Heck, I’ve posted messages that I regretted in advance.
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I must say that I had no idea on the diverse outlook(s) regarding Christianity, and within this context even greater differences regarding science and evolution, until I involved myself in exchanges on this site.
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I think many people can quickly jump to false conclusions about evolution, and thinking they know all they need to know about it, never learn any more. The surface differences between evolution’s and Genesis’ account of how the world came to be can easily make the religious person dismiss evolution as blasphemy, or the non-religious to assume that religion is false, and that evolution is proof that God does not exist.
Indeed. I suspect most lay people think “survival of the fittest” means being bigger stronger faster smarter, when it may mean being more shy and reclusive, smaller and easier to hide and pop out more little shy little creatures.
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Or being more social, or having more beautiful plumage, or even a more alluring courtship song.
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@jpm and @beaglelady,
Indeed!
The fact that smaller male praying mantis’s experience a high rate of death and cannibalism at the “claws of their mate”, physical fitness would seem to be contrary to the general trajectory of mantis reproduction - - which is to provide the new mother a good meal!
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And sometimes a mother spider is eaten alive by her offspring. It’s a mother’s ultimate sacrifice.
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I will link you to this post, so as not to retype it all. Towards the bottom, of the post, not that first part.
Not to say your child is unintelligent @Christy, I’m sure they are bright like you, but if a child gets it, it must be somewhat simple. I think it is cool that your child gets it, and even cooler that they learn it from a very knowledgeable source.
On a blank slate, no, it probably isn’t that difficult of a subject to understand.
But on a horribly dirty slate with graffiti all over it, it can be a challenge to learn. You first need to unlearn what was wrong, or first learn what you know to be is incorrect. And you need an open mind.
I have an open mind, I am having difficulty finding what is actually not at all what evolutionist believe. I guess once learning of what it is, erasing that old incorrect data isn’t that difficult. I like how the videos from biologos explain it, big picture in. That is how I learn, concept as a whole, then details. I think it is often taught as building blocks which one must understand to build upon, which might be great for a blank slate, but doesn’t seem to work on dirty ones. Or maybe it is just the different way I learn. Clearly I like analogies of the the map, rather than details from point a to point b.
So is any of those ways I see evolution correct?
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You know what? You really should have re-typed. Immediately above you provide a link with text.
But I guess you don’t want us to refer to the text…and you don’t want us to use the top part of the post the link goes to… but you expect us to understand which parts of the lower part of the text you are writing about.
What?!
Look… here’s the whole text of the post for which you provided the link. What is it you want a comment on?
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I will link you to this post, so as not to retype it all. Towards the bottom, of the post, not that first part. [<< worst set of directions I’ve ever seen…]
JES: Perhaps it is called a parable in another Gospel…But I do not know. Anyhow, could you re-iterate your point with this?
His point was, you said, the Bible says the earth happened in 6 days. But the Bible also says the rich man in hell conversed with Arbraham. You said, the Bible says it was a parable, which it does not say. Though one can infer it was a parable, it isn’t explicitly states as such. Which means you could then infer that Gen 6 days is also a parable. OR, you were mislead and indoctrinated that the Lazarus story was a parable, and you now must believe it really happened (to historical people), since it doesn’t explicitly say that it was one. I am not aware of this being in another Gospel, but perhaps it could have been titled as such in a version/translation? Like how NIV gives a title in bold before the verses kind of summarizing it. I’m sure you know this is words from the translators mouth, there is nothing in the original scripture that has a summarized bold title for the preceding passage.
JES: Just trying to mediate/clarify that argument between you two , sorry.
I used to argue this, probably because someone who heard Ken Hamm say it said it to me and it made sense in the argument they presented. We can see micro-evolution, sure it exist, black skin turns white, white skin turns black depending on location to the equator. Why argue something you can see.
We can’t see marcro-evolution, so it has to be false. Makes sense. Maybe not a good argument in debating standards as @jammycakes mentions with “where you there argument”, but it can, and is an effective debating tactic to ‘win sides’ from those who can’t see that tactic.
But think of what causes our skin to change colors? What causes micro-evolution? The body isn’t saying, I need to change colors, so lets do it. The genes are making this “decision”. The change is occurring at a microscopic level, a genetic level.
What limits does a gene have from changing? Can ice change to water easily (melt)? Can water change to steam easily (evaporation) Can ice change to steam easily (deposition) or from steam to ice (sublimation)? Not really, it takes a massive temperature difference. But going from water at 33 degrees to ice (melting) at 32 also happens at a molecular level. So though it takes a great input for ice to turn to steam, it doesn’t take very much input for ice to change to water. And once water, water can easily change to steam. So if you put a pot of ice on the stove set to 212 degrees, and watch the molecules, they behave the same at 32 degrees. Once the H20 heats up to 33 degrees, it turns to water, and once it hits 212, it evaporates Maybe a chemist on the forum or smart scientist can help out. But I think it requires about 5 times the heat to produce deposition. But again this is states of a molecule, not changes within the molecule itself, I am aware, just an analogy.
So though it may not make sense for a fish to turn into a dog or a skin gene could evolve into a bone gene (which isn’t what evolution teaches). Could it make sense for a large land animal (pakicetus) to turn into a whale instantly? that would require “5 times life energy”. A gene, has no boundaries or limits tell it what it can and can’t end up as. It only ‘knows’ what it is. A “structural gene of bone”, knows it as a structural gene of bone. It can get weaker or stronger, possibly grow or shrink. A skin gene can realize there is less bone here, why not shrink to fit the bone better. Why could skin not grow to reduce stretching of skin from this growing bone? Animal instinct is to live, if your legs aren’t working, you will die, maybe you can try the water? i.e A pakicetus turning into a whale. When all of these individual genes do their own thing, this results in a"chain reaction" of an evolutionary change in a much larger scale.
As this video explains of the fossil record of whales we found would suggest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVq9O3F97J0
Now as to how that all happens in technical terms, I would refer you to the Biologos staff biologist on here that are educated in that field. I just understand the concept, and how it is logical, I don’t know the inner workings. Though I started to try and read about IC (irreducible complexity) which is interesting, uses many terms that are way above my head, I am starting to get the concept. Addiction sounds a bit like IC. In that you didn’t need something, but now that you took it, you become dependent on it. Though were an addiction results in withdraw, IC results in death.
Here is a question for the evolution experts. Could evolution be seen as binary? Micro-evolution being that a gene can only strengthen or weaken? That’s it. And macro evolution is all the other genes responding to that change, and micro-evolving themselves? If that is what evolutionist believe, that is actually a very simple concept and extremely logical can can be observed.
What does an organism life require? Oxygen, nutrients? All blood is, is a means to carry oxygen and nutrients, all a heart is, is a pump for the blood, lings provides a way for us to get oxygen (gills provide oxygen for fish) ect. Monkeys climb trees to get nutrients, crabs go deep in the water. The first type of organism had these building blocks in them, it just developed/evolved different ways to supply and provide those things.
JES: The problem I see with a lot of these “evidences of evolution” is that many (if not most) of them could be explained by Young earth creationism, and would not provide a problem to it. Your thoughts on that?
Some things could possibly be explained, the bent rocks and ice cores or whatever Ken Ham finds. It might be a legitimately possible explanation. I hope they are legitimate and not skewing things to prove ones agenda.
But, can YEC explain that? If a YEC believes in micro-evolution, how would one explain the chain reaction that must occur to these micro-evolutionary events? That would surely take a lot of time.
I heard on the radio a current scientific study from observing a massive rise in knee arthritis. This is coming from all the sitting we do. Atrophy, go to space, you lose muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it, if you need it, you increase in it.
Though with regards to IC, if you need something to live, and you don’t have it you die, how does the living ones know that they need it now if they receive the same IC as you? If they couldn’t keep it and it killed them, why can you now keep it? It is almost like genes communicate from within the species, which if true also has a spiritual element to it showing God’s incredible design.
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@still_learning, So which part of all this do you want a comment about?
I guess it wasn’t clear? I was hoping one would click on that link and that would take you to a lengthy post on my thoughts. I don’t know how to do that other than the way I did it. It just so happened to have some text on an unrelated topic that I didn’t know how to get rid of.
The part related to this threads topic, of evolution being difficult to understand to some. I basically gave a back brief (how I understand something currently) and was asking for a head nod, or a correction, to let me know if I am heading in the right direction.
But I will quote myself to not confuse again
EDIT: oh hey, after seeing my submitted post, I did know now to quote just what I wanted and didn’t realize it. I thought I had to link it, I didn’t know it could quote over like this with a link.
That evolution works on a cellular level, but when many cells are forced to interact with each other, and much time occurs, larger changes can occur.
Like a pixel on a screen. If a red and blue change to green here and there, you won’t even notice, but if it happens a few million times, you now have a different picture. The pixels are ‘interacting’ to create something greatly different, even those the pixels themselves had very little change (with respect to the previous state).
With the first living organism? I don’t know if there was 1? Or how it came about, or if God littered the world with a living organism, but as far as I know, life requires oxygen and nutrients, and that’s it? The means with which one distributes oxygen has evolved, in that some have lungs that intake it, some have gills. Some have blood that circulates it, some have? Some acquire nutrients through leaves spreading and photosynthesis, some grew arms and legs to walk and get nutrients. Some got diseases a long the way and grew livers to filter things out, some got larger brains to help all these complex systems integrate better.
But all of the large changes, occurred on a cellular level, with very minute changes. And the genes are a recording of these changes and a glimpse into the ‘program’ written in the genes. A brilliant way to create such a diverse world we have. And a way to use “micro evolution” (which even AIG believes in) and show how micro evolution interacting with each other makes macro evolution make logical sense. There is no cellular ‘limit’ written in our genetic code that prevent a cell from only changing so much.
And also how evolution is even very scripturally accurate, in that the old creation would have also been a slow ans strange process that resulted in a blossoming fruition (in humans being image bearers), like the new creation was a slow and strange process like that of a mustard seed. And if we base the old creation (what we don’t know a lot about scripturally speaking) off of the many things we were taught (from Jesus) about the new creation, evolution also makes sense. It wasn’t great changes at once, it was on a cellular level, the Israelite’s here and there changed. They evolved from a nation that didn’t have a covenant with God, to a nation that did, through many years of slavery. To a nation that had a covenant with God and a tight relationship with Him, to one that didn’t trust God and challenged Him. It was just 10 spies that went to Jericho, and that changed/evolved the next 40 years of their life and relation with God. To a nation that was exiled from God, to a nation that never wanted exile again and thought to grow the nation through good deeds and strict adherence to the law.
All this to say that we observed this tiny seed growing, some crazy things occurred. There was genetic/spiritual drifting, there was natural/spiritual selection with legalism, there were individual prophets that changed a few greatly (genetic/spiritual mutation). Many allusions to the agents of evolutionary change in the second creation that what science tells us the first creation story used . When the mustard seed came to fruition and blossom, Jesus showed us the kingdom of heaven, the second creation. Just like humans being image bearers brought fruition upon the first creation of a mustard seed that was physical evolution that we scientifically theorize upon/observe.
Frankly, I have no idea what you want to focus on. Now that we got you in the general area… do you think you could take a single paragraph of your tome and post just THAT?
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I don’t think Darwin ever heard the terms gene and DNA, so he wasn’t treating animals as survival machines. I think you may be referring to Dawkins in The Selfish Gene.
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He might not have known DNA and genes (the code within the cells) or he might have been turned into a Christian, blown away by the awesome design of God. But he knew there was something behind the cells (not what is was or it’s name) and he knew evolution at a cellular level.
Evolution not on a cellular level, would make it difficult for me to believe.I can see a bird changes on the Galapagos islands. But that is no reason for me to think it could change further. Changing kinds seems like something that would require a great leap of faith. I wouldn’t see things as possible to change from kind to kind, just within its kind, looking at it from a big picture.
This is possibly why evolution wasn’t explained in the Bible, it would have made no sense without cellular knowledge.
It is only when we see things on a microscopic level that I am able to understand and logically understand evolution. It isn’t changing kind (as far as it knows) it is simply altering the cells ever so slightly, but many cells are interacting and changing over a long period of time.
The thing you are going to have to come to terms with is the “gradient of micro-evolution” can also be applied to Reproductive Compabitibility.
Once two populations have reached the end of the Reproductive Compatibility gradient, all bets are off.
You may end up with 2 different species of very similar looking animals. But because the two populations no longer exchange genetic information … micro-evolution has opened the door to potentially unlimited (so-called) macro-evolution.
Whales could not evolve if the early proto-whales were still mating with terrestrial mammals. It was only after the water-living proto creatures were no longer recieving a constant influx of terrestrial-related genetic information that the proto-whale population was set free to become whatever the environment pushed and shaped the population gene pool to become.
Do you understand the crucial nature of the gradient of “Reproductive Compatibility”?
I believe I do now. That sounds like a ring species somewhat? Which I am learning is an outcome of evolution.
I think above I am trying to go deeper than that and I am trying to learn the mechanisms of evolution.
I think I can see speciation occurring when a species travels far from the original, encounters a new environment. In that new environment natural selection and genetic flow occurs. Once that occurs, they can no longer reproduce, so they are a new species.
I guess the turning point for me where I really began to take it in was the common ancestors. Which sounds simple, but I don’t think I ever understood how to apply that. I was looking at too large of a scale, like they had arms and legs, so do I. But now I am understanding it on a microscopic or system like level, it makes sense. Our common ancestors required oxygen and nutrients (I’m sure some other things?) The other body parts we have and just complex ways to receive those basic things. Some evolved lungs to intake air and some evolved gills.
I still don’t know all the in’s and out’s of evolution, but I understand the grand concept of it…I think.
How it used different mechanisms of evolution, to get different outcomes of evolution. The cells are executing codes that the genes told it do, which is a change from what it was doing, the gene codes that changed due to the mechanisms of evolution(genetic drift,mutation natural selection ect) and the outcome of this change is a species that can no longer viably reproduce. And the beginning of this dominoes effect was the species encountering a new environment.
Is this last paragraph an accurate summary of evolution?
A good analogy (if it isn’t stretched too far) is language. Let’s say you take a population that speaks a single language, and everyone can be understood by each other. You split this population into two and put them on two isolated islands so they can no longer talk to one another. After 1,000 years you take a handful of people from each island and reintroduce them to one another. What you find is that the people from the same island can understand each other just fine, but they can’t understand what the people from the other island are saying. You have two new languages.
What you find is that each language changed on each island, but not so much that one generation was unintelligible to the next generation. More importantly, DIFFERENT changes occurred in each language so that different small changes happened in each generation. Over time, those small but different changes accumulated to the point that they could no longer understand a person from the other island, even though their ancestors all spoke the same language.
Speciation is the same. Small genetic changes occur over time, and those different changes stay within each isolated population because their is a lack of gene flow between the populations, just as there was a lack of language flow between the two isolated islands. This finally results in two populations that no longer interbreed or are incapable of interbreeding if re-introduced to one another.
The key to speciation is the initial separation into two populations that no longer interbreed or only occasionally interbreed. This can happen through many mechanisms. For chimps and bonobos, the formation of the Congo river split the ancestral population into two. Since chimps can’t swim, those populations were separated from one another which produced genetic divergence between them.
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Thanks, I think I get that now. I am trying to figure out why the language changed between the old language and the new language.
Which I edited my post to add that part to it. I think in your analogy, it would me the mechanics of evolution, is why the languages changed. Maybe they were being rushed and needed to communicate faster, so they dropped some words or length of words. This would kind of be like natural selection.
Or they never used a word, so it just wasn’t used and forgot by the population 2. But when going back to the other population 1, they still used it, but so much time passed, no one from population 2 understood that word. Like genetic drift kind of.
Or genetic mutation would be like population 2 calling a bathroom a water closet. Upon meeting population 1, no one knows what a water closet is.
Correct?
I’m not sure why human languages change over time, but a look through history shows that they do. Reading Old or MIddle English is pretty fun, especially if you try to read it aloud to someone. Even Shakespeare’s English can be hard to understand at times.
This is where the analogy gets strained a bit. Languages seem to change at random, or at least without any intent on the part of the human population. For example, no single person or committee decided to coin the term “jelly” as a synonym for “jealous”, it just happened that way. It is much more like genetic drift, which you discuss later in your post.[quote=“still_learning, post:51, topic:36659”]
Or genetic mutation would be like population 2 calling a bathroom a water closet. Upon meeting population 1, no one knows what a water closet is.
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Something like that. After changing it to water closet the pronunciation of t’s changes to a softer t so you get wather closeth. You get some vowel changes so you get wuther closeth. W’s are changed to y’s and you get yuther closeth. This isn’t too dissimilar to what happened to English over the years.
All languages… and all gene pools… experience changes over time.
The difference between these 2 “things” is that a language doesn’t go extinct “just because it doesn’t sound pretty enough”.
In contrast, a population of Life forms that doesn’t have enough genetically based behaviors (swift enough running because of leg design - or - smart enough hunting because of eye or nose design ) can go extinct.
Species that are highly uniform with few genetic variations are either extremely well adapted to their ecological niche … or they are a dead end vulnerable to extinction because an inevitable change in climate or competition will come upon them faster than their gene pool can respond.
Reproductive Compatibility is the valve that keeps one group “in sync” with other groups. Once the valve is closed to a threshold level… speciation is only a matter of time.
Ring Species are the most convincing examples of this inevitability!
Note: The reference to a “threshold level” is crucial! Before speciation is complete… there is still opportunity for some exchange between groups… but if the exchange is minimal (the minimum threshold varies from species to species and ecology to ecology!), Reproductive Compatibility continues to drift apart