- Joined
- Sep 12, 2003
- Messages
- 668
Okay, this is going to stir up all kinds of anger, but one thing I see repeated in the 'pro-creationism' posts is fairly basic lack of understanding about evolutionary theory. I'm nbot calling anybody stupid; it takes a fair degree of scientific literacy to have a full grasp of the principles.
That being said, take both sephin and longtim's comments about evolution and some kind of fascination with 'complciation' and 'superiority' and such. Evolution doesn't really classify or rank anything in this manner. Cockroaches have remained basically unchanged evolutionarily for hundreds of millions of years because they're current incarnation is extremely resiliant and successful to environmental stress. They're already at a very high and versatile adaptation level. Ditto for alligators. Evolution only occurrs as a response to environmental factors which select for favorable traits - altering and splitting species over very long periods of time. It is not an inborn function of life - it happens because of the environment in which life exists. There is no pre-programmed evolutionary factor except for females selecting fo the most desirable traits in males that they can get, facilitating the fitness of their offspring and favoring certain traits.
Another example of these misconceptions I believe can be found in bib's paper and is hinted at through the statements of others, where the size and complication of genetic code is seen as some kind of indicator of 'advanced' evolutionary status. Some of you might be interested to know that there are tiny once-celled bacteria that have a genetic code vastly longer than human beings. Likewise there are other more biologically complicated animals with short codes and simpler creatures with vast genomes. The majority of all DNA is useless or 'junk' DNA. The nature of the molecules and reproduction methods often compiles millions of useless codons that are essentially useless or static information.
It just seems to me that some of the creation crowd can't seperate evolution from 'superiority' and 'complication' in their minds. Yes we had primate ancestors - but they're not around anymore. Why? It was millions of years ago. We aren't related to chimpanzees in some kind of direct 'vertical' style model like I think many of you are imagining. If anything our relationship to a chimp is that of a genetic cousin, meaning at one point we did have a common ancestor. This is further supported by the fact that I mentioned previously - our DNA is 98.5% identical to a chimp's. Considering we're talking about information that I would think be equivilant to thousands of gigs of data, wouldn't you creationists say the odds are a bit low this is by accident?
The arguments made for creationism here basically use a strategy of using numerically convuluted attacks on certain dating techniques or contested chemical principles. Or in Bib's case, an extensive quoting of scripture portrayed in a was as to suggest that the men who authored the bible had some pre-knowledge of our recent theories about cosmology and the Earth's geological history. No matter what teh strategy, they all hang on minor points are revolve around rhetorically limited sub-arguments, while entirely dodging the 'big-picture' style serious errors with their concepts - such as the one I introduced in the previous paragraph. Once again, I'm not calling anybody dumb for being a Christian, and I'm sure that many of the most intelligent people of all time had a degree of faith in a higher power. What I will say is that the anti-evolution and fundamentalist bible supporters seems to have a very, very poor grasp of science and any arguments based upon it.
Like I said before - Religion has to try and fit all things within it's parameters. If everything we know fits neatly into the bible because it's perfect then why do you even have to argue? The answer is because you must change, reinterpret, or outright deny things that don't fit - because there are many, so many things, that simply do not.
That being said, take both sephin and longtim's comments about evolution and some kind of fascination with 'complciation' and 'superiority' and such. Evolution doesn't really classify or rank anything in this manner. Cockroaches have remained basically unchanged evolutionarily for hundreds of millions of years because they're current incarnation is extremely resiliant and successful to environmental stress. They're already at a very high and versatile adaptation level. Ditto for alligators. Evolution only occurrs as a response to environmental factors which select for favorable traits - altering and splitting species over very long periods of time. It is not an inborn function of life - it happens because of the environment in which life exists. There is no pre-programmed evolutionary factor except for females selecting fo the most desirable traits in males that they can get, facilitating the fitness of their offspring and favoring certain traits.
Another example of these misconceptions I believe can be found in bib's paper and is hinted at through the statements of others, where the size and complication of genetic code is seen as some kind of indicator of 'advanced' evolutionary status. Some of you might be interested to know that there are tiny once-celled bacteria that have a genetic code vastly longer than human beings. Likewise there are other more biologically complicated animals with short codes and simpler creatures with vast genomes. The majority of all DNA is useless or 'junk' DNA. The nature of the molecules and reproduction methods often compiles millions of useless codons that are essentially useless or static information.
It just seems to me that some of the creation crowd can't seperate evolution from 'superiority' and 'complication' in their minds. Yes we had primate ancestors - but they're not around anymore. Why? It was millions of years ago. We aren't related to chimpanzees in some kind of direct 'vertical' style model like I think many of you are imagining. If anything our relationship to a chimp is that of a genetic cousin, meaning at one point we did have a common ancestor. This is further supported by the fact that I mentioned previously - our DNA is 98.5% identical to a chimp's. Considering we're talking about information that I would think be equivilant to thousands of gigs of data, wouldn't you creationists say the odds are a bit low this is by accident?
The arguments made for creationism here basically use a strategy of using numerically convuluted attacks on certain dating techniques or contested chemical principles. Or in Bib's case, an extensive quoting of scripture portrayed in a was as to suggest that the men who authored the bible had some pre-knowledge of our recent theories about cosmology and the Earth's geological history. No matter what teh strategy, they all hang on minor points are revolve around rhetorically limited sub-arguments, while entirely dodging the 'big-picture' style serious errors with their concepts - such as the one I introduced in the previous paragraph. Once again, I'm not calling anybody dumb for being a Christian, and I'm sure that many of the most intelligent people of all time had a degree of faith in a higher power. What I will say is that the anti-evolution and fundamentalist bible supporters seems to have a very, very poor grasp of science and any arguments based upon it.
Like I said before - Religion has to try and fit all things within it's parameters. If everything we know fits neatly into the bible because it's perfect then why do you even have to argue? The answer is because you must change, reinterpret, or outright deny things that don't fit - because there are many, so many things, that simply do not.
