This is the place to discuss Ron's comments about evolution.
In previous posts Ron asked:
"I really respect your thoughts and I think that you offer a great intellectual response to questions that are on the mind of Christians. If you don’t mind I have another one for you that I am still pondering. If evolution is true and their is no truth to creation, then why have some creatures not evolved with others? Like the Coelacanth caught in 1938 and again in 1998?"
And
"Thanks but I was unclear with my original question, so I was misunderstood to be asking about an evolutionary change over a short period of time. The species was thought to be extinct and was discovered in 1938 and 1998 unchanged over the course of 80 million years.
My intent is asking questions is to get an honest atheistic answer in a kind manner and I know that myself and other Christians are asking some tough questions that I truely wonder what the other side of the idea world replies to.
Charles Edward White recently wrote an article using math and science to prove the existance of God. In it he quotes a formula from Jacob Beckenstein and Steven Hawking that says that the chance that the universe is created at random is one 10 to the 10 to the 123.
The second number that points to God comes from William Dembski. He says that there are 10 to the 80 elementary particles in the Universe. The fastest they could mutate would be Plank time or 10 to the -42 seconds. If every particle in the Universe had been mutating at the fastest possible rate since the Big Bang, there still would not be enough mutations. He says that for Darwins theory to be right the Universe would have to be a trillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion times older than it is.
The other number that White says points to God is the formula e pie i (I do not know how to make a pie symbol on my computer).
His science my be flawed, like I say I am just curious as to what the other side to this is."
Let's set up this post to discuss this outside of the forum for Off The Map.
posted by Siamang @ 10:34 AM
29 comments
29 Comments:
The short answer to the caelocanth is that some creatures do not evolve as much as others. Some can last a long time looking almost the same (alligators, sharks) and some see rapid change (humans from apes).
The reasons why are very interesting. They have something to do with the stability of the ecological niche they inhabit. If they are perfectly suited for their ecological niche, then there isn't selective pressure for change.
Look at the shark. It's been described as the perfect eating machine. Virtually unchanged for millions of years. Why? Because it's perfect! Well, as perfect as perfect gets in biology.
But if there was a survival pressure on sharks that was a drastic change, you'd either see extinction, or evolutionary change. Probably both.
Oh, there are lots of technical reasons why evolution rates differ, as well. Mutation rates, geneotype changes vs phenotype results, punctuated equilibrium and a whole bunch of stuff I don't have a deep technical grasp of.
What I'm giving you is the pseudo-lay version of the answer, the big-picture answer. This is the answer Darwin understood and outlined in his writings.
Ron wrote "Charles Edward White recently wrote an article using math and science to prove the existance of God. In it he quotes a formula from Jacob Beckenstein and Steven Hawking that says that the chance that the universe is created at random is one 10 to the 10 to the 123."
Do you have a cite for that? Specifically the Hawking quote? Because a writer quoting a scientist, specifically an ID writer, they generally quote them out of context.
Ron wrote:
The second number that points to God comes from William Dembski. He says that there are 10 to the 80 elementary particles in the Universe. The fastest they could mutate would be Plank time or 10 to the -42 seconds. If every particle in the Universe had been mutating at the fastest possible rate since the Big Bang, there still would not be enough mutations.
Enough mutations for what?
Why is he talking about elementary particles? And how did he get that number?
I really can't tell what you're talking about here. If you're talking about life, there are only a handful of chemicals required for life. Not 10^80 particles. Just hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, iron and a few others.
What the devil is he talking about? Particles don't mutate.
Ever hear of an electron mutating? What the heck?
I'm stumped by what you think E*Pi*I stands for. Energy times Pi times what does I stand for?
I cannot answer your question if you don't even know what your question is.
Siamang,
Just seeing if it worked.
Okay,
As long as you know that it is me. The article came from Christianity Today and is "God by the Numbers." Let me try to answer without rewriting the whole article.
The Hawking Beckenstein quote is from a book, "The Large, The Small, And the Human Mind" by Roger Penrose.
1st argument for God.
"The fine tuning of the Universe is shown in the precise strengths of four basic forces. Gravity is the best know and the weakest with a relative strength of 1. Next comes the weak nuclear force that holds the neutron together. It is 10^34 times stronger than gravity but works only at sub atomic distances. Electromagnatism is 1000 times stronger than the weak nuclear force which keeps protons together in the nucleus of an atom, is 100 times stronger yet. If even one of these forces had a slightly different strength, the life sustaining universe we know would be impossible."
White goes on to say,
"Besides these four factors, there are at least 25 others that require pinpoint precision to produce a universe that contains life. Getting each of them right suggests the presence of an Intelligent Designer."
He then goes on to talk about the another component of is the presence of habitable planets and how there ar 45 parameters ie. size of galaxy to mass of moon which permit the presence of life on a planet. From these 45 planetary characteristics alone, Hugh Ross, in his chapter Mere Creation calculates there is less than 1 in 10^69 of habitable planets occuring at random.
These two arguments are only two components White says.
"Comming at the same problem from a different direction by calculating the entropy of black holes, Penrose says the number is 1 in 10 to the 10 to the 123...and a strong case for a Creator emerges."
Concerning Darwinism:
White Say: "Darwin thought that all life, including humans, arose from a one-celled organism. But to get from a one-celled organism to a human being with at least a trillion cells, there would have to be many changes. Darwin says these changes were produced at randaom, but they would have had to occur in the right order. It doesn't do any good to give an organism a leg until it has a nervous system to control it. Even if we limit the number of nessisary mutations to 1000 and argure that half of these mutations are benificial, the odds of getting 1000 benificial mutations in the proper order is 2^1000. Expressed in decimal form this number is about 10^301.
10^301 is far beyond the capacity of the universe to generate. Even if every particle in the universe mutated at the fastest possible rate and had done so since the Big Bang, there still would not be enough mutations.
Continued:
White goes on: "There are about 10^80 elementary particles in the universe. The fastest they could mutate would be Plank time or 10^-42 seconds. If every particle in the universe had been mutating at the fastest possible rate since the Big Bang about 15 billion years ago, it would produce 10^139 mutations. But to have a chance at even 1000 beneficial mutations takes 10^301 tries. Thus the chance of getting 1000 beneficial mutations out of all the mutations the universe can generate is 10^139 divided by 10^301 or 1 chance in 10^162.
For Darwins thory to have a chance of being right, the universe would have to be a trillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion years older than it is. Because the univers is so young, Darwin's theory fails.
On the last one I wrote it wrong.
White uses Euler's number to prove God. It is correctly written e^Pi^i. This number is equal to -1 so when the formula is writtn e^Pi^i+1=0, it connects the five most important constants in mathmatics (e,Pi,i,0 and 1) along with three of the most important mathmatical operations (addition, multiplication, and exponentation).
These five constants symbolize the four major branches of mathmatics: arithmatic, represented by 1 and 0; algebra by i; geometry by Pi; and analysis by e, the base of the natural log. White says e^Pi^i has been called "the most famous of all formulas," because as one textbook says "it appeals equally to the mystic, the scientist, the philosopher and the mathematician."
What you are referring to is known in science as the "Anthropic Principle." Basically that the universe was fine tuned to give rise to life, and according to some, fine tuned specifically to give rise to US.
You provide the counter to this argument within your own material: "If even one of these forces had a slightly different strength, the life sustaining universe WE KNOW would be impossible." (emphasis mine)
Scientists are discovering almost daily it seems that the rules we have established for what it takes to create and sustain life are far too narrow. For decades we thought that life couldn't exist in water above a certain temperature, until we found Alvinella worms living by hydrothermal vents. We've find life in extreme cold, extreme salinity, extreme acidity. We've found life in the absence of light and the absence of air. We've found bacteria sealed inside rocks that have had no access to a food source for thousands of years, but as soon as they do they spring back to activity. In short... we don't understand life as well as we think we do.
The problem is that we have an observational bias. We assume that life should look like it does on this planet and be composed of the same elements that it is on this planet.
Yes, it's true that even the slightest changes in the structure of our universe would render it unfit for us. That does not mean that it would render it unfit for life at all.
Okay, one at a time:
The latest post alone will take some time to answer if you don't have a basis in developmental biology. I can attempt to help you here.
The problem we're getting into is that you are thowing questions up multiples multiples at a time. Are you trying to ask me, or stump me?
Let's take this slowly, if we can. If you want to understand this, it'll take a long time in biology class. I would rather we DID discuss this with biology, because that's where my understanding of the science is better. I'm only a lay evolutionary scientist, not also a particle physicist, a cosmologist etc.
I am wondering if you actually HAVE questions or if you are merely trying to stump me. I guess we'll see in the process here.
But back to the biological question at hand.
There are two main ideas at play here about the origin of man. One is that he suddenly came into being. The other is that many slow progressive changes happened to bring him about.
Please don't confuse the sudden instant man idea with evolution. That's creation's model.
Particles didn't suddenly come together to form man, nor the first lifeform.
Before the first lifeform, there were building blocks. And before those, smaller building blocks. And before them, even smaller, simpler ones.
""Darwin thought that all life, including humans, arose from a one-celled organism. But to get from a one-celled organism to a human being with at least a trillion cells, there would have to be many changes."
Of course. Humans go from one celled organisms to trillion-celled fully formed creatures in 9 months. It's not strange to imagine that all life has done that in the past 4 billion years.
Darwin says these changes were produced at randaom, but they would have had to occur in the right order.
Darwin absolutely did not say these changes occured at random. No evolutionary scientist says it is random. It is the furthest thing from random. The only people who use the word random to describe the evolutionary process are creationists when they are setting up an attack.
It doesn't do any good to give an organism a leg until it has a nervous system to control it.
And there's the attack.
It actually makes sense as an isolated idea. You need a central nervous system before a leg works. It's true.
With that idea, we can make a prediction about evolution. I predict that since you need a central nervous system before a leg will work, that if we look at the fossil record we will find animals with central nervous systems before we find animals with legs. We will also find animals with CNS's but no legs, but no animals with legs and no CNS's.
And you know what? We don't! Chalk it up for proof of evolution, the leg didn't evolve until after the CNS evolved.
Creatures with a CNS appear about 100 million years before the first things with legs.
Even if we limit the number of nessisary mutations to 1000 and argure that half of these mutations are benificial, the odds of getting 1000 benificial mutations in the proper order is 2^1000.
This guy knows nothing about evolution. Evolution doesn't say that all the mutations happened all at once. He also knows nothing about probability theory.
Evolution says it happens very very very slowly. One step at a time.
He's using numbers that prove that it couldn't happen all at once. He's right! But evolution doesn't say that it all happened at once.
Take flipping a coin. Flip it until it hits heads. When it hits heads put it down heads up and grab the next coin out of your pocket. Keep flipping that coin until it hits heads. Then put it down and get the next one out.
Pretty soon you'll have a whole table of heads. White would come look at that and say, the odds of flipping all of those coins and them all coming up heads is 1 in a million!
But he didn't know that you flipped them one at a time, and kept flipping them until you got a good answer.
That's evolution. Natural selection is like you making sure that a coin is heads up before you flip the next one. Natural selection makes sure than an animal's genes are good and useful for surviving in the world before passing them on to their offspring.
Hmm... You need a much more basic understanding of the theory of evolution, I think. I can't keep knocking down these fake versions of the theory of evolution if you have no general idea of what evolution is.
"It doesn't do any good to give an organism a leg until it has a nervous system to control it."
The problem with this argument is that this isn't how evolution works. There wasn't a fish born one day with a useless hunk of flesh in the form of a giraffe leg hanging off it. Can you see how ridiculous that is when it is stated in another way?
Parts change gradually. A fin becomes a leg over millions of years and change. And parts don't evolve separately. Parts can co-evolve and change function. That fin can change into a leg, and the nervous system changes with it.
Evolution also doesn't have or require an "order" as implied by this author. So the numbers he generates here are based on a false premise.
I don't know enough about deep math to say what the heck euler's equation shows. To me it's just a relationship between a logorithm and pi.
*shrug*
It seems to me that you don't know the question well enough to ask it, about euler's number. You merely come at us with it to stump us. Cut and paste, "well, what about this, mr smarty-atheist?"
Can you just stop cutting and pasting other people's questions and get to your own? That way, at least you'll UNDERSTAND what you're asking.
I don't cut and paste my answers. I'm not pointing you to a website or a book title and saying "learn up, God-boy!"
I'm willing to actually talk to you about this stuff. Are you willing, too?
Siamang,
I meant no attach on anyone or their ideas. There are just things that I believe evolution doesn't explain... outside of the White article. I just wondered if someone would be willing to talk about some of them, even if we chose to disagree in the long I would be more educated and less likly to say something that would potentially hurt someone else.
Siamang,
I am not cutting and pasting anything...I am re writing parts of the article. I don't know where to find it on-line, if it is on-line. The article closed with Euler's number as the one thing that certainly proved God and I got tired of rewriting it so I didn't elaborate on the rest of his argument. I assumed that you were familiar with it. I am sorry. I really am a lot more innocent than I think I come across. My initial question for that was: Is White right? Do these things prove God to someone is truely open minded that's all.
There are just things that I believe evolution doesn't explain.
But how can you believe that when you clearly don't understand WHAT evolution explains or how it explains it? It's like you showed up for a college course of math and said to the teacher before the class started, "there's things in the world that mathematics doesn't explain!"
Stop trying to stump me.
My initial question for that was: Is White right? Do these things prove God to someone is truely open minded that's all.
Maybe for some. I'm not a mathematician. I'm sure some people see a beauty and symmetry in that equation. Other people see beauty elsewhere.
Is the existence of beauty proof of God? That's a philosophical question.
For someone to write a math equation in an issue of Christianity today, and say "Look, math proves God!" It's like, wow, dude, smoke some more pot!
1-1=0 Therefore my dog is the king of siam!
It makes no sense.
I am feeling completly misunderstood and I know that it is becuae of my poor e-communication skills. I am not trying to stump anyone. Like I said I am probably a lot more inocent than I come across. Let me think of some better ways to ask some questions.
Let me try a friendlier approach!
Sorry if I've come off as less friendly that I'd like.
What I'd like you to do is to ask the questions of things you would like to understand. In your own words, with your own current understanding as a starting point.
That way, I can give you an answer suited to your question as you understand it.
Because otherwise I'm just writing answers to someone who wrote an article in a magazine. They'll never read my response, and you're not likely to understand my response if you don't understand the technical nature of the question in the first place.
If you say there are some things that evolution doesn't explain, let's hear you ask it. From your own life experience, and not from a website or a magazine. Just look out into the animal world, for instance, and say, "how does evolution explain why polar bears are white?" for example.
Ask the questions that you wonder about.
Siamang,
sounds fair. Let me start with my understanding of evolution. I have other questions that are for the philosophy buff but unless you welcome those too I will only ask you questions dealing with evolution. It is my understanding that natural selection is based on the thought that only the strong survive. If that is the case then where is there room for compassion?
We as people go out of our way to ensure that the weakest of our species survive and we send the strongest to war. With compassion, we provide for those underprivledged. If my notion of "only the strong survive" then you can see my confusion.
Ron
Well, natural selection isn't "only the strong survive." Sometimes it's "only the clever survive." Sometimes it's "only those who work together survive." Sometimes it's "whoever protects their own family, survive". Sometimes it's "whoever has the most babies, survives"
Nature is about survival. The rules of survival aren't set by man. If next week bird flu wipes the population of china off the map, bird flu won't be remorseful about it. It won't protect the weak. It will attack the weak.
Natural selection wasn't made by man. Natural selection is just the way of the world. Whatever survives passes on its genes to the next generation.
Morality is the name that man has given to man's tendency to protect the weak in our society. It is man standing astride the forces of nature and saying "Stop! You will not take our weak! We will protect our weak, our defenseless. We will shelter the weak from the storm, we will protect them from disease. We will defend them from the lion and the wolf, and the bird flu."
That is morality.
If you care to ask "where is the morality in natural selection" you might as well ask "where is the morality in calculus?"
One cannot invent a moral code out of science. One can only describe the world as it is, not as one wishes it would be. Sure, I'd like it if a cat, upon seeing a baby mouse, would be taken with compassion and say, "I cannot kill that, for it is only a weak, helpless baby mouse." But that doesn't happen!
But humans are social creatures. We have survived BECAUSE protecting the weak provides for a survival benefit, as I've posted to you before.
Just like a herd of water buffalo put their young ones to the center of the herd when being attacked by lions, humans also protect our weak.
It was a survival benefit for us to be moral and protect the weak, which is why it evolved.
Now humans have progressed beyond animal instincts, and we regard moral values as being a noble end unto itself. We are moral animals by our own biology, and our own declaration.
But "survival of the fittest" never meant leaving babys out to fend against the wolves. It's not a philosophy, or a morally defensible way to treat other human beings. It's merely a description of the savage world of nature.
One cannot invent a moral code out of science. One can only describe the world as it is, not as one wishes it would be. Sure, I'd like it if a cat, upon seeing a baby mouse, would be taken with compassion and say, "I cannot kill that, for it is only a weak, helpless baby mouse." But that doesn't happen!
Great answer, I do think that science has it's own moral code though that still puzzles me. I havn't seen a cat that would not hunt the mouse but what I did see on one of the animal shows was a crocodile that attacked a small deer like animal and a near-by hipo attacked the croc, gently placed the deer in his mouth and carried him to safety and tried to nudge him back to life. Even the people on the show said that they did not have an explaination for this.
Another show showed two male cobras in a turf battle and said that they will intentionally not bite each other because they have a built in understanding of the fatality in the bite. When one of the cobras is penned he must leave. I realize that my understanding could be skewed but to me that sounds like morals.
This is Texan
Siamang, I thought you might be interested in this. It ran yesterday in our paper. I think it's fascinating. Sorry it's a little long.
Seen that face before? Rat-squirrel not extinct after all
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) — It has the face of a rat and the tail of a skinny squirrel — and scientists say this creature discovered living in central Laos is pretty special: It's a species believed to have been extinct for 11 million years.
The long-whiskered rodent made international headlines last spring when biologists declared they'd discovered a brand new species, nicknamed the Laotian rock rat.
It turns out the little guy isn't new after all, but a rare kind of survivor: a member of a family until now known only from fossils.
Nor is it a rat. This species, called Diatomyidae, looks more like small squirrels or tree shrews, said paleontologist Mary Dawson of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
Dawson, with colleagues in France and China, report the creature's new identity in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
The resemblance is "absolutely striking," Dawson said. As soon as her team spotted reports about the rodent's discovery, "we thought, 'My goodness, this is not a new family. We've known it from the fossil record.'"
They set out to prove that through meticulous comparisons between the bones of today's specimens and fossils found in China and elsewhere in Asia.
To reappear after 11 million years is more exciting than if the rodent really had been a new species, said George Schaller, a naturalist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, which unveiled the creature's existence last year. Indeed, such reappearances are so rare that paleontologists dub them "the Lazarus effect."
"It shows you it's well worth looking around in this world, still, to see what's out there," Schaller said.
The nocturnal rodent lives in Laotian forests largely unexplored by outsiders, because of the geographic remoteness and history of political turmoil.
Schaller calls the area "an absolute wonderland," because biologists who have ventured in have found unique animals, like a type of wild ox called the saola, barking deer, and never-before-seen bats. Dawson describes it as a prehistoric zoo, teeming with information about past and present biodiversity.
All the attention to the ancient rodent will be "wonderful for conservation," Schaller said. "This way, Laos will be proud of that region for all these new animals, which will help conservation in that some of the forests, I hope, will be preserved."
Locals call the rodent kha-nyou. Scientists haven't yet a bagged a breathing one, only the bodies of those recently caught by hunters or for sale at meat markets, where researchers with the New York-based conservation society first spotted the creature.
Now the challenge is to trap some live ones, and calculate how many still exist to tell whether the species is endangered, Dawson said.
I'll make a new subject for the next parts of this discussion.
Siamang,
I don't want to try and stump you in any of your speech. Obviously you are very intelligent. We don't even have to talk about this anymore. What are your other interests?
Okay, hehe.
Videogames, animation, segways, theme parks, stuff like that.
What are you into?
Flyfishing, chess, reading, hiking. Triathlon, some sports.
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