He refers to the previous period in Europe as "intellectual night... passing away... into daybreak". These themes are reminiscent of passages in both the Old and New Testaments, such as 2 Samuel 22:29 "the Lord turns my darkness into light", Psalms 112:4 "even in darkness light dawns", John 1:5 "the light shines in darkness", and 2 Corinthians 6:14 "What fellowship can light have with darkness?". Donald Fleming, Draper's biographer, descr
Re:Darwin got it right... (Score:4, Interesting)
I would also like to point out that nose size has NOT BEARING AT ALL on how sensitive the sense of smell is. There are rodents that put our noses to shame.
What natural selection DOES say is that as traits are not used anymore, a mutation that impairs them is not bred out of the population. That is why we still have vestigal organs like the appendix and tonsils. There are other mammals that still use those organs, but humans don't.
(On a side note, the part of the human brain that should respond to pherimones stopped working eons ago. Unlike most mammals, we communicate sexual arousal through blushing, so color vision has largely replaced musk. Yes, we can still smell the pherimone, but that smell doesn't trigger that part of the brain anymore. Don't think we communicate sexual arousal through color? Why do women color their cheeks with makeup?.)
Re:Evolution vs. Creationism (Score:2, Interesting)
Hear, hear! Personally, I also have a hard time believing that the same force that keeps the planets in motion is the one that makes things fall down. I know scientists say that it's all some "gravity" thing, but it just seems too weird.
I mean, sure, they say they have a lot of evidence and math and stuff. But I tried looking at some of it, and it made me all sleepy. So I figure that's some all-powerful creator guy trying to tell me that the gravity thing is bunk, and it's just his will keeping things in the place where he thinks they should be.
Arguing Religion with Philosophers (Score:5, Interesting)
1 Corinthians Chapter 2
When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.
We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. No, we speak of God's secret wisdom, a wisdom that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. However, as it is written:
"No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him" -- but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words. The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man makes judgments about all things, but he himself is not subject to any man's judgment:
"For who has known the mind of the Lord that he may instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
Each must make up his own mind who Christ is, and what He's done for them. After that, we'll all sit around the throne in Heaven and talk with God like neighbors around the '67 Mustang --"So, THAT'S how you supercharged the intake." -- "So, THAT'S how you micro-mechanically sequenced the RNA to replicate the DNA so that the photo-sensitive proteins in the eye would transfer from one generation to the next."why don't we have more eyes? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ok, let's not go that far then. Why don't we have a wider field of vision? Some creatures like deers have almost 360 degree of vision.
Ok, I understand the importance of viewing depth, how about ears, why don't we have larger ears? Surely it would help to hear each other and predators better.
I confess I sucked at biology but I just wonder about this stuff sometimes.
Re:Why Verses? (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Bible: God is the Creator of all things. (Genesis 1)
Evolution: Natural chance processes can account for the existence of all things.
2. Bible: World created in six days. (Genesis 1) These must be literal days; see #23.
Evolution: World evolved over the aeons.
3. Bible: Creation is completed (Genesis 2:3)
Evolution: Creative processes continuing.
4. Bible: Oceans before land. (Genesis 1:2)
Evolution: Land before oceans.
5. Bible: First life on land. (Genesis 1:11)
Evolution: Life began in the oceans.
6. Bible: First life was land plants. (Genesis 1:11)
Evolution: Marine organisms evolved first.
7. Bible: Earth before sun and stars. (Genesis 1:14-19)
Evolution: Sun and stars before earth.
8. Bible: Fruit trees before fishes. (Genesis 1:11,20,21)
Evolution: All fishes before fruit trees.
9. Bible: All stars made on the fourth day. (Genesis 1:16)
Evolution: Stars evolved at various times.
10. Bible: Birds and fishes created on the fifth day. (Genesis 1:20,21)
Evolution: Fishes evolved over hundreds of millions of years before birds appeared.
11. Bible: Birds before insects. (Genesis 1:20-31; Leviticus 11)
Evolution: Insects before birds.
12. Bible: Whales before reptiles. (Genesis 1:20-31)
Evolution: Reptiles before whales.
13. Bible: Birds before reptiles. (Genesis 1:20-31)
Evolution: Reptiles before birds.
14. Bible: Man before rain. (Genesis 2:5)
Evolution: Rain before man.
15. Bible: Man before woman. (Genesis 2:21-22)
Evolution: Woman before man. (by genetics).
16. Bible: Light before the sun. (Genesis 1:3-19)
Evolution: Sun before any light (on earth).
17. Bible: Plants before the sun. (Genesis 1:11-19)
Evolution: Sun before any plants.
18. Bible: Abundance and variety of marine life appeared all at once. (Genesis 1:20-21)
Evolution: Marine life gradually developed from a primitive organic blob.
19. Bible: Man's body created from the dust of the earth. (Genesis 2:7)
Evolution: Man evolved from monkeys.
20. Bible: Man exercised dominion over all organisms. (Genesis 1:28)
Evolution: Most organisms extinct before man evolved.
21. Bible: Man originally a vegetarian. (Genesis 1:29)
Evolution: Man originally a meat-eater.
22. Bible: Fixed and distinct kinds (Genesis 1:11,12,21,24,25; 1 Corinthians 15:38-39), although speciation [answersingenesis.org] does occur.
Evolution: Life forms in a continual state of flux.
23. Bible: Man's sin is the cause of death. (Romans 5:12)
Evolution: Struggle and death existent log before the evolution of man.
Genetic diversity (Score:5, Interesting)
Didn't Noah's sons include his daughters-in-law in the Arc? If he had daughters, did they bring their husbands?
Where did that genetic diversity go?
Noah had three sons. Noah, his wife, and his sons and thier wives, were the only humans beings who entered the ark. The Bible records a male genetic bottleneck 4200 years ago -- i.e. all the males in the ark were descendants of Noah.
The following quote is from a NY times article about an interesting genetic study from a few years ago. It speaks about how the male lineage began to descend, referring quaintly to the Y-chromosome originator of the lineage as 'Adam' (could more correctly be 'Noah'). Note how it talks about three sub-lineages:This is shown clearly by this figure [nytimes.com](NY Times subscription may be required).
In other words, the Y-Chromosome ancestor was:
- A single male chromosomal ancestor
- With three descendant male lineages
- The third male lineage had seven sub-lineages
- These seven sub-lineages from the third lineage populate all the world except the Middle East and Africa.
The Bible says the same thing:
- We are all descended from a single male ancestor - Noah
- Noah had three male descendants
- One of the three sons, Japeth, had seven sons
- The Japeth lineage (his seven sons and their descendants) populated all the world except the Middle East and Africa.
Dawkins made a prediction (Score:5, Interesting)
The pit viper was already known so that wasn't hard. However, about 5 years after I read Dawkin's speculation, some oceanographers brought up some blind shrimp that had heat sensitive patches on their topside. The shrimp apparently use the ability to "see" heat to find smokers which provide the energy basis of the food chain at the bottom of the ocean.
Anyone know of a creature that uses a camera obscura for an eye?
Next stop: Bombardier Beetle (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile, I think it's pretty obvious to anyone who bothers to think about it that any eye (or photosensitive cell) is better than no eye, and that better eyes are more likely to survive. In other words, every feature we possess was advantageous in its lesser forms also.
Re:No, it won't (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:tell the entire story of our evolution over tim (Score:5, Interesting)
Man: Lord, how long is a million years to you?
God: Only a minute.
Man: Lord, how much is a million dollars to you?
God: Only a penny.
Man: Lord, can I have a million dollars?
God: In a minute.
It is naive of us to believe that Genesis is to be interpreted as literal fact, in much the same way that it is naive of us to believe that anything so transcribed, translated, and retranslated by fallible men is the infallible word of God.
Further, it is naive to assume that someone several thousand years ago could have understood evolution if God had described it to him/her. Jesus spoke in parables as a way of boiling complex issues down to a simple metaphorical truth. It seems perfectly consistent to assume that Genesis is similar: God taking a very complicated subject (for the time period) and distilling it to its very essence so that primitive minds could understand.
Creation versus evolution is not inherently a conflict except for those weak in faith. A faith that cannot be challenged---that cannot accept the possibility that it might have gotten some details wrong---is not true faith. True faith must grow, change, sometimes even die entirely to be reborn anew in a stronger, more vibrant form. That's what the Bible says, but some people forget this and angrily defend the exact words of the Bible as God's absolute truth, thus refusing to allow their faith to be tested. A faith untested cannot be strong, for it is in being tested that our faith becomes deeper than a superficial understanding of God.
God did not come to this Earth thousands of years ago never to return. He did not abandon us. He works in our lives every day, whether we're scientists or random church-goers. Does it not, therefore, stand to reason that evolution might be a new truth that God has revealed to us? Not all new truths are heresy. Earth is not flat. The Sun does not revolve around Earth. Women and men are equal. God created the world in billions of years. No difference.
That said, I could be wrong, but so could everyone else---and that is the point.
Re:A couple of questions about your Christianity (Score:5, Interesting)
Your first point, that one cannot be "born" Christian is, technically, true. After all, a newborn can't meaningfully be anything in terms of philosophy or religion. However, if one has been raised Christian for one's entire life, "lifelong" Christian is a perfectly good description of it. In Catholicism, at least, you are expected to make a conscious choice after reaching adulthood (or some reasonable facsimile thereof) to continue being Catholic, but that doesn't mean you weren't Catholic growing up. This is similar in the other Christian faiths with which I am familiar, and I assume in most, if not all, of them.
I don't mean to give offense, but had your second point not been surrounded by what seems to be reasoned text, I would call troll. Your statement that Christianity and Evolution are fundamentally incompatible is simply ridiculous. You are equating "Christianity" with "literal belief in the Bible as written," which is, quite plainly, false. There are Christian faiths, of course, which do subscribe to a strict-to-the-word belief in the Bible, but most do not.
The belief that man is fundamentally flawed and therefore can (and does) succumb to temptation does not rest upon the (patently false - after all, who did Cain marry?) strictest interpretation of the Bible. It rests solely upon the observation that man is flawed, and does sin. To reconcile this with a perfect creator (the "problem of evil") is a non-trivial philosophical task, but that's a different issue, and doesn't conflict with evolution whatsoever.
At its root, Christianity is simply the belief that there is a God who created everything (one way or another), and that His son, Jesus, died to redeem man of his sins after explaining how people should behave.
Everything else is added trappings and expansions (and, as a Catholic, let me tell you that various flavors add a lot of trappings and expansions). Some of those, such as strict intepretation of the Bible, do conflict directly with macro evolution. Others, such as the Assumption, don't.
In any event, in no way is Christianity fundamentally opposed to macro evolution. Strict interpretation is, but not Christianity.
Re:No, it won't (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's the old discussion [slashdot.org], with links to the three papers mentioned below:
Re:What's the Big Fuss (Score:3, Interesting)
To me, how humanity was created is just a minor detail in the grand scheme of things...as long as I understand that it was through God's will and not by accident.
As far as the eye is concerned, I don't see this study as concrete fact that the human eye was indeed a result of evolution. I still find it hard to believe that something so complex and exact would be the result of random, accidental mutations...but then again I am not completely closed to this being a possibility. I would stil like to see more evidence before it is considered a fact. And even if another study does prove the evolution of the human eye, I don't really see how that precludes intelligent design. For instance many of us here write code...if you analyzed code from an abstract, nieve level you might be surprised that all code is made of the same simple elements (such as ints, floats, different loops, simple logic, etc.). Why would something designed by God be any different? If I was going to engineer an eye and had already created something similar but less advanced, I would probably start with the less advanced eye as a base for my design and change or improve it as necessary. To me, something like evolution -- the improvement of an existing design -- is very intelligent.
I guess what this all boils down to is me viewing science as insight into the mind of God. After all, if you believe that God created humans then you must believe that God created our minds with the knowledge that we would one day figure out how very complex systems on Earth function. So why would He give us so much intelligence if it conflicts with the idea of Him existing?
Re:Richard Dawkins goes in depth in his book (Score:5, Interesting)
What you're talking about is a well-known heresy: in theological circles it's called the God of the Gaps Fallacy. Priests, ministers, rabbis, imams and pretty much everyone else with formal theological training despises the God of the Gaps, with solid theological reasoning. If we use God to fill in the gaps in human understanding, then to advance in human knowledge is to diminish God's majesty--and that is simply not allowed to occur. That means we have only two choices: we can either not advance human knowledge and let God live in those gaps, or else we can not put God in those gaps in the first place.
Of those two choices, we can't do the first: not just because it's the natural state of knowledge to progress, but because it's heretical to think that God should fit into the world where we want Him to fit. It turns God into a false idol, something we create for our own convenience, and that's major heresy.
Unfortunately, for all the sincere and educated theologians out there, there's an Al Sharpton or another self-appointed minister without theological training who says "no, no! Science is the work of the Devil!"
[sighs] God, you know I love you. But some of your followers are cause to make me doubt your existence, to say nothing of your wisdom.
Re:Richard Dawkins goes in depth in his book (Score:2, Interesting)
And I'll clarify my position too, I am a Christian with creationist beliefs. Oh I like science too, God gave me a brain and the desire to understand. Fortunately he also gave me the good sense to know that both religion and science applied in tandem can serve a far greater purpose than either one applied alone.
And as an aside, yes, Einstein did say it better.
http://en.thinkexist.com/quotation/science_withou
You say that you have become an athiest as a coping mechanism, I find that incredible. To me, that is tantamount to confessing that you swam out to sea to escape the life rafts. Have you actually listened to reasonable and practical people explain the belief structure? And I mean listened, not debated, I mean tried to understand, not tried to formulate counterpoints.
I guess it just doesn't seem to add up. I have found ridiculing the belief in God to be an extremely popular activity among the "Intelligentsia." And these are the very people who decry plebians as irrational and suggest that their choices are selected after an incomplete evaluation of all possible solutions. Perhaps you can help me understand this duality of belief, this unmentioned understanding that God can be summarily dismissed, but all other decisions and actions should be subjected to great scrutiny.
So then I pose this to you, how can you rule out the possibility of God, how can you decide that He does not exist when there is precious little evidence to support your belief, and what evidence there is (on either side) hasn't been completely (or, perhaps, even slightly) reviewed by you.
Re:tell the entire story of our evolution over tim (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No, it won't (Score:4, Interesting)
Which says:The article authors are simply trying to resolve a difficulty with another theory which states Tasmanians were isolated for 12000 years. If all humans descended from one man who lived about 3500 years ago, how could Tasmanians - who supposedly were isolated 12000 years - be descended from him too? So they conjecture that interbreeding with Europeans in the last 200 years has modified Tasmanians genetic data to look like the rest of the world's. This lets their conclusions not dispute the 12000 year isolation theory.
You said: "It doesn't mean that all genes originate from the same individual, ".
It does.
See quote below from an article called "The Human Family Tree: 10 Adams and 18 Eves" in the NY Times [nytimes.com] (free subscription required)
The human genome is turning out to be a rich new archive for historians and prehistorians
Population geneticists believe that the ancestral human population was very small -- a mere 2,000 breeding individuals
But the family tree based on human mitochondrial DNA does not trace back to the thousand women in this ancestral population.
The tree is rooted in a single individual, the mitochondrial Eve, because all the other lineages fell extinct.
The same is true of the Y chromosome tree, a consequence of the fact that in each generation some men will have no children, or only daughters,
This ancestral human population lived somewhere in Africa, geneticists believe, and started to split up some time after 144,000 years ago, give or take 10,000 years, the inferred time at which both the mitochondrial and Y chromosome trees make their first branches.
The tree is rooted in a single Y chromosomal Adam, and has 10 principal branches, Dr. Cavalli-Sforza reports.
Re:This won't change their minds... (Score:3, Interesting)
The latter is more relevant (for a scientist) because science is about disproving hypotheses until you run out of ways to do so or until they are proven irrelevant.
Creationism, being a slightly rediculous hyphothesis to begin with, clearly falls in the latter category: it is an irrelevant theory because it has been carefully constructed to support what the bible says instead of what we observe in scientific research. Worse, it is constantly being adjusted (as we learn more) by so called creationists to convince non scientists that it is in fact a scientifically sound theory. Some of these creationists even have scientific careers though I wouldn't trust many of them to pull off something like cloning a sheep.
Creationists derive their legitimacy from the very thing they are arguing against: science. They have their own little journals, professors, they take part in bonafide research projects and it can be quite hard to see the difference for non scientists. However, science has nothing to do with believes other than proving that what you believe is not supported by facts. Don't show you are right but demonstrate that you have done everything to prove your hypothesis wrong and maybe a scientist will believe you.
Science provides loads of facts and means to observe facts. Only if you ignore those facts, creationism makes sense. Scientific theories have to be consistent with everything we observe.
The creationist hyphothesis posed here was that because there are two different types of eyes in nature they cannot have the same ancestor (which from a darwinistic point of view is convenient rather than necessary). The motivation for this hypothesis comes not from any facts which need explaining but from the notion that something as complex as the eye must have been invented rather than evolved. This notion developed itself as creationsists were examining darwinian predictions which seemed so improbable that they would support the overall hypothesis that in fact darwinism is nonsense.
By showing that in fact there was a creature which at least had the building blocks for constructing both types of eyes, this hyphothesis has been proven wrong. Either the observation that there was such a creature is wrong or the hyphothesis is wrong. Both facts cannot be right at the same time. Case closed for the scientists.
Of course it is tempting (for a non creationist) to extrapolate the conclusion that in fact creatinism itself is nonsense (rather than darwinism). It's certainly true that many other creationist myths have been disproven in a similar way. However, as creationists are likely to point out: the observation could be wrong as well. And even if it's right it is all part of a bigger plan. Creationists never run out of explanations, no matter what the facts are.
Re:This won't change their minds... (Score:3, Interesting)
I used to hold this view very near and dear until I read a little about Bayesian statistics (the same stuff that makes your spam filter work). The problem is (and this is also brought up in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintainence) is that there is an infinite number of potentially valid hypothesis if one simply operates from this falsifiability standpoint, and therefore objective scientific progress is impossible.
Instead, all reason (scientific or religious) involves a prior subjective probability, a "hunch" if you will, against whichs one checks the validity of a experiment. In other words, scientists ask P(u|x), that is, what is probability of the truth "u" given the observation "x" which one can easily show depends strongly on your initial prior belief in what "u" should be. As you observe more "x", you become better able to judge the probability of "u" being true. Fundamentalists have a prior probability distribution of 1 and therefore even in the Bayesian approach will never reject "u". They are simply a limiting case of the scientific method, and most science falls in somewhere in the spectrum on this sliding scale, but science is by no means objective.
Perhaps... (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems paradoxical - but it really isn't. First off, let me state that I consider myself to be a recent transhumanist convert. The way to this conclusion was long and arduous, but upon reviewing the evidence, it seems clear that something is selecting for increasing levels of intelligence in the universe. We are not the pinnacle, not by a longshot. Our machines, however...
Both of these camps need to do some reading: Dyson's "Darwin Among the Machines" would be a good place to start. Kelly's "Out of Control" should be on the list, along with Johnson's "Emergence". Also, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi's "Linked". Finally, Drexler's "Engines of Creation" and Wolfram's "A New Kind of Science".
There are few other texts which could be recommended, but the titles to these will be run across in the above reading. Careful reading of all of these texts will reveal something that we are only beginning to understand, the basics of which is that complexity arises from simplicity (namely, simple algorithms and UTM-like mechanisms), that feedback is a necessary part of the equation, whether it is evolution or development of conciousness, and that networks (of all kinds - chemical, electrical, social, etc) play a central part.
All of this (mainly in the human/machine symbiosis) seems to be leading, via combinitorial exponentialism (ie, exponential increases in power in one area translating into further exponential increases in other areas, which feedback onto prior areas, etc) to what has been declared the "technological singularity".
Of all of this, I have only read one dissenting opinion (not that there aren't others - but I have yet to have them pointed out) - that of Lanier's [edge.org]. While his theory is interesting - that software has not made the same strides as hardware, and that since it is still fragile, it is not likely to lead to a singularity - his thinking seems like that of a top-down AI researcher: that such leaps will come from complex software.
If you only look at it from the macro level of current software, one can easily see that such software is nowhere near capable. However, we know that complexity can arise from simple instructions: oOur own DNA points out that this is the case. Wolfram's experiments also lends credence to the idea of simple algorithms producing complex results. This is the direction that software and hardware will have to take in order to continue the trend toward singularity, a very "bottom-up" approach. Our own universe may be the result of such processing:
Are we merely software running in an emulator we call the Universe?
No one knows, and no one can know. We are inside the system, we can't be objective to determine the truth (assuming there is such thing as "truth"). A bottom up approach to software is what is needed. We are only beginning to take steps in that direction. Much of the problems with this research has been lack of understanding over "top-down" vs. "bottom-up", thus the "bottom-up" researchers get lumped in with the "top-down" failures, and funding is lost or otherwise not invested properly. We need more investigation on neural nets, particularly large hardware based systems - even if the current electronics would fill a building or more. We did it with serial Von Neumann architechture machines, we do it today with parallel processing supercomputers. We should be doing it today with neural networks...
The whole creationism vs. evolution is a tiresome debate. On the surface, one seems to favor over the other. But when you really start looking into it - it seems like there is a driving force - most like, a vastly distributed UTM driving all of the possible outcomes in the universe, with perhaps quantum particles making up the interacting "bits", which has been running simple algorithms over a very long time span. We are only beginning to touch these levels, only beginning to understand this stuff.
Of course, all of
Re:tell the entire story of our evolution over tim (Score:2, Interesting)
If christians can see that the Bible is more of a "legend" than pure reality, they would see that evolution (and the big bang, etc) would have been the most "smart" way to create the universe, not taking care of it piece by piece.
But they're so attached to the Bible they take it at face-value...
Re: No, it won't (Score:3, Interesting)
Prior to the new 3500 years figure, the earlier figure for our common genetic ancestors was about 150,000 years.
Back in 2003, I posted this [slashdot.org] pointing out how that 150000 figure needs drastic downward revision (to be divided by 20) given:...The link also contains other evidence including this paper which indicates the Danish population divered from populations in the middle east around 4500 years ago This study indicates a selective advantage for Cystic fibrosis carriers [virginia.edu] (see mean number of offspring of Cystic fibrosis families v/s control families)
What is an MCRA?
Re:Darwin got it right... (Score:5, Interesting)
The Red Herring article is here [redherring.com] but you need to give up your first born to read it.
Re:tell the entire story of our evolution over tim (Score:4, Interesting)
One important thing for both Christians and others to understand about "creationism" is that the "common sense" or "literalistic" interpretation many/most modern day conservative evangelicals/fundamentalists apply to the creation narrative is a newcomer to Christianity.
Prior to the early 1900s, many conservative theologians (most notably, B.B. Warfield) had no problem with evolution.
See "Fit Bodies, Fat Minds" by Os Guiness or "The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind" by Mark Noll for examinations of when and why American Christians took a turn in this direction.
Re:This won't change their minds... (Score:2, Interesting)
If you do some research on the philosophical basis of eastern religions especially on the concepts of maya, karma, vedas etc then you can see that these require not faith, but simply the act of living that will reveal the truth. This is why eastern religions are more in accordance with science (e.g. quantum physics) thus you don't have these creationism vs evolution conflicts.
Re:Richard Dawkins goes in depth in his book (Score:3, Interesting)
If anybody wants a good discussion of this, they should read this remarkable interview [americanatheist.org] with Douglas Adams (which is also printed in "A Salmon of Doubt").
For an atheist belief does not enter into the picture. If asked whether there is a god, he will most probably answer, as Adams does, that he is convinced that there isn't. It requires neither belief, faith, nor dogma to be convinced about something you cannot know for sure (you cannot know ANYTHING for sure).
Evidence consistent with the Bible (Score:1, Interesting)
Of course, you could choose to reject this genetic evidence against the existence of such a bottleneck, but then, you couldn't consistently choose to accept the genetic evidence favoring the existence of a Y-chromosome Adam, either.
Re:History versus theory (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but this is pretty much because the (mammalian) eye is soft tissue that doesn't fossilize well. So it has long been a "mystery". The religious folks are really just arguing that "Scientists don't have any evidence about how our eye evolved, so it must have been a miracle." Anything not preserved in the fossil record can be used in this sort of fallacious argument.
On the other hand, you can read an interesting scientific story of the past few years by googling for "brittle-star eye". This is about a group of starfish, not mammals, but it's a case where we can see the early stages of a functional eye. The evolution has happened in the past million years or so. It's a nice case where the animals don't have a very good eye, with resolution of several degrees, but it's better than what their relatives have. Comparing the brittle stars with other starfish shows clearly how this eye is evolving.
In a few more hundreds of millions of years, when the descendants of the brittle stars are having their scientific revolution, they will probably have lots of fossil evidence showing how their advanced eye developed, and their religious people will have to use other arguments against evolution by natural selection. And they'll probably insist that those strange ancient creatures with internal skeletons couldn't have had vision, because their fossils don't show anything like the compound eye that all advanced species use.
(There's another interesting recently-developed sort of "eye" in the pit vipers, giving them a sort of pinhole camera that works in the infrared. But that's harder to find by googling.)
Re:There is a major difference (Score:4, Interesting)
The more traditional (and superior, imo) view acknowledges God as the creator of the universe as well as the author of the scriptures. The scriptures are the ultimate authority, but they don't speak exhaustively, and our understanding of what they say isn't perfect. Christians should listen to scientists (who "read" God's "other book") when considering topics about which scientists may legitimately speak.
P.S. You probably mean "theist," not "deist."
Politics, not belief (Score:3, Interesting)
There is a large grass-roots movement within the US to teach "intelligent design" side-by-side with evolution as a competing theory. Although ID makes no direct reference to God, or even to creation, the concept is a dressed-up creationism. (How can you have intelligent design without some form of intelligence?)
Even the ones that need proof so badly are acting on faith, and you can't disprove someone's faith. If you're trying to get them to change their minds, this is the wrong approach.
I agree completely. The idea isn't to change minds, although it would be helpful if people used a modicum of sense in their beliefs. The idea is to politically block the teaching of a non-science in science class.
I think this debate goes a long way to prove the fundamentallist nature of the US. Intelligent Design cannot be disproven, and so isn't even science. Yet there is a huge political push to teach it side-by-side with evolution, as a competing theory. I agree that there are holes in evolution, but the basic concept of evolution by natural selection has withstood every possible test thrown at it.
As natural selection works on phenotype variance within a population (and not on individuals), the holes in evolution are the general mechanism through which the genotype varies. The crude concept of "mutation" covers this variance, but the mechanisms of mutation aren't well-understood. It's not just a matter of stray particles striking a strand of DNA, or random recombination through sexual reproduction.
Because we don't understand it all yet, there is a huge gap in our knowledge that allows people to say, "God does it." Just like ancient maps with "Here be dragons" scrawled across unknown areas, those with religious beliefs apply their belief to everything that is unknown. This pushes many of them to teach everyone else that "God does it." That's fine in a relgious setting, but taught as knowledge, it is unacceptable. To present it as scientific is downright dishonest.
Anyway, that is the point of these scientific exercises. Not only does it add to our body of knowledge, but helps fill in the blanks in which people have previously written in flowing script, "God works here, in mysterious ways."
Re:Darwin got it right... (Score:3, Interesting)
You are somewhat correct. Given the general audience here on Slashdot, I "tuned" my comments a bit to make them more clear discussion. Photopic and mesopic are words commonly used in vision science, but are not words the general populace is familiar with. As for your point about humans seeing with four channels, this is somewhat complicated by the fact that cones "piggy back" on the existing rod based system so one does not have true segregation of signals. Mammals evolved cones later than rods and integrated them into the existing rod based pathways.
Also, isn't it somewhat misleading to describe the cone channels as red, green, and blue channels when in fact the peaks of their sensitivity curves are closer to what we would call yellow-green, green-yellow, and blue, IIRC? Or is referring to them as red-green-blue channels standard usage in the field in spite of that?
Most folks in the vision community, even the psychophysics folks use red, green and blue for their nomenclature, but everybody does know about the spectral properties of the pigments. As an interesting aside, the pigment in rods is actually blue-green.
I've heard rumors that a small number of human females may be tetrachromats -- i.e., actually possess 4 distinct cone variants -- but I'm not aware of any peer-reviewed studies of this supposed phenomenon. Do any exist to your knowledge?
I have seen a few posters at ARVO, and I believe there might have been a paper in Nature some time ago talking about it, but I am not really familiar with that literature.
Finally, regarding retinal regeneration, the current issue of New Scientist discusses some successful early experiments in which implantation of retinal material from aborted fetuses helped restore vision in adult humans.
Much of the vision restoration literature has been lacking in definitive proof of vision restoration. It turns out that the problem of evaluation of vision is harder than it seems. That said, I believe there are some good potential biological approaches to rescuing vision, possibly involving stem cells, but I have my own ideas about that and am not talking just yet.....
Re:tell the entire story of our evolution over tim (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep in mind that when Paul refers to the scriptures, he isn't talking about the Bible. That didn't come about until centuries after his death. He was referring to a library of religious teachings that spanned the texts of the ancient Hebrews, to the writings of contemporaneous Prophets.
Our modern Bible is a fraction of the material they were working with back then. Many of the omissions are editorial. But there are those scholars that say that politics went into the selection, or omission, of several texts into the Canon.
The Darwin/Hitler Links (Score:0, Interesting)
Two points: 1. Read Nazi literature or, better yet, go to Univ. of California TV [www.uctv.tv] and watch "From Darwin to Hitler" and you'll discover that Nazism was applied Darwinism in the same sense that Communism was applied Marxism. Disagree with Darwin and you're automatically a foe of Nazism and indeed in Germany, Hitler's bravest foes were the Catholics and orthodox/neo-orthodox (but not liberal) Protestant pastors. Read back issues of Time magazine from the 1930s and that's very clear.
The subtitle of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Survival. Hitler and Darwin would have undoubtedly differed over a technically--whether Jews belonged in the "unfavoured" category. But they would not have disagreed over the fundamental principle of Darwinism, stated in the last paragraph of Origin, that virtually all progress is a result of struggle, famine and death.
Nor were Darwin and his colleagues reluctant to discuss in private their belief that the favoured/unfavoured races distinction applied as much to human races as it did to animals. It's merely that the optimism of the latter half of the 1800s, when Europeans dominated the world, gave them a smug confidence that white Europeans would eventually rule the world. H. G. Wells wrote of exactly that in his 1901 Anticipations which is discussed here. [inklingbooks.com]
2. The poster is right that if everyone wanted to merely "live and enjoy life," we'd be spared the horrors of great evils. But alas, that isn't so. Great evil must be met by an equally great set of convictions, courage and committment. There has to be a core of people who believe in doing good just as strongly as others do in evil. That's Churchill in WWII, that's Reagan and the Cold War; that's Bush and the War on Terror. And all, particularly the last two, drew strong support from the "religious right." And lest we forget, the liberal/left and their friends in the press were AWOL on the latter two. Reagan got even nastier and more biased press in 1984 than Bush does today. Even today, few liberals have shown the integrity to admit that Reagan really did end the Cold War.
Post-Christian Western Europe simply lacks the convictions or courage to stand up to terrorism, as does most of the US NPR-listening left. They want to "live and enjoy life" in utter indifference to the horrors Saddam inflicted on his people. And particularly the French want to see the Middle East ruled by tyrants and perpetually on the verge of war so they can trade arms for oil and take their lengthy August vacations. They want to "enjoy life."
In that, the US remains different. Unlike Western Europe, it still has a substantial population with the conviction and courage to stand up for good in the face an "Evil Empire" (Reagan about the USSR) or the "Axis of Evil" (Bush about terrorism and the states that support them).
And we should never forget that history has no "givens." Just because Reagan managed to win the Cold War over the resistance of France and Germany doesn't mean that the War on Terror will be won in spite of the same weasely two and cowardly liberals. Much will hinge on tomorrow's election. A guy who thinks "wounds" that can be treated with a bandaid are worthy of a Purple Heart is clearly not the sort to stan
Re:The "mammalian" eye & the "cephalopod" eye. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is quite right. The difference is simple: the photoreceptors all have to feed into a neural network for processing, and then the outputs of that neural network are connected by axons (wires, basically) that run down into the optical nerve to transmit the information from the brain.
The cephalopod retina does this the way you'd expect: photoreceptors up front receiving the light, neural network behind it, axonal connections behind that.
The eye in all chordate (spinal-cord bearing, i.e. mammals, birds, reptiles) organisms is built the other way around: the photoreceptors are at the back of the retina, with the neural net in front of them and the axonal network in front of that. Before light reaches your photoreceptors, it has to pass through several layers of cells. Your "blind spot" is the area right on top of the optical nerve where the axons go back through the whole layered structure, taking up the room that might otherwise be used for photoreceptors. Take a look at the photo on the wikipedia page about the retina [wikipedia.org]. In that cross-section of the retina, the light comes in from the left.
From an engineering point of view, it's totally retarted. But evolved organisms have this kind of kludge all the time, because once you have a structure locked in, it's really hard to get away from it by mutation. You could concieve of a series of organisms with a few mutations at a time where by the end the structure of the retina was reversed and they had better eyes. BUT, the organisms in the middle of the series would probably be blind so you'd never get to the end.
Another fantastic example is the fact that our lungs are above and in front of our stomach, but our nose is above our mouth. This requires our air-path and food-path to cross each other, opening the possibility of choking to death. How stupid is that?
But the number and combination of mutations required to restructure the entire neck and jaw so that your trachea could be behind your throat
Particularly things like body-plan order that happen early in development tend to get really locked in by evolution. This is why we can see so many "bad engineering decisions" in biological organisms.
Re:Next stop: Bombardier Beetle (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course one is left with the job of explaining precisely why God needed to create a beetle which shoots corrosive chemicals from its abdomen.
For more information on the bombardier beetle, try checking out the talk.origins FAQ on the subject [talkorigins.org].
Re:the fucking sorry state of American "thinking" (Score:2, Interesting)
1. I'm a Christian.
2. The Bible is about the most useless piece of crap for drawing moral conclusions from.
I've just read Stephen Jay Gould's Rock of Ages book, which proposes the NOMA theory - non-overlapping magisteria. This is precisely what you are stating. Science deals with some questions and religion deals with other questions. Of course, if you are not religious, there are also ways of looking at those questions.
Also, it's worth checking out Michael Ruse's "Can a Darwinian be a Christian?" where he looks in more detail and states quite emphatically that Yes, Darwinism and Christianity are completely compatible.
Same old same old. (Score:1, Interesting)
'Creationists' say common features mean a common designer.
So finding common features doesn't prove on case over the other.
The boundary between science and religion (Score:1, Interesting)
Science's unscientific view that random mutations fuel evolution is as ridiculous as religion's personification of god. Both are wrong and the answer lies somewhere in the middle: development and change through time, according to intelligent design, perhaps guided by the collective consciousness of a species, or of all the life on the world.
The history of science and religion reveal where these ideas came from. Science, in order to exist alongside religion, had to divide the world into the physical and the spiritual. And it's that old old habitual materialist view which gave birth to the idea that evolution had to be random. There wasnt any other option! Admitting intelligent design was treading in the realms of religion. And religion's all-powerful god HAD to have created the world, or else it might seem that there was a power greater than god. So we landed in this bizarre in-between land of two theories that both hold clearly wrong but ancient beliefs.
Personally now, I believe the rest of the theory of evolution is pretty sound. And creationism doesnt hold much validity beyond the idea of intelligent design, which I hold to be an all-important addition to the theory of evolution.
Re:Evolution vs. Creationism (Score:1, Interesting)
And if you really want to see the sparks fly, suggest the teachings of the Koran (and I have no idea what these are or if they are diff from Christian type concepts...but my guess is the 'supporters' of ID would have a huge problem with this just on concept)
Skip the middle-man and go straight for the unsupportable option; teach ancient Greek mythology as a legitimate theory. Titans etc. Polytheism. Then watch as the Christians who are so angry that schools don't teach ID come up with a thousand arguments against teaching ancient Greek mythology that will also apply against teaching ID.
argument # CB310 -Snopes for creationist arguments (Score:3, Interesting)
And there it is, argument CB310 [talkorigins.org], a standard argument from incredulity [talkorigins.org] on this beetle and how it could have come into being.
US Creationists (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:tell the entire story of our evolution over tim (Score:3, Interesting)
Correct... Evolution only attempts to explain how we go here from the stuff that was already here, not how the stuff got here in the first place. That's another area of study completely, which brings us to your second point....
This argument doesn't hold any merit for the premise of God creating the universe, as it leaves the question open of who created God. And if God could have always been, why couldn't whatever phenomenon which ultimately led to the big bang have always been?
This one is prety simple... if human beings weren't stimulated by pleasure during sex, we wouldn't actually _have_ sex (or at least not nearly as often)... the human race would have died out ages ago and we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
This would only apply if the big bang were an outwward explosion in only the visible dimensions. Try this one on... the big bang pushed all objects outward along a dimension that we recognize as time. This is why there is no spatial "center" of the universe... the center would actually be a point in the distant past, not a point in 3 dimensional space. Further, objects actually _are_ moving away from eachother (commensurate with the premise that the universe is expanding). It just so happens that gravity is able to overcome that motion from time to time enough to be able to form large blocks of coherent matter.
Actually all that it really means is that the moon's orbit was never really stable to begin with,
Creationists performing a service for evo theory? (Score:4, Interesting)
Darwin posited his theory which was generally rejected by the religious. Later Creationists 'evolved' their ideas in a more 'scientific' direction by raising problems with the theory. They sometimes raise legitimate questions which deserve an answer.
Evolutionists then had to work harder to 'evolve' their theory to answer the Creationist's critique.
Now we have the ID (Intelligent Design) school raising objections to the theory. The evolution of the eye has been a longstanding question (as in "how could natural selection account for the development of the eye"). And now the evolution side has come up with perhaps a more complete answer.
Really, I'm not sure why there is so much antagonism toward Creationists (at least the ones that try to posit well-reasoned, thought out questions - yes, they may be in the minority). In some sense aren't the Creationists helping the Evolutionists to hone their theory? If everyone agreed with the theory, and nobody questioned it, how would the theory develop and improve?
Maybe instead of a "how dare you question evolution!" sort of an attitude, the evolutionists should thank thoughtful Creationists (or even just doubters of evolution who are not Creationists) for playing some part in the development of the theory.
Re:the fucking sorry state of American "thinking" (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually I would say it was the other way round. Religon has always been the "power" in western society. The Church has always dictated the direction of thinking and belief. If something doesn't agree with their rules they persecute it. Galileo for example.
Eastern culture has always been based more on spiritual guidelines than hard doctrine and made many technilogical advances long before western society.
Re:tell the entire story of our evolution over tim (Score:3, Interesting)
This is unfair, since the blurring of terms is as much the fault of evolutionists as it is creationists. Creationists have in the past used the terms micro and macro evolution to distinguish, which are now avoided because they imply that they are the same thing with longer time. Another way to distinguish is to use the title "Darwinist".
You are right that natural selection plays on us all the time, performing selection of beneficial traits and creating new species. The great issue is the question of common ancestry - whether all living things share a common ancestor or not. That is what creationists dispute, and that is what is commonly called "the theory of evolution" - shortened to evolution. Creationists do not deny natural selection, they just observe it from a different angle. So what do you think the theory of evolution that includes common ancestry should be called?
To use terminology that distinguishes between elements of this debate more accurate would help the creationists, because proof for each step would need to be provided by Darwinists - rather than just demonstrating proof for one definition of 'evolution' and then claiming that all aspects are thus justified.
Re:tell the entire story of our evolution over tim (Score:2, Interesting)
Just curious
Re:Darwin got it right... (Score:3, Interesting)
That question is meaningless, because your premise is either circular, or flat-out wrong, depending on the definition of "color" used.
If "color" means those things humans call colors, then then it's a truism: we can see everything we can see, because that's what we can see.
But the number of potential colors is unlimited, even within the visual spectrum. The colors we percieve are actually superimposed photonic waveforms produced when light reflects off a surface. (or is emitted by radiation, etc).
If you understand auditory perception, that can be a helpful analogy: although sound is really a 1-dimensional quantity (air pressure varying over time), the variations happen too fast to be tracked directly. So the ear canal contains receptors sensitive to different frequencies of pulsation, which are combined in your brain to make hearing.
Photons are even faster and less plausible to measure individually, so receptors trigger off of different wavelengths, and combine them visually. There's no physical reason for an RGB breakdown; that's just the number of colors which turned out to be most helpful for mammalls to evolve.
So the most advanced vision would seem to be that which employs the fewest detectors to represent the full range of the visible spectrum
And is the most advanced computer the one that uses the fewest symbols to represent the full range of possible data? Of course not. There's a reason we don't just use ASCII / VT100 terminals, and there's an even better reason why the Altair's binary lightbulb display was so quickly obseleted.