Y or N? Do you believe in Evolution? Why?

[mark5019]

u beleave in it

[InfiniteNow]

Folks are equivocating with the word "belief." It's the foundation and support of the belief that is really relevant.

 

Darwinian Evolution is more "accepted as a valid description of nature" than it is a "belief" or "belief system."

 

However, thinking that some dude with long hair and a beard is going to rise from the dead as the son of god... that's not supported by evidence and is not a valid predictor, so that is *just* belief.

 

 

I believe that if I jump off the roof of a very tall building with nothing to help me during the descent that I will be seriously injured or killed. However, that's not quite the same thing as a belief that it's crying unicorns which make it rain, or god bowling that makes the sound of thunder.

[Tolouse]

1. it is a valid theory, to a point. so, yes and no

 

2. it cold be the answer to how, and not the answer to why

[TheFaithfulStone]

The question is basically nonsense. You do not "believe in" evolution in the same way that you "believe in" God or Jesus or whatever. It's like asking if I drank a steak for dinner. Maybe - but you have to pretty seriously alter what you mean by "steak" for the question to even make sense. Perhaps what you meant to ask was "Do you accept evolution as a scientific fact?" which is sort of akin to asking "Does an equilateral triangle have three angles of 60°?" Evolution is an observable fact - like the number of legs on your standard cow.

 

A: Yes.

Why: There has never been an observation that contradicted it. If you answered "No" then you either misunderstood the question, are being willfully ignorant, or are misinformed to a COLOSSAL extent.

 

More charitably, perhaps you meant to ask - "Do you accept Darwin's theory of natural selection as the most likely description of the mechanism by which species evolve?"

 

A. Yes, partially.

B. It has that "elegance ring" to it that good theories tend to have - plus it can be replicated by experiment. (Sort fruit flies some time.) That said, it's probably an incomplete description of the process and certain aspects of it could use some refinement.

 

TFS

[Rade]

The books 'The Scientific Alternative to Neo Darwinian Evolutionary Theory, as well as 'The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution' also discuss in length some of the discrepancies regarding evolution.

 

Well, this is nice--but so does every textbook on Organic Evolution used in any college course on the subject discuss in length the discrepancies regarding evolution. All scientific theories have "discrepancies", e.g., facts not yet explained, alternative explanations, etc.--theory of evolution is no different. But discrepancies do not then mean that a theory is falsified--this happens when theory is replaced by better theory. Alas, there is no better scientific theory to explain the great complexity of life forms on earth than theory of evolution.

 

I would have greater interest in knowing how these authors you present discuss the discrepancies regarding scientific process of special creation as presented in Genesis of the Hebrew Bible. In particular, could you lead me to the scientific thinking they might use that would help me understand the mechanism of how human man (Adam) was formed--that is, the scientific process of making Adam from "dust of earth with breath of god added". Now, I'm not one to tell god how to make things, but, it would seem to me that if god created human male from dust of earth, most likely god used same scientific process to create whale, elephant, cow, jackass, etc.--don't you agree ?

[Thunderbird]

I think some clarifications may be helpful, in order to understand what exactly is being debated. Lets first agree on what the issues are.

 

Is there ample evidence that life was been around on the earth over billions of years, first as single celled autonomous units, then as complex multi-cellular animals? Undeniably yes.

 

Do Darwinian models address the fact that life changes in time to adapt to environmental conditions, and competitive challenges with other life forms? Yes, best we have So far. Are we still expanding our knowledge using this model. Yes, Its a tried and true model for understanding adaptation, and has proven further by the modern science of hereditary genetics.

 

Do Darwinian models address the origins of life from the inorganic to the autonomous autopoetic self replicating systems of the first livening cell? No.

 

 

Darwinian selection did not play an essential role in the origin of life

"Eigen's approach is certainly of great interest. Darwinian selection for faithful self-reproduction is certainly important in an environment with a limited capacity. But we tend to believe that this is not the only aspect involved in prebiotic evolution. ... At this stage life, or "prelife," probably was so diluted that Darwinian selection did not play the essential role it did in later stages.." (Prigogine, Ilya [Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1977, former Professor of Professor of Chemistry and Theoretical Physics, University of Brussels] & Stengers I., "Order out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature," [1984], Flamingo: London, 1990, reprint, p.191).

 

 

Do Darwinian models address the origins of the archtypal forms of the phyla of the early Cambrian? Maybe, maybe not.

 

There are still many problems yet to be solved scientifically. My intuitive sense looking at this particular problem, of the origins of the first cell, is that these stages are related , in that they are both the same type of autopoeitic functioning's systems inside the first single cells, followed by the second autopoeitic cyclical systems stage represented in the internal biological cycles inside animal biology. A clear distinction exist here between these two epochs of life. The appearance of the animal life is also the beginning sexual reproduction signaling a major change to a birth and death cycle.

 

 

These are clear transitional stages that are not explained very well with Darwinian models. The underlying organizing principles that govern these transitional stages are however being addressed by theoretical models of emergence, chaos, non-linear equations and systems theory.

[DAN 1]

Yes. I believe in Evolution as the Divine Process presented in the Urantia Book. Darwin only touched upon the finite surface of this element of Eternal Life. It has already happend, that scientists of other worlds have come before God and were rewarded for their dedicated journey. Science is an essential part of Creation.

 

I believe because it appeals to and makes sense to my particular personality and character.

 

Respectfully Submitted, DAN 1

[hbah427]

I guess then you do not believe in and use computers and cars, as these are also continually evolving, both in functionality and capability.

 

Yes, because cars and computers all happened by chance, and they definitely did not get created by a creator! BTW, What you just said is Micro-Evolution (if you consider computers and cars "species") It's been PROVEN!

[tynkyr_belle]

YES.

Because I'm not STUPID, that's why.

[mark5019]

yes i do its obvious

[Pyrotex]

Yes, I do. Because I took the time to actually study what scientists said about evolution -- not what my hometown preacher was saying about what scientists were saying. I even read Origin of Species. The more I read, the more obvious it became that evolution would work, HAD to work -- that it actually EXPLAINED the evidence, rather than hand-waving it away. And that the only alternative was to believe in an invisible, all-powerful, peeping-tom, supernatural, slight-of-hand, stage magician in the sky.

[InfiniteNow]

I've posted this already in another thread, but within a few days, that thread and this one will be completely seperated again and I feel this particular discussion would benefit from the below:

 

 

YouTube - How Evolution REALLY Works http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeTssvexa9s

[wddycus]

Moderation note: This posts and several responses to it have been moved to the thread 14879. They were moved to the Theology forum because they are less about the original thread’s topic than the subject of God

 

I do not know where to start. In the Beginning their was a big bang can we all agree with this. So who or what causes it. You can go either way with this depending on your belief so for me I think I will go with the big Guy started it all so if I am right then I have the Big Guy on my side.

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[HydrogenBond]

I believe in evolution, but not necessarily by the standard mechanisms that are currently in vogue. Here a simple observation. Red bloods cells are able to function without DNA. They are alive without needing DNA. But the DNA is not alive without the rest of the cell. Logically, the hierarchy is the alive part first and the dead part second. But most existing theories of evolution put the cart before the horse. If we put the cart before the horse we will need to add fudge factors to account for lack of logical direction. The dead part has to randomly mutate since it is dead. The default is the need for statistics to factor out all the variations in the road that can stir the cart. We need to have a way to account for the affect of potholes, the slope of the road, etc, when the cart is leading.

 

The ID approach is oversimplified, but they are intuitively putting some version of a horse before the cart. At some conceptual level, this approach is correct, although their choice of horse is not supported with science. That is the heart of the debate. Evolution currently has a conceptual problem that is hard to see since the cart before the horse is supported with science and a random fudge factor. It is fully functional even without needing logic because it is empirical. ID doesn't have this fundamental conceptual problem, but it lacks science support for the type of horse it tries to use.

 

If we continue the cart-horse analogy one can see the difference in affect. Picture a dirt road that is winding, it has little hills and valleys, pot holes, the shoulder of the road is sloped with various pitches along the way. With the cart going first it will be a slow ride. If we put the horse first, much of this variation is not as significant, since the horse will just pull the cart long. The result is the journey ends quicker. ID sort of assumes a race horse instead of a work horse, but it has a horse pulling the cart. The logical approach is put the horse first but use science at the same time.

[InfiniteNow]

[CraigD]

I believe in evolution, but not necessarily by the standard mechanisms that are currently in vogue.

…

Logically, the hierarchy is the alive part first and the dead part second. But most existing theories of evolution put the cart before the horse.

Though I’m unsure to what logical hierarchy HB is referring, these ideas remind me of the “metabolism first vs. replication first” discussion of such biochemists as Robert Shapiro, which we discussed in 12575. In short, Sharpiro describes the previous mainstream theories of the origin of life as “replication first”, in that they propose that RNA arose from random chemical reactions, leading to the storage of information, first as RNA only, then as DNA, which organized and allowed cells to faithfully reproduce. In his “metabolism first” model, a rich pre-biotic ecology of cyclic chemical reactions appears first, with RNA eventually being selected from among many such systems due to its superlative efficiency.

Here a simple observation. Red bloods cells are able to function without DNA. They are alive without needing DNA. But the DNA is not alive without the rest of the cell.

I find this an interesting perspective. Red blood cells are indeed without nuclei or mitochondria, and thus without DNA or RNA – with the exception of briefly after their release into the blood, when they retain some of the RNA involved in their construction, and possibly when infected by viral invaders – although they can only be used by viruses as protection and transportation, not for reproduction.

 

However, I don’t think, upon close examination, most people would conclude that red blood cells are independently alive. Although capable of glycolysis-powered metabolism, red blood cells cannot reproduce, or even repair damage to themselves. Their surface proteins slowly wear and degrade, until, after about 120 days, the immune system identifies them as foreign bodies, attacks and destroys them. Along with the other two kinds of blood cells, white cells (which have DNA) and platelets (which don’t), they’re “manufactured” by bone marrow cells, which have both nuclear and mitochondrial DNA.

 

Perhaps more than any other, red cells are, IMHO, well-described as “molecular machines”. Due to their simplicity and short lifespans, they’re one of the few metabolically active cells that can be replaced with a variety of artificial substitutes. Though critical to nearly all complex animal life, one can reasonably, I think, consider red blood cells (and their non-red, oxygen-carrying equivalents in some animals) to be non-living, due to their lack of the various “life traits” described in this thread and elsewhere.