Posted on 04/27/2008 2:42:03 AM PDT by canuck_conservative
"Oh what a piece of work is man," wrote Shakespeare, long before Darwin suggested just how little work went into us. Somehow, that same process that gave us reason, language and art also left us with hernias, flatulence and hiccups.
One argument scientists often make against so-called intelligent design — the idea that evolution cannot by itself explain life — is that on closer inspection, we look like we've been put together by someone who didn't read the manual, or at least did a somewhat sloppy job of things.
Viewed as products of evolution, however, our anatomical quirks start to make sense, says University of Chicago fossil hunter and anatomy professor Neil Shubin, author of the recent book Your Inner Fish. And by focusing on our less lofty traits, evolutionary biology can help dispel one of the most egregious and even tragic fallacies surrounding Darwinian evolution — that it moves toward perfection, with man at the apex of some towering ladder.
Evolution of Hiccups
That misreading of evolution has been connected to the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, with the Nazis extending the man-as-ideal notion to blue-eyed blond German-man-as-ideal notion.
"Darwin didn't believe it, but some, who saw it through a more religious light, tended to want to interpret evolution as a steady march toward the pinnacle of humanity," says University of Pennsylvania ethicist Art Caplan, who has written extensively on the eugenics movement.
By today's understanding, evolution by natural selection doesn't march toward anything — it just modifies existing creatures to better compete in ever-shifting environments.
Understanding something as seemingly trivial as the evolution of hiccups can help clear up some profound misperceptions on the nature of life and humanity.
The sound of a hiccup echoes back to our very distant past as fish and amphibians some 375 million years ago, says Shubin. It's really just a spasm that causes a sharp intake of breath followed by a quick partial closing of our upper airway with that flap of skin known as the glottis. It's best if you can nip it in the first couple of hics, he says.
It's much harder to stop once you've let yourself get up to 10. By that point you've reverted to an ancient breathing pattern orchestrated by the brain stem that once helped amphibians breath, letting water pass the gills without leaking into the lungs.
"Tadpoles normally breathe with something like a hiccup," Shubin says.
The theme of his book is that we owe much of our anatomy to our animal ancestors. "Parts that evolved in one setting are now jury-rigged to work in another," he says. "When you look at the human body, you see layer after layer of history inside of us."
The first layer is what we share with chimpanzees and gorillas. The next goes back to mice and cows, while further down, you get to the relatively underappreciated layers we share with fish — which include the backbone and basic layout of the body.
Fishy news about hernias
Our descent from fish explains why men are so much more prone to hernias than women. In fish, Shubin explains, the testicles lie up near the heart.
(Had they remained there, he said, it would give a whole new meaning to the Pledge of Allegiance.)
The budding gonads still form up high in a human embryo, but male mammals reproduce better with their sperm kept a bit cooler than body temperature. And so during gestation, human testicles take an incredible journey down through the body to their destination in the scrotum.
The trip downward puts a loop in the cord that connects the testes to the penis, leaving a weakness in the body wall where the cord attaches that never quite repairs itself.
Hence the trouble with hernias down the road.
The matter of milk
No good story about human design flaws can pass up a discussion of flatulence — and science has addressed the kind that would occur if everyone in the world drank a tall glass of milk at the same time.
Geneticist Pragna Patel of the University of Southern California said one of her favorite examples of evolution in progress involves the gene that determines who can digest the sugars in milk and who cannot.
From genetic studies it appears that so-called lactose intolerance was our ancestral state.
A few people, however, were genetically gifted with an enzyme called lactase, which breaks down lactose, and in groups that started drinking lots of milk around 10,000 years ago, that version of the gene started to take over.
Scientists recently sequenced the lactase gene and found 43 different variations that allow adults to drink the milk of other animals.
"It's the first clear evidence of convergent evolution," Patel said, though it's not known whether those lacking this innovation failed to pass on their genes because they suffered from lack of nutrition or just didn't get invited to any parties.
I usually stay out of these threads, but I have to comment on this. The Bible does require our faith, but in no way discourages us from challenging it as a way to grow. To attack someone who strives to reconcile their faith with what they observe seems to be to be a very disingenuous argument, designed not to persuade, but to offend.
Your argument was not facts vs poetry. It was that the bible was full of contradictions.
Here is more on the issue of the “foundations of the earth”. It may be more comfortable to see it as some sort of elephant holding up a flat plane. For believers it is a promise and for unbelievers it is a judgment.
Revelations tells us more about the foundations of the earth. It is about God’s saving grace for those in the book of life and for the condemnation of those not in the book of life. These things are unchangeable from the foundation of the earth:
Revelation 13:8
And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.
Revelation 13:7-9 (in Context) Revelation 13 (Whole Chapter)
Revelation 17:8
The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.
...and you know this how? When will you answer my questions instead of reciting your puerile postulations? Is there a finite number of souls?
1 Thess 4
1Finally, brothers, we instructed you how to live in order to please God, as in fact you are living. Now we ask you and urge you in the Lord Jesus to do this more and more. 2For you know what instructions we gave you by the authority of the Lord Jesus.
3It is God's will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; 4that each of you should learn to control his own body[a] in a way that is holy and honorable, 5not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God; 6and that in this matter no one should wrong his brother or take advantage of him. The Lord will punish men for all such sins, as we have already told you and warned you. 7For God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. 8Therefore, he who rejects this instruction does not reject man but God, who gives you his Holy Spirit.
9Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10And in fact, you do love all the brothers throughout Macedonia. Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.
11Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, 12so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
13Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. 14We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18Therefore encourage each other with these words.
God never requires faith without providing evidence.
Well, are you suggesting that your God influenced me to perform the splicing of the blastocyst, and this was not out of my own free will?
Oh, the dilemmas!
You offer a lot of crap, without facts. When will you answer my questions?
Then faith doesn't exist
Puerile?
It’s by far more logical than assuming 2000+ year old literature written on scrolls by manipulative individuals of suspicious intentions, in a society of highly impressionble, oppressed individuals, as the only possible “truth”.
Faith cannot exist in the presence of proof. To demand proof is to deny faith.
You don’t answer questions, do you.?Your style of science is quite interesting...NOT! Puerile describes your attempts at reason!
You offered literature and prose, instead of logic.
I just asked you plainly, if I were to cause a blastocyst to develop artificially into identical twins, how would your God address the question of what soul to provide to each being?
Can you answer this or not? If the answer is that God would provide another soul, then you would be implying that I directly influenced God’s creation.
As for the origin of life, when prions were synthetically produced, and knowing the self-replicating nature of prion, would this be a near-attempt at artificial life?
Evidence versus proof. You obviously want to play games. I don’t.
Besides, using scientific method does not account for final proof of anything, only evidence in support of, or in contradiction to a hypothesis.
If only they scrutinised their faith as much as they do, science!
Answer my questions, or are you impotent?
I did. Look above.
I look at the mountain behind me and thank Him for His creation! That is proof enough!
When did you scrutinize your faith?
Science is tested. God is not.
God is not described as being invisible. The trinity describes God as Father, Son and Holy spirit. Scripture describes God the father as having a face, as having the likeness of man, as having a breath and as walking with Adam. The Son has 30 plus year recorded history on earth. The Holy Spirit has been observed as a flame. God is described as having from and substance.
who could do anything.
Except sin.
He created himself from nothing,
God never claims he created himself. He says "I am". He says he is the alpha and omega. The beginning and the end.
but nothing else can be created from nothing because I say so.
The actual term is ex-nihilo. One of the mysteries of theology is the meaning of "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep." Is this truly nothing? Saying yes solves a number of theological issues and brings many other characteristics of God into harmony. However, can we read that far into the passage? Perhaps. Most do. Myself included.
Evidence is not proof.
Records of suspect nature.
There are records of other superhumans too. And burning, talking bushes and fires. And the like.
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