Posted on 02/05/2002 8:18:30 AM PST by JediGirl
For those of us who are constantly checking up on the crevo threads, why do you debate the merits (or perceived lack thereof) of evolution?
My point was merely to state that the mind-boggling possibilities are not a problem. Consider your own existence. What were the odds against your own parents meeting and mating? And given their marriage, what were the odds against one particular sperm making the glorious connection -- that particular month -- to encounter just the right ovum which was necessary to produce your own unique self? Pretty staggering odds, right? Now back up a generation and go through the same exercise for each set of grandparents; and so on back through all the generations. The odds against your existence are astronomical! Yet here you are. And each biological event in your long ancestral history was a perfectly natural (that is, biological) event. So you can look back and be amazed at how fortuitous it is that we are all here, but -- and here's the point I tried to make -- there is nothing unnatural about it.
The point of the probability argument is not that improbable, complex things don't happen, or merely the sheer number of events, but that life is ordered in such a way as to defy a natural explanation.
Well now, there's always the theory of evolution ...
I suspect you have a notion that each species must evolve the ultimate equipment for mastery of the environment. If that were the rule, I would need to answer your question. However, all that a species needs to do is survive well enough to produce offspring. The bats are doing well enough (if they weren't they'd be gone).
Gish shouldn't still be pushing that fraud charge by Hoyle at all, now that I think about it. This charge had been refuted by 1986 at the latest.
But that's Gish for you. One feature of his methods is that he may be corrected in one forum, one town, one night, but he's right back at saying the same thing the next time he has a new audience.
VadeRetro (Post 397) -- Here's an earlier critter, nowhere near as well feathered and nobody's calling it a bird . . .
RaceBannon (Post 402) -- The botom picture is new to me, are you calling that a bird, too? . . . You have no evidence it flew, you only know it 'looks' like a bird.
Is it easier to fire back if you pretend I'm calling the thing a bird? Sounds funny, but your mentor Gish likes this trick, too. On another thread lately, I saw an article in which he attacks Ambulocetus and other possible ancestors of whales as "laughable" because they had legs! (And what sort of "whale" has legs, etc. etc.?)
It's a Catch-22 game. Anything not a fully modern whale isn't a whale and so can't be a transitional to whales. Anything that is a fully modern whale can't be a transitional because it's "A whale! Just a whale!"
So, while it does appear corretions need to be made about whether DuBois hid date, the facts of what he dug up still show fully human skulls in the same strata as JAVA Man: That means humans lived with JAVA MAn, Java man could not be a link then, man was already there. It also shows Humans were around longer/or almost as long as Homo Erectus!
NO HE DID NOT. The human skulls were NOT found "nearby" Java Man, nor were they "at the same level" as Java Man. Take a deep breath, say to yourself "I'm strong enough to handle the Truth" to distract the Morton's Demon inside you, then read the passage again:
<sigh> The quality & honesty of creationist scholarship you're relying on should really embarrass you, Race...
Many creationists have claimed that Java Man, discovered by Eugene Dubois in 1893, was "bad science". Gish (1985) says that Dubois found two human skulls at nearby Wadjak at the same level and had kept them secret; that Dubois later decided Java Man was a giant gibbon; and that the bones do not come from the same individual. Most people would find Gish's meaning of "nearby" surprising: the Wadjak skulls were found 65 miles of mountainous countryside away from Java Man. Similarly for "at the same level": the Wadjak skulls were found in cave deposits in the mountains, while Java Man was found in river deposits in a flood plain (Fezer 1993). Nor is it true, as is often claimed, that Dubois kept the existence of the Wadjak skulls secret because knowledge of them would have discredited Java Man. Dubois briefly reported the Wadjak skulls in three separate publications in 1890 and 1892. Despite being corrected on this in a debate in 1982 and in print (Brace 1986), Gish has continued to make this claim, even stating, despite not having apparently read Dubois' reports, that they did not mention the Wadjak skulls (Fezer 1993).
But, even if that had been true, so what? It wouldn't have been like they found human remains in deposits that were too old. Finding evidence of H. erectus (like in your China article) in deposits that seem too young would imply that H. erectus had hung on as a smaller population somewhere, like a post-empire England. (I'm still reeling from the realization that England still exists - still an old-fashioned monarchy! - even though modern America evolved from England 225 years ago. Shouldn't the British all be dead by now?)
Look: Finding an ancient fossil species in younger strata than before is perfectly compatible with evolution. Finding a fossil species in significantly older strata than before is what's a potential falsification of evolution. (That's why it's not a tautology - two opposite scenarios would not both lead to the same conclusion.)
I agree with everything you said in the paragraph up to these words. That is the bone of contention, no pun intended. Were such events as abiogenesis and random mutation leading to ever increasing specified complexity of genetic information really biological events?
The analogy of sperm and egg is not really on point because it is highly likely that ONE of the sperm would complete its journey resulting in a new life. As to whether that would be ME or not you are right; it is highly unpredictable (in human terms). In the supposed prebiotic soup, though, it is highly unlikely that there would EVER be ANY result such as a protein forming by a series of random events. If we were playing a card game and you keep coming up with amazing, improbable winning hands, hand after hand, I would be led to believe that the game was fixed, not that the hands were random.
Cordially,
I'm not a biochemist, but I think there are numerous experiments which suggest otherwise. The building blocks of protiens aren't difficult to create, or so I've read. And when you've got oceans of such stuff bubbling around, and a billion years to play with, I don't believe we can really say with confidence that formation of protien is all that unlikely. But I'm not the expert here.
If we were playing a card game and you keep coming up with amazing, improbable winning hands, hand after hand, I would be led to believe that the game was fixed, not that the hands were random.
Cards aren't chemicals. Chemicals can and will combine in certain very specific ways. That reminds me of a post by jennyp, more than a year ago. When this playing card analogy was raised by someone else, she said a more apt analogy would be where some of the cards had velcro strips on them. You'd be assured of certain hands being dealt after the shuffle. This is much more like the results when you're talking about chemistry. In other words, chemical combinations aren't really random. If you have the right temperature, and some water and some carbon and some trace elements, and time -- lots of time -- certain combinations are just going to happen. Is that how the first self-replicating strands of protein came to exist? We just don't know. But it's a possibility. A long shot, perhaps. But what other natural [hee hee] explanation do we have going for us at the moment?
Sorry to jump in here. If you have the right temperature and the right concentrations it will take no time at all. The low probabilities are not in the kinetics but in the reaction path.
Yes ... well ... harumph ... I, uh, was getting around to that (cough, cough).
In the mean time, I do have one little question:
Perhaps I wasn't clear enough, but Shannon’s work is is not really germane to the real issue, which is what coded infomation, such as found in DNA, is and how it could have arisen by chance. addressed here
What is the difference between "coded information" and any other type of information? If Shannon's work is not really germane, then whose work is? How does this person quantify information so we can tell when some has arisen, by whatever means?
What does 'fittest' mean then? The ones that survive are the ones that survive. The ones that produce the most offsrpring are the ones that produce the most offspring.
I was thinking of a vampire-like bat. Just imagine the competitive advantages of such a bat over other bats. Having a venom system that could (being the very fittest) paralyze large mammals, which would enable the bat to feed itself and its offsrping for long periods of time at will. The elements to accomplish this are present in many species and in comparison to other extremely complex accomplishments of evolution, such a development would be relatively trivial. Given the the Darwinian principle of constant, gradual, survival of the fittest, plus millions and millions of years to hone it's predatory capability, such a prediction seems reasonable and consistent with the theory. I'm sure that any good evolutionist here could construct a hypothetical scenario to explain the evolutionary steps. Other than the fact that it didn't occur, why is such a prediction unreasonable in a Darwinian sense?
Every living organism existing at present has been naturally selected (otherwise it would not be here). With millions of species each having hundreds of physical characteristics required for survival, doesn't the theory predict that each one of them, with perhaps a few explainable exceptions, are the fittest? Yet by any measure other than the bare effect of survival, it seems that many are not. And this is not to even mention the problem of extinctions. There doesn't seem to be any other objective characteristic or criteria for determining optimal fitness. There are many species where it looks like other than surviving, they are not the best they could be, even just in comparison to other members of their own kind.
If a theory has the ability to explain processes of cause and effect how are such significant non-evolutionary events explained in a Darwinian sense? Considering the enormous accomplishments that are claimed for evolution, it seems reasonable to require an explanation for things that could reasonably be predicted to occur, but did not, especially if such a developments, had they occurred, would likely have had a disasterous effect on the very existence of mammals, including us.
Cordially,
Vampires mainly prey on cattle and similar large animals. Their tiny fangs are apparently almost unfelt, much as you may not notice a mosquito biting you.
Using their sharp teeth, the bats make tiny cuts in the skin of a sleeping animal. The bats' saliva contains a chemical that keeps the blood from clotting. The bats then lap up the blood that oozes from the wound. Another chemical in their saliva numbs the animal's skin and keeps them from waking up.From here.
Injecting a poison would spoil the deal big time. Bats already have what they need, not what you think they should need. Dawkins likes to say, "Evolution is smarter than you are."
Extinctions happen. Many things are on the way to extinction right now. One of them could be you.
Murphy's Law to the contrary, not absolutely everything that can happen does. Much of your post is strawman logic and argument from astonishment. You're basically assuming that you know how to be a bat and the real bats aren't doing it right. You're also assuming that you know how to be an evolutionist and the real evolutionists aren't doing it right.
You need to question your assumptions.
They haven't really been "selected." I think you are reading way too much into that word. They have survived, which is quite sufficient. The "selection" means only that those which can't survive are, as it were, selected out -- and don't fall into the semantic trap of thinking: "Ahah! There's an Intelligent Selector out there." Not at all, it's just pure survival, yes or no. This is not a complicated concept.
With millions of species each having hundreds of physical characteristics required for survival, doesn't the theory predict that each one of them, with perhaps a few explainable exceptions, are the fittest? Yet by any measure other than the bare effect of survival, it seems that many are not.
No, the theory makes no such prediction. Only that you can't survive if you aren't sufficiently fit to do so. I suppose one could speculate that in a simple prey-preditor relationship, as the weakest of the prey are consumed, the herd of prey animals are constantly being strengthened because the weak among them are being culled. And that would put pressure on the preditors to weed out the slowpokes among them too. Thus a kind of "arms race" would seem to be inevitable. That doesn't mean that lions will evolve into "Terminator" killers, however. Just that they'll stay strong enough to feed themselves on the prey animals.
So, contrary to what I was force-fed from first grade on regarding natural selection and survival of the fittest, we are unable to say, except possibly in retrospect, how any particular characteristic might favor or disfavor the suvival of any particular animal. Natural selection favors fitness only fitness is defined as leaving more descendants. The most successful breeders populate the world, and the less successful breeders die out - regardless of their respective characteristics.
So, in reference to EXPLANATORY POWER: To use your example, some bats have a chemical in their saliva that numbs the animal's skin and keeps them from waking up because...? Apparently, the only explanation is that the bat has survived because it has survived. Is is fair to say then that the principle of natural selection is apparently unable to shed any light on why giraffe have long necks or why bats don't have venom, or do or don't have saliva that can numb an animal's skin, and that any attempt to define or ascertain natural selection's role in affecting any particular characteristic of an organism, or its survival, or in evolution as a whole is to make unwarranted assumptions?
Of what value is the observation that some animals suvive and prosper while others die out? What kind of explanatory power does that have?
Cordially,
. . . Of what value is the observation that some animals suvive and prosper while others die out? What kind of explanatory power does that have?
We used to have very little clue what was going on regarding the origin of species. Darwin's book actually told people something they didn't know and it upset a lot of them.
Random mutation and natural selection. It isn't just the one. It isn't just the other. It's both. The joint operation isn't purely random. It isn't a tautology. ("The survivors survive.") Natural variation creates a field of competitors. Some make it, some don't. Start the next round. Over time, the population isn't the same as the one you started with, especially if the environmental pressures change over time.
What you see at any given time is a convergence toward what has been needed for fitness in the evolutionarily recent past. (Not necessarily "today" if a big meteorite just hit yesterday.)
Maybe you can't predict very well when or where a new species will evolve. It's a chaotic phenomenon, rather like the weather. It may even be even more intractable to analysis, since guessing when and where and what mutation will happen needs some pretty detailed knowledge of the world.
We don't predict the weather perfectly, even now. That doesn't mean we don't know where it comes from, or have the general idea of how it works. The specifics of prediction take a lot of data collection and a lot of super-computer number crunching and for all that we still can miss a on specifics. The point is we understand plenty about what's going on and any failure of forecasting does not change that.
We may well never have a highly predictive model of evolution, given the difficulties of knowing what cosmic ray is approaching a cell and at what angle. You want too much for that.
And your point in trying to discredit the understanding we do have is to make room for your Invisible Friend, as if that somehow could ever be good science. Everyone used to believe in supernatural explanations for everything and that was wrong.
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