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

First of all, I think this is a debate. Not all debates have a winner and a loser. Many times side A believers think they have won while side B believers think they have won. This seems to be that sort of debate. There seem to be more pro-evolution believers in the audience than evolution deniers but no one has changed anyone's mind so far.

@gopher

All I know is I am learning a ton about the topic of Evoluion/Intelligent Design.

   True, gopher...no one has changed anyone's mind. That is typical of "debates". There should be a winner and a loser but there never is.

  And when Spike blocked all (many? most?) of us science-pro types, he didn't seem to take into account that he was killing his thread (but perhaps that was his intent).

   This is why we need scoundrels here, such as e99 and hapless. They certainly are not blocked. So, they must have yielded in defeat.

   Me, as a boy, attempting to escape from all the religious madness:

Perhaps it is a parable about the sort of unprovoked sectarian violence that any self-respecting deity abhors.

Here is what I hope will be my final attempt at trying to bring about a sensible conclusion to this debate.

First, I might be a well educated, highly intelligent master of universal knowledge or I might be the village idiot simply babbling things I have heard at church or at the local bar. My education doesn’t matter when you actually get down to the substance of the argument. I will give you this clue. I am neither of those.

Let us begin with what we seem to be able to agree on: The traditional religious view of the age of the human race, the age of the Earth and the universe vastly understates the true lapse of time involved in past, present and future creation events. There is substantial genomic and fossil evidence to indicate that at the level species, genus and beyond there were ancestral forms that predated the modern equivalents. For the purpose of teaching the relationships between past and extant species the Darwinian model is well suited to the needs of the classroom. It tells us that primates are more closely related to bats than they are to rodents. Rodents are more closely related to lizards than they are to fish. Fish are more closely related to mushrooms than they are to plants. And so on. It also tells us that much of the aforementioned diversity is the result of adaptation to environmental changes and competitive advantages and that DNA is the mechanism by which a successful adaptation is preserved.

Okay, so we agree on a lot. Where do we start to disagree? It begins with the assertion that ALL adaptation is the result of completely random changes and that this is supported by enough evidence to make this undeniable. Well, there are gaps. Not just some small gaps resulting from cosmic bombardment or bad copying but huge gaps in some places.

Let’s start with one of the smaller gaps the human/chimpanzee genome. I will give some numbers but provide no bibliography. If you don’t trust me, substitute numbers that you think are more reliable. Experts disagree on exactly how similar the two genomes are. They range from 98.5% to 95% similarity. There are approximately 20,500 genes in the human genome. This means around 310 genes have changed using the percentage of greatest similarity. I would need one of you experts to confirm or deny this but that means in approximately 3 million years from when humans and chimps diverged from their common ancestor around 10 million or so AT or CG pairings were changed. I guess this could fall within the range of believability using the greater similarity numbers but becomes less believable at 95% similarity. I’ll keep an open mind and say this does not confirm or deny the possibility of design.

So let’s look at some of the large gaps. Has anyone observed any mixture of inorganic or organic compounds, in a sterile environment, assembling into a molecule such as RNA or DNA? Given a mixture of RNA or DNA in a suitable media within a sterile environment, has anyone observed a living organism being produced in or out of the laboratory? Any ideas about how a molecule of chlorophyll was first synthesized and incorporated into the DNA of plants? What were the characteristics of the common ancestor in the case of the Bilaterians?

Let me explain. I want to include those who never knew or have forgotten just what we are talking about. A bilaterian is a superphylum of animals that have three layers of dermal (skin) tissue. They are further subdivided into two other groups, the protostomes (insects, mollusks, segmented worms and lots of other stuff) and the deuterostomes (star fish, vertebrates and other stuff). They are thought to have a common ancestor. They all start out as a hollow ball of embryonic cells called a blastula. The blastula begins to fold in on itself. The point where it folds in is called a blastopore. In the case of protostomes the blastopore pinches off in the middle. The slit that remains becomes the mouth and the opposite end becomes the anus. In the case of deuterostomes the blastopore becomes the anus and the mouth requires a separate opening. I hope I’m not boring you. This is pretty exciting, hey? So how do we envision a common ancestor or ancestors? This all happened with small incremental stages? Or was it a sudden design change? Natural selection made up its mind that one way was better than the other? No, wait. Natural selection doesn’t have a mind.

Well, it’s going to be hard to say because this all happened a real long time ago, Precambrian era 500 – 600 million years ago. I can give other examples but I would be wasting time. Let’s hear a respectful and intelligent reply. i.e. no ranting or character assassination.

Why is 98.5% believable and 95% not? 

Yes there are gaps. Wait for it. Those gaps get smaller every year.  At the time of writing 'Origins..." Darwin didn't know of any of the mechanisms or percentages that you wrote.  He, and others only knew that those mechanisms had to exist and they had a pretty good idea of what they would look like when they were discovered.  They turned out to be right which is why the theory of evolution has stood the test of time.

We know what the picture will look like when the gaps are filled and unless the entire picture to date is completely wrong it is not going to look like ID.

I should think it would be important to a good many people. If there's a universe-creating being, I want to know it; but even more, if there's an afterlife and a being who has rules for how to get into the good afterlife, I want to know about it, and I want to know about those rules.

But I suspect you mean that *having their beliefs respected* is intensely important to some--and nobody is ever under any obligation to respect anybody else's beliefs, even though everybody is always under an obligation to respect other people.

A question to which I do not know the answer is how the genome of a species is worked out. Surely, not all of the genes of all of the individuals of a species are the same. What does it mean, then, to speak of the genome of a species?

   Here is something that I just found.

   Russia is attempting to store the DNA of every creature, present and past. Perhaps this could explain how Noah got two of every species on his ark? The Russians plan to do it at a 166 square mile facility (I have to wonder if that could be a misprint...166 square miles?!)

   Perhaps the Ancient Aliens helped Noah, with their advanced technology, to shrink all the samples so that they could fit on a rather small boat (http://www.creationtips.com/arksize.html).

   If the Ancient Aliens could have helped the Eqytians build the pyramids (anti-gravity machines to lift and place the large blocks), then why wouldn't it be possible for them to have helped Noah? Makes sense to me.

   Anyway, the Russians collecting humongous quantities of DNA: 

http://www.engadget.com/2014/12/27/russia-dna-noahs-ark/

Elroch wrote:

Perhaps it is a parable about the sort of unprovoked sectarian violence that any self-respecting deity abhors.

.

Yes.

Except for the unprovoked part. That professor was definitely doing some provoking, there.

MindWalk wrote:

I should think it would be important to a good many people. If there's a universe-creating being, I want to know it; but even more, if there's an afterlife and a being who has rules for how to get into the good afterlife, I want to know about it, and I want to know about those rules.

But I suspect you mean that *having their

beliefs respected* is intensely important to some--and nobody is ever under any obligation to respect anybody else's beliefs, even though everybody is always under an obligation to respect other people..

.

.

Correct.

In the story, the professor makes a career out of spitting on what he knows others hold sacred, and then acts shocked when he find out he has earned no popularity points for his efforts.

.

Most everybody in the world believes in a God or Gods, under one name or another. And .hose believers have one thing in common. They have no sense of humor about it.

The professor was 100% aware of this. He decided to try pushing his luck, anyway. Most would concur, he got his just desert.

var, that schtick is nothing more than a strawman parody. There is nothing to be learned there. It is simply a fictitious attempt to denigrate atheists.

   Now, about the Russians, dna and Noah's Ark, with the help of space aliens. Here we have "meat on the bone"...lol

The only strawman fallacy was that just because the professor didn't repect religion, didn't mean he didn't respect the nation, or its veterans.

But, we can forgive the Marine for making that leap. It was a tiny one.

"Dissin my God? You wanna diss my Marines, too?"

That "joke" has been around for years. I've seen it many times. In the original version, the Marine was a male. Here, on my next post, I will come up with the latest iteration.

A woman enlists in the Marines. She serves a tour in Iraq, and another in Afghanistan. Seeing heavy action in each. She has a prosthetic right arm and hand.

Her enlistment complete, she goes reserve, and in her spare time, takes some classes at the nearby college. Cashing in on her GI Bill.

One of her classes is a philosophy course; the professor is a Muslim and member of ISIS.

One day she arrives for class, and sits down at her seat. The professor arrives five minutes late, marches up to the platform at the front of the class, and says "If there truely is not a God, may I be knocked down off this platform right here and now! I'll wait fifteen minutes!"

Five minutes pass in silence. The class begins to shift nervously in teir seats. Ten minutes go by.

"Well?!" Says the professor. "I'm waiting!"

Finally, our veteran decides enough is enough. She stands up, marches straight to the professor, clocks him in the jaw with her steel fist and sits back down again.

The class is dumbfounded.

Knees shaking and rubbing his jaw, the professor weakly gets back on his feet and says "What the Hell was that?!

To which the woman replied "Well, you see. There is no God watching over our troops who at this very moment are risking their lives, fighting for your right to stand up there and say stupid shit. So I'm doing it for Him!"

Edit: Try this: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Atheist_professor_myth

"There are no atheists in foxholes" -- Dwight D Eisenhower

Nice story, though.

Would you believe me if I told you, I hated both of those professors exactly as much, for the exact same reason?

   That "no atheists in foxholes" is another failure on my baloney detector meter. I have been on death's doorstep a few times, and I am a military veteran (4 years active; 2 reserves). That statement is an attempt at saying atheists are superficial.

    The professor story is not a "nice story". It is a stupid story.

   If you are going to keep posting dumb theist quotes, I can match you with 10 to 1 of atheists' pithies.

   Anyway...dna, genes... What do you think about the Russians attempt at preserving the dna of every species, past and present (where specimens are available)? What do you suppose they plan to do with them? Juraasic Park clones? Military weapons?

Link?

Post #914