Evolution's bottom line

National Center for Science Education ^ | 12 May 2006 | Staff

[PatrickHenry]

In his op-ed "Evolution's bottom line," published in The New York Times (May 12, 2006), Holden Thorp emphasizes the practical applications of evolution, writing, "creationism has no commercial application. Evolution does," and citing several specific examples.

In places where evolution education is undermined, he argues, it isn't only students who will be the poorer for it: "Will Mom or Dad Scientist want to live somewhere where their children are less likely to learn evolution?" He concludes, "Where science gets done is where wealth gets created, so places that decide to put stickers on their textbooks or change the definition of science have decided, perhaps unknowingly, not to go to the innovation party of the future. Maybe that's fine for the grownups who'd rather stay home, but it seems like a raw deal for the 14-year-old girl in Topeka who might have gone on to find a cure for resistant infections if only she had been taught evolution in high school."

Thorp is chairman of the chemistry department at the University of North Carolina.

[mlc9852]

Absolutely

[ml1954]

A sane person would bet that the reason the other 10s of millions of christian germans were virulently anti-semitic, is the same reason Hitler was anti-semitic.

Well said and succinct.

[donh]

Have you researched Luther as well?

Martin Luther was possibly the most virulent jew-hater of all time, as attested to by his writings. One of the reasons the Lutherans had for breaking off from Rome was the perception that Rome had grown soft on its doctrinally and biblically-based obligation to press and afflict the Jews into being baptized and drawn into the catholic church--by, for example, kidnapping their children to be baptized and brought up in the RC church. And, incredibly enough, to modern perceptions, that was far from the worst of it.

[grey_whiskers]

Nobody died and put you in charge of my argument. If you can't see the connection between pieces of my argument, I can't force it on you, but let me just suggest, for conjecture's sake, that when I make a chain of argument, the pieces have something to do with each other.

You are acting like a troll, don. I didn't claim to be in charge of the argument. I answered one point out of your argument and made it quite clear I just plain wasn't interested in the others. The condition of Adolph's soul is not the same thing as a historical analysis of anti-Semitism on the continent. One can lead to a discussion of the other, but it doesn't HAVE to.

It's in severe doubt in devout christian apologist circles. It is not in severe doubt in historical circles, such as those of the custodians of the USArmy intelligence evaluation.

Claiming that one of the greatest mass murderers in history was "really a Christian" is ONLY going to cause you to lose all credibility, except with the atheist club around here.

Hitler co-opted elements of Christian theology to make his race-based pseudo-philosophy more palatable in the social context of the times. Just as Bubba and Jimmuh Carter donned the mantle of evangelical Christianity in the States to further their careers.

Oh, indeed, how was anti-semitism "steeped into the culture of Europe", other than by the Catholic Church's 1400 years of intense propaganda?

That's a question for a professional historian. Like I said, that's not what I am concerned with.

Hitler, like millions of other Germans, was anti-semitic because he was educated in a famously anti-semitic church

Yup. But somehow none of the other German leaders, from the Kaiser to Hindeburg, ever felt it their duty to engage in genocide; and to invade the rest of Europe and Russia; and to exterminate as many Jews as they could reach in every country they subjugatted. Hitler was an outlier in the data. For you to insist that he was a mainstream, sincere Christian will not earn you any credibility.

Cheers!

[newguy357]

But the selection process itself is not random.

And I haven't said otherwise. Fill a bucket full of red and green jelly beans at random. Now select five. Repeat this experiment a thousand times, always filling the bucket at random. The selection process is not random (always "select five" or in the case of evolution "select that which reproduces most") yet the overall result is still random because you're beginning with a random distribution.

[conserv371]

That's the beauty. God is without origin. I am the First and the Last. Everything outside of God has an origin.

[conserv371]

Jesus commanded alms to be given. The body of Christ is an organization. The Apostle Paul told Gentile churches to support the Jewish church in Jerusalem. If no offerings, no maintenance, support missionaries, different groups in churches, etc. That is why most churches have yearly budgets for their congregations.

[conserv371]

So it seems that you are content with the condemnation you have heaped on yourself. We choose to sin. God is perfect by nature. We cannot justify ourselves before God which why Christ lived the life He did and died in our place. Whether or not we like it we have earned death (eternal separation from God)by our sinning. This world is condemned, whether we like or not. We are all stand guilty before God. We, in ourselves, cannot change that condition. God's nature is sinless. He lives in a sinless place. Only God can change a human, making him fit for heaven. Our only hope is someone who has paid our sin debt which is Jesus Christ.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Fill a bucket full of red and green jelly beans at random. Now select five. Repeat this experiment a thousand times, always filling the bucket at random. The selection process is not random..."

The selection WOULD be random in your jelly bean example. It's not at all how natural selection works. It matters not if you selected 5 at a time or 1 or 20. The jelly beans selected have nothing to do with whether they are green or red. When you were finished collecting them 5 at a time, you would end up with the exact same ratio of red to green. What you are describing is a random selection process, not just a random distribution.

With natural selection, there is a bias toward one trait or another(technically it's the entire suite of traits that make up an organism that gets selected), and that bias comes from the environment. The whole point is that some traits are better than others in any particular environment. Red does not provide the same fitness as green, to use the jelly bean analogy. Instead of randomly selecting every jelly bean you pick up, natural selection would bias the results so that perhaps you take twice as many red as green. Even if the amount of red was small compared to the green at the beginning, in time it would dominate. (Your jellybean analogy doesn't take into account reproduction and selection over many generations, where *jelly beans* would get lost (die before reproduction) and others that were biased for would multiply beyond their original numbers).

Natural selection is not random.

[donh]

You are acting like a troll, don. I didn't claim to be in charge of the argument. I answered one point out of your argument and made it quite clear I just plain wasn't interested in the others.

These arguments are intimately entertwined, and I have a point, and I care about it; this is not a rhetoric class exercise for me, and you're not the daddy of this conversation.

The condition of Adolph's soul is not the same thing as a historical analysis of anti-Semitism on the continent. One can lead to a discussion of the other, but it doesn't HAVE to.

If you don't want to argue about something, just refrain from doing so--sheesh.

The condition of Adolf's soul came up as an epistimological point on account of your question concerning my "certainty". If you don't want answers, don't ask questions, and particularly don't follow that up by continuing this inappropriate attempt to control the conversation by by patronizing me. Who taught you to argue in this spinless manner? It lacks onions.

It's in severe doubt in devout christian apologist circles. It is not in severe doubt in historical circles, such as those of the custodians of the USArmy intelligence evaluation.

Claiming that one of the greatest mass murderers in history was "really a Christian" is ONLY going to cause you to lose all credibility,

How someone feels about some thesis is not a measure of its likelihood.

except with the atheist club around here.

And historians not affiliated the the RC church, and only a handful of those, and the USArmy intelligence branch, and pretty much any of his biographers.

Hitler co-opted elements of Christian theology to make his race-based pseudo-philosophy more palatable in the social context of the times. Just as Bubba and Jimmuh Carter donned the mantle of evangelical Christianity in the States to further their careers.

Not a relevant argument. There can be no serious doubt that Hitler started out christian, and got his anti-jewish bias from the same source as those to whom he appealed.

Oh, indeed, how was anti-semitism "steeped into the culture of Europe", other than by the Catholic Church's 1400 years of intense propaganda?

That's a question for a professional historian. Like I said, that's not what I am concerned with.

Right, because you prefer not to cope with the tellingly obvious, about which there is no significant historical doubt, even within the RC church.

Hitler, like millions of other Germans, was anti-semitic because he was educated in a famously anti-semitic church Yup. But somehow none of the other German leaders, from the Kaiser to Hindeburg, ever felt it their duty to engage in genocide; and to invade the rest of Europe and Russia; and to exterminate as many Jews as they could reach in every country they subjugatted. Hitler was an outlier in the data.

Hitler is extremely far from the only christian who has murdered jews wholesale in christian countries. The fact that many people refrain from murdering jews, doesn't gainsay that many have, historically, in the name of christianity.

For you to insist that he was a mainstream, sincere Christian will not earn you any credibility.

...with christian apologists, which I already conceded.

[newguy357]

Woh, woh you took my jelly bean analogy WAY beyond its intended bounds. The only thing I was using it for was to illustrate a non-random selection scheme ("DRAW FIVE") from a random source ("throw any number of reds in greens in a bucket"), giving a random result--my analogy goes no further and is not intended to. Don't read in anything more than that. Of course reds and greens would change if it were an evolutionary analogy--but it's not. It's not a generational analogy of any kind. It's only an analogy to non-random selection from a random source.

The overall RESULTS of evolution are random. That is the only thing I've been trying to say in this discussion. Natural selection is NON-random--we agree. The most reproductively able will dominate the evolutionary path. So what. The selection process is non-random but the initial traits from which we choose ARE random. Therefore the overall evolutionary process is random.

Do you believe if life were removed from the earth and the evolutionary process began again from the simplest organism that evolution would proceed in such a manner as to produce the identical organisms that populate the earth now? Non-random evolution forces that conclusion.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"It's only an analogy to non-random selection from a random source."

But it wasn't a nonrandom selection, it was entirely random. You took every jellybean you picked up, regardless of whether it was red or green. The colors made absolutely no difference as to which ones were selected.

"The overall RESULTS of evolution are random."

Not of natural selection. Natural selection makes sure that not just any organism survives to reproduce. It's not to say there aren't random elements involved; a freak accident can kill the fittest individual. What's important is that every individual is unique; the probability of that one individual survives to reproduce is not the same as any other's. Those that survive to reproduce do not do so at random; far from it.

"The most reproductively able will dominate the evolutionary path. So what."

It matters to who lives and who dies.

"The selection process is non-random but the initial traits from which we choose ARE random. Therefore the overall evolutionary process is random."

There is an element of randomness, but that is not the most important element.

"Do you believe if life were removed from the earth and the evolutionary process began again from the simplest organism that evolution would proceed in such a manner as to produce the identical organisms that populate the earth now?"

No, but that doesn't mean that the evolutionary process is random. It means it's contingent on what happened before it; it means the end is not predictable. That is not the same as being random. In fact, if it were random, it would be more predictable.

[RunningWolf]

This particular piece of fraud had passed all the checks and balances, consensus & peer review and was only uncovered by accident, not by any astute objective critical analysis.

The scandal only came to light when Prof Protsch was caught trying to sell his department's entire chimpanzee skull collection to the United States. I have not seen any eveidnec presented that the scientidifc communti had doudts on this finding.

Indeed his find was /a crucial Hamburg skull fragment/ and to to global acclaim.

"Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago," said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. "Prof Protsch's work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish."

An inquiry later established that he had also passed off fake fossils as real ones and had plagiarised other scientists' work.

That's how science works - checks and balances, consensus, peer review science working as it is supposed to/sarc>

Wolf

[js1138]

The selection process is non-random but the initial traits from which we choose ARE random. Therefore the overall evolutionary process is random.

This is nonsense at face value. There are many kinds of processes with random inputs and non-random outcomes. A casino can operate just fine with a completely random source for its various games. The more perfectly random, the more predictable the outcome.

In evolution it is selection that shapes outcomes, not the source of variation.

[aNYCguy]

Everything that we see has an origin. Where does the first amoeba come from? It has to have an origin.

God is without origin... Everything outside of God has an origin.

So, in other words, your argument is "Some things have an origin. Some things do not have an origin. God exists."

Not particularly convincing, in my humble opinion.

[newguy357]

Is the location at which the mutation-causing gamma ray strikes the DNA a random one?

[Elsie]

Jesus commanded alms to be given.

Commanded? Could you point out CH & Verse?

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Is the location at which the mutation-causing gamma ray strikes the DNA a random one?"

Mostly, but again that is irrelevant. The mutations that increase the reproductive success of the organism will be favored, while those that decrease it will be removed.

It doesn't matter what process produces the variation. What matters is that variation happens, and that this variation is in significant part heritable. The variation could be produced by completely random mutations, or it could be designed by Zeus. The selection process would be exactly the same. The selection process is not random.

[Coyoteman]

That's how science works - checks and balances, consensus, peer review science working as it is supposed to/sarc>

What went wrong that you hate science and scientists so much?

[Almagest]

<< So it seems that you are content with the condemnation you have heaped on yourself. >>


I leave condemation to yous guys. LOL!


<< We choose to sin. >>


Can we choose not to? Are we able to avoid sin? A large segment of Christianity says no -- another large segment says yes. When y'all get it worked out, let me know.

From my fifty years of studying the Bible, it seems to clearly say that we sin because we are sinners. The sin nature is inherited from Adam. We are condemned because we are "in Adam."

If you are in that group that says we can avoid sin entirely, but we "choose" to sin anyway -- are you ready to accept that someone, somewhere may have avoided sin entirely by "choosing not to"? If not -- then saying "we choose to sin" is meaningless.


<< Whether or not we like it we have earned death (eternal separation from God)by our sinning. This world is condemned, whether we like or not. >>


Hank will beat the hell out of you forever and ever because you are incapable of kissing his feet. Why are you incapable? Because he made you that way? Why did he make you that way? Because your great-great-great-granddaddy ate a piece of off-limits fruit.


<< We are all stand guilty before God. We, in ourselves, cannot change that condition. >>


AHA! If we cannot change it -- then we didn't "choose it." You can't have it both ways. If we can "choose to sin" then we can "choose NOT to sin." If we can "choose not to sin," then we CAN help it. Your argument is running in circles.


<< God's nature is sinless. He lives in a sinless place. Only God can change a human, making him fit for heaven. Our only hope is someone who has paid our sin debt which is Jesus Christ. >>


Unless you kiss Hank's feet, he will beat the crap out of you forever. You don't have the ability to do so, unless he gives you that ability. But it's your fault.

I preached it for thirty-seven years. Ran myself in circles just as you are doing to yourself. But since, according to you, I am condemned to getting the crap beat out of me for eternity -- why not just leave me alone and let me enjoy what little time I have here before all that starts?

I like Christians. I like Christian ethics. You won't have any success getting me to accept Christian doctrines about sin and salvation -- so it would be a better use of your time to just "shake the dust off your feet" with respect to me and my "condition" -- and take comfort in your assurance that Hank will beat the crap out of me forever.