Evolution Lesson Plan Goes in for Redesign

[dj43]

To accept "macro" evolution only means that you accept the world does not lie to you.
Explain what you mean by this statement.

[dj43]

There is no distinction between "macro" and "micro" evolution. They are the same thing.
OK. I can look at it that way. The end game is that the person who is looking for a naturalistic explanation of how we got here will be obligated to admit that there was no supernatural influence in that development. Now that will still leave open the matter of first cause, but that is another thread.
Not necessarily. What it does mean is that the fable of creation as put forth in the Bible can not be literal truth. No more, no less. The Catholic Church, for example, is fine with that - they say the Creation myth is allegory. God created everything, but since we can't understand how he did it, he gave us a nice story.
You last sentence sums it up. Since WE can't understand it, WE needed to have something more. This is the fatal flaw in trying to describe God in our terms. If God is who He says He is, it seems extremely arrogant of us to say that He could't do what His Word says He did.

Where things start to come apart is when we humans, who live in finite time, start trying to define "creation" in our finite terms instead of God's infinite terms. Trying to put our time frame on God's actions is silly.


Trust me - atheists who once believed in God (such as myself) are not rejecting belief in God because of evolution, or some incapability of understanding God. That has nothing to do with it.
So I'm curious. Why DID you cease believing in God, if you don't mind my asking?

[spejic]

Explain what you mean by this statement.The fossil record and the genetic code of living animals imply a history that includes what you call "macro evolution". To believe otherwise means you belive that the world around you is lying by suggesting relationships between animals that don't exist.

[Chicago1871]

The point of life on other spheres is incidental to life on this sphere.
How so? If God created everything, he would have created life on other planets (assuming it exists), and if he "spoke" to the living creatures on this planet, would it not be safe to assume he would have "spoken" to the living creaters on the other planets?
Even if we are to totally exclude any other place, the Cosmic Constant argument, and the knife-edge balance it states, still stands. Science has shown no ability to achieve and maintain such a balance.
100 years ago science couldn't create a nuclear reaction.
This position is demonstrated by the Arizona Biosphere project begun back in 1988. The goal, funded by Edward Bass in the amount of $150MILLION, was to set up a totally self-contained environment and put people in it to live for 3 years. Great care and preparation was used in setting things up from the soil to the plants to insects to humidity and all the rest of what is required to sustain life. I toured it in 1994 and was amazed at the number of monitoring and control devices in the Command Center. The guide explained a few examples of critical levels that would render the entire deal a waste if not properly maintained. Well ultimately, despite all these precautions, the best that humans could offer was insufficient to make it work. Now it is nothing more than a very interesting base for study.
Science learns just as much, if not more, from failure as it does from success. I bet dollars to donuts that if the experiment were done again it would see greater success than before, but would likely still fail. Twenty years later if it were run again the likelihood of improved success would be greater, and so on. Personally, just because a first attempt was no successful, I don't think the entire concept is a failure. Look at the Wright Brothers for a prime example of that.

[Chicago1871]

We don't have to understand EVERYTHING about God to believe that He exists, and that He did things that we cannot explain by our knowledge set. There ARE things we DO understand about Him that direct our lives but that is not my main point here.
But how can you know that what you do understand isn't foolish in and of itself?
As to the suggestion that most scientists are non-believers would be the subject of a poll that I don't think has been taken. However, I know, and have read, numerous scientists who range from deists to Jews and Christians, and their work is well-respected in that community. The practice of the many disciplines of science is by no means limited to atheist and agnostics, but I don't think you implied or inferred that.
I didn't say most scientists were non-believers, I said that most non-believers subscribed to scientific theories.

[dj43]

The fossil record and the genetic code of living animals imply a history that includes what you call "macro evolution". To believe otherwise means you belive that the world around you is lying by suggesting relationships between animals that don't exist.
OK. That I understand. So let me begin my response by saying that, to be better understood, I will now refer to whatever version of evolution, micro or macro, as "naturalism" or an all-naturalistic method as opposed to some level of directed design. I know that is a pretty wide brush that might sometimes include genetic drift and the like but I hope that works.

But as to the idea that nature is always truthful; I would say that is what we should expect. However, nature does not always give us what we expect or want. And that is no more clear than when we DO look at the fossil record in the ancestral pathway to man. We haven't yet found what want. And then we have folks who have lied or misrepresented what the record actually shows.

First off, we have never seen any of the intermediate links that Darwin admitted were vital to his theory. Nature just hasn't given us what we want to conclude the case...and without that we are still talking about a theory.

Second, some fossils we have found have been put forth as something that were later shown to be something else. archaeopteriyx is such an example. It was originally purported to be the link we were seeking between reptiles and birds, and lots of folks bought into that idea because it fit what they WANTED to be true. In the end, it not only wasn't the half-bird, half-reptile creature they sought. It was ALL bird, of a species that became extinct long before the time frame sought for the intermediate link.

Another such example was archaeoraptor, another misrepresentation to try establish that link that paleontologists sought. That little chicken sized dinosaur toured the country with feathers and feather-like structures covering it, and a long string of controversy followed it. For starters, the actual fossil record showed absolutely no trace of any feathers or feather-like structures. The folks running that little game put them on because that is what they wanted to be there, even though there was NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE to support their existence on that dinosaur. (Is that a lie?) Next came the fact that the eyes used in the reconstruction were the same used by taxidermists for eagles instead of what is more commonly believed to represent actual dinosaur-bird it was...and though there was a cryptic explanation of same, it appeared only in the "fine print." Lastly, there was the HOT news that bird DNA had been discovered on this fossil. Ultimately it was learned it was 100% turkey DNA and might have been dropped out of the sandwich of someone working on the little critter and gotten lodged in a crevice only to be found by someone else later. But that didn't stop a 2003 issue of Science Magazine from headlining "Dinos and Turkeys: Connected by DNA?" Now eventually all of those little "mishaps" were conceded but it does go to make the point that "nature," in this case "natural" people did some things that some might call lies.

I won't go into Haeckel's fraud or Java man, even though those lies did have a great deal of influence on the swing of the pendulum on their own, and they are now withdrawn as evidence. But like the accused man who makes front-page headlines when the accusation is first made, the news of his exoneration gets 2 column inches buried on the 7th page. IOW, people once falsely convinced do not always hear the news that the original claim was falsely based.

Let me sum this up with a statement by Alan Feduccia, an evolutionary biologist at UNC Chapel Hill, regarding the fraudulent misrepresentation of archaeoraptor. In the February 2003 issue of Discover Magazine he is responding to a question about the possibilty that other "errors" in the fossil record may exist. He states: "Archaeorapator is just the tip of the iceberg. There are scores of fake fossils out there, and they have cast a dark shadow over the whole field. When you go to these fossil shows, it's difficult to tell which ones are faked and which ones are not. I have heard there is a fake-fossil factory in northeast China, in Liaoning Province, near the deposits where many of these recent alleged feathered dinosaurs were found." When asked what would motivate this fraud he said, "Money. The Chinese fossil trade has become a big business. These fossil forgeries have been sold on the black market for years, for huge sums of money. Anyone who can produce a good fake stands to profit."

Now while this fake fossil trade is not an indictment of paleoanthropologists per se, when people see these fossil forgeries being shown around and being called the "missing link," but with no disclaimer presnet, they tend to be influenced to believe they are real when they are not.

Hence, the world does indeed lie to us, or to put it more correctly, people who have a non-truthful ethic present a worldview that is a lie. And even when withdrawn, the impact of those false or misleading statements cannot be eliminated.

[dj43]

How so? If God created everything, he would have created life on other planets (assuming it exists), and if he "spoke" to the living creatures on this planet, would it not be safe to assume he would have "spoken" to the living creaters on the other planets?
Whether or not God created life someplace else other than earth is not relevant to the reality that there is a very narrow set of circumstances demanded for life on THIS planet to exist. What He may have done in other areas of the universe is something we cannot know, and frankly, we shouldn't care.

Science learns just as much, if not more, from failure as it does from success. I bet dollars to donuts that if the experiment were done again it would see greater success than before, but would likely still fail. Twenty years later if it were run again the likelihood of improved success would be greater, and so on. Personally, just because a first attempt was no successful, I don't think the entire concept is a failure. Look at the Wright Brothers for a prime example of that.
I don't seem to be able to convey the point of the Cosmic Constant that is so critical. Let me try it one last time:

Imagine you are starting to build a house on a very isolated island. Due to the extreme isolation of this place, and the difficulty in getting material delivered, you will get only a single delivery of precisely enough material with which to build your house, and not a single rafter, roofing tile or even a nail left over when you are finished. And one more thing; the design of this house is of such a nature that if even a single piece is not installed properly, the house will not stand. In such a case you obviously will have to exercise extreme care to make sure that each cut of the saw, each swing of the hammer will do exactly what it must do, or the entire house project will fail, and if there is just that single mistake, there is no house.

That is the case made by Cosmic Constant. This isn't like the Wright Brothers where they could go back and re-build it with more parts from the shop. There were no more parts, no shop, and no do-overs. It was all-or-nothing first time. The entire Project Earth was certainly not a failure. On the contrary the mere fact that life has been sustained here against all odds is an example of that success. The materials were used in exactly the correct way so that we could live the way we do. A second part of Cosmic Constant then looks at the reality that there CANNOT be any changes if life is to be sustained. ANY changes in the delicate balance required would be catastrophic.

[Chicago1871]

Whether or not God created life someplace else other than earth is not relevant to the reality that there is a very narrow set of circumstances demanded for life on THIS planet to exist. What He may have done in other areas of the universe is something we cannot know, and frankly, we shouldn't care.
So you're against programs like SETI?
I don't seem to be able to convey the point of the Cosmic Constant that is so critical. Let me try it one last time:

Imagine you are starting to build a house on a very isolated island. Due to the extreme isolation of this place, and the difficulty in getting material delivered, you will get only a single delivery of precisely enough material with which to build your house, and not a single rafter, roofing tile or even a nail left over when you are finished. And one more thing; the design of this house is of such a nature that if even a single piece is not installed properly, the house will not stand. In such a case you obviously will have to exercise extreme care to make sure that each cut of the saw, each swing of the hammer will do exactly what it must do, or the entire house project will fail, and if there is just that single mistake, there is no house.
A more accurate example would be that a near infinite number of people with varied construction abilities, over billions of years, all tried to build a house with the same requirements you provide. Chances are that at least one house will meet the requirements at some point in time.
That is the case made by Cosmic Constant. This isn't like the Wright Brothers where they could go back and re-build it with more parts from the shop. There were no more parts, no shop, and no do-overs. It was all-or-nothing first time.
Except it was all-or-nothing over and over and over with spare parts galore.

[dj43]

But how can you know that what you do understand isn't foolish in and of itself?
Because what I do see works correctly time and again.

I didn't say most scientists were non-believers, I said that most non-believers subscribed to scientific theories.
I agree. That is self-evident. Non-believers have chosen not to have a choice in this matter. Making no choice is the same as choosing to not believe. In the end, it is all the same. Non-believers are left with the results of the choice they made.

CS Lewis had a very descriptive way of stating the answer to this matter. He said, "When you can no longer stand up, it does you no good to say you choose to lay down."

[dj43]

So you're against programs like SETI?

A more accurate example would be that a near infinite number of people with varied construction abilities, over billions of years, all tried to build a house with the same requirements you provide. Chances are that at least one house will meet the requirements at some point in time.

Except it was all-or-nothing over and over and over with spare parts galore.
Work calls. I'll get back to this later.

[Foosinho]

So I'm curious. Why DID you cease believing in God, if you don't mind my asking?
It's not really germane to this discussion, but basically because there wasn't any evidence to support that belief - and therefore I changed my conclusion to "unknown and unlikely". If you want to continue this side discussion, I'd be glad to do it via PM or another thread.

Whether or not God created life someplace else other than earth is not relevant to the reality that there is a very narrow set of circumstances demanded for life on THIS planet to exist. What He may have done in other areas of the universe is something we cannot know, and frankly, we shouldn't care.
Have you considered the fact that we so precisely require *this* environment because *this* environment is the one we evolved in?

There are unanswered questions still in this field - our only frame of reference is our own existence. It is possible that there could be non-carbon-based life in some other environment that would be toxic to us. Abiogenesis research should help us understand not only how *we* came to be, but also potentially other paths. Maybe abiogenesis is "easy", and can happen under a wide variety of "pea-soup" cocktail environments.

Imagine you are starting to build a house on a very isolated island.
Chicago1871 already addressed this point, but let me add an addendum - I'm sure there are plenty of places where the house did not get built correctly. Maybe in some places, those pieces were assembled into a different house, somehow. When you've got millions upon millions of independent trials, nearly anything is possible.

[Samarkand]

Well said[/b] your Eminence! Well said. This then is the true Catholic message, as opposed to Observatory Director George Coyne's laughable appeal to the National Science Teachers Association. I'd recommend that he stay with astromomy as his primary focus....
If reading were your forte, you would have read that George Coyne is a priest, so I think you'll find that his ministry, vocation and office are his primary focus, not that you'd understand that, not being a Catholic 'n' all.......

[Samarkand]

As to the size of the universe, and how that may increase the possibilities, that only underlines how totally unique earth remains. How is it that this planet, with its unique balance, came about despite this amazing balance that must be maintained? And that we have see no evidence of life anyplace else? This only points the more strongly to the reality that earth had to have something setting the early development right in order for anything to EVER be possible.

Though we may speculate about the idea that some form of life may exist someplace else simply based on our thinking about odds, we have absolutely no evidence of anything like that happening anyplace, at least not in the form that we know to support life.How big is the universe? Exactly how much of it have humans explored? (And Star Trek don't count!)

My mother lost her engagement ring on a 3 mile long beach some years before I was born. When I heard about this, I went looking for it (dutiful son and all that). After 10 minutes and having searched approximately 3 whole square feet, I gave up saying that it wasn't there. I was 5.

And you are similarly so certain that there's no life elsewhere in this universe.

[Mel Brennan]

The "Bible plus E.T." portion of the discussion, I think, deserves it's own thread...thus, like magic, it has it's own thread.

Primitives would see that and call me God, like Ewoks and C-3PO. ;)

[christopher d]

It's not really germane to this discussion, but basically because there wasn't any evidence to support that belief - and therefore I changed my conclusion to "unknown and unlikely". If you want to continue this side discussion, I'd be glad to do it via PM or another thread.


To follow Mel's lead, ask and ye shall receive (http://www.bigsoccer.com/forum/showthread.php?t=316843).

I'd call it magic, but I forgot to cast a circle first... ;)

[royalstilton]

A.) Has jackall to do with evolution. B.) The chances of me being here, when looked at over even 1000 years are infintesimal. My father and mother meeting? They were born 8 years apart 1000+ miles away. Three of grandparents fought in wars in which they might easily have been killed. Etc. My existence is certainly a contingency, in the philosophical sense. However, because I am here, the best and most scientifically provable explanation for my existence is this extremely unlikely chain of events.
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what is clear about your existence is that all of the necessary requirements for your birth were met prior to your birth. there were ova and spermatozoa abundantly in evidence, and the specific two of those "seeds" were introduced to one another by a set of rather fortuitous occasions ( or dysfortuitous, depending on ones viewpoint ).

let us be clear on something. none of us knows what the requisites for life on earth are. we know that they have been met, but the difference between the prerequisites for your specific birth and for life as a particular phenomenon is so vastly complex that trying to explain or grasp its complexity is beyond us.

whether your birth was likely or not is immaterial. it was possible.

now, life was possible, as we know, but was it possible because of a random set of circumstances or because of divine intervention?

there is no way to be certain of the answer to that question.

no. way.

[royalstilton]

A more accurate example would be that a near infinite number of people with varied construction abilities, over billions of years, all tried to build a house with the same requirements you provide. Chances are that at least one house will meet the requirements at some point in time.
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not sure of this...

where did the raw material come from, and where did the original plans come from?

[vivzig]

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what is clear about your existence is that all of the necessary requirements for your birth were met prior to your birth. there were ova and spermatozoa abundantly in evidence, and the specific two of those "seeds" were introduced to one another by a set of rather fortuitous occasions ( or dysfortuitous, depending on ones viewpoint ).
Ouch! And, not a word (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=dysfortuitous)! :)

let us be clear on something. none of us knows what the requisites for life on earth are. we know that they have been met, but the difference between the prerequisites for your specific birth and for life as a particular phenomenon is so vastly complex that trying to explain or grasp its complexity is beyond us.
A. That's why I used a metaphor. B. As someone else pointed out, 100 years ago we couldn't undestand much less produce a nuclear reaction. Why are you so quick to give up?
whether your birth was likely or not is immaterial. it was possible.
And life on Earth was not? Didn't we just finish conceeding that we just couldn't answer this question...yet?
now, life was possible, as we know, but was it possible because of a random set of circumstances or because of divine intervention?
For one argument (did god provide the spark), see above. For the evolution argument, the question and the answer are completely irrelevant. I, for one, am completely at home with the idea that god (necessarily existing in this action, and this action alone, whatever other properties it may have) provided that spark for the universe to do it's Big Bangy thing. Hell, I even believe that god invented evolution, if only through this action, since I hate first causes arguments. But that has jackall to do with Genesis, or the Norse God's Cow licking the universe out of the primeval ooze.

there is no way to be certain of the answer to that question.

no. way.
And yet you and your Bible are sure that you have answered it.

[royalstilton]

A. That's why I used a metaphor. B. As someone else pointed out, 100 years ago we couldn't understand much less produce a nuclear reaction. Why are you so quick to give up?

And yet you and your Bible are sure that you have answered it.
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i didn't want to go with "unfortuitous", but i over reached.

we could not understand a nuclear reaction 100 years ago? somehow i think we could. we knew about atoms and we knew about energy. it is easy to imagine that someone could have envisioned a scenario whereby something would release energy by being broken apart.

before we knew about atoms, a different story.

not to be picky, but it isn't my Bible. oooops. that was picky. :)

i think i see evidence where you see none. i experience a sense of certainty, but i know i could be wrong, and that is the faith part.

[spejic]

First off, we have never seen any of the intermediate links that Darwin admitted were vital to his theory.This is wrong, especially in the field of human history because so much effort has gone into looking for it. We have something like 20 different species showing a clear branching from the common ape-human ancestor to modern man and apes. And Darwin did not think that having a complete record of intermediate links was vital to his theory - in fact, he describes clearly a series of explanations as to why such a record would probably never be found in Origin of Species.Second, some fossils we have found have been put forth as something that were later shown to be something else. archaeopteriyx is such an example. It was originally purported to be the link we were seeking between reptiles and birds, and lots of folks bought into that idea because it fit what they WANTED to be true. In the end, it not only wasn't the half-bird, half-reptile creature they sought. It was ALL bird, of a species that became extinct long before the time frame sought for the intermediate link.It is not all bird. It has no bill, teeth, unfused trunk vertebrae, neck connecting to the skull from the rear, long bony tail with free vertebrae, and dozens of other features that are found in dinosaurs and not in any birds.Another such example was archaeoraptor, another misrepresentation to try establish that link that paleontologists sought.The Chinese "archaeoraptor" was an amalgum of fossils put together by an amateur fossil hunter looking to make something that would sell. It was never claimed by scientists to be a missing link, and in fact they found out the truth of it in a matter of weeks. This is actually a story of science in action, if you didn't only get the creationist's version of it. Besdies, there are plenty of actual links between dinosaurs and birds, like the dromeosaur (http://research.amnh.org/vertpaleo/dinobird.html).I won't go into Haeckel's fraud or Java man, even though those lies did have a great deal of influence on the swing of the pendulum on their own, and they are now withdrawn as evidence. But like the accused man who makes front-page headlines when the accusation is first made, the news of his exoneration gets 2 column inches buried on the 7th page. IOW, people once falsely convinced do not always hear the news that the original claim was falsely based.The original claim is totally and completely secure and none of these things threaten it in the slightest. Of course there is going to be mistakes and fraud because science is done by humans and - guess what - humans do those kind of things. But science has its own error corrections mechanisms, and all these things are caught and corrected by scientists.

And now that we can actually study DNA, we have an alternate system of studying the history of how animals evolved that doesn't have many of the problems of fossil study.