I’ve a feeling that most of the people on the forums here believe evolution is true; however, I’ll put this post out there to try and coax people who think it’s untrue out of the woodwork.
I’d like to begin by referencing an article I find especially convincing for the case of evolution by evolutionary biologist Stephen J. Gould:
In closing, I’d like to say that while there might still be discourse and controversy over how evolution happened, there is no controversy that it happened.
an imperfection in a design does lend support to evolution, some imperfections are obviously the work of a blind process of natural selection, which is an alternative and much more sensible explanation for how life ended up looking as if it were ‘designed’.
it may not lend support to a ‘no god hypothesis’ but it lends support to evolution, which crushes one of the most compelling reasons to believe in god for endless amounts of people. (the appearance of design)
I wouldn’t say Gould was a bad scientist exactly, but yeah, he was a pretty bad scientist at times. Really bad actually.
thats not just like, bad scientific theories, but the way in which he decried other people’s work, he didn’t use scientific analysis, but rather like kinder garden insults.
Cyrene - I do wonder about this - I agree with everything you have said except one thing - I am not so sure that anyone rests their faith entirely on ID. It has always seemed to me to be part of the politics of religion, and not a core belief. I must confess that this is just a guess, however. But public speech and private beliefs often seem to differ.
I’m sure that for plenty of people, the idea that god designed species is pretty compelling, maybe even the ice-breaker for them, but what you say is also largely correct. A lot of people don’t rest their faith soley on ID, and either have no problem with evolution or accept other explanations, so that the imperfection of organisms or adaptations, could (to them at least), support their beliefs as much as evolution supports the belief that a god is uneeded.
The appearance of design might be a reason for some people to be religious, but I imagine that a lot of people would be religious one way or another, looking at the cognitive roots/nature of religion even if they didn’t take ID seriously.
A bit of an over-statement. Theres still some people, who when they learn about evolution/natural selection fully, do give up belief in the supernatural though. So at least for some small amount of people it may be convincing.
though at least, it was a huge historical reason for people to believe in god, even if now, they have moved on to other cosmological opposed to biological mysteries.
I can personally attest to the fact that learning evolution through natural selection is what tipped the scales for me. I was agnostic, then began leaning towards atheism.
I would love to know why you think Gould is a bad scientist. It seems like he has contributed quite a lot to evolutionary theory, regardless of how he treats other scientists’ theories.
I agree with Faust, too. It seems people believe their religion, then adopt Intelligent Design to nourish and defend their faith.
Group selection is unproven and rather speculative, and he rejected the molecular revolution which is the basis for modern biology. That doesn’t necessarily make him a ‘bad’ scientists, per se. It does, however, make him an ‘old’ scientist.
I also think he made absurd criticisms of gene-based view of evolution. Essentially nonsense criticisms of evo-psychology as well.
Gould.
Its such a stupid criticism it doesn’t even make sense. 1. Spandrels are byproducts, one can’t talk about them without talking about the adaptation that produces them. 2. Spandrels don’t produce functional complexity for a purpose in the same way that adaptations are known to.
When an evo-psychologist decides somthing is an adaptation, they are using the criteria of evolutionary biology, not some made up psychological idea of what an adaptation should be. Its like saying that biologists have ignored the idea that a stomach or eyeball could be a spandrel.
and its bullshit because plenty of evo psychologists, envoke spandrels to explain a wide variety of psychological/social mechanisms/occurances. Like religion and etc.
If its possible to be a good and bad scientist, than gould was that, because his stupid criticisms of a wide variety of proper scientists based on proper evidence, and his support of backward views of biology (against massive amounts of evidence) has got* to make him a bad scientist, at least in some way.
Its a lot of nonsense, theres actually a chapter in the blind watchmaker, dedicated to explaining how its nonsense. Its actually a great chapter. Or at least how some people precieve punctuated equilibrium anyway.
maybe that happens somtimes to some species, but it would be the result of some kind of new environmental pressure and just another example of regular evolution going to work slowly.
like if you place some lizard that has been the same for a long time on a new island it may rapidly evolve but thats not an issue of punctuated equilibrium worth stating, its definatly not the driving force behind evolution. At least i’d say, the evidence for that is slim.
Even though we see explosions of life at different periods.
Punctuated Equilibrium is, basically, the result of a confused understanding of what is going on. This is something I’ve harped on again and again in thread on evolution, and that is that mutation happens. It is always happening. Not just from environmental effects (UV rays, certain chemicals, etc.) but simply because DNA polymerase isn’t perfectly efficient at its job. Mistakes happen. Under steady-state conditions (inasmuch as they exist), many of these mutations are deleterious, usually because they make an organism less effective at the particular niche they are filling (for the moment, let’s put aside silent mutations and just work with those that manifest a phenotype). So, those mutations aren’t readily passed on and certainly won’t become dominant. Of course, some of these mutations will also lead to a more effective organism. But since organisms are adapted to their environment and by extension, their niche, these advantages will be slight. You know how in the Olympics, the gold medal is always a few hundredths of a second better than the silver medal? Yeah, that is the kind of improvement that happens when something is already “good” at what it does.
But, sometimes a niche opens up. Like if the organism(s) holding that niche becomes extinct for whatever reason or there is some change in local conditions. At that point, some mutations will make the organism in question less effective at filling their particular niche, but some of those may also make them more effective at filling the empty niche. At this point, it isn’t so much a competition between Olympians, but more akin to fifth grade gym class. Everybody is terrible at sprinting (compared to an Olympian) but there is still a huge range between the people racing. The race between the asthmatic and the fat kid is slow as hell, but one of them will be better at running it than the other, and will win. If nobody else is running, that is all you need. So it isn’t that ‘mutation’ somehow accelerates, but rather that there is a venue where mutations are allowed to flourish.
I used to think it was baloney, now I’m not so sure.
If you imagine the above ‘phenotypic sheet’ is the result of this ‘genetic underpinning’ below:
Now imagine that each canal is a phenotype that the ‘ball of developmental expression’ can run down - each canal having a different phenotype at its end. Now if an enviroment stays consistant, the ball will 99.999% of the time fall down the most easily traversed canal. Producing, to an outside observer, a consistant and easily recognizable species. But beneath the most consistant phenotype are other phenotypic possibilities, most so close to the norm as to be pretty much indistinguishable on the macro-scale, but some others decidedly not so.
The enviroment changes, and selective pressure begin pushing the ‘BODE’ away from its normal pathway with increasing force - until bang!!! the genomic/epigenomic variations reach a threshold where the ‘BODE’ is tipped from canal A pheno, to canal B pheno and a sometimes startlingly new, but fully functional form is produced without intermediaries.
Dorky, I think there’s a flaw in what I presume to be your line of reasoning in making this post.
I’m guessing it went something like this:
I’m a reasonable, smart person.
Evolution is obviously correct.
I can understand that because I’m reasonable and smart.
Others on ILP must be reasonable and smart, too.
If there’s anyone so intellectually benighted so as not to believe in evolution, I can convince them using my rational points and calm intellect, together with well-worded quotes that, regardless of the character of the man who generated them, make intellectually sound and contextually closed arguments.
An admirable line of reasoning; I myself would wholeheartedly agree that (1) applies to you, that (2) is trivially correct, (3) certainly follows, and that sadly (5) fails because it rests on (4), which indicates a well-meaning but incorrect assumption that plenty of other people are smart.
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, is it too much to ask that we come to a consensus that there is no god, that evolution is correct, that morality is subjective, that there is such a thing as genetic human nature, that free will is an incoherent concept and that “identity” is philosophically and neurobiologically illusory, at least in part, and then move on to topics whose contention isn’t based on idiocy?
