Posted on 05/03/2005 2:12:35 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Cordially,
"Natural selection" isn't driven. It's a passive influence. No two groups of entities have exactly the same environment; thus one of the groups will have more offspring than the other. This will continue down through time.
Eventually one population will be substantially larger than the other. There could be a difference in their genetic makeup (like better eating habits or disease resistance) or just luck. That's about all there is to natural selection. Of course, it's the details that are interesting.
I will refer you back again to my posts 453 and 464.
Ask any specific questions you like about the material in the post.
At this point you seem to be just repeating your questions as if you had not read the responses.
I personally taught in two different public schools for about a year and a half, and my personal experience was that there are a few good, knowledgeable science teachers out there and a whole bunch of ones who know little about science. I think there really is a shortage of qualified people who want to teach. There are, I believe, several factors causing this situation.
First and foremost is the state of university education for teachers. Prospective science teachers are required to take surprisingly few science classes, and a whole lot of education classes. This strikes me as bass ackwards. We should have teachers take a bachelor's degree in the field in which they wish to teach. Then, they could take a semester or two of education courses (or do this during the four years of their B.S. in addition to the B.S. coursework) and finally move into their student teaching. A firm grounding in the field is lacking in many educators. I think many of today's students who have some interest in science are attracted to science education programs since these tend to be less difficult and rigorous. Unfortunately this leads to a lowering of the qualifications of the average science teacher.
Secondly, (and the main reason I no longer teach), teaching in the public schools today involves very little actual teaching and a whole lot of administrative and classroom management type activities. Student discipline is difficult in today's schools. I don't know how it was for you in school, but if I got in trouble at school, I was in trouble when I got home as well. Now, it's relatively common for a parent to completely deny that their precious little son or daughter did what the teacher says that they did. Without parental support, and often without the support of school administrators who fear that the parents will make trouble or even sue if their child is held accountable for their actions, it's difficult to maintain any authority as a teacher. There simply is too often no consequence for student misbehavior. In such an environment, educating children is difficult, and many knowledgeable teachers (including me) just give up and move on to other jobs.
Thirdly, in the 1950's and 1960's, after the Soviets launched Sputnik, there was a great push to get qualified people into the teaching of science. In many cases, prospective science teachers had their college tuitions paid for in order to encourage smart people to go into science education. This has led in recent years to a fairly large group of older science teachers who are nearing retirement, and are not so motivated as younger teachers. These are the tenured teachers who are holding on until they get to their 35 or 40 year mark and can retire. I taught in 1997-1999, so this issue is probably on the decline because of attrition.
Finally, there is the issue of compensation. In many areas of the country, a bachelor's level scientist can earn 50-100% more than a high school science teacher. I personally feel that this is less important for explaining the lack of good science educators simply because a person who becomes a teacher based primarily on the money is likely not to be as good a teacher as one who enters the field out of a motivation to help students. Still, there may be many qualified individuals who want to teach, but choose an industrial R&D position instead based on compensation.
The lack of emphasis on science in public schools and in the country in general, I think, comes from a generalized dumbing down in the school system, which has led to an overall less knowledeable population. The school system is more concerned now with promoting an unearned feeling of self esteem in students rather than in real achievement. A good science education is rigorous and difficult, and we can't teach our children something that they can't master completely or they might feel bad. Therefore, we just water down the science curriculum to the point where most of the students have no problem with it. Only problem is that they then don't really learn much and we end up with a scientifically illiterate population.
It might be a good thing. "Alternative" views might seem likeless of a good idea.
Yep. Natural selection is driven by competition for resources (ie. mates, food, etc.) Those organisms that are best able to find food, avoid predators, and find mates are the ones that pass their genes on to the next generation. These descendants, barring dramatic changes in environment or a new, more successful variant, are also the ones that will be more likely to reproduce. By contrast, those organisms with genetic makeups that make them less able to compete for resources tend to die without reproducing. Hence, desirable genetic characteristics will tend to accumulate in a population and undesirable ones tend to be weeded out. That's what natural selection is about.
Nobody said it was of no interest, just that it isn't part of the theory of evolution. Finding a misleading or incorrect statement in a textbook, BTW, is these days unfortunately common.
I think you summed it up nicely. Another point involves students not being encouraged to take the more difficult courses. From what I've seen, guidance counselors serve little purpose at schools so we can't depend on them to encourage students to push themselves. And most students just don't see how the sciences will be useful in their lives and have few role models in the sciences. And, of course, many science teachers don't make it the most interesting of subjects, although I think it should be. Americans are more concerned about American Idol than when the next space shuttle will be launched. Our culture in general continues to dumb down. I'm not sure what the answer is.
Think about it for a minute. Critters with no desire to survive would most likely not, and therefore not reproduce.
421
Cordially,
You got me there, pard. You're right. Naturalistic origins are now coming under the microscope. Do you aver that scientists should discover pathways by which naturalistic explanations of life could occur, and immediately conclude that they didn't?
I know - I just don't know WHY we want to survive. Okay, instinct maybe. But how do you quantify instinct? How can you prove it exists? Sorry - just ignore me if my questions become too ridiculous.
The hardwiring has developed over millions of years, with successful responses surviving and unsuccessful ones being weeded out of the gene pool. Consider it a self-reinforcing loop.
I would say we don't "want to survive" we want to satisfy various urges: hunger, breathing, comfortable temperature, sex etc.
Survival is a by-product.
"... Nobody knows how it happened but, somehow, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, a molecule arose that just happened to have the property of self-copying—a replicator. This may seem like a big stroke of luck... Freakish or not, this kind of luck does happen... [and] it had to happen only once... What is more, as far as we know, it may have happened on only one planet out of a billion billion planets in the universe. Of course many people think that it actually happened on lots and lots of planets, but we only have evidence that it happened on one planet, after a lapse of half a billion to a billion years."What is irksome to me is that someone like Dawkins routinely make absolute claims of fact about the earth's history, for which he claims there is evidence, but he says that nobody knows how it happened. Is that what you mean by "hypotheses surrounding the origins of life are speculative"? If these purported events are merely conjecture then why are they continually presented as facts of natural history in the continuum of evolution from the Big Bang to Michael Jackson? And since natural history really is an unbroken continuum of events, why, other that practical reasons of scope of research, would one second prior to the beginning of macro-evolution be out of bounds of evolution and not one second after the beginning, other than merely by an argument from definition?
It is unsurprising that "those who are studying the origin of life" would investigate naturalist hypotheses. What other line of reasoning should people in the physical sciences pursue?
There is a difference between philosophical naturalism and methodological naturalism. If science is to remain exclusively within the natural (material) realm methodologically (this itself is a metaphysical assumption) then in any putative naturalistic accounting of history the term ‘evolution’ cannot logically be excluded from the emergence of any thing that exists, including the beginning of life, or the universe itself because the universe began and has ‘evolved’ to what it is today.
It seems to me that if such questions are entirely speculation, or conjecture because we really don't know what happened, then it is not science to assert that events happened of which we are ignorant.
Cordially,
Well, there is also the instinctual avoidance of danger (fight or flight).
The proponents are doing all the heavy lifting for me.
Cordially,
"Evolution comprises all the stages of the development of the universe: the cosmic, biological and human or cultural developments. Attempts to restrict the concept of evolution to biology are gratuitous. Life is a product of the evolution of inorganic nature, and man is a product of the evolution of life."Cordially,
Theodosius Dobzhansky
"The explanation of an eclipse as being due to "magic" is not a useful explanation."
You missed the point of the steps: it was the recognition of the pattern that was useful. It was incomplete in the why or how, but the observation still had application.
Everything in Ich's doc dumps presupposes that the evolutionary premise is proven... because, it's... proven,...and then takes this circular reasoning to a level of con-artistry rarely seen.
Evolution's frauds and flaws are there for any rationally thinking person to appreciate. Apparently, you just don't happen to be one of them.
Evolution has such hard core DNA evidence, that to disbelieve it is ... just unbelievable.
OK. Prove it. Your own words. Are you speaking from your own research, or are you intending to quote someone else's vain speculations in the liberal MSM?
Show us what you know for a change. Show us you can put two cogent thoughts together that make any scientific sense. Forget the Ichy doc dump routine -- he just uses that for a smoke screen to hide behind and to gloss over what he doesn't know himself.
I really think that some "creationists" are merely atheist trolls attempting to embarrass Christians by making them look stupid.
If that is what you "really think," one may reasonably conclude that your powers of cogent reasoning about any topic -- let alone a topic of science -- must be truly impoverished.
You just go ahead and keep thinking that. Anything you say from this point forward will be able to be appreciated from the readers' now privileged insight as to how you "really think" -- or perhaps more accurately stated, can't think.
Well, I'm sorry you're irked, but it's not like a man can't have an opinion.
And since natural history really is an unbroken continuum of events, why, other that practical reasons of scope of research, would one second prior to the beginning of macro-evolution be out of bounds of evolution and not one second after the beginning, other than merely by an argument from definition?
This is a non sequitur. Evolution as a practical scientific theory *must* be limited in scope of investigation. Just because some scientists express opinions on the subject does not mean the technical denotation is changed. Furthermore, just because these are opinions with which you may disagree does not mean you may redefine it, either. One of the reasons for maintaining rigorous hold on a technical definition is because it's so easy to redefine things. People are great definers and categorizers. Finding patterns is one of the things we're really good at, from dividing up history into eras to taxonomy to the periodic table. We're so good at it, some people will find patterns where there are none, like finding a potato that resembles Elvis or those spiritualists who listen to television static wanting to hear voices and so occasionally hear some random bit of white noise that sounds like "get out."
If science is to remain exclusively within the natural (material) realm methodologically (this itself is a metaphysical assumption) then in any putative naturalistic accounting of history the term ‘evolution’ cannot logically be excluded from the emergence of any thing that exists, including the beginning of life, or the universe itself because the universe began and has ‘evolved’ to what it is today.
This is sophistry. In one awkward sentence you've redefined 'evolution' to mean 'life, the universe, and everything' to which the answer is, of course, forty-two.
It seems to me that if such questions are entirely speculation, or conjecture because we really don't know what happened, then it is not science to assert that events happened of which we are ignorant.
You seem to be implying that scientists are asserting something as absolute fact on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, which of course isn't the case. In that long post with all the references in it (241 I think) there was at least one that contained the word 'speculation' in the title, and several named as hypotheses. Reading the titles (I haven't read the abstracts) it's clear people are trying to figure out what happened and how. Hypotheses by their very nature are speculative. Heaven forbid scientists speculate! Now, this is not to say that one hypothesis or another is without any supporting evidence. Hypotheses are designed to match what evidence we now have. What evidence might that be? Perhaps our understand of the early solar system, our understanding of molecular biology and inorganic chemistry? Certainly there is no one dominant theory of a naturalistic biogenesis as there is with the theory of evolution, but of course there are literally mountains of evidence for evolution.
See, you've managed to drag me kicking and screaming off topic. I don't often argue abiogenesis because, honestly, it's not a discipline I know a great deal about. This thread is about evolution, not origins. Please don't keep trying to change the subject.
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