Ojuice5001

All evolution means is that characteristics will survive if they have short-term advantages. There are a lot of people who think that progress toward an attractive-to-humans goal is important in evolution. Why don't they see that this isn't true of something like a sloth. The common ancestor of humans and sloths was faster, smarter, and less likely to go extinct than a sloth. It also didn't fight wars or do many other bad things that humans do. The common ancestor of all placentals was a good animal, though not as good as modern rodents. Why can't people see this?

Jimmy Higgins

I don't mean to ruin this thread, but your mentioning of a sloth brought up an interesting question in my mind. If they are so lazy, how do they reproduce? Or do they do that all night and are so sore and tired during the day they just kinda stay still?

scigirl

Ojuice,

I'm not sure. But a YEC just used that argument on me yesterday at the BB?

I think it's because the actual theory of evolution is so simple and easy to believe (variation, natural selection), that the YECS have to change evolution around and demonize it in order to gain support for their own cause.

"Evolution is an evil atheist conspiracy"

"Evolution is satanic and racist."

No, evolution is change over time. It happens. Deal with it!

scigirl

Mageth

The common ancestor of humans and sloths was faster, smarter, and less likely to go extinct than a sloth.

Umm...the "common ancestor" is extinct. The sloth, obviously, isn't. I don't think we can really judge which is more or less likely to go extinct.

But you're correct; evolution doesn't have a particular direction or goal.

edited to add: actually, every species has or will eventually go extinct, so you might say all are equally likely to go extinct.

[ February 22, 2002: Message edited by: Mageth ]</p>

sensate

I think most people's concept of evolution is caught up in certain cultural values like new is better. The spread of evolution into the public mind occured at the same times as the industrial revolution and other social changes and I think that it is caught up in all of that.

I have also noticed that popular media, like movies and television, often misrepresent evolution. A recent movie called Evolution was way off. Even science friendly shows like Star Trek sometimes skew the definition of evolution a bit.

Automaton

Natural selection can be viewed as improvement over the current allele frequency per single generation to fit the environment. However, that has nothing to do with an overall trend to some subjective nonsense of "improvement".

abe smith

To paraphrase the smart tyke in "Buckets" strip, define 'improvement'? To be sure,in the long run,or even the medium-short run,we earlier,and all terrestrial life eventually are slated for extinction...Whaddya want to inject this business of your human values in here for?

Quetzal

I think it's likely a hold-over from the early naturalists like Oken (German school) who said "Man is the summit, the crown of nature's development", or the Brits Owen and Sedgewick. Couple that with the biblical idea of human dominion over nature, and you have a pernicious and very tempting idea: if evolution is true, isn't mankind the epitome? It fits in nicely with creationism and even some of the theistic evolutionists.

Darwin's Finch

A lot of people just have trouble thinking about mindless processes. Assigning some telos to things is a millenia-old error that still comes easily to many folks.