Evolution was, and is, a great notion

The Boston Globe ^ | 6/17/2003 | Chet Raymo

[Radix]

What was the greatest scientific idea of all time? The answer, I think, is clear: Evolution by natural selection, conceived more or less simultaneously by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace in the mid-19th century. It was their genius to imagine a way diverse organisms could arise from simple ancestors by purely natural process.

[qam1]

And I suppose you "listen" to the devil even today to get the "straight scoop"?

No I don't believe in the God or the Devil, If I heard from either one of them I would wonder who put what in my drink

Most people I know who listen to/follow the devil have the most horrible lives. He does not seem to take care of His own very well.

Besides some whack jobs I seen on the Discovery Channel (Who I don't really believe they believe in the Devil but rather I think they just want attention) I don't know anybody who claims to believe in the Devil. I think for the most part this Santanic cults are everywhere thing is just a big myth.

But anyhow speaking of the Devil (no pun intended) here is something else I always wondered. If this Heaven and Hell thingy is correct and bad people go to Hell where they are punished for by satan for eternity then isn't satan for lack of better words a "Good guy", He is punishing those who are evil right? So isn't he doing a needed service?

Think OJ Simpson, He got away with murder without any consequences and right now he is living a pretty good life. Now according to religion he may have escaped justice here on Earth but when OJ dies justice will be served to him by him burning in hell, Who will administer this justice? The devil of course, So doesn't the fact that OJ will be punished by the devil mean that the devil is doing good? According to religion all the devil really is, is basically a prison warden and prison wardens aren't bad they are doing a necessary service.

[PatrickHenry]

You've described all the reasons why many of us are participating in the evolution threads.

[Aric2000]

Good post, I agree 100%...

[Lurking Libertarian]

Evolutionary theory has actually regressed over the past 100 years, as again and again their premises have been proven false

Lots of vague assertions, no supporting data. Which premises of evolution have proven false?

There is not a single piece of compelling evidence to support evolution, while there are tons of evidence (actually, the absence of evidence that would have to be there) that argues against it.

Once again, some supporting data for your sweeping claims might be helpful. Let me suggest you look at 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution.

[qam1]

Genesis I

1:21

And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

1:22

And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.

1:23

And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

.......

1:26

And God said, Let us (BTW Who is US, Is there more than one God)  make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

1:27

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

.....

1:31

And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Clear as day that according to G1 all the animals are already there when God made Man

Now Genesis II

2:18

And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

2:19

And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

Clear as day God made animals after he made Adam according to G2.

Sorry but no matter how you spin it they don't match

As for if Adam named of every species of Animal or just every "kind", I think it's pretty clear

read 2:19 again

And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called EVERY living creature, that was the name thereof.

[Lurking Libertarian]

there are holes in the theory of evolution that are just wrong. Where are the "transitional" species? And there should be many of them!

There are many of them--fish to reptile transitionals, reptile to mammal transitionals, land mammal to whale transitionals, and lots of others. Look here.

Homo Hablis just became Homo Eructus with nothing in between?

The human line is a great example of transitional fossils-- we have many fossils, all found in the fossil record in the correct order, all showing gradual increase in brain size and erect posture, gradual change from ape-like teeth to human-like teeth, and each being found together with tools of gradually increasing complexity.

What about the fact the Homo Sapiens and Homo Neanderthal were nearly identical?

Well, what about it? Both had a common ancestor. Horses and zebras are nearly identical, as are dogs and coyotes, or leopards and cheetahs. What's your point?

[Jeff Gordon]

Outstanding Post!

[AmericaUnited]

Gee, you provided dump trucks worth of ammo. Where does one start?...

[AmericaUnited]

I see you put "day" in big bold print. Do you even KNOW what the meaning of the word is in Hebrew, the original language of the book of Genesis?

I'm guessing you don't have a clue. I'm also guessing that's also the reason why your so confused.

[AmericaUnited]

Ok, I'll go easy on you and give you a huge hint: The Sun and Moon were not created until the "fourth" day. So, as most Hebrew scholars know, "day" as used in Genesis, meant a "period of time", not a 24 hour day.

[Aric2000]

SO, what is exactly the problem with evolutiom then?

[Stultis]

Whether or not you believe in Creation, there is simply nothing out there to support evolution.

---

A Translocation Between Man and Chimpanzee Chromosomes

---

On the left of the diagram is human chromosome number 2 (of 23). On the right of the diagram are the matching chromosomes from a chimpanzee.

If you compare carefully, you will see that all the details line up. However, obviously something has happened: a translocation mutation has changed the number of chromosomes.

The Theory of Evolution explains this by saying that the two species have a common ancestor. Since chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos all have 24 chromosome pairs, it is assumed that the common ancestor had 24 pairs. Since the time of that ancestor, the human line has had a fusion mutation that turned 24 into 23.

I am not sure what the Creationist explanation is. Since both arrangements function well, we cannot argue that Intelligent Design is at work, or that one is a "degraded" version of the other. Saying that humans and chimps are different "designs" or "kinds" is unconvincing, since then there is a completely unnecessary amount of similarity.

The other major visible difference is that there are nine inversions between man and chimp.

 

 

Technical details about the image

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Last modified: 29 November 1998

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[Timmy]

Gee, then. There must be, like, millions of fossils showing the transition from chimps to people. Not to mention all those half-chimp, half-people running around. If that's the best you can do, can you say, "Falsified?"

[bondserv]

Wow, where to start.

The moon gives off it's own light instead of reflecting it from the sun,

The Bible does not say that the moon gives off its own light. It calls it the lesser light in the sky. You are thinking 100 watt light vs. 40 watt light, it says nothing about the moon being a source of light, nothing like it burns brightly in the night.

Stars are not bodies like our sun but instead they are little lights stuck on a Solid firmament around the Earth and they can fall down anytime.

Today if it is overcast someone will say, "there is no sun today", but you wouldn't say that person thinks the sun left for the day. We still call a meteor shower a falling star. Does that mean we think that it is a falling star like the sun? And where does it say the firmament is solid and the stars are stuck on it?

Diseases aren't caused by bacteria and viruses (which despite their importance to humans aren't even mentioned in the bible)but instead are caused because God is punishing you...

You must be aware of the book of Leviticus, and the sanitary rules that God handed down to the Hebrews. Kosher laws, Hand washing, Abstaining during a period... These are all related to preventing disease. God even had the Hebrews walk outside camp and dig a hole and bury their human waste.

...like creationism over science including the lies (Like the 2nd law BS) that go with it than they can believe anything.

You continue to ignore the destructiveness of nature, and the neccessity for the input of information to create order out of chaos. Your closet will never straighten itself out, it takes the input of intelligent information to organize it. As Pasteur said without life you cannot get life. Without the input of intelligent information you cannot have organized complexity.

Though the information in our genetics is degrading, it is still very functional. God coded in microevolution to tan our skin, callous our overworked hands, strengthen a beak, but it is all within the limits of the preexisting genetic code.

[Aric2000]

NICE, VERY NICE!!!

[Aric2000]

NICE, VERY NICE!!!

[qam1]

Ok, I'll go easy on you and give you a huge hint: The Sun and Moon were not created until the "fourth" day. So, as most Hebrew scholars know, "day" as used in Genesis, meant a "period of time", not a 24 hour day.

What the hell are you talking about, It the context of the post it doesn't matter if a day was 24 hours, 24 months, 24 years or 24 centuries. What matters is regardless of the "period of time" the sequences of Genesis condradict each other.

But speaking of the "fourth" day when the sun and moon were created, A day couldn't have been to long because plants were created on the third day. If a day was a long period of time all plants which need sunlight to grow would have shriveled and died. Hmmm, You would think an all knowing, All powerful God would know that!

Again it shows that Genesis was written by people who tried to explain the Universe with the limited knowledge they had at the time because it would make no sense for an all knowing God to do it that way, However to people living in BC times they wouldn't see a problem with what he wrote because at that time he wouldn't have any knowledge of Photosynthesis

[bondserv]

Adam did not run around the earth naming every single animal God made on the earth, God created and presented one of every kind where Adam stood to speed up the process.

God created a multiplicity of animals, on both the fifth and sixth day. In Genesis 2 he is referring to the presentation of every type of beast of the field, every type of fowl of the air and every type of cattle for Adam to name.

[Stultis]

If that's the best you can do

Far from it. More detail on this (one particular bit among mountains of evidence for common ancestry) here:

http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoEvidence.html (Click on "Comparison of the Human and Great Ape Chromosomes as Evidence for Common Ancestry" in the second paragraph of the introduction.)

e.g.

The biggest single chromosomal rearrangement among the four species is the unique number of chromosomes (23 pairs) found in humans as opposed to the apes (24 pairs). Examining this difference will allow us to see some of the differences expected between common ancestry as opposed to a common designer and address the second creationist objection listed above.

There are two potential naturalistic explanations for the difference in chromosome numbers - either a fusion of two separate chromosomes occurred in the human line, or a fission of a chromosome occurred among the apes. The evidence favors a fusion event in the human line. One could imagine that the fusion is only an apparent artifact of the work of a designer or the work of nature (due to common ancestry). The common ancestry scenario presents two predictions. Since the chromosomes were apparently joined end to end, and the ends of chromosomes (called the telomere) have a distinctive structure from the rest of the chromosome, there may be evidence of this structure in the middle of human chromosome 2 where the fusion apparently occurred. Also, since both of the chromosomes that hypothetically were fused had a centromere (the distinctive central part of the chromosome), we should see some evidence of two centromeres.

The first prediction (evidence of a telomere at the fusion point) is shown to be true in reference 3 . Telomeres in humans have been shown to consist of head to tail repeats of the bases 5'TTAGGG running toward the end of the chromosome. Furthermore, there is a characteristic pattern of the base pairs in what is called the pre-telomeric region, the region just before the telomere. When the vicinity of chromosome 2 where the fusion is expected to occur (based on comparison to chimp chromosomes 2p and 2q) is examined, we see first sequences that are characteristic of the pre-telomeric region, then a section of telomeric sequences, and then another section of pre-telomeric sequences. Furthermore, in the telomeric section, it is observed that there is a point where instead of being arranged head to tail, the telomeric repeats suddenly reverse direction - becoming (CCCTAA)3' instead of 5'(TTAGGG), and the second pre-telomeric section is also the reverse of the first telomeric section. This pattern is precisely as predicted by a telomere to telomere fusion of the chimpanzee (ancestor) 2p and 2q chromosomes, and in precisely the expected location. Note that the CCCTAA sequence is the reversed complement of TTAGGG (C pairs with G, and T pairs with A).

The second prediction - remnants of the 2p and 2q centromeres is documented in reference 4. The normal centromere found on human chromosome 2 lines up with the 2p chimp chromosome, and the remnants of the 2q chromosome is found at the expected location based upon the banding pattern.

Please explain, Timmy, how these facts to NOT constitute evidence for the common ancestry of humans and apes. Remember you claimed that there was NO evidence for evolution. You might approach this by explaining how creationism (or any non-evolutionary scenario) explains these detailed and very particular facts:

1) Why (apart from common ancestry) would the very distinctive and unmistakable DNA sequences of telomeres, usually only found at the ends of chromosomes, be arranged head to head at the exact place in the human 2 chromosome where a fusion event must have occured to correspond with the separate ape chromosomes?

2) Why (apart from common ancestry) would the human 2 chromosome have the clear and unmistakable remnant of a second centromere, at the exact place place required by the fusion hypothesis, when chromosomes only need and have one functional centromere?

[f.Christian]

If Patrick Henry hasn't fully learned this lesson, its liberal detractors are worse off: Their view of freedom has produced intellectual chaos. As Reformation leader Martin Luther once put it, sinful man is like a drunken fellow who falls off one side of his horse, only to get back up and fall off the other side. Luther's drunken man is looking more and more like an Ivy League professor."

"In a 1992 essay for Time, Robert Hughes excoriated intellectuals for empty theorizing while Soviet Communism disintegrated and Chinese Communism was bloodied by the Tiananmen Square massacre. "The world changes more deeply, widely, thrillingly than at any moment since 1917. . . and the American academic left keeps fretting about how phallocentricity is inscribed in Dickens' portrayal of Little Nell."13 Hughes shouldn't have been surprised. Much of the academy—discarding both moral and scholarly ideals—has been hobbled by intellectual vertigo for decades. Before Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind came Robert Nisbet's The Degradation of the Academic Dogma, and before that the 1945 Harvard Report, an attempt by a group of professors to envision a new purpose for the university in light of wartime threats to democracy. The committee came close to recommending a return to classical education. "The goal of education," it said, "is not in conflict with but largely includes the goals of religious education, education in the Western tradition, and education in modern democracy."14

"Not even the heartless evil of September 11, however, could produce a similar statement among today's academic gatekeepers. The war on terrorism, in fact, has stirred little serious reflection on the nature of religious conflict or America's political and spiritual resources to counter it. Instead, university-bred élites have treated us to lines like this: "We all know that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."15 That suggests not merely an intellectual crisis in the academy, but a moral one."

"Indeed, Allan Bloom argued poignantly that students were being denied access to the foundations of republican virtue—having in mind the Bible no less than The Republic or The Federalist. "A life based on the Book is closer to the truth, [because] it provides the material for deeper research in and access to the real nature of things," he wrote. "Without the great revelations, epics, and philosophies as part of our natural vision, there is nothing to see out there, and eventually little left inside."16 More recently, Bruce Cole, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, cautioned against neglecting the deepest sources of democratic values. "Defending our democracy demands more than successful military campaigns," he told an audience at New York University. "It also requires an understanding of the ideals, ideas and institutions that have shaped our country."

"In this sense, the Western moral tradition represents a much deeper rebuke to secular liberals than to religious fundamentalists."

"As Cole warns: "A nation that does not know ... why it exists, or what it stands for --- cannot be expected to long endure."

"The purpose of an open mind, G.K. Chesterton once advised, is the same as that of an open mouth: to shut it on something solid. By being forever open on nearly all questions, the secular academy has severed the link between real intellectual inquiry and moral conviction. Schools dedicated to the liberal arts tradition, especially those upholding Christian orthodoxy, are in the best position to mend the breach."

Joseph Loconte is the William E. Simon Fellow in Religion and a Free Society at the Heritage Foundation and a regular commentator on religion for National Public Radio.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Books & Culture magazine.

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