The Ant and the Blade of Grass

[tpir]

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Self defense.

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Fair enough [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]


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Other natural laws haven't been offered as proof that God doesn't exist.

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There could never be "proof that God doesn't exist" as long as you stop trying to pigeonhole Him with specifics. If God is *everything* then our evolving would just be a part of His nature unfolding.


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...all come from apes(or even some one celled bug crawling in the muck)- with no proof.

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The way you use the word "proof" is unreasonable. We would never be able to know anything and engaging in these threads would be intellectually dishonest. Where is the proof that counters the overwhelming evidence that we are related to apes?


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But it didn't happen by accident.

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No one is saying that it did. Don't conflate random changes in generations with a cosmic accident. Evolution says nothing about what initially started life, just how it got from "there" to here. That's it. I know you know all of this though, so???

[Hopey]

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Is this one of your clever word games where you purposefully used the word "proof" instead of "evidence"?


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I promise you I debated which word to use. But I knew it didn't matter, either would draw fire. I chose proof as a stronger word than evidence because I can't say there's absolutely zero evidence.

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Would you argue that there is "proof" of god's existence, or merely "evidence" of such?

[Lestat]

<font color="blue"> Other natural laws haven't been offered as proof that God doesn't exist. </font>

I think it's unfair for you to hold this view. I do not understand evolution as being offered as "proof" God doesn't exist. It is just the way many theists (particularily creationists), have chosen to take it.

Unlike Newtonian theory, evolution just happens to rip to shreds a very important and core Christian belief. Many fundamentalist Christians are reviled when it comes to the prospect that we descended from apes. They are indignant at the mere mention of it and insulted. But here's the thing...

Just like the theory of gravity and all other scientific theories, evolutionary theory isn't going to go away. It's a fact! So Christians need to be more like yourself and somehow manage to find a way to work their beliefs around evolution. The problem arises because they want evolution/science to work its way around their beliefs! That's not gonna happen. Evolution is as true as gravity it's here to stay.

[NotReady]

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here could never be "proof that God doesn't exist" as long as you stop trying to pigeonhole Him with specifics. If God is *everything* then our evolving would just be a part of His nature unfolding.


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Send that memo to Dawkins, cc Dennett,Harris and Stenger.

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The way you use the word "proof" is unreasonable


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We need a FAQ on proof, evidence and burden of proof.

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No one is saying that it did.


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To me mindless means accident. Especially when you want to kill God in the bargain.

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Evolution says nothing about what initially started life, just how it got from "there" to here.


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We need a FAQ defining evolution.

[NotReady]

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Would you argue that there is "proof" of god's existence, or merely "evidence" of such?


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We need a FAQ.

[NotReady]

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I do not understand evolution as being offered as "proof" God doesn't exist. It is just the way many theists (particularily creationists), have chosen to take it.


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We take it that way because it's shoved down our throats. See my Asa Gray thread.

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Unlike Newtonian theory, evolution just happens to rip to shreds a very important and core Christian belief.


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Good definition of begging the question. Like Gore on global warming, I guess you think the debate is over?

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Evolution is as true as gravity it's here to stay.


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I agree with the second half.

[tpir]

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To me mindless means accident.

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Appealing to ignorance won't work here. What it means to you does not alter what it actually says. And it says nothing about accidents. If you want to hold onto this view you should just respond with "I refuse to be reasonable about this topic" and never post about it ever again.


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Especially when you want to kill God in the bargain.

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How is God getting killed? God is everything. That makes God un-killable. Are you saying you reject evolution because it makes your specific Biblical definition of God unlikely? Get over it dude. God isn't what you want Him to be. Sorry.

[Praxising]

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Daniel C. Dennett likes to tell the story about an ant crawling to the top of a blade of grass. It turn out that the ant's brain can be invaded by a parasitic worm, which need to get into the belly of a cow for survival. Thus (as Dennett puts it), it drives the ant like an all terrain vehicle up the blade of grass so a cow can digest it.

Well, I certainly have a healthy respect for evolution, but just how on earth did this worm evolve to know not only to invade the brain of the ant, but to then have an exact effect on the brain that causes it to climb up the blade of grass?

[/ QUOTE ]I haven't read the other responses, there are some pretty smart people here, so maybe you've had a satisfactory answer. But...I can't resist the opportunity to teach evolutionary theory again, so I'll have a crack at it.

I imagine some researcher somewhere can tell you a great deal about how this specific worm, and ant and cow got together. But just as an example of the "How the heck could that happen?" issue, I will tell you what is sometimes called a "just-so story" which is a hypothetical based on other similar things happening that we do know about.

Evolution is possible because of mutation, diversity and heritability. So, this worm, no idea where it came from, but it was likely "pre-adapted" to life in the gut of a vertebrate. Could be any sort of vertebrate. Like a generalized worm you might find in a dog.

So, extruded in feces, the ants swarm around and the worm, instinctively, clings onto and burrows into whatever is warm and alive, the ant's head is closest, so in it goes.

Now we come to the speculative part. If there is one way to easily invade the ant, then the worms, having diversity, will in some cases burrow left, some right, some stay in position and so forth. There are some neurological problems that make you "dance" or swear or turn in circles or even climb things. Such may be true also for ants.

It is quite possible (though this may not be the case at all in this instance ) that the newly-infected ants might burrow into the ground with a worm in one place, freeze, run away, or turn in circles with the worm in another. And some might climb to the top of the nearest thing.....whatever the original host (let's say...gopher) he is depositing his feces in grass.

The burrowing, running, etc. ants, they are out of range, but the next grazing animal that happens near, a bovine, is going to eat that grass. He and his compatriots get a few ants that are on top of the grass.

Now comes the interesting part. By "pre-adapted" we mean that a sprecies has a trait that makes it easily adapt to a new situation. So, the gopher worm finds inself in one of the multiple cow stomachs and it likes it. The cows, being a herd species, move off together an deposit the offspring of these worms, accidentally programmed to make a sharp left when entering the ant, in some grass they are also grazing on. Now the cows take up more ants of a small population of worms and what do you get?

FOUNDER EFFECT! A simple form of genetic drift where a portion of a population gets isolated and begins to interbreed. This "founding" population is small, and has not all the varieties of gene for some traits, like, you might accidentally get a blue-eyed population on a deserted island from a shipwreck, if only those with blue eyes survived.

This worm/ant/grass/cow/feces sceanario could produce a new species acting exactly as you decribe in relatively few generations. They watched a new species of fly emerge in Hawaii, I believe it was in twenty years.

Now, I don't know exactly how this occurred. I only mean to point out that things that seem improbable to the average person in biological evolution, to someone who has spent years in the field - it just seems pretty straightforward.

[tolbiny]

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Now, I don't know exactly how this occurred. I only mean to point out that things that seem improbable to the average person in biological evolution, to someone who has spent years in the field - it just seems pretty straightforward.

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What do you do in the field? I recently started working with date palms and mutation rates from cell cultures.

[Praxising]

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What do you do in the field? I recently started working with date palms and mutation rates from cell cultures.

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I don't do anything now. I play poker online. I'm old. I was a fossil preparator, taught some, and I am well-aware that paleoanthropology went zooming way past my knowledge base about 5 minutes after I got out of science. But something as basic as this, I can still keep my internet hand in.

I hope you'll post about your work here in some detail.