Adam and Eve or Evolution? (2 Viewers)

[HalcyonSky]

I am in the position currently however that leans me more toward theory of an intelligent designer rather than that of atheism. This is for numerous reasons, however I choose to leave them out of this thread

post up ur reasons, its relevant

 

[BradCube]

- Well first of all, given that macro-evolution is essentially the conglomeration of micro-evolution (clumsy sentence but you get my meaning) - how is that not inference enough? And you say there is no evidence, however Stevo provided a decent example of macro-evolution in charismatic megafauna (as I much doubt that the protracted evolution of the amphibia and osteichthyes interests you as much) in the development of the horse. We have consistent transitory fossils for a significant period of time, detailing almost the entire development of the horse, showing macro-evolution IN micro-evolution. So what's your problem?

Not any real problem. At first after reading this evidence on wikipedia, I was still finding it hard to plausibly believe that these changes were merely micro-evolution. In fact to be honest, I still do - they seem like quite large changes to me. However, after reading some of the articles suggest by others such as 3unitz I am willing to accept that we may never have fossil records for all the steps in between. As such, I am also willing to accept that this is a valid example of macro-evolution.

- As has been stated, phylogeny and taxonomy. All first year biology students would know this (or people who actually have a passing interest in science; I knew this when I was about 8).

As I pointed out in my first post on this thread, I didn't study Biology in Yr 11 or 12 and have not made any further studies outside of my schooling in this field. No need to insult my education further than what I have already openly admitted.

- First of all, it is a mistake on the part of the geologists to refer to it as the Cambrian 'Explosion'. It was a rapid amount of time in the GEOLOGIC sense, but in a biological one, in 10 million years a lot can happen.

It's not the fact that 10 million years is a small amount of time - the difference in the Cambrian period is that it showed an exceptional increase in life to the rate at which life was evolving previously. One of the articles 3unitz recommended suggest that this is because it was at this stage that vertebrates were becoming apparent. This allowed more fossil records to be persevered. The article did note however that around 80% of all types of vertebrae we see today appeared in this period. That alone is still quite a remarkable occurrence.

That is actually entirely rational. You choose to believe something you have no proof in; well, fine, but you KNOW there is no proof. As long as you know that, believe away.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic here. I don't think you are so I'll leave it at that.

However, what worries me is that you lean towards an 'intelligent designer' - which goes against everything regarding evolution here stated. So which is it? Evolution, or intelligent design?

Intelligent Design is not necessarily incompatible with evolution. Indeed there are many scientists that believe in both evolution and God. Which parts of intelligent design do you feel are incompatible with the theory of evolution?

Also, on a completely unrelated note, this may seem like a ridiculous question but do plants also evolve? All of the explanations I see in texts books and given by other people use animals.

 

[BradCube]

post up ur reasons, its relevant

So far (On the reasons for me leaning toward intelligent design rather than atheism):

1. The fine tuning of the universe
2. God makes sense of the origin of the universe
3. My own personal revelation of God in my life - This one comes with a clause that it is only proof for the individual that experiences it. I would never expect this to logically be proof for any other person.

There are more reasons to be sure, but I have not investigated them to a level that I would be happy defending the reasons I believe them.

 

[HalcyonSky]

So far (On the reasons for me leaning toward intelligent design rather than atheism):

1. The fine tuning of the universe
2. God makes sense of the origin of the universe

1. "Fine tuning" ? The universe is just a constant set of exceptionally chaotic processes, there is nothing fine tuned about it.
And before you go calling life fine tuned, take a look at this. (graphic warning.)
God loves us all.

As for your second point, whatever. If i was god id create the universe via an obscure 16 billion year process, place earth in a minor solar system on the edge of the universe, then to really get them thinking id implement evolution. I'd let the holocaust happen, and let parts of the world like kenya turn to shit while I rest from my tireing exertion and look at how wonderful it is that so many rich westerners are praising me.

There are so many things about a "god" that are completely and utterly illogical. Give it up already

 

[Stevo.]

It all boils down to the question of who created 'god' and the answer is man.

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

So far (On the reasons for me leaning toward intelligent design rather than atheism):

1. The fine tuning of the universe

The 'fine tuning' makes sense with or without a God, it's not like if God didn't exist we would expect the universe to be inhospitable to life or anything. Tbh it's like...

Imagine a conscious puddle, it would wake up, look at the universe around it as it understands it and presume that 'wow, since I fit in this hole it must have been made for me'.

2. God makes sense of the origin of the universe

About as much sense as 'God did it' made sense of an earthquake for ancient people.

3. My own personal revelation of God in my life - This one comes with a clause that it is only proof for the individual that experiences it. I would never expect this to logically be proof for any other person.

Well, tbh, if I thought something supernatural had affected my life, I would try to get myself mental help. We know of the existance of many people with insane delusions but of none who have ever verifiably had a supernatural experience.

 

[Annalisee]

It all boils down to the question of who created 'god' and the answer is man.

Very nice

As for your second point, whatever. If i was god id create the universe via an obscure 16 billion year process, place earth in a minor solar system on the edge of the universe, then to really get them thinking id implement evolution. I'd let the holocaust happen, and let parts of the world like kenya turn to shit while I rest from my tireing exertion and look at how wonderful it is that so many rich westerners are praising me.

There are so many things about a "god" that are completely and utterly illogical. Give it up already

I believe in evolution but there is no use blaming god for things like the holocaust that have been completely human driven.

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

If you believe in the book of revelations, shouldn't you be somewhat conflicted about whether steps towards the end of the world (nuclear armourment etc) are a good or a bad thing? If the world's comming to an end, surely Jesus has to come back before then?

 

[HalcyonSky]

I believe in evolution but there is no use blaming god for things like the holocaust that have been completely human driven.

exactly.. when a christian regains the ability to walk after a debilitating accident, theyll claim a miracle has occured. Yet why would god not intervene in events such as the holocaust or the inquisition. And what about natural events like hurricane katrina and the indonesian tsunami?

there is no logic in christianity

 

[Slidey]

1. "Fine tuning" ? The universe is just a constant set of exceptionally chaotic processes, there is nothing fine tuned about it.

Agreed. Complexity theory is beautiful. It underpins all fields. In its simplest form it predicts that there are levels of chaos which will give rise to order. Earth is one such 'sweet point' in this chaos.

The predictability of science is what gives it so much credence. If evolution could not accurately predict the world around us, it would not have stood the test of time against creationism (something which cannot predict, nor is required to by its followers).

 

[Slidey]

Oh, and all you creationists out there: never make the mistake of separating genetics and evolution. So many times such people call genetics the creation of god, yet it is evolution which predicted and sculpted that field. If evolution is so wrong, how did it get genetics so right, and why does genetics imply evolution rather than an Intelligent Designer?

You can't have your cake and eat it; either God created evolution, or God didn't create genetics. Even then, you can only say "God created evolution" simply because we don't have enough data from that time period to know exactly which complex processes lead to evolution.

 

[Riet]

The banana is a perfect fit in your hand and so easy to peel therefore god exists.

 

[Slidey]

Oh, and Brad, you make a distinction between macro and micro evolution. What then is bacterial/viral/archaean/single-cell eukaryote evolution? Is it always micro-evolution, even though given its speed can produce massive, massive variation between species in short periods of time? It's like animal evolution on drugs, and has been thoroughly documented. Do you believe in it? Consider that animals start out as single-celled eukaryotes during reproduction - a necessity to pass on genetic information and mutations.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, this may seem like a ridiculous question but do plants also evolve? All of the explanations I see in texts books and given by other people use animals.

Actually, most of my studies at university revolved around plants and bacteria rather than animals. I found it easier to understand evolution through plants rather than animals because it's easier to track. IMO. Though I did a bit on the homeobox genes in vertebrates and vertebrates - an interesting topic in and of itself.

Let's be clear, though, that animals and plants aren't the only things that evolved into multi-cellular organisms. With the big hit that was eukaryotes (look it up, important), lots of new things evolved from them. Of the 7 distinct things to evolve from eukaryotes, 3 of them are multicellular (plants, fungi, animals), and another 3 have multicellular and unicellulars members, as well as unicellular members that join to become multicellular when they want to reproduce, move, defend or attack/feed. Animal evolution wasn't something unique - lots of things had taken new forms with the evolution of the eukaryotic cell. Fungi are more closely related to animals than they are to plants.

Plant evolution is widely understood, possibly because plants are the biggest part of the biotechnology industry (from all areas - drugs, poisons, foods, fuels etc) and thus get the most funding.

One of the things that makes plants so easy to study, evolutionarily, is perhaps that they have live representatives or close relatives of almost every species that has ever evolved, and only a small number of aesthetic points of diversity (leaves, reproductive parts, stems basically) compared to animals. Also, they are younger than animals, having evolved on land (Whilst animals evolved in the ocean). I will talk about algae as well, of which some are the ancestors of plants, whilst others are completely unrelated, despite looking like the relatives of plants.

To figure out where plants come from we need to figure out where photosynthesis comes from. The answer is cyanobacteria. These single-celled prokaryotes have evolved the ability to convert some colours of light (depends on the species) into energy; that is, they changed from being reductive as in normal bacteria to oxidative. Here is an example of one: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/64/Anabaena_sperica.jpeg/200px-Anabaena_sperica.jpeg
Note that the strand is comprised of multiple separate cells. Cyanobacteria is responsible for the evolution of animals due to changing the make-up of air on earth - they increased the supply of oxygen available to a level that would support life outside the ocean (where oxygen was dissolved in water). Cyanobacteria are some of the oldest organisms and there's a wide variety of species.

Did plants evolve from cyanobacteria? Nope, not even close, actually. Plants evolved from algae.

Algae are not a species or family or anything like that. Algae are a group of eukaryotic organisms that have evolved multiple times, all having chloroplasts - often into the same shape and form (the multicellular ones, that is). A chloroplast is an entity within a algal or plant cell which can photosynthesise. The chloroplast has its own DNA and is self-contained. Where did the chloroplast come from and why does it have separate DNA? As you might be able to guess, the chloroplast used to be a cyanobacteria. It was captured through endosymbiosis (a eukaryotic algae essentially ate it, but it survived instead of decomposing), just like mitochondria. DNA comparisons between some cyanobacteria and chloroplasts agree with this theory. Examples of this which exist today are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endosymbiont#Endosymbionts_in_protists

Anyway, despite that lots of algae look like plants, not all are related to plants or even eac-other. The likely candidates which plants evolved from are: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyta

The fact that algae already had sexual reproduction explains why all plants do, too. In fact, the Chlorophyta algae are considered part of the plant kingdom, though most would mean Embryohpyta, an offshoot of Chlorophyta, when they say 'plants'.

As for the rest, it follows fairly simply from this diagram, and you can look up each step in Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantae#Phylogeny

Take notice of how almost every branch in that tree has living representatives, or cousins. Perhaps the biggest missing step is the progymnosperms - the massive moss-like trees that were the most common plant during the dinosaur age. There's plenty of fossil record but unfortunately no living members - but the gymnosperms (under seed plants next to progymnosperms, along with things like flowering plants) and ferns are quite similar to them. Gymnosperms include: cycads, pines, conifers, wollemei pine, Ginko Biloba etc. Gymnosperms are older than flowering plants, which is often apparent by looking at them.

Why can't moss grow tall? Because most species have the very simplest of vascular systems (with some moss managing to grow small 'stems' and branch out a bit, but usually to twice the height of normal moss at most).

Why were algae able to grow taller than moss, then? Because they were in water, so they were more stable - they'd grow even taller, too, if the water didn't constantly snap them off (but this is good, fitness wise, as it's a form of reproduction by splitting).

The most interesting steps in plants which I suggest you look up are, in order of evolution:
Charophyta (essentially algae-like plants)
Liverworts
Hornworts, Mosses (both evolved after liverworts, before the rest of plants, but are sparate groups)
Lycodiphyta (a very interesting group which I saw in the Blue Mountains a few days ago. Looks like a small pine tree, but evolved before them and have since diverged from their ancestors on the main plant tree more than mosses, worts, etc. They are the oldest living vascular plants, at about 420 million years old and have many many extinct species)
Pteridophyta, Gymnosperms, Progymnosperms (ferns and fern allies = Pteridophyta, these three groups evolved all roughly at the same time)
Flowering Plants

 

[Kwayera]

\
As I pointed out in my first post on this thread, I didn't study Biology in Yr 11 or 12 and have not made any further studies outside of my schooling in this field. No need to insult my education further than what I have already openly admitted.

It's not the fact that 10 million years is a small amount of time - the difference in the Cambrian period is that it showed an exceptional increase in life to the rate at which life was evolving previously. One of the articles 3unitz recommended suggest that this is because it was at this stage that vertebrates were becoming apparent. This allowed more fossil records to be persevered. The article did note however that around 80% of all types of vertebrae we see today appeared in this period. That alone is still quite a remarkable occurrence.


Not sure if you're being sarcastic here. I don't think you are so I'll leave it at that.


Intelligent Design is not necessarily incompatible with evolution. Indeed there are many scientists that believe in both evolution and God. Which parts of intelligent design do you feel are incompatible with the theory of evolution?

Also, on a completely unrelated note, this may seem like a ridiculous question but do plants also evolve? All of the explanations I see in texts books and given by other people use animals.

- It wasn't an insult, it was a statement of fact. The information is not buried under terminology and textbooks; it's out there for you to read and absorb if only you were interested.

- It didn't show an exponential increase in life; rather, it DOCUMENTED 'more' taxonomical expansion than any period previously. Extensively, the important fossils documented were ARTHROPODS with HARD shells (indeed, it was evidence of the first significant emergence of hard parts), which is significant because soft-parts are even harder to fossilise than hard parts (chitin, etc). It wasn't so much that there was suddenly more life for no reason; it's that the advent of hard parts both a) precipitated mass diversity and speciation and b) allowed evidence thereof to be preserved. All of the life now present is descended from invertebrates present in that period (obviously); however it is also worth observing that the large majority of the species, taxa and classes represented in the Cambrian 'explosion' became extinct not long after.

- I wasn't.

- Intelligent design is fundamentally incompatible with evolution, from my point of view. Evolution rests on the laurels of science, and again, intelligent design is a total antithesis to science; for intelligent design, the implication is that a divine being had a hand in the initiation of life and/or its ongoing development is totally apart from scientific fact and its ideas on the initiation of life (for an example, look up the Michelson-Morely experiment). As I see it, you can believe in intelligent design or in evolution - but not in both. Believing in GOD and evolution, however, is a totally different matter, if you accept that that God had no involvement in the 'creation' of life, the universe and everything. But then, that God loses its omnipotence; what point, then, God?

- Plants do evolve. They did this long before 'animals' did (I'd quibble the ppint with Slidey, who answered more extensively, that the ancestors of true plants were around long before the ancestors of true animals).

 

[Ademir]

Religious language is very ambigious and unclear at times. It is very open to interpretation; and the literal one is often the most obvious one, but is not necessarily the one that makes the most sense.

With that said, depending on some interpretations, the idea that God created life is entirely compatible with evolution. The Catholic Church accepts this, as do many other religious denominations.

If a holy book says that Adam was created from clay, I don't see why someone can't interpret the phrase as a metaphor. Clay represents earth, the elements, the basic foundations of life. If God sparked even the initial event that created everything that exists today, then he in turn created atoms, amino acids, cells, and life as the precursor or catalyst. Thus, in a sense, he still is the one who created life, he is still responsible, albeit indirectly. Because he created the mechanism which is responsible for everything we see today.

Personally, I don't believe this. Religion is a delusion, basically. However, I don't agree that to other people, the idea of a God becomes pointless if they accept evolution. A religious belief system is compatible with scientific evolution depending on how the person approaches both. It doesn't always have to "one or the other", and indeed, I'd venture to say that most people mix the two views together, even though I personally believe that creationism is a load of crap.

 

[Captain Gh3y]

When the Bible was written, people didn't know of the existence of atoms, amino acids or cells and wouldn't for a few thousand years (not counting the atomists in Greece), so how could it possibly be a metaphor for those things? In the case of Genesis the writers didn't necessarily mean it literally, but if you take it as a metaphor then how can you determine which parts of the Bible are metaphors and which are literal? If you use the rule of "parts that contradict known history must only be metaphors and the rest is true" then the Gospels must be only metaphors.

And if our understanding of how those things came about works without god then why do we need him at all? Science and religion are completely incompatible because one posits supernatural intervention for somewhat understood physical processes with no evidence and the other uses available evidence to construct accounts of physical processes, and in many cases the former takes credit for the latter in the form of ultra-ambiguous 'metaphors' in ancient texts. As we come to know more about how life first arranged itself on Earth, and how atoms arranged themselves after the Big Bang, we can do away with god altogether, in the same sense that we no longer attribute lightning strikes or earthquakes to god.

 

[katie_tully]

On the first day, god created scotch
On the second day he got bloind
On the third day he mowed the lawn

 

[Ademir]

I agree that the Bible and other religious texts have immense gaps. I am 100% for evolution and against creationism. However, it isn't entirely contradictory to believe in both accounts.

I know people were not aware of the existence of amino acids etc. but you are making that point from the position of non-belief. To someone who believes God exists and ordained the Bible, the passages within it come from God himself. And God would obviously know of the existence of such things as amino acids.

However, I do see the point you two are making, and I agree. Most religion is illogical, and man created God, not the other way around. I was merely trying to explain how it is possible to believe in both evolution and God, and most people do, through interpretation. It isn't possible if the Bible is taken literally.

It's much the same in cases where the Bible or any other book is so obviously illogical (eg Noah's Ark) that it is evident to anyone with any kind of reasoning that the story is just that, a story, a metaphor, not meant to be taken literally.

 

[katie_tully]

Simplistic, but this is intrinsically how I feel about the existence of 'Intelligent Design'.

There are far too many diseases, tragedies and horrors in the world for me to believe for a moment that there is a caring and benevolent God up there. If he really were a benevolent, loving God then why isn't the world one, big happy Eutopia?

the end.

 

[quixote studios]

Simplistic, but this is intrinsically how I feel about the existence of 'Intelligent Design'.

There are far too many diseases, tragedies and horrors in the world for me to believe for a moment that there is a caring and benevolent God up there. If he really were a benevolent, loving God then why isn't the world one, big happy Eutopia?

the end.

communist ;P