DNA + Microevolution+ Bayes =Macroevolution

[NotReady]

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I actually agree with this. To assign any sort of "probability" to the arbitrary, meaningless concept of God


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Right answer, wrong reason.

[soon2bepro]

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I realize that, if it was it would be proof of God.

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If it "was", it would most likely just mean we haven't found the way by which we think it evolved. If it really was, however, then perhaps it could suggest design (perhaps not), but it would definitely not suggest an idea as particular as God.

[PairTheBoard]

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I realize that, if it was it would be proof of God. It's pretty easy to imagine how a light sensitive patch of cells could develop a signaling system with movement/nerve cells to provide an evolutionary advantage, and eventually become an eye.


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This is the problem I have - It's easy to imagine lots of things, so what? I am told these beliefs are made with scientific knowledge behind them.

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Here's the thing. If "God" were tinkering with the universe, his magical tricks would be indistinguishable from natural events for which there are shortfalls in scientific explanation.

Therefore, magical tricks performed by "God" can never prove the existence of God. Neither can science ever prove God is not performing such magical tricks as long as science has any shortfalls in its ability to explain everything. Science cannot find evidence For Divine magic tricks. Science can only expand scientific explanation. There is no reason for science to say anything one way or the other about the possibilty of Divine magic tricks taking place in the gaps of scientific explantion. That is a Religious issue, not a scientific one.

If Religious people want to believe Divine magic tricks take place in the gaps of scientific explanation that's their perogative. However they are wrong to say a scientific shortfall implies Divine magic tricks. It doesn't. And Religious people are especially foolish when they assert the existence of Divine magic tricks in scientific gaps that are likely to be filled in the near future. They can do so if they wish, and maybe the gaps won't be filled so quickly, if at all. But regardless it remains a Religious assertion.

PairTheBoard

[m_the0ry]

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But you need species - using Mayr's definition of reproductively isolated, etc. - to really get at evolution because once gene flow stops between populations then they each develop unique paths and evolutionary histories.

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Mayr's definitions are becoming increasingly dated, the inaccuracies are highlighted by interpecies sex. Which gene pools are allowed to mingle with others is a highly dynamic process.

[Rduke55]

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But you need species - using Mayr's definition of reproductively isolated, etc. - to really get at evolution because once gene flow stops between populations then they each develop unique paths and evolutionary histories.

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Mayr's definitions are becoming increasingly dated, the inaccuracies are highlighted by interpecies sex. Which gene pools are allowed to mingle with others is a highly dynamic process.

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Can you elaborate?

Also, I'm not saying that there aren't problems with defining "species" or that transitional organisms or exceptions can't be found - this is biology after all.

[carlo]

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It is as if a vague and formless being, whom we may call, as we will, man or superman, had sought to realize himself, and had succeeded only by abandoning a part of himself on the way. The losses are represented by the rest of the animal world, and even by the vegetable world, at least in what these have that is positive and above the accidents of evolution. (Creative Evolution)

From lightly woven and easily attainable thoughts like this, Bergson produces an idea of evolution that had been expressed previously in a profound mode of thought by W. H. Preuss in his book, Spirit and Matter (1882). Preuss also held that man has not developed from the other natural beings but is, from the beginning the fundamental entity, which had first to eject his preliminary stages into the other living beings before he could give himself the form appropriate for him on earth. We read in the above-mentioned book:

The time should have come . . . to establish a theory of origin of organic species that is not based solely on one-sidedly proclaimed theorems from descriptive natural science, but is also in agreement with the other natural laws that are at the same time the laws of human thinking. What is necessary is a theory that is free from all hypothesizing and that rests solely on strict conclusions from natural scientific observations in the widest sense of the word; a theory that saves the concept of the species according to the actual possibility, but at the same time adapts Darwin's concept of evolution to its own field and tries to make it fruitful. The center of this new theory is man, the species unique on our planet: [censored] sapiens. It is strange that the older observers began with the objects of nature and then went astray to such an extent that they did not find the way that leads to the human being. This aim had been attained by Darwin only in an insufficient and unsatisfactory way as he sought the ancestor of the lord of creation among the animals, while the naturalist should begin with himself as a human being in order to proceed through the entire realm of existence and of thinking and to return finally to humanity. . . . It was not by accident that the human nature resulted from the entire terrestrial evolution, but by necessity. Man is the aim of all telluric processes and every other form that occurs beside him has borrowed its traits from him. Man is the first-born being of the entire cosmos. . . . When his germinating state (man in his potentiality) had come into being, the remaining organic substance no longer had the power to produce further human possibilities. What developed thereafter became animal or plan. . . .

Such a view attempts to recognize man as placed on his ground by the development of modern world conception, that is to say, outside nature, in order to find something in such a knowledge of man that throws light on the world surrounding him. In the little known thinker from Elsfleth, W. H. Preuss, the ardent wish arises to gain a knowledge of the world at once through an insight into man. His forceful and significant ideas are immediately directed to the human being. He sees how this being struggles its way into existence. What it must leave behind on its way, what it must slough off, remains as nature with its entities on a lower stage of evolution surrounding man as his environment. The way toward the riddles of the world in modern philosophy must go through an investigation of the human entity manifested in the self-conscious ego. This becomes apparent through the development of this philosophy. The more one tries to enter into its striving and its search, the more one becomes aware of the fact that this search aims at such experiences in the human soul that do not only produce an insight into the human soul itself, but also kindles a light by means of which a certain knowledge concerning the world outside man can be secured. In looking at the views of Hegel and related thinkers, more recent philosophers came to doubt that there could be the power in the life of thought to spread its light beyond the realm of the soul itself. The element of thought seemed not strong enough to engender an activity that could explain the being and the meaning of the world. By contrast, the natural scientific mode of conception demanded a penetration into the core of the soul that rested on a firmer ground than thought can supply.

Steiner"Riddles of Philosophy"

[iversonian]

Can someone explain to me how the number of chromosomes in sexually reproducing organisms can change and those altered beings can continue to mate and produce offspring? In all my readings of Dawkins and Co., I haven't heard an explanation of this.

[carlo]

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Can someone explain to me how the number of chromosomes in sexually reproducing organisms can change and those altered beings can continue to mate and produce offspring? In all my readings of Dawkins and Co., I haven't heard an explanation of this.

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Have no idea-not my work. But I suppose an armless, legless, chinless man can still reproduce. Obvioulsy didn't chop off the right chromosome. But then again, if the leg chromosome is missing from both how does one produce a leg?

I know, there is the "creative chromosome" which includes all the rest but exists and within the chromosome and who's existance lies within itself within its own justification.

[arahant]

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The nautilus has a very primitive 'pinhole' eye, with a light sensitive patch. I think answers your question and shows why this is considered science and not imagination.
Evolution of the eye


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Oops. Education.

[vhawk01]

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Actually, only probability+ our definition of species

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Creationists latch onto our definition of a species all the time, and their right. If our definition of species was a consistent and correct law of nature it would be very hard to support macro evolution, but its not, its just a convenient way of categorizing unlike things. Things that are very like it struggles with because its a definition composed for unlike things.

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Yep, I've tried to make this point several times on this forum. I really dislike 'species,' and the reason is mostly due to creationists. I think most people really aren't aware of how nebulous and arbitrary our definition of species is, and they treat it like its a boundary that represents some actual reality. This leads to confusion and defeat at the hands of the savvy creationist.

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But you need species - using Mayr's definition of reproductively isolated, etc. - to really get at evolution because once gene flow stops between populations then they each develop unique paths and evolutionary histories.

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I do agree with that, absolutely, and it is a somewhat meaningful distinction. I should not have used the word arbitrary. It just doesn't mean what the creationists want it to mean.