Evolution Questions

[Chris†opher Paul]

Personally I dont have a problem with creatures evolving. It doesnt effect my ideas of God. I am just not convinced that it can happen on its own.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by s0uljah
You seem to think that science doesnt change over time.

Of course it does, that is how we know that evolution rather than special creation explains the diversity of life. Science doesn't change back to disproven theories.

Theories and explainations change, but observations don't. The facts of evolution won't change, i.e. that populations of organisms change over time.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Originally posted by s0uljah
Personally I dont have a problem with creatures evolving. It doesnt effect my ideas of God. I am just not convinced that it can happen on its own.

Do you hold the same opinion about weather and lightening?

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Originally posted by RufusAtticus
Do you hold the same opinion about weather and lightening?

It depends what you mean by that. Could they exist in the first place without God, out of nothingness, no. Do they follow physical processes put into place by God, yes.

 

[RufusAtticus]

So God is required to establish physical processes. Okay.

Why then do you have a problem with evolution being the result of those physical processes?

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

I dont, as I said.

Personally I dont have a problem with creatures evolving. It doesnt effect my ideas of God.

What I have a problem with is the complexity of it occuring unguided.

 

[RufusAtticus]

Well, all science states is that complex adaptations are the result of simple natual processes. This is well founded and tested. Since you are okay with other things being the product of God-instituted natural processes, why is the evolution of complexity any different?

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by s0uljah

What I have a problem with is the complexity of it occuring unguided.

What exactly constitutes unguided?

Everyone here agrees that you can breed dogs, right? You can breed dogs for, say, a thicker coat.

Now, would you agree that, in practice, simply gradually lowering the temperature of the area you are breeding dogs in would allow you to, gradually, develop thicker-coated dogs without actually taking any overt action yourself? I mean, you might have to do things that the Humane Society wouldn't like, like making it way too cold for the dogs, but the ones that live will develop thicker coats, right?

Now... Was that guided, or unguided?

If dogs happen to live somewhere an ice age is about to happen, is that guided, or unguided?

I think the mechanisms available are sufficient that it doesn't strain logical credibility to imagine that it could have happened without direct intervention. I don't think this means there wasn't direct intervention, but if there was, I don't think it was because there was no other way to get life forms complicated enough, but because we might have gotten the wrong ones.

In other words, I think it's much more likely that God nudged specific life forms to attain aesthetically useful results than that He intervened constantly to get any sort of complexity at all.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

All I am saying is that I think of myself as reasonably intelligent and reasonably educated.

I just dont buy the idea that complex systems are the result of simple, successive, natural adaptations. I see certain biological structures and I dont see any way of forming them in that manner, just by pure chance.

A dog's fur getting thicker just isnt impressive enough to convince me that my babies delicate programming is the result of randomness.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by s0uljah
All I am saying is that I think of myself as reasonably intelligent and reasonably educated.

I just dont buy the idea that complex systems are the result of simple, successive, natural adaptations. I see certain biological structures and I dont see any way of forming them in that manner, just by pure chance.

Hmm. You're a programmer, right?

If you have some free time, let's do an offline thing and build a genetic algorithms program, and do some playing around. People in the field regularly get excessively complex programs, with "irreducibly complex" components, through selection pressures and mutations.

I have always wanted to learn about genetic algorithms, but I haven't had the time or motivation; this'd be a good chance for me to learn something new. All we need is a byte code language in which programs can be written, and then some way of doing genetic testing on 'em.

I betcha that a random program can be evolved into printing out the alphabet within a fairly short amount of time.

Wanna try this? I think hands-on experimentation would be a much better way to get a feel for what's happening than endless debates referencing studies and results that, to the best of my knowledge, neither of us can understand.

 

[Chris†opher Paul]

Originally posted by seebs
Hmm. You're a programmer, right?

If you have some free time, let's do an offline thing and build a genetic algorithms program, and do some playing around. People in the field regularly get excessively complex programs, with "irreducibly complex" components, through selection pressures and mutations.

I have always wanted to learn about genetic algorithms, but I haven't had the time or motivation; this'd be a good chance for me to learn something new. All we need is a byte code language in which programs can be written, and then some way of doing genetic testing on 'em.

I betcha that a random program can be evolved into printing out the alphabet within a fairly short amount of time.

Wanna try this? I think hands-on experimentation would be a much better way to get a feel for what's happening than endless debates referencing studies and results that, to the best of my knowledge, neither of us can understand.

Sounds like fun. But before we do that, we need to realize that we are creating a world and creating the pressures that will cause adaptation...wait...thats your point isnt it...lol.

God created the world and the pressures, so natural adaptation is still guided in a way, since He set the parameters to the "program"

 

[seebs]

That's fine. My point is, I see no biological evidence inconsistent with a Deist God. I think that complexity can arise through "simple" selection pressures, and often in very surprising ways.

I think it'd be a nice simple thing to do. I'm thinking of doing just a REALLY simple machine; tiny, with very few knobs, which basically has only a few features, so I know how to make it do things. Then, seed it with random data, and test the output, and change the program, and test the output... and see what wins.

 

[Morat]

  Seebs: I've got sitting around, half-finished, what I call my "Million Monkeys" program. A genetic algorithm designed to pound out Hamlet starting from a simple null string (a string of no length, with no values).  I've broken Hamlet down into it's component scenes, and using them as chromosomes, so to speak.

   It's reproduction and fitness that was giving me fits, at the moment. Mostly fitness.

 

 

[Azeotroper]

Rufus,

So for you, evolution is no mere theory, but absolute fact?

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Originally posted by Azeotroper
Rufus,

So for you, evolution is no mere theory, but absolute fact?

Species do change over time. This is an observable fact. The theories of evolution concern the mechanisms that cause this change.

 

[LadyShea]

Rufus is an Evolutionary Biologist (Population Genetics or some such specialty field)...that's his day job, he is a professional scientist. As a lay person myself, I trust he knows more about this topic than I do; much like I trust my phycisian to know more about my internal organs' functions than I do. Most scientists accept Evolution (change over time) as fact, the theories are about the exact mechanisms if I understand correclty.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by Azeotroper
Rufus,

So for you, evolution is no mere theory, but absolute fact?

"Absolute"? I mean, speaking as a properly raised skeptic, I am obliged to observe that the reality of other people is not "absolute fact" in my experience, but simply a theory I have that explains why they keep doing things that surprise me.

I would say that, from everything I've seen in biology, the basic core of evolutionary theory will change less often than basic physics in the future. Honestly, I think we'll have inertialess drives and FTL travel long before we find any meaningful challenges to the core theory of evolution. You wanna debate abiogenesis? Lots of interesting theories to be had, plenty of fun for all. The basic idea that a species can, over time, change characteristics, or split into two separate species? I don't expect to ever see it change. I think I'm more likely to personally stand on a world in another solar system than to see that one taken down.

 

[Azeotroper]

What I was asking was, does Rufus believe in the Theory of Evolution as a fact in the same way that he accepts the 1st and 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as being absolutely true. 

There are no know exceptions to the 1st or 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics.  Does he believe that macroevolution has been proven to that point?

I am no biologist by trade, but a physician.  I believe that microevolution has occured and does occur.  But macroevolution is a much greater leap of faith to believe in, given the absence of evidence.  What I mean is, there has never been proof of a dog becoming a different species (as an example).  In fact, I can remember thinking in my training when profs would expound on evolution with the same fervor of a holy roller preacher.  It seemed to me that macroevolution to them  wass a strongly held religious faith, not backed up by science any more than the belief in God was.

 

[fragmentsofdreams]

Originally posted by Azeotroper
What I was asking was, does Rufus believe in the Theory of Evolution as a fact in the same way that he accepts the 1st and 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as being absolutely true. 

There are no know exceptions to the 1st or 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics.  Does he believe that macroevolution has been proven to that point?

I am no biologist by trade, but a physician.  I believe that microevolution has occured and does occur.  But macroevolution is a much greater leap of faith to believe in, given the absence of evidence.  What I mean is, there has never been proof of a dog becoming a different species (as an example).  In fact, I can remember thinking in my training when profs would expound on evolution with the same fervor of a holy roller preacher.  It seemed to me that macroevolution to them  wass a strongly held religious faith, not backed up by science any more than the belief in God was.

Looking at the fossil record, we see groups of organisms that seem to form a line. Evolution connects the dots. We can be more certain of our choice of lines because when we test the DNA of animals we believe evolved from a shared ancestor, we discover that the closer to the present they split, the greater the shared DNA.

 

[seebs]

Originally posted by Azeotroper
What I was asking was, does Rufus believe in the Theory of Evolution as a fact in the same way that he accepts the 1st and 2nd Law of Thermodynamics as being absolutely true. 

There are no know exceptions to the 1st or 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics.  Does he believe that macroevolution has been proven to that point?

Can you name a verifiable exception?