Why are there still apes?

James A

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That is a highly imaginative (though not very well-informed) scenario. I think that you will discover that in reality the location of these increasingly light and sound sensitive structures was settled long before they came to resemble modern eyes and ears.


Are you saying that the early species has light/sound sensitive cells all over their body and later concentrated to the positions we see today? This explanation brought the question a level further - What made some cells light sensitive, some sound sensitive? Do we know whether tears, eye lids, ear wax etc. were developed along with the eyes and ears.


The "cause" was randomly distributed variation exposed to natural selection over many generations.

Isn't "variation" effect?

I conclude that the clock is designed because I see evidence of human manufacture--what William Paley called "indications of contrivance." I see no such indications in living creatures. That does not mean design is not present, merely that it cannot be demonstrated.

@SelfSim

To make sure I got this correct, are you saying that you would conclude the clock has design only because you know (intelligent) humans exists? To put this another way, if you find a thing like mind reader or something, you will deny it has design because humans cannot create it?

Let us take these two points in the context of your reply.

1) If natural agents made one of the species, humans, so intelligent that they reached Moon and decoded DNA, could you deny the existence of a super intelligent species which became more intelligent than humans and they freed themselves from the physical world - transcended space and time, some sort of angels?

2) We don't know what 94% of the Universe is composed of. Cosmologists call this Dark Matter (44%) and Dark Energy (50%). If we don't know anything about , how do we know they exists? Well, dark matter was introduced to explain the seemingly faster movement of some stars in Andromeda galaxy; Dark energy to explain the expansion of the universe. Why can't we do a similar approach to the Evolution, call it "creator" ' or "intelligent mind" which induced order into the diversification of life
 
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Hans Blaster

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1) If natural agents made one of the species, humans, so intelligent that they reached Moon and decoded DNA, could you deny the existence of a super intelligent species which became more intelligent than humans and they freed themselves from the physical world - transcended space and time, some sort of angels?

That would violate known physics. It's also not a claim of any sort of biologist. It's more a plot from Star Trek.
 
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Hans Blaster

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2) We don't know what 94% of the Universe is composed of. Cosmologists call this Dark Matter (44%) and Dark Energy (50%). If we don't know anything about , how do we know they exists? Well, dark matter was introduced to explain the seemingly faster movement of some stars in Andromeda galaxy; Dark energy to explain the expansion of the universe. Why can't we do a similar approach to the Evolution, call it "creator" ' or "intelligent mind" which induced order into the diversification of life

Because Dark Matter and Dark Energy have simple properties and computable and regular impacts on regular matter that can (and is) observed. A capricious intelligent agent can not be predicted and is therefore not a valid scientific hypothesis.
 
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James A

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Flapdoodle.

I was just repeating a millenniums old principle which is derived out of definition and you call it a flapdoodle?

Sex did not come from bacteria. First cells started forming into clumps that developed a life of their own independent of the cells. Some cells broke off to form new clumps. One type of clump came upon the novelty of sharing parts of the genome with neighbors. This gave them a huge survival advantage, in that a beneficial mutation could now spread to all future members of the species. The cells that left one clump with half the genome became known as sperm, and those that stayed with the source became known as the egg.

Again, we are talking about the operation . ( And we have "sperm" and "egg" complement each other, right? how did they evolve in isolation? Did the incomplete sperm and egg ever unite or they united after the development is complete?)


Why could not survival of the fittest preserve those children that were protected by their parents? Why can not survival of the fittest preserve those who were aware of the self and the needs of the self?

Survival of the fittest presuppose the arrival of the fit. Do we know what caused the arrival of the fit?


And you speak of free will. What free will? It is the molecules of the brain that make our decisions.

Would love to talk about free will but, let us keep this thread in the intended context

Again, I used to be a Creationist. I argued long and hard for creation. But I was persuaded first by the evidence for an old earth, then for the evidence of the progression of species through millions of years, and then by the seeming randomness of the changes.

I personally am comfortable with genesis and ( the operation and timeline) documented in the Theory of Evolution.


Do you or do you not accept that evolution happened? If you do not accept evolution, I don't see how you can understand well enough to understand the workings of an intelligent designer. But if you do believe in evolution, then we are left with a discussion of theistic evolution vs atheistic evolution. Where are you at? It would help if you told me so I could adjust my responses to what you are saying.

I believe in Theistic evolution


This thread is not about the origin of life. It is about human evolution. Do you or do you not agree with the main thesis of this thread? Why change the subject?

This was my point - the primitive life surviving the hostile environment of the early earth shows the involvement of a intelligent, supernatural agent

...in a closed system. You left out the last part of the second law of your statement of the second law.


Even though my post sounded like the Second Law, I did not name it. But my post about increasing disorder was a natural observation. E.g. if we leave our home open and come back we see more disorder, compared to closed house.

Do you mind spending some time on what a -posteriori analysis means? You may want to go through the last points about angels and Dark Matter #781. Also, on log versus clock discussion started on #755?
 
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James A

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Wait, what? You believe in science? And you have been winning arguments against evolutionists for 10 years?

I did say that I have been debating with revolutionists ( who deny Design) and atheists for over 10 years but never claimed that I changed any ones mind. No, I don't hope so even in my wildest dreams - people who had no qualms in believing that the mathematically discipled Universe and the complex life came into existence by nothing are too "special" to be convinced.
.
Nonetheless, this analogy below has worked to some extends.

Imagine I found "happy birthday" written on the front door of my house on my birthday. There are two explanations

a) it was the wind which blew last night caused pebbles to make scratches in which happened to read "happy birthday"

b) my children, knowing that it is my birthday, wrote it.

#a is certainly possible but none in their right mind will spent even a minute thinking about it. What if the letters are all in the same case? What if my name is written? What if my age is written? More order we see, it is less likely that it was caused by unintelligent agents.

Origin and diversification of life is a million times more complex than "happy birthday" and I leave it up to you to decide #a or #b is the right explanation.


Surely as an ardent believer in science for all those years, you would have a view that you think is more scientific than evolution, and would have evidence for it. What is your view? Do you think that millions of creatures popped into existence every hundred years are so over the course of hundreds of millions of years? If so, please state your evidence that this is how God created. If it wasn't that way, please state how you think it happened.

For the 25th time in this thread, I don't deny Theistic Evolution.
 
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James A

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Nothing about your general (and incorrect) statements about evolution address that question *at all*.

I am trying to demonstrate the involvement of an intelligent mind in the origin and diversification of species so, to prove apes and humans exists as is by d(D)esign.
 
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James A

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I am still trying to figure out how you think we came into existence. As near as I can tell, you are opposed to those who say there was a 1 week creation event sometime in the last 10,000 years. You are opposed to those who say we evolved over many millions of years. But those are the only two ideas on the table on this thread. Do you care to put your option on the table for our consideration?

Below is a chart of various known hominids. How do you think all these species came into existence?
tattersall-hominids-r.png

I oppose seven "day" week creation but I believe in seven "action" creation :)

I believe humans are brand new creation of God but I don't have any issues with Homo evolving from Apes as long it was Divine plan
 
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Hans Blaster

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Survival of the fittest presuppose the arrival of the fit. Do we know what caused the arrival of the fit?

Fitness is just the ability to pass genes to another generation, and perhaps more so, to the generation after that.
 
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Hans Blaster

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This was my point - the primitive life surviving the hostile environment of the early earth shows the involvement of a intelligent, supernatural agent

One thing about early life on Earth -- There was nothing else to eat it.
 
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James A

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@Hans Blaster

I appreciate your time responding to my posts and I understand I replied to posts that are over three weeks old but, with respect, your posts are totally out of context. Do you mind taking a few moments to go through the history, for the best use of our time?
 
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Hans Blaster

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I am trying to demonstrate the involvement of an intelligent mind in the origin and diversification of species so, to prove apes and humans exists as is by d(D)esign.

Do you realize that simplicity is a hallmark of design more so than complexity?
 
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Hans Blaster

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@Hans Blaster

I appreciate your time responding to my posts and I understand I replied to posts that are over three weeks old but, with respect, your posts are totally out of context. Do you mind taking a few moments to go through the history, for the best use of our time?

You're all over the place and rarely hit on anything about apes. You want to talk about apes?

(Most people aren't going to care much about a conversation that has lain dormant for 3 weeks. Me included, so I will reply to the things your wrote today.)
 
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Hans Blaster

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I an trying to prove the involvement of an intelligent mind in the origin and diversification of life so, Apes and humans exists by Design. ( This is my 26th declaration :) )

That's a rather large topic for such a narrowly titled thread. Why not create a new one if that's what you want to "prove". (Science doesn't work by "proofs".)

Good night all good ape-members of CF.
 
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Bungle_Bear

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I an trying to prove the involvement of an intelligent mind in the origin and diversification of life so, Apes and humans exists by Design. ( This is my 26th declaration :) )
Your arguments, so far, have been nothing more than unsupported assertions. Incredulity and religious beliefs do not count as evidence.
 
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Shemjaza

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This, again, talks about the operation. What I am concerned about is the cause.
You are adding a new cause. Natural sources can trigger mutations that add variation.

Your proposed new supernatural source is not in evidence.

No object can escape a universal cause unless acted upon by an external agent. Thus, the early life surviving the hostile environment proves the involvement of an intelligent mind
That's just an assertion. Early life surviving against the odds is just that, against the odds.

There's no chain of reasoning that even implies a necessary intelligence, let alone "proves" it.

post #628

What sort of "natural agents" mutated the primitive bacteria, presumably unisex, into complex male and female with organs which complement each other? Not to mention, their instinct to live together and reproduce.

Additionally, why would those "natural agents" give male birds shining feathers, male humans facial hairs and different voice from females?
Mutations and development of complicated interaction of the body with all the various hormones and other bodily features.

We see this change in recorded history. Think about all the patterns and colours of domestic animals, some of them are linked to genetic traits that can only be passed to male or female examples.

Animals who are descended from multi sexed ancestors have developed various tactics where the different sex can have different traits and that has been a survival bonus.

Animals do have life, a metaphysical property, which cannot be a natural part of their physical life by definition.

Additionally, we know living beings are pre programmed to protest their own life so, the instinct of mothers animals risking their own life to protect their children cannot be termed "natural".
This is just wrong.

If anything the "pre programming" would be for the survival of the species, so a mother protecting her young would absolutely support that goal.

I've repeatedly asked how you can demonstrate the existence of "metaphysical properties". Just declaring that nature can't do something without evidence isn't evidence.


Evidence would be "order" or "discipline". Natural agents by definition cannot induce order.

I've never seen a definition of "natural" that necessitated only producing chaos. It's certainly not one I use.

My point was that you would need to present evidence that this designer even existed. Just declaring it necessary isn't evidence, it's just an assertian.

Abandon? I don't deny Science. And I know that Science cannot answer the ontological question we are talking about.
Most of the questions you've presented have natural answers.

Chemistry, biology and geology are natural sciences.

Now if you want to present truly ontological questions like "Why is there existence?" then sure there aren't scientific answers.

If the primitive forms of live always exists then why have we seen the origin of life only once? The primitive life form in the early earth not only survived but progressed to complex forms.
My point was about life's ability to survive and reproduce when there aren't competitors. There most definitely are competitors now.

It's possible that the conditions for new life forming no longer exist, it's also possible that it does still happen... but proto life coming head to head with extant life with billions of years of evolution and competition isn't going to survive long.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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And do you mind addressing the main point of my previous post - would anyone try to come up with a Scientific formulae in a chaotic world like Alice's wonderland?
A formula for what? And since, as you said, 'we are not living in Alice's Wonderland', what would be the point?

Looks like you already defined how the "intelligent mind" should function and rejecting everything that doesn't fit. (Isn't this what dogma means?)
You misunderstand - I was answering your question "what would it take you to believe Intelligent Design?".

Intelligent Design is a proposed hypothesis for explaining the diversity of life. I gave you some of the criteria by which such a hypothesis can be judged - the common abductive criteria for arguing to the best explanation. If Intelligent Design can outperform Evolution by Natural Selection by those criteria, then it is clearly a better explanation and I will accept it. Unfortunately for its proponents, it fails dismally on all criteria. One of its difficulties is that it doesn't even define its premises - 'intelligence' and 'design'...

If you can show me how the Intelligent Design hypothesis satisfies the criteria I gave, we can see how it stands up against Evolution by Natural Selection as an explanatory hypothesis.

Do you want to reconcile your post with the concept of Dark energy and dark matter, something which our 94% of our Universe consists of?
What makes you think my post needs 'reconciling' with dark energy and dark matter?

I dont deny the primitive life surviving the early earth. What I meant was the survival and its progress to advanced life shows the involvemnt of a supernatural agent.
How is it shown? What do you think a supernatural agent did that could not have happened otherwise? What is a supernatural agent - how do you know such a thing exists?

While my post sounded like the Second Law, I did not use the term. What I meant was a simple thing we observe. For example, if we leave our house opened, we will find more disorder compred to leaving it closed. More natural agents work on a object, more disorder it undergoes but we believe natural agents (?) worked consistently for hundreds of thousands of generations resulted in the mutations.
You are describing the increase of entropy over time - which is what the 2nd law of thermodynamics is about. While it is true that overall disorder never decreases in isolated (closed) systems, it is not true of open systems like the Earth.

When there is a source of low entropy energy, e.g. the sun, disorder can decrease in local areas at the expense of a greater overall increase in disorder. Systems that use energy to reduce local disorder and export greater disorder to their surroundings are called 'dissipative systems'. The universe is full of them, and living things are examples of dissipative systems.

If you were expressing your doubts that such systems can persist for millions of years, the laws of physics haven't changed. That's why stars and galaxies - and life - can continue exporting entropy to the universe.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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What Science established is the operation and timelines and what I am trying to prove is that there is pre design behind the diversification of life ( thus we see Apes and humans by design).
Like I said, I think you'll find that it is neither provable nor falsifiable in general. Also, we already have a very elegant and effective theory that accounts for the diversification of life without invoking pre-design.
 
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FrumiousBandersnatch

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Animals do have life, a metaphysical property, which cannot be a natural part of their physical life by definition.
This is incoherent - anything physical has metaphysical properties. What is the definition you're referring to?

What sort of "natural agents" mutated the primitive bacteria, presumably unisex, into complex male and female with organs which complement each other? Not to mention, their instinct to live together and reproduce.

Additionally, why would those "natural agents" give male birds shining feathers, male humans facial hairs and different voice from females?
This is all explained by evolutionary theory - there's plenty of educational material online that will answer your questions.

If you want a very brief overview, I can give you one.

... I don't deny Science.
The things you say contradict well-established science, so you deny it implicitly.
 
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Speedwell

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Are you saying that the early species has light/sound sensitive cells all over their body and later concentrated to the positions we see today? This explanation brought the question a level further - What made some cells light sensitive, some sound sensitive? Do we know whether tears, eye lids, ear wax etc. were developed along with the eyes and ears.
. We could save a lot of bandwidth here if you would crack a book.


Isn't "variation" effect?
Yes, that too.




To make sure I got this correct, are you saying that you would conclude the clock has design only because you know (intelligent) humans exists? To put this another way, if you find a thing like mind reader or something, you will deny it has design because humans cannot create it?
No, you haven't got it correct. The presence of design is unfalsifiable; it can never be denied. It just can't always be detected.
 
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