Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: xm177e2

Very easily done. Science has not successfully identified the mechanism of evolutionary change. Mutation and natural selection doesn't explain complex, seemingly purposeful adaptations. This is a scientific, not a religious observation. The problem scientists create for themselves is they wish to see no purpose or plan in nature beyond random occurrence. The scientists reject God, therefore they reject anything that sounds like planned movement in nature. It all just has to be happening because atoms randomly bounced into one another. But we see that nature, at least here on Earth, has evolved in a direction toward greater complexity and awareness. If evolution is merely leading to greater survival of the fittest, it could have stopped with sharks or with a shark that can defend against the few natural enemies a shark posseses. Instead, relatively fragile human beings are sitting around debating on the Internet - and still being eaten by sharks.


84 posted on 03/09/2005 2:53:30 PM PST by Williams
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 61 | View Replies ]


To: Williams
If evolution is merely leading to greater survival of the fittest, it could have stopped with sharks

Yep, they do real great on land, in shallow water, in fresh water, and in the air. They also survive well on plankton, shrimp, carrion and plants.

90 posted on 03/09/2005 2:56:29 PM PST by antiRepublicrat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 84 | View Replies ]

To: Williams
Science has not successfully identified the mechanism of evolutionary change.

Micro-evolution is widely accepted, even among creationists. That is a "mechanism of evolutionary change."

It does explain.

The problem scientists create for themselves is they wish to see no purpose or plan in nature beyond random occurrence. The scientists reject God, therefore they reject anything that sounds like planned movement in nature. It all just has to be happening because atoms randomly bounced into one another.

I don't think you have to reject God to accept that the natural world operates according to very simple laws, and that this means "random" situations will befall different members of a species.

But we see that nature, at least here on Earth, has evolved in a direction toward greater complexity and awareness.

This is not true. Some species have evolved towards greater complexity and intelligence (awareness). But other species have not. Some species merely evolve to become more adept at handling their environment. For new species of bacteria, they aren't any more or less intelligent than the species they evolved from. They aren't evolving greater intelligence. So only a small fraction of evolution involves species becoming more intelligent.

And the fact that intelligence has evolved is not contrary to evolutionary theory in any way.

If evolution is merely leading to greater survival of the fittest, it could have stopped with sharks or with a shark that can defend against the few natural enemies a shark posseses. Instead, relatively fragile human beings are sitting around debating on the Internet - and still being eaten by sharks.

Fragile??? Man is the ultimate predator, at least as far as the Earth has seen (Predators are the ultimate predator, but they only exist in comic books and movies and video games). Man is an awesome predator. We've killed a member of pretty much every species on Earth (certainly almost every land animal; there may be some ocean species that have escaped our violence by living deep enough under the Earth). Individually, man might be weak compared to lions, tigers, and bears, but that doesn't matter to evolutionists. If we work as a group, then that's how we should be measured (biologists measure how things function in the real world, not how things would function in artificial settings). And if, as a group, we kill anything we want to kill, then we're the ultimate.

99 posted on 03/09/2005 3:05:52 PM PST by xm177e2 (Stalinists, Maoists, Ba'athists, Pacifists: Why are they always on the same side?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 84 | View Replies ]

To: Williams
If evolution is merely leading to greater survival of the fittest, it could have stopped with sharks or with a shark that can defend against the few natural enemies a shark posseses. Instead, relatively fragile human beings are sitting around debating on the Internet - and still being eaten by sharks.

First of all, humans have not evolved from fish. You seem to picture the tree of life as a sort of ladder with humans on the top, sharks farther down, et cetera down to bacteria. It is nothing of the kind.

Anyway, the evolution of complex organisms is a fine example of what is called a 'random walk.' Think about it: the initial life forms were necessarily simple and could not evolve to be simpler. But a subset could evolve to be more complex, so it did. With time there arose niches for more complex forms that were not there initially. For instance, certain unicellular organisms (prokaryotes) would band together into multicellular ones (eukaryotes), trading off independent reproduction for other benefits. In brief, the scope of complexity started out at rock bottom and could only increase by random changes as time went one.

As an analogy, think of companies. The first businesses to arise in a world would probably be one person efforts. In time it might be profitable for some such businesses to fuse and expand. Eventually you would observe a great range of company scales from one to many thousand employees, with the distribution skewed heavily toward the former. Noone would suggest that this development required a grand plan to come about. The increase in complexity happened because it could happen, whereas a decrease in complexity could not.

127 posted on 03/09/2005 3:22:33 PM PST by Tamberlane
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 84 | View Replies ]

To: Williams
If evolution is merely leading to greater survival of the fittest, it could have stopped with sharks or with a shark that can defend against the few natural enemies a shark posseses. Instead, relatively fragile human beings are sitting around debating on the Internet - and still being eaten by sharks.

And yet, last time I looked The Sharks are losing

154 posted on 03/09/2005 4:48:06 PM PST by Oztrich Boy (The true danger is when Liberty is nibbled away, for expedients. - Edmund Burke (1799))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 84 | View Replies ]

To: Williams

What a bunch of flapdoodle! LOL


172 posted on 03/09/2005 5:14:44 PM PST by shubi (Peace through superior firepower.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 84 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson