What if the Theory of Evolution is Right? (Part I)

The_Ghostess_Lola wrote:

PW....Let me be perfectly clear.

When did the evolutionist's ancestors begin making love ? You hafta see that I see things from a different perspective than you.

I wanna know at what point does the evolutionist feel that our emotions evolved past today's monkeys ?....there....I said it.

And I don't care what Google or any other think tank thinks. I have alot more respect for creative, speculative, imaginative thinking than a frame saying someone's a PhD. Some of the smartest ppl I've ever met have barely > than 0 education - a few are illiterate ! 

There's jigsaw pieces ppl are trying to find out there. And there's a great big gap between monkeys and humans (w/ a few sparse pieces found here & there).

I'm speculating that important answers may be found from the study of how our emotions developed in this time frame. Ppl study bones & chromosomes. Great ! Extremely important stuff. I happen to be interested in another side of it. We don't wanna leave that out, do we ?

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Making love?

To date amy trait, habit or emotion, we simply look back on the evolutionary tree, to see how long far back we can trace it.

If you're talking about sex, even rabbits do that. No way humans can claim patent rights to that.

If your talking about love well thats a different story.

Looking at the animal kingdom, do we see examples of love?

What about swans?

Swans fall in love exactly once in their lives. And stick with them through thick and thin. A swan has no "wandering eye." And doesn't even think about anything equivalent to "divorce."

Now I ask you, what exactly could any human teach a swan, about love?

And there other species which show similar commitment to their mates. That is only one example..

Then there are other emotions or traits besides love. The branch of science which deals with this is named Evolutionary Psychology. It is quite fascinating stuff.

It looks at human emotions, and seeks to see how they were applicable survival traits, back in our hunter/gatherer days.

Let's look at a popular emotion, jealousy.

Imagine a setting, we have a woman at a bar, sees her husband talking to another woman. Rage immediately swell up inside her. She gets up, walks over to them, and tells that woman to get lost. Or maybe strike her, without warning.

This reaction is our genes, telling us to fight to protect our reproductive rights. We can see similar reaction among almost any mammilian creature.

Basically, there are two sources for human emotions. Nature and Nurture.

That is, either we are born with it. Or we learned it later, through society or TV or whatever..

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hapless_fool wrote:

@ Elroch - man has no choice. If our genes direct us to drive other species to extinction, who are you to complain about it? It's a natural process. We are just animals, after all.

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There we have a situation where mans Evolutionary Psychology is counterproductive to Society.

We've been dealing with this problem for millenia, and the solution is simple.

We simply pass regulations, to protect those species.

Then we fine or convict a few, so people know we're serious.

For centuries peopkes defence has been "But the Devil made me do it!" At which point the judge just smiles, pronounces his verdict, pouds the gavel, and says "I didn't want to fine you, but the Devil made me do it!"

Today, te defendant may choose to say "Evolution made me do it!" So the judge says "Evolution made me do it, too!"

Problem solved.

Negative reinforcement is a powerful and proven motivator, used by goverments and churches alike, for centuries now.

So I'll ask, do you really think you might chose to accept a prison sentence or hefty fine, just because evolution says your conscience should be clean?.

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The answer to hapless_fool's question is really very simple. If our genes forced us to drive other species to extinction, we would. But what the heck is his basis for claiming that our genes do force us to do this? There certainly isn't a scientific reason for this claim.

Indeed, other than for direct competition between species in the same niche this is something that is not part of the theory of evolution in general, nor is it implied in any way by this theory seen from the gene-centric viewpoint, and there is nothing in the science to suggest that the genes humans possess have some specific tendency to drive other species into extinction.

So in short, he is assuming a conclusion and then saying that if this conclusion is true, it is true. Which is not very enlightening.

Humans have caused extinctions due to a number of factors. One is ignorance: I am not aware of any example of deliberate extinction, with the possible exception of disease microbes. There is rarely a benefit to causing extinction, and it is rarely desired. It's an accidental side effect of things like rapid increases in skill at hunting, destruction of environment to use land for something else, toxic pollution, environmental change in general and so on.

Note there is nothing here relating specifically to human genes: it is more a matter of powerful human capabilities being used in a blundering, destructive, unsustainable way. This is a story that is not just modern - it extends back to prehistory. It is only in the very recent past that people have become aware of harm and quantified it to an extent that we may have a chance to avoid unintended harm. This capability is no less (and no more) related to human genes than past (and ongoing) destruction.

It is fair to say that the effect of humans is far more to do with memes than genes: our laws, our technologies, our awareness of the environment. These things have huge effect and are independent of our genes (which have changed very little in our entire history).

And of course memes can be changed entirely in a single generation, not randomly but by design. Human design.

Okay.

Maybe enironmentalism was a bad example. (Or maybe not. That's a different debate.)

But Evolution does supply us with a lot of bad tendencies.

Murder.

Rape.

Theft.

Just to name a few.

In any case, the solution is the same. We tell the suspect "Evolution made us convict you" and move on to the next case.

It is true that people are inclined to do things we consider undesirable, and it is part of the role of society to reduce those things. Such moderation is an example of memes in action.

Elroch wrote:

It is true that people are inclined to do things we consider undesirable, and it is part of the role of society to reduce those things. Such moderation is an example of memes in action.

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Yes.

And it is also Evolution which drives us to maintan a structured, orderly herd, pack, household or nation, to give our offspring the best chance to survive and thrive.

In fact, many claim it was exactly this impulse to seek order, which drove most every society in the world to invent a false religion, when they were denied access to a true one.

einstein99 wrote:

Ha! An undergraduate attempts to discredit Dr. Tomkins work. Get outta here Mind Walk! 😋 BTW. he showed that the MSY chimp/human chromosome comparison is only 43% similar, not the 70% that evolutionists gave it!

Okay, I'll ask

What makes one study more reliable than the other. It's because you prefered the result, is it?

The_Ghostess_Lola wrote:

If chimps came b4 hominids, then why did they survive and the hominid didn't?

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What?

I'm a hominid.

I'm still alive, last I checked.

I'm afraid you lost me, ghostess.

What do you mean by "hominids didn't survive?"

I think she meant all the other, non-sapiens, hominids.

hapless_fool wrote:

Humans play chess. Mushrooms don't.

Although from what I've seen on Chess.com, many humans play as though they're on mushrooms..... 

To summarise the discussion about human and chimpanzee genomes.

Several peer-reviewed papers have been referenced explicitly (or implicitly by 99). All explicitly accept that hominids have evolved in the way that it is now understood. (Indeed it is my understanding that people who work in this area would be bemused why anyone would think otherwise).

I have drawn attention to the extremely close relationship between human and chimpanzee chromosomes (about 0.5% difference in the coding DNA, as seen in proteins) and only 1.3% difference in all of the autosomal DNA (after about 2.7% of gene duplications are allowed for). Interesting to see that non-coding DNA has somewhat more differences than coding DNA.

99 has concentrated on that part of the smallest (<2%), non-autosomal chromosome which only occurs in males, about 95% of the Y-chromosome (because it is the part of the DNA which is most subject to mutation, hence most different) but produced figures for the differences which he refuses to back up with a reference to research. We can take it that he has not done the analysis himself (and if he had, he would need to get it peer-reviewed to put it up against other sources).

All of the papers I have looked at on this precise topic see no conflict with the theory of evolution in the (real) differences that exist. Indeed they quantify the amount and nature of mutations that have occurred and find they are consistent with the time frame of 6 million years or so since the last common ancestor of humans and our closest living non-human relatives. The superficially largest differences are merely gene deletions and gene duplications, which have led to quite a large difference in size of the human and chimpanzee Y-chromosomes. These pose no problem for the theory of evolution, as any such step takes just one generation, even though it may add or subtract hundreds (or more) of base pairs.

It is clear that the science denialist side here is not attempting to meet the same standards as the other, and that reason may be that they are relying on sources for their reasoning which would be exposed to refutation if admitted.

[I will also mention that I had a reproducible research assignment to get finished by midnight tonight, and it took twice as long because of me getting distracted by this discussion. For which I have only myself to blame. ]

   Well, I just downloaded the latest planet of the apes movie, which got me thinking...

   On the molecular level, evolution is not an easy task to comprehend. I'm working on it, but it doesn't come easily. And it is obvious to me that most people don't even have a clue, for example, of what a nucleotide is.

   Further, they enjoy being absolutely ignorant of such matters. (If I were to bring the topic up at dinner with my adult children...wow, could you just see what a lively, animated, intellectual conversation we would enjoy! No...you think I'm that naiive?!)

   On a macro level, I can't quite understand why those who dispute evolution keep saying things like...well, just read the post right after I started this thread.

   How do they dismiss hominid paleontology, such as Cro-magnum, Neanderthal, Homo-Georgius, Homo erectus, Homo habilis...and the many pre-cursors to modern homo sapiens?

   Do these objectors to the theory of evolution just have their heads buried in the sand? Or do they know something that I don't know as to why all these earlier versions of hominid are meaningless? Is it all a hoax?

A few references:

http://factsanddetails.com/world/cat56/sub360/item1491.html

http://www.ehow.com/about_5523542_early-human-timelines.html?ref=Track2&utm_source=ask

Experts thought Piltdown man was genuine but it turned out to be a hoax. Experts thought the platypus was hoax but it turned out to be genuine. When it comes to expert testimony, who knows?

I've never heard any ideas on how life orignited, presumibly through the random collection of molecules that were capable of replicating themselves. These inital organisms I conceive as being something like viruses, anything much more complex I can't imagine forming spontaniously, even in two billion years. Somones probably adressed this question earlier in the thread, but I don't feel like looking back through it. Should anyone know any theories or studies in this area, please enlighten me. 

The origin of the first life (abiogenesis) is a fascinating question and a hugely challenging one. It's best kept separate from the question of how life evolved once it existed, because so much about it is different from cellular life as we know it.

The best available hypotheses involve self-replicating molecules which themselves are subject to evolution. RNA molecules are the main candidate: they replicate naturally without the use of anything unlikely. What we know as life must have arisen by the power of evolution (which requires only that information is replicated and mutated) to produce molecules which interacted with the environment in ways which increased the chance of replication by any way possible. Also, the idea is that several evolving molecules can co-operate to replicate themselves in what is called an autocatalytic network. (In a way, life is the cooperation of many elements of DNA to replicate itself, enlisting and controlling other molecules to do so.

A really neat thing is that the structure of the Ribosome is such that it is feasible that it evolved from a precursor that was pure RNA. This makes it a lot easier to imagine how life as we know it developed.

Also there is some knowledge of natural fatty acid structures that could have served as ad hoc cells, with pre-cellular life "learning" to get these better under control through the action of natural selection.

DNA looks like a sort of ad hoc molecular backup mechanism, which evolved to help deal with the problem that RNA is too unstable for large molecules to be practical except for short times.

V1, Its up to the claimant to prove the case of fusion of two chromosomes. The evolutionists guessed at it, and now they have egg on face. Its up to them now to prove that Dr. Tomkins is wrong that there's a transcribable gene at the purported fusion location. Also no gene synteny on either side of this supposed fusion site for 614,000 nucleotides. Besides evolutionists did that experiment back in 2002. That transcribable gene, DDX11L2, isn't found on supposed chimp 2a or 2b. Evolutionists punted on this one!😉

Our Vespers reading from the book of Dawkins:

“The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes.”

Excerpt From: Dawkins, Richard. “The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary edition.” Oxford University Press, 2006. iBooks.

This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itun.es/us/kNkmU.l

In answer to Elroch, this is the statement behind my "Humans as machines" comment.

And, Lord forgive me, reading Dawkins is worse than reading the bible. Was the above comment literal? Figurative? Metaphorical?

I imagine, as contentious as robot kind is, there are now sectarian Dawkinians fighting over this.

"Of course it's literal" say the conservative Dawkinians. "He fancies himself a lucid writer and he meant what he said".

"No," say the liberal Dwkinians. "No one would take him seriously for making such a ridiculous statement. He means we are LIKE machines, and genes behave LIKE they were capable for motives, but he doesn't really mean it."

"Both of you are wrong" say the reformed Dawkinians. "His statements are meant to be taken as both literal and metaphorical, or neither, or whatever scores points when arguing against unbelievers."

   Why don't you buy the damn book, read it from cover-to-cover, then critique it or just shut up about it? Just reading the book jacket rates you a big, fat 0 in the integrity department.

   And wrong on another point. The Bible (all of it) is 10,000 more times a pain in the butt to read.

   Sheesh!

I bought the damn book and I AM reading it all. Not cover to cover, because it is on my iPad. It doesn't have a jacket cover. In fact, I will quote Dawkins and only Dawkins on this thread. If I'm quoting it, it from the book. IPads make that really easy to do.

I really wouldn't know about the bible. As you pointed out, and well-backed by scientific research, Christians don't bother to read it. We'll all just liars. And we insult people to boot 😃

Thank you Gopher....