yeah, maybe just your circles...
i dont belive in no evolution
- Thread starter luka
- Start date
yeah, maybe just your circles...
littlebird
Wild Horses
Not that I said it was.
The problem with ideas (like Darwinian evolution or Marxism or...) when they become articles of faith is that they get layed over the top of existing beliefs. So people who have a predominately Christian value system are brought up with Darwin & the two are inextricably linked, but not always on a conscious level.
I'm sorry, but Selection only goes so far into explaining many of the complex phenomena we can observe in nature, in ours & other species. I doubt it was ever intended to become the justification for passive or active genocide that it has, just like it was never intended to imply an invisable hand at work or that (modern) humans evolved from (modern) primates.
Natural Selection is really usefull for the Intelligent Design mob, for a reason.
Witness the Fitness
Isn't the main point about Darwinian evolutionary theory that it doesn't have any kind of teleological aspect to it. Adaptation happens in an environment - a particular kind of beak is advantageous for a particular kind of food supply. But there is nothing in the evolutionary descent of these beaks which is objectively "fitter" than any other kind of beak per se. The better adapted beak isn't better than the worse adapted one in any sort of moral way, no more than psychopath in the criminal underworld is better than a nun, who would be hard pressed to survive there. Evolution isn't proceeding to any final denouement.
But one interesting difference between man and the other animals is that man actively alters his own environment. I'm not sure how Darwinian theory accounts for this.
Isn't the main point about Darwinian evolutionary theory that it doesn't have any kind of teleological aspect to it. Adaptation happens in an environment - a particular kind of beak is advantageous for a particular kind of food supply. But there is nothing in the evolutionary descent of these beaks which is objectively "fitter" than any other kind of beak per se. The better adapted beak isn't better than the worse adapted one in any sort of moral way, no more than psychopath in the criminal underworld is better than a nun, who would be hard pressed to survive there. Evolution isn't proceeding to any final denouement.
But one interesting difference between man and the other animals is that man actively alters his own environment. I'm not sure how Darwinian theory accounts for this.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
This is stupid. I'd still "believe in" evolution if there were no creationists, because it's, you know, real. I'm not rallying behind anyone's banner, I just accept it like I accept that the Earth orbits the Sun and that matter is made up of atoms. It's not something you can meaningfully question: the only alternative is to dogmatically deny it because it disagrees with your holy book of choice.
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"I just accept it like I accept that the Earth orbits the Sun and that matter is made up of atoms."
But are these matters of belief? Or of knowledge, or fact. It strikes me that there's a difference. Perhaps the main one being, that the former doesn't really imply anything, whereas beliefs seem to commit their adherents to bigger claims.
I think some people do believe in evolution, and have had their minds warped as a consequence.
But are these matters of belief? Or of knowledge, or fact. It strikes me that there's a difference. Perhaps the main one being, that the former doesn't really imply anything, whereas beliefs seem to commit their adherents to bigger claims.
I think some people do believe in evolution, and have had their minds warped as a consequence.
Speciation is a consequence of adaptation, and the primary mechanism of adaptation is mutation plus selection: it's a branch-and-prune heuristic.
Can you give me an example of some complex natural phenomenon, supposedly explained by natural selection, that cannot in fact be explained in that way? The Aurora Borealis will not do as an example, since that is not among the phenomena supposedly explained by natural selection. Ditto asteroid collisions, volcanic eruptions, or the expansion (or contraction) of glaciers.
& this is the exact moment that science becomes religion.
I wish I could belive that everyone waving the flag for evolution was doing so thinking / knowing that 'fitter' doesn't mean 'better' My experiance tells me otherwise.
I would say, roughly, about 99% of the things every human being is doing, right now. Sorry, it does look in previous posts as tho I'm saying selection doesn't exist at all, of course it does, but I don't think it has the first & last say that it has had in the past.
Tree lobsters are a great example. There are several species that are almost totally unrelated but evolved in similar circumstances to similar ends. On tiny islands floating in the middle of the Pacific. So you have several, similar, systems with a limited amount of connections between elements in those systems, ending up with unrelated but similar results.
That works fine under controlled conditions, when organisms find themselves in (increasingly) complex & dense systems it doesn't work so well. Selection is still at work but there are so many differant factors at play it becomes impossiable to say condition A led to mutation B which was selected over X, Y & Z because of C.
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Disqualified by the "supposedly explained by selection" clause, I think. Although I would say less than 99%.
I don't see how that works. Why is it impossible? It might just be very hard. Is it demonstrably impossible, or is this the argument from personal incredulity?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
This has to rate as one of the stupidest posts I've ever read on Dissensus. It's like every smug, ignorant, po-mo anti-science cliché rolled into one.
"Natural selection is like soooo last century, no-one takes that outdated empiricist-modernist schlock seriously any more, I mean get with the preaugram!"
Darwin was responsible for the Holocaust.
Evolution as a belief system - because after all, isn't science just another kind of religion????!!!
Blah blah Burroughs, some confused math-speak, the old teleology straw man and oh, some French philosopher clearly knows more about biology than any of those stupid biologists...
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
How so? Is you definition of 'religion' equivalent to knowing facts? There is a huge body of evidence in favour of evolution by natural selection, and so far there's been no serious, rigorous research that contradicts it. To accept something as true when it's as well-supported as that is not religion, it's the complete opposite of religion. Religion revolves wholly around blind faith and received wisdom, it's completely antithetical to empiricism.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
This is called parallel evolution and is a well known phenomenon. Surely the fact that separate species converge towards a similar adaptation in similar environments is good evidence in favour of Darwinian selection and evolution?
"Religion revolves wholly around blind faith and received wisdom, it's completely antithetical to empiricism."
Of course, one abiding irony of contemporary religion is that it has begun to present itself in pseudo-scientific terms. Creationists say that creationism is a theory - and granted, this is ridiculous, but questions of scientific method and what is the correct relationship to science to adopt come into play here, and these are not simple questions.
Some religious types precisely think they know that they know facts.
Here is a question: Would you accept that there is a religion of science? A religion which is not the same as science but which science sometimes may tend to bleed into?
And if you would, would you agree or disagree with the idea that there is now today a religion of Darwinism?
Of course, one abiding irony of contemporary religion is that it has begun to present itself in pseudo-scientific terms. Creationists say that creationism is a theory - and granted, this is ridiculous, but questions of scientific method and what is the correct relationship to science to adopt come into play here, and these are not simple questions.
Some religious types precisely think they know that they know facts.
Here is a question: Would you accept that there is a religion of science? A religion which is not the same as science but which science sometimes may tend to bleed into?
And if you would, would you agree or disagree with the idea that there is now today a religion of Darwinism?
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Natural Selection has not been "consigned to the dustbin of history". SOCIAL DARWINISM has.
In case maybe this is a mystery to all of you, Bataille and Burroughs believed in evolution.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Mr. Tea, it is now cool to pretend that science is the same as blind faith in Spaghetti Monsters.
I think what the people here are doing is mixing up social darwinism with the well-accepted tenets of Darwinian evolution.
Of course people have used science (or tried to use science) to prop up their stupid ideologies in the past. They still are--check out any creationist "scientist" if you want to see some really horrific anti-science. The logic leap from here to "science is the same as religion or any other belief system" is pretty ridic.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Whaa??
Whaaaaaattt?????
Actually selection is still at work in our own complex and dense system. How many species is it that go extinct each year? Hundreds if not thousands.
Tree lobsters may be a rare case of an individual species surviving with no nearby ancestors in conditions that seem nearly impossible for them to have survived, but this almost certainly is MORE proof of natural selection. They must have benefited from some sort of mutation that made them eventually adaptive to the land environs. Lobsters and insects aren't so different, really. Lobsters and scorpions.
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nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Also, I just looked at one of these "tree lobsters" and they just look like a large insect with a red exoskeleton. I think the "lobsters" designation is poetic more than literal.
luka
Well-known member
one FACT is that things change from one form into another.
thats fine. forms which survive often seem adapted to the niche they inhabit, to a greater or lesser extent. well sure, the beaks thing is lovely, i love the beaks. and survival has, as one of its preconditions, the need to extract energy from the enviroment. im not sure how far that gets you. you are saying, in effect, things which are alive meet the preconditions for existance.
but i don't think you're dealing with facts when you attempt to blithely assert that all this is a product of natural selection and random mutations. i don't think thats a FACT. or at least not one that has been established with any degree of certainty. here you are dealing with probablities and educated guesses. i think there's room to believe in either, pure chaos, as doom suggests, or an intelligence byond the level of the individual, not limited to traditional conceptions of god. or perhaps, a thousand other things and patterns to lay over reality.
in the chaos scenario there is no why. or at least the number of factors at play are so numerous and so hopeleslly tangled and interlinked that any attempt to explain is hubristic.
in the other case, well, im sure its something everyone here has thought about at one time or another, and if not, i would sigguest you're sorely lacking in imagination. (or scarred by a religious upbringing.)
thats fine. forms which survive often seem adapted to the niche they inhabit, to a greater or lesser extent. well sure, the beaks thing is lovely, i love the beaks. and survival has, as one of its preconditions, the need to extract energy from the enviroment. im not sure how far that gets you. you are saying, in effect, things which are alive meet the preconditions for existance.
but i don't think you're dealing with facts when you attempt to blithely assert that all this is a product of natural selection and random mutations. i don't think thats a FACT. or at least not one that has been established with any degree of certainty. here you are dealing with probablities and educated guesses. i think there's room to believe in either, pure chaos, as doom suggests, or an intelligence byond the level of the individual, not limited to traditional conceptions of god. or perhaps, a thousand other things and patterns to lay over reality.
in the chaos scenario there is no why. or at least the number of factors at play are so numerous and so hopeleslly tangled and interlinked that any attempt to explain is hubristic.
in the other case, well, im sure its something everyone here has thought about at one time or another, and if not, i would sigguest you're sorely lacking in imagination. (or scarred by a religious upbringing.)
luka
Well-known member
i think it probably depends on how you are defining NS.
certainly not every phenomeon appears to be adaptive, but thats neccesarily true in a continuously changing enviroment. if you are take every phenomenon, and say either that it exists becasue it is adaptive, or that it exists because it is a mutation which either hasnt been 'selected' (misleading word) out of the gene pool, or is so utterly inconsequential that there are no pressures bearing upon it, well sure, you can explain everything in that way.
but again, whether that makes it a FACT in Mr Tea sense, im not so sure.