scigirl

Didy, it's real simple. See, the Creationist explanation of our origins has done such a wonderful job explaining every aspect of human behavior, including everything from addictions to obesity to territorial violence to why I am obsessed with Law and Order, that naturally, a theist would want to know how evolution is a superior theory. I mean, I consult the Bible every single day when I am trying to explain complex genetic phenomenon such as Robertsonian translocations and non-homologous recombination. Not some stupid evolutionary theory textbook.


scigirl

Doubting Didymus

Actually, I think I get it. Albert, you are saying that all things biological must be EITHER evolutionary OR random, am I right?

If so it makes much more sense, and I apologise for misinterpreting you. Allow me to address this problem.

You propose a false dichotomy, and there IS another option. So far we've seen:
Either a biological feature is 'random' (or an undirected consequence, of other natural processes), or it is evolutionary.

Alternatively, a feature could be an emergent property of other adaptive features. In the preceeding example, I am invoking nonadaptive human cognition. This may be an emergent effect of posessing a complex mind, which IS a selective advantage. You see, developing a trait as an adaptation may have a hundred side effects, some adaptive, some neutral, and some deleterious. Provided that the benifit outweighs the cost, it will stay in the population warts and all. This provides for the existance af a variety of non adaptive features in biology without invoking an alternative theory of origins.

Put simply: there is a third option in the materialist world: Either a biologiocal feature is a product of evolution, OR it is a product of chance or other undirected physical processes OR it is in turn the result of one of these two.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Doubting,
You ask, His triune nature is on display in every aspect of the universe and human nature, including rape. For example the two beings becoming one and a third being resulting from that union.

You mustn't make the mistake that most Christians make. Evil is not a dual reality. It is a non-existent reality. Evil is classically defined as the abscence of a necessary good (St. Thomas Aquinas). If all that is, is good (St. Augustine) then it follows like the night that follows the day that all which is not good (evil) is really what is less good than it ought to be.

To graphically illustrate, 95% of rape is good in the sense that our bodies are good, sex is good, the potential for conception is the potential for an infinite good, and the mechanics of it all is good. But forcing all these goods upon another is not good. Ergo, rape is 100% not good cuz an essential good is missing from the equation.

In short, evil is the moral equivalent of a parasite. Evil totally depends upon good for its sustenance. -- Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Albert Cipriani

Hey Doubting,
Our posts crossed "like ships in the night." I just read yours now.

Your's is the arguement Jobar made about a month ago in reference to the larynx. It allows us to talk yet makes us more likely to choke. But the talking is more adaptive than the choking so it stays, "warts and all" as you say.

I know intuitively that this is circular reasoning. But I will think some more about it.

As I only got 5 hours sleep last night, must hit the sack. But it's been great dialoguing with you tonight. I appreciate your no-nonsence lack of posturing approach. Cheers, Albert

Non-praying Mantis

Actually Albert, rapists are usually more successful at producing offspring than men that never have sex and never take a mate.
However, in the human situation, rapists are usually not more successful at having offspring than males that can find a mate and make a family. However, in our situation, rape might be a result of other factors that make up a successfully reproducing family man, such as aggressiveness.

In some other animals, especially birds, that require a large parental investment in their offspring, rape is completely useless for passing on genes. In their cases, only the males that hang around and help bring up the offspring will pass on their genes.

With many animals, however, rape is quite effective at passing on genes. Whatever works best is what remains.

NPM

Non-praying Mantis

Actually, evolution can produce all of these things! There are situations in which simplicity is favored, complexity is favored, diversity is favored, and in which efficiency is favored.

The reason for this is that natural selection does not specifically favor any of these things. It favors the organisms that produce the most viable offspring. If that organism is simple or complex, it does not matter unless it produces more viable offspring than its competitors.

On the aspect of having cake and eating it too, evolution is like being in a restaurant. Sometimes you can eat cake (if you are a paying customer) and sometimes you can only have cake (if you are a waiter, for instance).

BTW, I happen to agree with you about the above mentioned disingenious Christians.

NPM

Albert Cipriani

Dear Manits,
You say: That is my problem. Am I the only one who sees it? Like a lone voice in the wilderness I say unto you: any process that can be accused of doing wildly opposite things is no process at all.

Your irrational exuberance reminds me of Einstein's "greatest blunder," his cosmological constant (?), the number he used to fudge his theory of Relativity so that it conformed to the screwed up data of his day.

Allow me to exaggerate my point into an ink blot. Photosynthesis is the process whereby sunlight is converted into chemical energy. Do you think it could also do the opposite? be the process whereby darkness is converted into energy? or energy is converted into sunlight? or how about it also being the process whereby chemical energy is wasted through diverse mutations in the form of rainbows?

Let's bring back ether! Remeber? It was just a century ago that scientists everywhere thought that ether was everywhere but could not nor ever could be detected... yet could be relied on to explain all we knew at that time about the propogation of lightwaves through space. That's precisely what your enthusiasum for "Evolution" sounds like to me. The process whereby all life processes, even contradictory ones, can be explained. -- Totally Fluxomed with Arms Akimbo, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Doubting Didymus

The answer to your objection can be approached in two ways: first, that evolution as we use the term is not a single specific process, as photosythesis is, but an umbrella term for a myriad of processes that produce effects when combined.

You use 'photosynthesis' as an example of a process, but evolution is not so distinct. I choose to draw an analogy between the process of evolution and the 'process' of publishing a book. In both cases, the 'process' is actually a conglomerate of different sub-processes. In the case of evolution, mutation, natural selection, sexual selection, genetic drift and other processes are collectively titled 'evolution'. In the writing of a book the individuals choices and the processes that the author and his associates in the industry undergo, from the actual writing, the editing process, finding a publisher and so on are all part of the general phenomena we generally refer to as simply "I wrote a book". In both cases, the results can vary wildly and even be contrdictory: both simple and complex books, both simple and complex organisms. It is because we are not dealing with discreete single processes that varied results can be forged.

Secondly, it might be said that evolution DOES, in fact, reliably produce a single outcome. In the same way that book writing might produce such differing objects as a childrens paperback and a vast and detailed encyclopedia, it can always be relied apon to produce a BOOK of some kind. If one considers that 'evolutionary fitness' is always in an environmental context it could thus be said that evolution always favours the same fitness. If evolution creates a simple baceria as well as a complex metazoan, it is because both are highly fit in their respective environments. A human is not much good at making a home between two yeast cells, and a bacteria is not the weapon of choice for coordinating an attack using firey sticks on a woolly mammoth. In these two wildly different cases, evolution has essentially acted toward the precise same ends: increased fitness. Both humans and bacteria are evolutionary gold, but in their own different ways. There is no contradiction.

Non-praying Mantis

First, I want to thank you, DD, for attempting to set Albert straight. Your attempt saved me a lot of effort!

But, I want to cover a few points that DD may have missed:



Correct, it is your problem. Like a biologist, who understands the process of evolution, I say unto you: you don't understand what you are talking about! Let me give you an example of how evolution can do "wildly opposite" things:

Let's suppose that the world's climate is getting colder. There is a population of animals who live on a continent, going about their daily business of survival and reproduction. As the average temperature lowers, those animals that are better at living in cold conditions (thicker coat of hair or feathers, thicker subcutaneous fat layers, better metabolism, better at hunting in the snow, etc.), will pass on their characteristics (which allow them to survive increasing levels of cold) to the next generation. Over time, the population will aquire increasing amounts of these characteristics, and the overall level of cold preference will change, in the direction of colder temperatures tolerated.

Now, after thousands of years of this cooling, suddenly, the climate begins to reverse direction. Now, instead of those animals able to handle colder conditions are at a disadvantage. Those animals with thinner coats, thinner subcutaneous fat, etc. are now reproducing at an increased level. As the climate reverses direction and gets warmer, those new warm weather traits will spread throughout the population, and the overall level of cold preference will change, in the direction of warmer temperatures tolerated. This is how evolution produces both cold adapted and warm adapted animals, seemingly opposite processes.



Of course, Photosynthesis is a process that transforms electromagnetic energy into chemical energy.

Ever heard of luciferase? It is the enzyme in lightningbugs (and other various animals) that converts chemical energy into electromagnetic energy, making them flash.

Scientists suggest that evolution is responsible for both of those processes as well.

Hmmm...ether is everywhere, but cannot be detected, and is relied upon to explain away what we don't understand...

Sounds a bit like your God!

NPM

Albert Cipriani

Dear Doubting,
Your book making process is comparable to the evolutionary process in that both processes rearrange a limited alphabet (A through Z or A T C G) in informationally rich ways. Dr. Suez books, compared to Shakespeare books, are informationally poor. But both sets of books contain more information than the random sum of their alphabetical parts. That is, the book making process always reorganizes the alphabetical sequence into a more complex sequence.

But the atrophication of eyes in cave-dwelling fish speak of evolution’s penchant to disorganize its alphabet. This loss of complexity makes fish more fit for their cave environment much like an abridged and bowdlerized version of Shakespeare makes Shakespeare more fit for prudes and morons.

This smells like something rotten in the state of Denmark. I intuitively sense that your evolutionary process is a process that doesn’t make sense. But I am prepared to hold my nose and accept it against my better judgment until a more elegant explanation presents itself. How environmental forces and natural or unnatural selection atrophies fish into a different species is another issue, one that I still resist.

You wrote:
Then the purpose of life is to live? Saying that evolution favors fitness seems to be to say that life evolves to live. Life is its own justification – not pleasure or meaning? Each evolutionary change adapts life to more and more different environments so that there can be more and more life. So we are all caught up on this train of being alive for life’s sake, not our own. I find the implications of this view totally repugnant. But I guess that’s simply my problem and not a problem for the run-away train of evolution.

Tell me, then, what is ours? What sense does sense make or our sense of purpose in life or meaning derived from life? If evolution fully explains how we got here, isn’t it about time that we jettisoned such antiquated notions as self? Aren’t we just the latest greatest expression of the neurotically compulsive replicating behavior of GCAT’s? – Sincerely Saddened, Albert the Traditional Catholic