In my retirement I have been thinking of a simple way to communicate evolution to fellow Christians who have little interest in science.
The Natural Sciences are the study of God’s laws in nature.
- The laws of Physics can explain how the universe was created about 14 billion year ago. - The laws of Chemistry can probably explain how the first building blocks of life were created about 4 billion years ago - The laws of Biology can explain how all forms of life were created, the first humans about 300,000 years ago
But in writing this Post and replying to the first Reply’s I realized that my real stumbling block is that the Natural Sciences don’t explain all of Human Evolution. They don’t explain why, that in the last 12,000 years the population of humans has grown exponentially from ~1 Million to 7.8 Billion.
Are there explanations in the Social Sciences – Economics, Psychology and Sociology? I have not found much.
Undoubtably the explanations are to be found in the History (Evolution) of Language and the History (Evolution) of Religion but the theories that I have read are all quite speculative.
Any suggested readings would be welcome!
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
2
No we can’t. Nothing comes from nothing. Never has.
I think the question is how has humanity changed over the past 5000 years rather than neglecting the changes taking place before that. Roughly 8000 BC is when we see the beginnings of agriculture, which allowed much larger groups of people and larger total population, as well as requiring greater organization. But throughout the record of anatomically modern humans, there seems to be a general pattern of innovation and change, unlike the highly conservative Neanderthals, for example. 5000 years ago would be around when writing is beginning to facilitate the spread of ideas.
No we can’t. Nothing comes from nothing. Never has.
Thanks
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
7
In what way were the Neanderthals conservative? More so than we? They were artistic, buried their dead. My favourite theory is that they only regarded dogs - and ourselves - as prey, that we and dogs cooperated to exterminate (and eat) them, as we did all large predators.
According to Wikipedia:
Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by abstract thinking, planning depth, symbolic behavior (e.g., art, ornamentation), music and dance, exploitation of large game, and blade technology, among others.
My first birth here on Earth was in what is today modern day Wales about 12,000 I guestimate. And we sure had all these characteristics and well developed in fact, despite that we lived in caves and hunted lions. There were lions there. I was a shamanka and used many different types of rituals and ornaments for healing/ health purposes etc.
Yes, my point is that in the last 12,000 years the population of humans has grown from ~1 Million to 7.8 Billion. What changed to explain this? Humankind has been able to cooperate in larger and larger numbers.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
10
What that implies, John, is there has always been something. Always been physics. Whether God instantiates nature for and from eternity or not. There is no warrant at all for saying that He does, except Jesus.
Artistry is hard to assess. There’s a cave with a mark like # on the wall, but thanks to Twitter we know that isn’t an indication of intelligence. Ornamentation and the like in Neanderthals seems quite limited. The “burial with flowers” is likely due to pollen in rodent burrows, not Neanderthals contributing flowers to the burial. Was burying the dead a reflection of particular belief, or just the best way to get rid of something smelly that could attract predators?
There’s very little change in the tools over the total of Neanderthal history, apart from some late ones who evidently imitated modern humans. As stone tools go, the Neanderthal kit is fairly sophisticated, but it has minimal change over about 200,000 years. They seem to have gone much more for up close and personal confrontations with large animals, rather than relying as much on technology. Modern-type humans did much more innovating (though the early archaeological record is pretty sparse).
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
12
No higher animal buries its dead. Although many grieve. They didn’t have to rely on technology, they were immensely strong and could wield a worked rock as a war hammer. Like the Coelacanth or Ginkgo, why change? And when we came along with dogs it was too late.
My answer to the population growth question is that once modern humans had made the technological and other advances, plus a questing spirit to explore, they were no longer at the mercy of particular climates or habitats. They could adapt to a vast range. And nutrition was no longer a limiting factor in the way it is for an animal limited to a particular habitat. Plus, the larger the human communities were, the better they could exploit their habitats and diversify individual’s roles within the society.
Time Out | James Tour | Inference
Chemistry so far has not been able to determine how life came about. James Tour in the link above explains some of the complexities and says " “We synthetic chemists should state the obvious. The appearance of life on earth is a mystery. We are nowhere near solving this problem. The proposals offered thus far to explain life’s origin make no scientific sense.”
I say probably because it appears God created through natural laws of Physics and Biology so it is likely there are natural laws in Chemistry that we have not yet discovered that will explain it
That’s a good distinction. There are certainly gaps in our current models of how abiogenesis could take place, but we are gradually building both from simpler chemicals to more complex systems and from existing life down towards plausible simpler systems. In that situation, we cannot say with absolute confidence that an explanation will be found, nor that an explanation won’t be found. Certainly the fact that God generally makes use of the means of ordinary laws of nature suggests that a chemical explanation of the origin of life is possible. As we’re still finding out a lot of basics about what the chemistry of life is and how it works, we should not expect to have a complete explanation of its origins. If we achieve that, it will take a lot more time and research effort.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
17
He’s a DI man and not speaking out of the scientific side of his mouth.
Why should the theory of evolution be expected to explain everything any more than any other specific theory does? Does photosynthesis explain everything? The abiotic origin of life isn’t within the scope of evolution [as we presently know it], so it is no surprise that evolution doesn’t explain it. Any more than it is surprising that gravitational theory fails to explain psychology.