Intelligent Design

Dannager said:

shinbits, imagine it this way: You have thirty dice, all six-sided. You roll them. This is mutation. Then you remove everything but the fours. This is natural selection. The end result is that you are left with a relatively expected number of fours. This is evolution.

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That makes sense. Only, why would everything but fours be removed? The reasons given, would depend on luck or more random chance.

shinbits said:

That makes sense. Only, why would everything but fours be removed? The reasons given, would depend on luck or more random chance.

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Not really. If each face of the die were a different mutation, the selection reflects every mutation but the fours dying off for being unfit. The environment selects against mutations.

shinbits said:

That makes sense. Only, why would everything but fours be removed? The reasons given, would depend on luck or more random chance.

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No, they would depend on the environment.

The dice represent DNA for, let's say rabbits. As they are rolled, we get a wide variety of random mutations.

Now that we have a wide assortment of genetic traits, it's time to select the ones that are best suited for the environment.

In this example, let's say that the fours represent a mutation that makes these rabbits faster than normal rabbits. Let us also say that where these rabbits live is full of foxes, wolves, and other rabbit-eating predators.

Slow rabbits get eaten, fast rabbits get away. So in time, everything except the "Fast gene" (the fours on the dice) is eliminated.

If the environment wasn't inhabited by predators, the fours wouldn't be eliminated... there's nothing random about it, it's strictly cause-and-effect.

For the rabbit, be quick or be lunch.

shinbits said:

But there are many, many other diseases, each of which some may survive, some not. The Black Plague is one. The survivors of the plague could only rely on luck---if they were lucky enough to get medicine, lucky enough to avoid it, or lucky enough to come out of it alive, if they were infected.

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Or lucky enough to have immunity or resistence to it due to mutation. Same thing is happening with AIDS. Natural selection and evolution will cure AIDS before we do.

Again, no luck involved. Genetics that allow certain members of a popluation to survive better than others regardless of what that variation brings forth, will cause the population to evolve.

Are the bacteria that survive antibiotics 'lucky'? Why or why not?

Hooboy, the problem is that everybody here is tossing around the word "random" without really defining it. Off the top of my head I can think of three separate ways to use the word random:

1. Teleological randomness - random as opposed to caused-by-divine-Providence.

2. Statistical randomness - showing little or no correlation between dependent and independent variable.

3. Scientific randomness - random in the sense of "random error", causes that vary too quickly to be modelled and accounted for in any sense other than statistically.

So which is it? To me evolution is not (1)random, not (2)random, but perhaps slightly (3)random. Mutations are not (1)random either, but they are quite (2)random and (3)random. To an atheist anything that happens is (1)random, even if it can be proved that it is not (2)random or (3)random.

shinbits said:

Wasn't the child born to an aristocrat lucky?

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Sure, birth is always a matter of luck. But you are still thinking individualistically not statistically. "Random" is a statistical concept.


The correct question is not: is this child lucky to be born to an aristocrat. It is, why are children (note the plural) of aristocrats more likely than beggars' children to avoid or survive the Plague?


If it were a matter of luck the ratio of infections to population and deaths to infections would be the same for both groups. It's not, so it is not random.

Those who are able to afford a good diet and good housing most likely worked for it; that wouldn't be luck. But for children born to them it would be; or a woman chosen to be a bride to a succesful man because of beauty, is lucky to be born that way, or lucky to be in circumstances where she could eat properly, stay healthy, and maintain her beauty.

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You don't know whether or not it is luck until you look at it statistically. It is not what happens to a child or a woman or a man that determines whether survival is random, but what the pattern of survival is in a whole group of men, women or children as compared to another group of men, women or children. If one group has a better survival rate than another, and this can be attributed to something they have in common that the other group does not share--such as a different diet--then it is not a matter of random luck, it is something related to their diet.

For example, you say a woman is lucky to be born beautiful because she is more likely to attract the attention of a successful man. But that tells you there is a statistical relationship between beauty and marriage to successful men. Successful men do not choose their brides at random; they choose them according to certain criteria, one of which is beauty. If the choice of marriage partner was strictly random, it wouldn't matter whether or not she was beautiful. Then it would really be luck if she attracted a successful man. But as his choice is not random, this is not an example of luck, it is an example of selection.

So evolution is fueled on luck?

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Not quite. Only some mutations get the chance to be fuel. Every tank of gasoline at the filling station can be fuel for your car, but you choose whether you will put regular or premium in the tank, and after you have filled the tank, you choose where the car will go.

Similarly, while all mutations could fuel evolution, which mutations are actually used as fuel and where they will take the evolving species are a matter of non-random selection. It is selection, not mutations, which drive evolution.

Shinbits. This is for you.

Let's pretend a horrible virulent disease has passed through the population causing horrible lesions to appear on the body which ooze goo, and smell really bad, and unfortunately there is no cure, these people will ooze for the rest of their lives, however a random mutation in some people causes immunity to the goo oozing lesion disease.

Now given the choice between mating with somebody oozing smelly goo, or mating with somebody who is physically fit and healthy, most people would choose the healthy person . . . . .people are non-randomly choosing to mate with another healthy person. The immunity genes will be passed on to the next generation, because the chromosomal re-arrangements which occur during fertilisation are random, some individuals will be born with immunity, some won't, the immune members of generation 2 will be non-randomly selected to mate with. Eventually over many many generations, the entire population will only have the immune genes.

This is an exaggerated way of showing that favourable characteristics can arise randomly through mutation, but individuals who have these characteristics make more desirable mates, therefore they will be more likely to mate and pass on their genes to the next generation . . . . and this is known as natural selection and as you can see it is not random because the fittest, healthiest individuals are chosen over those who are weak and sickly.

Random mutation - non random selection . . . . do you see now?

OK, Perrard, this is what gets me hot.

In the school systems, Evolution is taught as a scientific fact rather than just a theory, almost completely dismissive of God. I can see why they would not want to get into it because of legal concerns, but to be taught as scientific fact is completely out of the question.

MidnightCandel777 said:

OK, Perrard, this is what gets me hot.

In the school systems, Evolution is taught as a scientific fact rather than just a theory, almost completely dismissive of God. I can see why they would not want to get into it because of legal concerns, but to be taught as scientific fact is completely out of the question.

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Well, I think there's a misunderstanding, here. Evolution is a fact. It is observed to occur. People perform repeatable experiments to show that it occurs. The theory of evolution is something different from evolution, itself. The theory asks how it works. What are the processes that permit evolution to occur?

I think the problem is that many of us use the two interchangeably in our speech and writing. For that, I apologize. I'll endeavor to do better.

In the school systems, Evolution is taught as a scientific fact rather than just a theory, almost completely dismissive of God. I can see why they would not want to get into it because of legal concerns, but to be taught as scientific fact is completely out of the question.

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What gets me hot is to see evolution singled out for "godless atheistic science" labeling. By the same argument I don't see why the schools should teach Newton's Second Law unless they state it as "F=ma, God willing", since its current statement is also "almost completely dismissive of God". Talking like that is symptomatic of a God-of-the-gaps belief which is really Christian defeatism in the face of scientism.

MidnightCandel777 said:

OK, Perrard, this is what gets me hot.

In the school systems, Evolution is taught as a scientific fact rather than just a theory, almost completely dismissive of God. I can see why they would not want to get into it because of legal concerns, but to be taught as scientific fact is completely out of the question.

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This is a misconception a lot of those who aren't familiar with the sciences hold. Evolution, along with gravity and a lot of other scientific concepts are both fact and theory. Facts and theories are not interchangeable, nor do theories "grow" into facts. Facts are used to support theories. Theories are explanations for sets of observations.