Cresselia~~
Junichi Masuda likes this!!
Yes, it happened so much faster than it probably needed, I personally would call it a miracle.
But to have everything done in exactly 6 days... come on...
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Serious Evolution/Creation debate
- Thread starter Pappy777
- Start date
But to have everything done in exactly 6 days... come on...
6 days... I wonder what took all that time? I mean, if a creator deity is omnipotent, he'd have the capability to do it in an instant if he liked. What kept him for so long?
Even more interesting is the idea that the allegedly all-powerful Judeo-Christian god had to rest for a day afterwards. Does world creation take a toll on gods who can bend the realities of anything? Wouldn't it be more practical to at first declare "from now on, things work so that I don't get tired doing this"? Or, when tired, declare "I am not tired any more". At any rate, the deity would have to had defined both his own world-building speed and his own rate of recovery at some point, if he's not bound by any natural laws (such as The Law on How Quickly Gods Rest) and no laws can exist without him. And that begs the question - why create a natural law that only applies to yourself, and then decide to follow it, even though it's not convenient? Does God like to impose challenges on himself? If things are to be taken literally, a whole bunch of weird questions start popping up. And if it's meant to be a metaphor ("it's not meant to be days as in days, but days as they appear for God"), why take it literally at all?
Either way, this is all stories written by humans, for humans. And they should never be taken as a foundation for anything within natural science. The question of "evolution or no evolution" is a question of life, ultimately. Data to determine the answer will only be found by studying life, or nature, not by skimming through the same words of the same book over and over again. If you want to find out whether evolution is true or not, you have to study life.
And fortunately, people have been studying life for centuries now. It's called biology. Over the years, millions of biologists have dedicated their own life to determine the answers to the questions of life. And in biology, there is near-unanimous agreement that the theory of evolution is pretty rock-solid. I wouldn't take a theologist's word for the contrary any more seriously than I would a hairdresser's.
The Bible, or texts like it (there are thousands, most claiming to be divinely inspired, many of them intensely believed to be divinely inspired by some people, yet they all have to come from somewhere and can't all preach The One Truth, so it's reasonable to believe some ordinary humans invented most of them - all religions claim this is true of any religious texts but their own) can make claims, but the mere fact that the claims are made should not give any weight to the claims. Claims only gain weight by evidence, and evidence on the nature of life is only found in life itself (and its surroundings, but certainly not in some old book). Investigate life, find the evidence, sort the evidence, then make the claims. If the claims align with an old text, good job on that part. If the old text make further claims on the topic, disregard them completely and investigate some more. No matter how much of it agrees with the old text, no unsupported claims should ever be taken for true. That's how science works, and following that method we've made some impressive achievements as a species.
And if no evidence can be found on a topic, that doesn't mean "anything goes". That just means uncertainity, and claims made on the topic should never, ever be taken for true. We've had plenty of such "holes" in knowledge in the past, and all of them that have been filled, all mysteries ever solved, have turned out to be - not magic. That leaves pretty poor grounds for claims of magic being the solution to the rest of the holes we currently have.
Even more interesting is the idea that the allegedly all-powerful Judeo-Christian god had to rest for a day afterwards. Does world creation take a toll on gods who can bend the realities of anything? Wouldn't it be more practical to at first declare "from now on, things work so that I don't get tired doing this"? Or, when tired, declare "I am not tired any more". At any rate, the deity would have to had defined both his own world-building speed and his own rate of recovery at some point, if he's not bound by any natural laws (such as The Law on How Quickly Gods Rest) and no laws can exist without him. And that begs the question - why create a natural law that only applies to yourself, and then decide to follow it, even though it's not convenient? Does God like to impose challenges on himself? If things are to be taken literally, a whole bunch of weird questions start popping up. And if it's meant to be a metaphor ("it's not meant to be days as in days, but days as they appear for God"), why take it literally at all?
Either way, this is all stories written by humans, for humans. And they should never be taken as a foundation for anything within natural science. The question of "evolution or no evolution" is a question of life, ultimately. Data to determine the answer will only be found by studying life, or nature, not by skimming through the same words of the same book over and over again. If you want to find out whether evolution is true or not, you have to study life.
And fortunately, people have been studying life for centuries now. It's called biology. Over the years, millions of biologists have dedicated their own life to determine the answers to the questions of life. And in biology, there is near-unanimous agreement that the theory of evolution is pretty rock-solid. I wouldn't take a theologist's word for the contrary any more seriously than I would a hairdresser's.
The Bible, or texts like it (there are thousands, most claiming to be divinely inspired, many of them intensely believed to be divinely inspired by some people, yet they all have to come from somewhere and can't all preach The One Truth, so it's reasonable to believe some ordinary humans invented most of them - all religions claim this is true of any religious texts but their own) can make claims, but the mere fact that the claims are made should not give any weight to the claims. Claims only gain weight by evidence, and evidence on the nature of life is only found in life itself (and its surroundings, but certainly not in some old book). Investigate life, find the evidence, sort the evidence, then make the claims. If the claims align with an old text, good job on that part. If the old text make further claims on the topic, disregard them completely and investigate some more. No matter how much of it agrees with the old text, no unsupported claims should ever be taken for true. That's how science works, and following that method we've made some impressive achievements as a species.
And if no evidence can be found on a topic, that doesn't mean "anything goes". That just means uncertainity, and claims made on the topic should never, ever be taken for true. We've had plenty of such "holes" in knowledge in the past, and all of them that have been filled, all mysteries ever solved, have turned out to be - not magic. That leaves pretty poor grounds for claims of magic being the solution to the rest of the holes we currently have.
Cresselia~~
Junichi Masuda likes this!!
I'm not saying that He is incapable of doing so.
I'm only saying that He did not do so.
I'm only saying that He did not do so.
Hey, only a week's gap this time
Oh silly mattj, you and your "not all creationists" argument (even though attempts to legislate theocratic laws are being fought all the time). But anyway, jynx has already responded to this:
And come on, you responded to shade's question 1 by violating the "(don't give me that shit that birds are dinosaurs because thats not what i mean)" condition in question 2...
Pappy777, if you're going to try to respond to an argument, please make sure you actually understand it instead of trying to prove how oh-so-skeptical you are (because that never works). Unfortunately, what AiG does (and, by extension, you're doing) is to fiddle with the definitions of terms, many of which creationists/IDs made up, and at the end they have an "argument" that seems like it makes sense, but the implied meanings are either so vague or so far removed from the thing they're trying to refute that it's essentially a non-sequitur. This is a terrible way of arguing things and all it does is confuse everyone to the point that they can't understand basic sentences. Like, I understand that I often have trouble communicating things in a way that other people understand, but I don't know what there is not to get about point 4. Unless you have a specific notion of "transitional fossil" where you can't just demand more every time something that qualifies as a transitional fossil is found, you're not really refuting anything.
More science-explaining because why not:
The theory of evolution is not some unchanging philosophical treatise by Charles Darwin. It's an organic theory that makes specific explanations and predictions. It's the foundation of biology and thus has found many practical applications. And yet due to how specific the theory is, one could easily conceive of a finding that would unambiguously, irrefutably, uh, refute it.
Even then, theories are never really completely "wrong" or "right". Parts of a theory might need to be adjusted or scrapped, and with something as successful as Newton's laws or evolution this is pretty much what happened. You can't talk about theories being "wrong" or "right" without talking about how "wrong" or "right" they are, because then you're essentially committing the continuum fallacy. This is why I said that there are no evolutionists, and as this thread goes on I'm uncomfortable even with the creationist label. I honestly don't believe that it has any practical use other than to describe people who are just really wrong about this evolution thing - people who think that they have refuted the theory entirely.
whistle:
* I think that, regardless of private or public, children should be taught things according to the scope and context of their applicability, as accurately as is feasible. Teach religion in religion, philosophy in philosophy, science in science, etc. I don't like the idea that private schools should somehow be exempt from all regulations designed to protect children from being screwed over. To do so is to throw out very important rights of the children in favour of relatively unimportant rights of parents and such. I'm against any system where children are essentially slaves to their parents by virtue of their ignorance (that doesn't mean I think children should have all the same rights/privileges like drinking or whatever, just that indoctrination is not okay).
* I wouldn't say that I'm "offended", but my problem with using "faith" to describe any (not completely researched) belief ever is that, in most practical contexts, "faith" refers specifically to religious belief (at least, when "faith" isn't being equated with "trust"). There's often an attempt being made to equate the "faith" of the religious to the "faith" in claims that have solid evidence. And sure, all that anyone ever does when evaluating a claim is to look at the evidence that they have and try to fill in the knowledge gaps. But that doesn't mean that it's all the same "faith" (again, continuum fallacy).
Oh silly mattj, you and your "not all creationists" argument (even though attempts to legislate theocratic laws are being fought all the time). But anyway, jynx has already responded to this:
But I want to add that this is a blatant ad hominem argument (and I'm using this in the correct form of "they suck!!! therefore they're wrong"). Why do you consider modern theology "hip and liberal and wishy washy"? Do you really think that they don't "tak[e] their sole source material seriously"? You implied this rather arrogant argument in the atheism/agnosticism thread, too, that your notion of what's "biblical" is somehow superior regardless of how much research and work that others have put into their understanding of theology. Even in that other thread, I doubt that anything along the lines of "well maybe other people are right and I'm wrong, and maybe that has bad implications for me" crosses your mind when you make these ridiculous condemnations of people who simply disagree with you on what it means for a book to be divinely inspired, relevant to modern life, etc. Everyone in theology is seriously trying to make sense of what the Bible is trying to say. Not just you.
And come on, you responded to shade's question 1 by violating the "(don't give me that shit that birds are dinosaurs because thats not what i mean)" condition in question 2...
Pappy777, if you're going to try to respond to an argument, please make sure you actually understand it instead of trying to prove how oh-so-skeptical you are (because that never works). Unfortunately, what AiG does (and, by extension, you're doing) is to fiddle with the definitions of terms, many of which creationists/IDs made up, and at the end they have an "argument" that seems like it makes sense, but the implied meanings are either so vague or so far removed from the thing they're trying to refute that it's essentially a non-sequitur. This is a terrible way of arguing things and all it does is confuse everyone to the point that they can't understand basic sentences. Like, I understand that I often have trouble communicating things in a way that other people understand, but I don't know what there is not to get about point 4. Unless you have a specific notion of "transitional fossil" where you can't just demand more every time something that qualifies as a transitional fossil is found, you're not really refuting anything.
More science-explaining because why not:
The theory of evolution is not some unchanging philosophical treatise by Charles Darwin. It's an organic theory that makes specific explanations and predictions. It's the foundation of biology and thus has found many practical applications. And yet due to how specific the theory is, one could easily conceive of a finding that would unambiguously, irrefutably, uh, refute it.
Even then, theories are never really completely "wrong" or "right". Parts of a theory might need to be adjusted or scrapped, and with something as successful as Newton's laws or evolution this is pretty much what happened. You can't talk about theories being "wrong" or "right" without talking about how "wrong" or "right" they are, because then you're essentially committing the continuum fallacy. This is why I said that there are no evolutionists, and as this thread goes on I'm uncomfortable even with the creationist label. I honestly don't believe that it has any practical use other than to describe people who are just really wrong about this evolution thing - people who think that they have refuted the theory entirely.
whistle:
* I think that, regardless of private or public, children should be taught things according to the scope and context of their applicability, as accurately as is feasible. Teach religion in religion, philosophy in philosophy, science in science, etc. I don't like the idea that private schools should somehow be exempt from all regulations designed to protect children from being screwed over. To do so is to throw out very important rights of the children in favour of relatively unimportant rights of parents and such. I'm against any system where children are essentially slaves to their parents by virtue of their ignorance (that doesn't mean I think children should have all the same rights/privileges like drinking or whatever, just that indoctrination is not okay).
* I wouldn't say that I'm "offended", but my problem with using "faith" to describe any (not completely researched) belief ever is that, in most practical contexts, "faith" refers specifically to religious belief (at least, when "faith" isn't being equated with "trust"). There's often an attempt being made to equate the "faith" of the religious to the "faith" in claims that have solid evidence. And sure, all that anyone ever does when evaluating a claim is to look at the evidence that they have and try to fill in the knowledge gaps. But that doesn't mean that it's all the same "faith" (again, continuum fallacy).
I find this point very hypocritical. You are implying that teaching all viewpoints other than your own are considered indoctrination. So it's up to you (or your government) to decide what is acceptable teaching or not. Isn't that the point of private school? So one can be taught according to his/her belief system.
You also imply that any parent who chooses to raise their children in their belief system are ignorant. I'm sure you wouldn't call a private school that teaches your belief system (whatever it may be) ignorant. I don't know if you are from America or not, but we have laws to prevent the state from mingling in religious issues.
Anyways just playing devil's advocate, I know this goes a little too far off topic but I do believe that refuting a point I disagree with was important for the discussion.
I see no such implication. You're projecting the "other than your own" onto him. He's totally equal-opportunity here.
Material covered in school should have some objective, low-level backing to it. Like, the unit on ancient Egypt has the real-life burial tombs. Science has experiments and shit. Material covered in school should not be dogma asserted by parents or government or church or any other agent using only its authority to decree something as "true".
It should NOT be the point of education to conform information to some specific "belief system".
Not everyone maintains a substantial set of unchanging dogmatic assertions through which all information must be filtered. It's actually best to avoid such assertions if you want to hold a maximally veridical understanding of the world.
destinyunknown
Banned deucer.
Why the hell is the Bible taken as a literal book? The message you should take from it is the subjective one, it tries to convey a message (an ethical one, most of the time), and if you are reading it as an historical or scientific (for lack of better words) you're just plain wrong. Both atheists and christians are wrong when they treat the Bible like that, and many people do it.
Cresselia~~
Junichi Masuda likes this!!
I'm afraid that the Christians who do that are actually the majority of the Christian community.
Especially when they find "taking the bible literally" is more "moral".
I've always found that surprising, considering the Pope is not a creationist and has spoken about it many times (about how the Bible shouldn't be taken literally, even adding things like that hell does not exist).
I think this creation v. evolution argument runs strongest in the US (and maybe Canada or other new world countries?) though... I could be wrong, but it's my impression this "debate" isn't really continuing in Europe. It never existed in the first place in Asia.
In regards to the US though, Catholicism is not the most prominent brand of Christianity so the words of the pope are not so influential on America's Christian community.
Edit: NVM, a quick Google search turned up that there are many anti-theory of evolution elements in Europe, they just aren't as homogenous and orchestrated as in the US. But there too, it doesn't look like Catholics are the driving force behind it.
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I'd actually say that the majority of religious people (at least, in the Abrahamic religions) just talk about taking their holy texts "literally" but don't really. In general, people often talk about the authority of their holy text in some area, but they only do so in areas where they're ignorant enough to get away with it in their minds. In this day and age, from a literal scientific or historical standpoint, religion can't get away with much, and most scientific and historical claims are taken as figurative or mistakes/manipulations on the writers' parts. It's the ethical standpoint where people feel more confident in saying the Bible or the Qu'ran or whatever still has authoritative things to say. The holy texts can still be pretty fucking horrible when it comes to ethics, but I guess by going there this post would start to veer off-topic.
This pretty much describes my attitude towards the bible-- though I probably don't give it even this much credit.
For the record, I grew up with a Congregational Church (one of the most liberal brands of Chrisitanity I believe?) that was Japanese-established in a largely Japanese residential area in Hawaii-- one of the most liberal states.
That said, Hawaii is politically liberal, socially extremely conservative-- with the words "tradition", "history," and "culture" carrying almost sacred levels of weight in society, and spirituality is omnipresent (though coming from a very international melting pot); you couldn't live there without being comfortable with Hawaiian prayers/chants and also frequently hearing the phrases "faith", "our lord," "amen", etc etc. Asian religions also play a very strong community role, especially Buddhism. Hawaiian gods and I'd say Shintoism as well pretty much play in the background of our everyday lives.
Thing is, while I grew up amongst strongly devout people of many religions (the Japanese-American Congregational/Presbyterian/Baptist community most closely), I grew up knowing basically no one who took the Bible literally-- as science or history. The church is central to the community of faithful Christians but basically absent from politics. I NEVER heard the pastor or anyone suggest that evolution wasn't real, or that the world has only existed for only 4000 years, whatever. Faith is purely spiritual where I come from.
Maybe because Japanese have never allowed religion to dictate their world view (Shintoism and Buddhism exist for convenience more than guidance in Japan).
Maybe it's because for us even as Christians, the history of Israelites is someone else's history.
That said, Hawaii is politically liberal, socially extremely conservative-- with the words "tradition", "history," and "culture" carrying almost sacred levels of weight in society, and spirituality is omnipresent (though coming from a very international melting pot); you couldn't live there without being comfortable with Hawaiian prayers/chants and also frequently hearing the phrases "faith", "our lord," "amen", etc etc. Asian religions also play a very strong community role, especially Buddhism. Hawaiian gods and I'd say Shintoism as well pretty much play in the background of our everyday lives.
Thing is, while I grew up amongst strongly devout people of many religions (the Japanese-American Congregational/Presbyterian/Baptist community most closely), I grew up knowing basically no one who took the Bible literally-- as science or history. The church is central to the community of faithful Christians but basically absent from politics. I NEVER heard the pastor or anyone suggest that evolution wasn't real, or that the world has only existed for only 4000 years, whatever. Faith is purely spiritual where I come from.
Maybe because Japanese have never allowed religion to dictate their world view (Shintoism and Buddhism exist for convenience more than guidance in Japan).
Maybe it's because for us even as Christians, the history of Israelites is someone else's history.
Whatever the reason, literal interpretation or political views based on religion are not really on the table where I come from despite being strongly spiritual/socially conservative.
If anything, I felt like the church wanted to emphasize most importantly the fallibility of humans; which is why we seek guidance and forgiveness. What should be most strongly understood-- especially from the stories of Peter and Judas-- is that all humans are fallible, and that this definitely applies to the apostles, and the writers of the holy script.
For me, this has always meant that the bible was a reference book. Just like I wouldn't expect any historian to write a flawless factual history, I wouldn't expect the fallible human writers of the bible to perfectly transcribe the word or truth of God.
Some Christian friends I met in College (on the mainland US, not in Hawaii) asked me "Do you really think God wouldn't directly guide the writing of the church's most important document?" To which I'd answer, "Not only is there no reason to believe he would, but the bible itself leads me to believe otherwise."
The bible strongly emphasizes those instances when messengers of God reach out to directly communicate with humans and notes these instances as especially noteworthy. But it doesn't say that there was a holy brain-transfer where God fed the facts of the universe (or even his perfect understanding of ethics) directly into the brains of scripture writers as they wrote.
To me, what the bible makes clear is that God has purposely left things unclear. It's a Christian understanding that God tests us and challenges us to live virtuous lives and find the right path-- this means the answers aren't just given to us; which applies to the Bible as well.
If God wanted us to have a perfected text and understanding, he would have had Jesus write the whole book, and write it out in literal, plain terms. But that's not what he gave us.
The bible is a spiritual (not scientific) text that was given to us not by God, but by some guys who had the chance to hang out with God (and who frankly got strung around by our constantly testing God who never gave THEM straight answers) in a desert society not shaped by science that existed 2000 years ago on the other side of the planet.
I believe in the Christian God, creator of Nature-- but the bible is a reference book for spiritual development, nothing more nothing less.
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Cresselia~~
Junichi Masuda likes this!!
There actually aren't that many Christians in Europe as one would imagine.
And I personally feel that their churches run in a different way than America.
Asia... a lot of top scientists in Asia are actually Christians or Catholic. This includes leading doctors (medics) and physics people.
Christian scientists are also numerous. I don't mean that stupid Christians don't exist, but they certainly belong to the minority.
My university didn't care if we believe in evolution or not, they only need you to know the details of evolution. "You need to know what the professor teaches you, but you should always be skeptical."
(My university is among the top 3 in Hong Kong, and it is of Christian background)
I guess this is partially due to most early missionaries to Asia were medics/ nurses. And those people have always been scientific.
(Back in those days, Asians knew nothing about science, lol)
I dunno... if you think Asians knew nothing about science pre-western contact (despite China basically being the world's most advanced civilization for hundreds of years of human history) I think your teachers might not be doing such a great job (in the History department at least...).
(I know you probably don't mean it)
Cresselia~~
Junichi Masuda likes this!!
Western science, to be specific.
Asian science often lack important aspects in western science, most notably, explaining how things work and prediction.
They know that such and such works, through observation. But they never knew why it works.
I don't think you see my point. Basically what I was trying to say is that if you want to change someone's opinion, use facts and evidence. The state should not be a device to make the majority's opinion the only opinion.
What capefeather was proposing was using laws to end the creation vs. evolution debate. Which is toxic to a democracy because then the majority could use laws to end all debate. I'd like to see him respond to my post because it was directed at his viewpoint.
I also fail to see the importance and relevence of the creation vs. evolution debate. If you believe the earth was created in 6 days, what does that matter? It doesn't make you a worse or better person. It won't cause you actual harm (you will be trolled on online pokemon forums however.)
No he wasn't? He was suggesting, if anything, laws to prevent schools from teaching creationism as though it were science (which it isn't), NOT to make voicing a creationist argument in any context illegal. That's perfectly reasonable to me, I mean I won't take you seriously if you're, say, a flat-earther, but I think it should be legal for you to be able to say the earth is flat in general. Just not when, in doing so, you're misleading a bunch of kids who have no choice but to trust you as a proxy for scientific consensus.
Get outta here with your cavalier application of the slippery slope, son.
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a strong belief in separation of church and state supports evolutioncreationism not even being taught anywhere in school, so i really don't know where you're coming from.
the state is not saying that creationism is "incorrect" any more than it is saying that the ancient greek, aztec, and egyptian mythologies about the creation of the universe are "incorrect". they are matters of personal, religious belief, and the state does not interfere with them. they are not matters of scientific fact, nor can they be reasonably backed up by scientific evidence, and as such they do not deserve to be discussed in science classrooms. in the same vein, a study of the works of chaucer has no place in science classrooms. this is in no way the state saying that the canterbury tales are "incorrect" but rather that they aren't relevant to the discussion
the mythological beliefs of a single culture or religion, regardless of whether the teaching of them is embodied in religious indoctrination without reference to scientific evidence or whether it attempts to disprove evolution through science in order to come to the conclusion of that mythological belief, does not belong in a scientific classroom. science deals with scientific theories that can be backed up by substantial amounts of evidence, and with the generalizations that are drawn from those theories.
in a public school, under the concept of separation of church and state, mythological / religious belief systems should only be taught in their context as mythological and religious beliefs. attempting to do anything else is at best extreme bias and at worst intentional distortion.
EDIT: am dumbass
the state is not saying that creationism is "incorrect" any more than it is saying that the ancient greek, aztec, and egyptian mythologies about the creation of the universe are "incorrect". they are matters of personal, religious belief, and the state does not interfere with them. they are not matters of scientific fact, nor can they be reasonably backed up by scientific evidence, and as such they do not deserve to be discussed in science classrooms. in the same vein, a study of the works of chaucer has no place in science classrooms. this is in no way the state saying that the canterbury tales are "incorrect" but rather that they aren't relevant to the discussion
the mythological beliefs of a single culture or religion, regardless of whether the teaching of them is embodied in religious indoctrination without reference to scientific evidence or whether it attempts to disprove evolution through science in order to come to the conclusion of that mythological belief, does not belong in a scientific classroom. science deals with scientific theories that can be backed up by substantial amounts of evidence, and with the generalizations that are drawn from those theories.
in a public school, under the concept of separation of church and state, mythological / religious belief systems should only be taught in their context as mythological and religious beliefs. attempting to do anything else is at best extreme bias and at worst intentional distortion.
EDIT: am dumbass
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Ash Borer
I've heard they're short of room in hell
this is funny. It definitely was a science textbook until it became outdated due to better methodology. The bits about how nature is the way it is in the book are completely literal to someone writing it and reading it thousands of years ago. It's part of the reason people like religion, it answers questions. Saying the bible "isn't literal" is just a way of reconciling a complete disparity between it and reality.
Science isn't merely a collection of statements about "the way nature is". It needs empirical backing to be science. Thus, the Bible was never a science textbook.
I get what you mean about the fluid interpretation of the Bible, but I figured I should clarify, as the former is the naive interpretation of science that allows Creationism to be "debated" in science classrooms!
I get what you mean about the fluid interpretation of the Bible, but I figured I should clarify, as the former is the naive interpretation of science that allows Creationism to be "debated" in science classrooms!
Max Carvalho
Que os jogos comecem
Honestely don't you think it is ironic that the things we create (tecnology mainly) are based on the nature, something that apparentely wasn't projected? And we still have many to learn with nature, which is far more advanced than our ignorant and little mind can understand lol. Just see horse's leg for instance. Horses can reach 50 km/h (idk how is that in miles 30 maybe?) besides wasting few energy on the process. How come that happens? Well consider what occurs when a horse gallops. Elastic muscle-tendon units absorb energy when the leg steps onto the ground, and much like a spring, they return it, propelling the horse forward. Furthermore, at a gallop the horse’s legs vibrate at high frequencies that could injure its tendons. However, the muscles in the legs act as dampers. Researchers call this structure a “highly specialized muscle-tendon design” that provides both agility and strength. Nowadays, engineers try to imitate these legs design to use in four-legged robots. MTI though, admits that due to the current materiais and knowledge avaiable, it won't be easy to duplicate this system. Nature outclasses us again :o. Yet again, the live beings like the horse was another result of the evolution. I just feel its hard to tell so complex and beautiful beings weren't created when we use such species as basis to create our own stuff.
i'm not exactly sure what you're getting at, but I think you're trying to say that because nature is so efficient / powerful / good (which are all fairly subjective to begin with) and that technology currently isn't at that point, that there must be a creator greater than humans.
while this argument seems logical (i guess?) on the face of it, it ignores the fact that nature created this "ideal" structure of a horse's leg, or whatever, over millions of years and thousands of adaptations. evolutionism doesn't hinge even remotely on the idea that everything just -happened- randomly and we got these structures we now have today, but rather that natural selection constantly selects the best trait, leading to "optimal" species for their respective environments over time.
the argument also hinges on the concept that human technology will never be able to surpass that of the natural world, which is frankly myopic even while not considering the rate that technology is growing. yes, we can learn a lot from animal species, but that isn't equivalent to their being more "perfect" structures than humans can ever create.
Humans have already used genetic algorithms modeled on evolution for everything from spacecraft engine design to codebreaking. (These are only two of a huge number of examples.) It's not strange to believe that the processes of evolution could create such complexity in nature when we can literally simulate the same thing on a computer.
e: i just googled a random paper for the codebreaking one, i know there are better examples but i was in a hurry :/ fuk google
e: i just googled a random paper for the codebreaking one, i know there are better examples but i was in a hurry :/ fuk google
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That paper you linked is probably the worst possible example of genetic algorithms in codebreaking. It looks like it was something some random dude wrote in LaTeX for a cryptography class, the methods are described in very vague terms with no specification of formulae or parameters, and it doesn't even work, converging on local maxima like a gradient ascent when the whole point is to avoid that problem :x
Genetic algorithms aren't necessarily the most efficient methods for optimizing, for anyone wondering. They're more a "well it works in nature, let's apply it elsewhere" kind of thing, and they have their strengths and drawbacks. Optimization methods in general can reveal solutions that humans wouldn't be able to derive a priori, and this alone should be enough evidence that some higher power didn't need to design anything directly.
Of course, then there's the more deist argument of some dispassionate prime mover creating some metaheuristic and just letting the universe sort out its own parameters, which argues for some sort of indirect intelligent design while actually being supported by the effectiveness of optimization algorithms. Such a deity is basically inconsequential though, and still locks one into magical thinking by fixating on personifying "happy coincidences" rather than realizing the vastness of time and space makes at least one instance of those coincidences a lot more likely. And of course, the probability that you'd observe coincidences friendly to life is basically 1 as your ability to observe them in the first place is a predicate of those coincidences.
Genetic algorithms aren't necessarily the most efficient methods for optimizing, for anyone wondering. They're more a "well it works in nature, let's apply it elsewhere" kind of thing, and they have their strengths and drawbacks. Optimization methods in general can reveal solutions that humans wouldn't be able to derive a priori, and this alone should be enough evidence that some higher power didn't need to design anything directly.
Of course, then there's the more deist argument of some dispassionate prime mover creating some metaheuristic and just letting the universe sort out its own parameters, which argues for some sort of indirect intelligent design while actually being supported by the effectiveness of optimization algorithms. Such a deity is basically inconsequential though, and still locks one into magical thinking by fixating on personifying "happy coincidences" rather than realizing the vastness of time and space makes at least one instance of those coincidences a lot more likely. And of course, the probability that you'd observe coincidences friendly to life is basically 1 as your ability to observe them in the first place is a predicate of those coincidences.
1. a different way of looking at evolution:
when certain types of organic molecules are broken down, the final (waste) metabolite created is uric acid. it has antioxidant properties (good) but at high levels in humans it can crystallize and cause gout (no good). there is an enzyme that breaks it down (urate oxidase) and this enzyme appears in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, which indicates the metabolic pathway is relatively old. for reasons unknown, somewhere along recent primate evolution, the enzyme was lost. this paper (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC298506/) suggests that the molecular cause was a sudden dna mutation in the gene for the enzyme that causes enzyme synthesis to truncate prematurely, creating quickly-degraded junk (if it is ever expressed). this is in contrast to an alternative mechanism, which would involve many steps that each lowered enzyme activity by a little bit, which might seem more "intuitive". if you think about it, this sudden mechanism really illustrates the random and agnostic nature of evolution.
here (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11961098) is a more in-depth discussion of the genetic differences between the gene in different species (fig 1/table 1 are nice, text is heavy). I think evolution makes more sense if you think about the mechanism: small changes in DNA sequences. a mistake or insertion or deletion in DNA replication is a mechanical process, which is something that everyone can appreciate. the aggregate of DNA changes, eventually, over evolutionary time, leads to the morphological differences that constitute "evolution". but trying to intuitively picture the spontaneous "growth" of some biological adaptation or organ might be asking a lot, even for people who are convinced of evolution.
note: I don't think there is a consensus on whether the lack of urate oxidase is good or bad... some say it's good because of uric acid's antioxidant activity (and a minority hypothesize that this is what made higher thought possible) and some say it's a screw-up that somehow propagated and means we have to deal with gout now. also, this is probably not the best model system for thinking about molecular evolution, but I was reading about peroxisomes (site of urate oxidation) and thought of this thread.
2. not evolution-based algorithms, but sort of conceptually related - molecular computing:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7973651, pdf @ https://www.usc.edu/dept/molecular-science/papers/adleman-science.pdf
there is a type of computational problem that is very time consuming to solve with traditional algorithms and this paper uses dna computing to solve it instead. a first or second year undergrad could probably do this whole procedure in less than a week which is essentially nothing in lab time.
he does this by making 20 nucleotide "words" that uniquely represent each graph vertex. so if you take the last 10 letters of vertex i and the first 10 letters of vertex j and make a new 20 letter splice word, that represents the edge connecting vertices i and j. if you put all "vertices" and all "edges" together, you get a bunch of longer sequences that represent different paths through the graph. through various simple molecular biology techniques you can eliminate those that don't start and end at the right place, those that are the wrong length, and those that skip a vertex. so if you have any left at the end, that means there is a hamiltonian path through the directed graph.
fun fact: the paper's sole author is the A in RSA encryption.
when certain types of organic molecules are broken down, the final (waste) metabolite created is uric acid. it has antioxidant properties (good) but at high levels in humans it can crystallize and cause gout (no good). there is an enzyme that breaks it down (urate oxidase) and this enzyme appears in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, which indicates the metabolic pathway is relatively old. for reasons unknown, somewhere along recent primate evolution, the enzyme was lost. this paper (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC298506/) suggests that the molecular cause was a sudden dna mutation in the gene for the enzyme that causes enzyme synthesis to truncate prematurely, creating quickly-degraded junk (if it is ever expressed). this is in contrast to an alternative mechanism, which would involve many steps that each lowered enzyme activity by a little bit, which might seem more "intuitive". if you think about it, this sudden mechanism really illustrates the random and agnostic nature of evolution.
here (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11961098) is a more in-depth discussion of the genetic differences between the gene in different species (fig 1/table 1 are nice, text is heavy). I think evolution makes more sense if you think about the mechanism: small changes in DNA sequences. a mistake or insertion or deletion in DNA replication is a mechanical process, which is something that everyone can appreciate. the aggregate of DNA changes, eventually, over evolutionary time, leads to the morphological differences that constitute "evolution". but trying to intuitively picture the spontaneous "growth" of some biological adaptation or organ might be asking a lot, even for people who are convinced of evolution.
note: I don't think there is a consensus on whether the lack of urate oxidase is good or bad... some say it's good because of uric acid's antioxidant activity (and a minority hypothesize that this is what made higher thought possible) and some say it's a screw-up that somehow propagated and means we have to deal with gout now. also, this is probably not the best model system for thinking about molecular evolution, but I was reading about peroxisomes (site of urate oxidation) and thought of this thread.
2. not evolution-based algorithms, but sort of conceptually related - molecular computing:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7973651, pdf @ https://www.usc.edu/dept/molecular-science/papers/adleman-science.pdf
there is a type of computational problem that is very time consuming to solve with traditional algorithms and this paper uses dna computing to solve it instead. a first or second year undergrad could probably do this whole procedure in less than a week which is essentially nothing in lab time.
he does this by making 20 nucleotide "words" that uniquely represent each graph vertex. so if you take the last 10 letters of vertex i and the first 10 letters of vertex j and make a new 20 letter splice word, that represents the edge connecting vertices i and j. if you put all "vertices" and all "edges" together, you get a bunch of longer sequences that represent different paths through the graph. through various simple molecular biology techniques you can eliminate those that don't start and end at the right place, those that are the wrong length, and those that skip a vertex. so if you have any left at the end, that means there is a hamiltonian path through the directed graph.
fun fact: the paper's sole author is the A in RSA encryption.
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