Would any creationist at this forum like to critique, and refute this article?

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Isn't evolution taught to initially start within earths atmosphere. Whereas it should be taught that an "energy of life" was needed in order for evolution to exist that is not of this world.
If it is taught maybe it should be more emphasized so it doesn't invoke so much religious turmoil.

Before anyone posts about bio-chemicals creating the first energy to form life on earth. I would like to remind you that those chemicals, produced by the amino acids, are producing energy that has the same properties as the energyused in order for those organisms to be created in the first place.

If you'd like to learn what the theory of evolution actually says (and what "energy" actually means, for that matter), I can point you toward a few resources.

 

[Super Universe]

So then you don't actually accept ID.

Again, ID is not just believing that the universe or life were designed by an intelligence.

Who owns the right to the label Intelligent Design?

You keep trying to put all the ID eggs into one basket. They just don't fit.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Who owns the right to the label Intelligent Design?

Not you.

If you're going to use your own personal definition for words, that's your prerogative, but don't expect others to accept them.

You keep trying to put all the ID eggs into one basket. They just don't fit.

No, I'm trying to apply the actual definition of a term even though you've decided to shoehorn beliefs that don't fit into it.

 

[Pozessed]

That cuold be part of the class, some of those (not all, you have a couple misconceptions when it comes to teacher´s answers) but that´s nowhere near the whole class. That´s just what we dont know.

When it comes to ID, the whole class is "Creation is smart, God/s did it". If not, by all means, there is a thread asking what an ID class would be like. You can also find a big subject list of what an evolution class would entail. If you can teach anything ID, that is not "god did it" and it is ACTUALLY about ID (instead of being more commentary on evolution) I am fruballing you. Warning: it most have more to do with science than with comparative religion class.

I agree with your logic self. God should not be the final answer of any topic of intelligent importance.

However if God were taught to be an ever growing vessel of knowledge. That is still learning from the observations he makes using microscopic energies that communicate back to him, and that humans are merely vessels of energy that are used to manipulate the physical part of our universe for him to gain a better understanding of which way to proceed with future creations, maybe the idea of God wouldn't be so scarey for a school system because a God that fits that description promotes learning.

IDK I'm tired and rambling. I hope that makes sense, if not let me know and I will rephrase.

 

[Pozessed]

If you'd like to learn what the theory of evolution actually says (and what "energy" actually means, for that matter), I can point you toward a few resources.

Sure I would love to look at some references, but please don't take that post literally. I m very tired today and though my terms may be out of context at times, (imo) my thoughts are usually more collect than what that one was.

 

[Me Myself]

I agree with your logic self. God should not be the final answer of any topic of intelligent importance.

But I don´t know if I agree with that For my God is the answer to everything! (right along 42). What I am saying is that in a SCIENCE class, God doesn´t even need a mention.

Let me rephrase that. God is awesome, but it is wrong to talk about it on science class. God is to be promoted at home, in yoga class, church, between friends, or in a private school in the "religion" class.

NOT on a science class. He is not falsifiable.

However if God were taught to be an ever growing vessel of knowledge. That is still learning from the observations he makes using microscopic energies that communicate back to him, and that humans are merely vessels of energy that are used to manipulate the physical part of our universe for him to gain a better understanding of which way to proceed with future creations, maybe the idea of God wouldn't be so scarey for a school system because a God that fits that description promotes learning.

IDK I'm tired and rambling. I hope that makes sense, if not let me know and I will rephrase.

Sounded like some Deepak Chopra ramble . Don´t get me wrong, I am all for Deepak, but on a science or biology class, the word "God" has nothing to do there.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Normal evolution class:

Student asks "What activates DNA?"
Teacher "Uh, we don't know."

What do you mean by "activates"?

Student "Well why does evolution seem to go in the direction of more complexity."
Teacher "Uh, yeah, we don't really know why".

I'd fire your hypothetical teacher here.

There's a decent intro textbook on evoloution by E. V. Koonin called The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution (Pearson Education, 2012). Like any intro textbook, Koonin's treatment is hardly comprehensive, but unlike some intro textbooks, Koonin does include a final chapter which touches upon more technical issues and more nuanced approaches, including a nice display comparing the "classical" Darwinian portrait vs. the modern one. One such comparison is as follows:

[older, "classical" view]: "Evolution by natural selection tends to produce increasingly complex adaptive features of organisms, hence progress is a general trend in evolution."

[modern, updated view]: "False. Genomic complexity probably evolved as a “genomic syndrome” caused by weak purifying selection in small population, not as an adaptation. There is no consistent trend toward increasing complexity in evolution, and the notion of evolutionary progress is unwarranted." (emphasis in original; p. 399).

Nor is it true that we have no idea concerning directions and/or origins of biological complexity. From Alvero Moreno's paper "A systemic approach to the origin of biological organization" published in the edited volume Systems Biology: Philosophical Foundations (Elsevier, 2007):

"At the beginning, the driving force towards complexity was nothing but the confluence of several principles of ordering, such as self-assembly, template replication, or self-organization, merged in the framework of what I have called a nontrivial self-maintaining organization. The key of this process is functional recursivity, namely, the fact that every novelty capable of contributing to a more efficient form of maintenance will be recruited. This leads us to the central concept of autonomy, defined as a form of self-constructing organization, which maintains its identity through its interactions with its environment." (p. 243).

This is only one example concerning one issue on the topic of biological complexity and evolution.

Student "Why does the fossil record show that species change suddenly and not slowly over time?"
Teacher "Well we think it's because species find a niche and evolve quickly into that niche."
Student "And somehow the whole species knows there is a niche available?"
Teacher "Uhh, yeah. That's the best thing we got now."

First, the idea that natural selection works primarily through random, heritable variations which happen to be beneficial to some environment is quite flawed. Not only do the variations include a wide range of everything from genetic loss to massive genetic fluctuations, but they can be "directed" rather than random. Second, it doesn't take much in terms of genetic varation/mutation to have a rather large effect (a single gene duplication or deletion in some population is all it takes sometimes), and in fact the whole idea of "gradual" evolution is largely unfounded at best and utterly wrong at worst.

Student "So how did life begin?"

Teacher: "Evolution doesn't deal with this question."

Teacher "Well, if so then we wouldn't have an explanation for what causes all the species diversity we see now and over earths entire history."

I would be careful about how much weight to you give to species diversity. Convergent evolution grew (at least partly) out of a need to explain a lack of diversity. For example, bats have wings like birds, but they're mammals. Likewise, dolphins, whales, and other sea creatures look a great deal like fish (or at least have many similarities when it comes to functional anatomy), but they aren't fish. Things like eyes and ears are quite similar independent of membership to a particular genus (or even higher order classification).

 

[Super Universe]

What do you mean by "activates"?



I'd fire your hypothetical teacher here.

There's a decent intro textbook on evoloution by E. V. Koonin called The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution (Pearson Education, 2012). Like any intro textbook, Koonin's treatment is hardly comprehensive, but unlike some intro textbooks, Koonin does include a final chapter which touches upon more technical issues and more nuanced approaches, including a nice display comparing the "classical" Darwinian portrait vs. the modern one. One such comparison is as follows:

[older, "classical" view]: "Evolution by natural selection tends to produce increasingly complex adaptive features of organisms, hence progress is a general trend in evolution."

[modern, updated view]: "False. Genomic complexity probably evolved as a “genomic syndrome” caused by weak purifying selection in small population, not as an adaptation. There is no consistent trend toward increasing complexity in evolution, and the notion of evolutionary progress is unwarranted." (emphasis in original; p. 399).

Nor is it true that we have no idea concerning directions and/or origins of biological complexity. From Alvero Moreno's paper "A systemic approach to the origin of biological organization" published in the edited volume Systems Biology: Philosophical Foundations (Elsevier, 2007):

"At the beginning, the driving force towards complexity was nothing but the confluence of several principles of ordering, such as self-assembly, template replication, or self-organization, merged in the framework of what I have called a nontrivial self-maintaining organization. The key of this process is functional recursivity, namely, the fact that every novelty capable of contributing to a more efficient form of maintenance will be recruited. This leads us to the central concept of autonomy, defined as a form of self-constructing organization, which maintains its identity through its interactions with its environment." (p. 243).

This is only one example concerning one issue on the topic of biological complexity and evolution.



First, the idea that natural selection works primarily through random, heritable variations which happen to be beneficial to some environment is quite flawed. Not only do the variations include a wide range of everything from genetic loss to massive genetic fluctuations, but they can be "directed" rather than random. Second, it doesn't take much in terms of genetic varation/mutation to have a rather large effect (a single gene duplication or deletion in some population is all it takes sometimes), and in fact the whole idea of "gradual" evolution is largely unfounded at best and utterly wrong at worst.


Teacher: "Evolution doesn't deal with this question."




I would be careful about how much weight to you give to species diversity. Convergent evolution grew (at least partly) out of a need to explain a lack of diversity. For example, bats have wings like birds, but they're mammals. Likewise, dolphins, whales, and other sea creatures look a great deal like fish (or at least have many similarities when it comes to functional anatomy), but they aren't fish. Things like eyes and ears are quite similar independent of membership to a particular genus (or even higher order classification).

What do I mean activates? Oh, you thought it "just worked". It does just work but how is what you have to discover.

There is no consistent trend toward increasing complexity in evolution? And people believe that bull? So are they trying to say that a single celled amoeba's that existed billions of years ago are the same complexity as a human being?

How are variations directed?

Evolution does not deal with the question of how life began? Right, so because scientists don't have an answer the rest of us are just supposed to ignore that question.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

What do I mean activates? Oh, you thought it "just worked". It does just work but how is what you have to discover.

It seems as if you think you are using the word in such a way as to make what are saying obvious (so much so that perhaps you thought I wasn't seriously asking?), and perhaps you are to some, but not to me. By "activate" do you mean how DNA, as a "genetic code" of sorts, is involved with biological processes in general, or are you referring to the roles DNA plays in evolution? And in either case (or if you meant something entirely different), what is it that we don't know?

There is no consistent trend toward increasing complexity in evolution? And people believe that bull? So are they trying to say that a single celled amoeba's that existed billions of years ago are the same complexity as a human being?

No, I wouldn't say that single-celled organisms that existed billions of years ago are as complex as humans. However, while we are the only surviving member of the genus homo, species of bacteria and archaea have thrived (for the most part; the Great Oxidation Event did limit their geographic distribution) for far, far, far longer than our species, or even our genus. It's only from anthropic bias (exemplified so wonderfully in the classic depiction of Darwinian evolution, in which increasingly erect "apes" become "humans") and the fact that, after over 100,000 years in which we luckily didn't get wiped out, we finally began to do things (e.g., farming) which actually seperated us from other members of our genus (or even, to some extent, other primates).

But this isn't the norm. Simple isn't always better, but neither is it always worse (and by "better" or "worse" I am using casual language to stand in for the formalism behind fitness functions). Whether we approach the issue from a standpoint of pure mathematics (entropy, complexity, information, phase space, etc.) or simply survey life as it exists today (and which species are more or less unchanged after millions upon millions of years) the only motivation for equating evolution with increased complexity is anthropic bias and arrogance.

How are variations directed?

Because rather than being random mutations that are then "selected" by the enivronment, they occur because of the environment (e.g., stress-induced mutagenesis). Additionally, as complex systems are also dynamic (i.e., chaotic) systems, simple random mutations can have drastic consequences. It stands to reason that biological systems, therefore, in addition to various possible mechanisms through which they respond to their environment through (epi-)genetic change, also have systems for holding mutation in check. In other words, given the complexity of biological systems and the tendency for such complexity to tend towards non-equilibrium or to simply break down (tend towards a resting state), and the ability for mutations to do this so easily, it is hard to imagine that biological systems are simply enslaved to constant random mutations.

Evolution does not deal with the question of how life began? Right, so because scientists don't have an answer the rest of us are just supposed to ignore that question.

I didn't say anything about ignoring the question. It's an area of active research:

Nobody has one, at least not one that is generally accepted in some relevant field (systems biology, computational biology, evolutionary biology, biological physics, even astrobiology). Despite this, you'll still (in general) get a different answer on probable or possible origins both of life and of the mechanisms which "drive" it. Oddly enough, astrobiologists have done some interesting work here, and their approach (given the field) is broader than others. Because they are concerned with life and the possibility of life in general (rather than what's on this planet), astrobiologists tend to either rely on or have a cross-disciplinary perspective (see, e.g., the edited volume Origins and Evolution of Life: An Astrobiological Perspective (Cambridge University Press; 2011).

In the end, I think the most likely answer (and the one the most specialists in various fields would, at least in part, agree with) is that the "motivation" to "survive and reproduce" in some sense predates life itself. That is, even without getting into the issue of how life began, there remains considerable disagreement over the proper approach to evolutionary processes (work in evolutionary and genetic algorithms both progressed the field and opened up new issues). What everyone agrees on is that life, whether we are talking organisms or the individual cells within organisms, is extremely complex. What lies behind this complexity is (I think) at least partly the answer to your question.

Humans build machines, whether we are talking about pulleys or computers, for some function or range of functions. As a result, artificial systems tend to be very modular, tend not to have much (if any) redundancy, and in general tend to be organized, well-structured, and rigid. Part of the massive complexity behind biological systems, on the other hand, is a great deal of redundancy. Additionally, biological systems are generally very difficult even to approximate with some reductionist computational model, because their internal organization is continuous and massively parallel, and if that weren't enough, these systems are continuously reacting/adapting to their immediate environment.

Why all the complexity? After all, assuming life emerged from some set of prebiotic compounds, isn't is more likely that something simpler than the "simplest" forms of life we know of would have emerged first, rather than not at all? Not really. First, all of life (and pretty much this planet) works against the basic laws of physics. From single-celled organisms to Earth itself, we're dealing with dynamical systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. In other words, the earliest life didn't just require the ability to self-replicate and a certain degree of autonomy, but required an architecture which allowed all that and in addition the ability to neither tend towards a resting state (i.e., back to inert, inactive, prebiotic matter), nor tend towards chaos, but somehow remain within specific parameters such that the tendency towards either "resting" or "chaos" would be held in check by some set of mechanisms.

That same capacity to remain far from thermodynamic equilibrium and yet (despite constant interaction with an ever-changing environment) remain within a certain phase space, is very similar to a "motivation" to survive. Granted, it doesn't explain how self-replication began, but perhaps that too resulted from the need for a sort of controlled chaos.

 

[Me Myself]

What do I mean activates? Oh, you thought it "just worked". It does just work but how is what you have to discover.

There is no consistent trend toward increasing complexity in evolution? And people believe that bull? So are they trying to say that a single celled amoeba's that existed billions of years ago are the same complexity as a human being?

How are variations directed?

Evolution does not deal with the question of how life began? Right, so because scientists don't have an answer the rest of us are just supposed to ignore that question.

Who is saying the single cell had the same complexity? How variations are directed is a reasonable question for an evolution class.

About how life began, OF COURSE you can ask! Even better, when you realize we don´t know yet, you can study more about it, go to college and study more about it, and become a savant, and a leading biologist trying to uncover such question

 

[Alceste]

Normal evolution class:

Student asks "What activates DNA?"
Teacher "Uh, we don't know."
Student "Well why does evolution seem to go in the direction of more complexity."
Teacher "Uh, yeah, we don't really know why".
Student "Why does the fossil record show that species change suddenly and not slowly over time?"
Teacher "Well we think it's because species find a niche and evolve quickly into that niche."
Student "And somehow the whole species knows there is a niche available?"
Teacher "Uhh, yeah. That's the best thing we got now."
Student "So how did life begin?"
Teacher "We don't know but there was an experiment where amino acids were formed in a closed container and zapped with electricity."
Student "But amino acids are not alive."
Teacher "Uhh, no, they're not."
Student "Couldn't natural selection just be a factor in controlling population levels of species?"
Teacher "Well, if so then we wouldn't have an explanation for what causes all the species diversity we see now and over earths entire history."
Student "It sounds to me like you don't have an explanation for it now."

I never get tired of watching creationists fantasize about being able to one day win a debate.


Edited to add: It's EXTREMELY implausible that a real world science teacher (my cousin is one) would allow any of the misconceptions and bald assertions in these hypothetical questions to go unchallenged or unanswered. And I mean every single question. There's nothing in there that would stump a real science teacher, even for a moment.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

But I don´t know if I agree with that For my God is the answer to everything! (right along 42). What I am saying is that in a SCIENCE class, God doesn´t even need a mention.

Let me rephrase that. God is awesome, but it is wrong to talk about it on science class. God is to be promoted at home, in yoga class, church, between friends, or in a private school in the "religion" class.

NOT on a science class. He is not falsifiable.

Forgive the ignorance of a non-theist (and agnostic), but I'm not sure I follow the logic behind your distinction. First, the idea that scientific theories must be falsifiable is neither universally accepted nor has it been a part of scientific inquiry and the developments of methods within this inquiry until recently (and, arguably, is often still absent from scientific practice). More importantly, science is about knowledge and understanding reality. What is "promoted" in science classes should, therefore, be the methods, bases, logic, and results of investigations concerning the nature of reality. If god (or gods, or some other similar religious concept) is a part of reality, then why preclude it from scientific discourse? This division frequently not adhered to in scientific literature, so one cannot rely on that as a model. In any case, shielding science from religion (and vice versa) by relying on a modern and debated conception of what constitutes science (i.e., falsifiability) is not consistent with the scientific endeavour. Reality/the cosmos/the universe/etc. are what science is concerned with. If god is in some way part of reality, then necessarily god is a part of what science seeks to understand.

 

[Super Universe]

I never get tired of watching creationists fantasize about being able to one day win a debate.


Edited to add: It's EXTREMELY implausible that a real world science teacher (my cousin is one) would allow any of the misconceptions and bald assertions in these hypothetical questions to go unchallenged or unanswered. And I mean every single question. There's nothing in there that would stump a real science teacher, even for a moment.

Nothing in there would stump a real science teacher? Then why did you leave out the science teachers answers?

Answer them then.

How did life begin?

 

[McBell]

Nothing in there would stump a real science teacher? Then why did you leave out the science teachers answers?

Answer them then.

How did life begin?

It is amazing how some people just cannot accept "I don't know" as an answer.
Perhaps that is why they gotta use god as a filler..?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Normal evolution class:

Student asks "What activates DNA?"
Teacher "Uh, we don't know."
Student "Well why does evolution seem to go in the direction of more complexity."
Teacher "Uh, yeah, we don't really know why".
Student "Why does the fossil record show that species change suddenly and not slowly over time?"
Teacher "Well we think it's because species find a niche and evolve quickly into that niche."
Student "And somehow the whole species knows there is a niche available?"
Teacher "Uhh, yeah. That's the best thing we got now."
Student "So how did life begin?"
Teacher "We don't know but there was an experiment where amino acids were formed in a closed container and zapped with electricity."
Student "But amino acids are not alive."
Teacher "Uhh, no, they're not."
Student "Couldn't natural selection just be a factor in controlling population levels of species?"
Teacher "Well, if so then we wouldn't have an explanation for what causes all the species diversity we see now and over earths entire history."
Student "It sounds to me like you don't have an explanation for it now."

Have you ever actually been in an "evolution class", normal or otherwise?

Your post suggests you haven't.

 

[Super Universe]

It seems as if you think you are using the word in such a way as to make what are saying obvious (so much so that perhaps you thought I wasn't seriously asking?), and perhaps you are to some, but not to me. By "activate" do you mean how DNA, as a "genetic code" of sorts, is involved with biological processes in general, or are you referring to the roles DNA plays in evolution? And in either case (or if you meant something entirely different), what is it that we don't know?



No, I wouldn't say that single-celled organisms that existed billions of years ago are as complex as humans. However, while we are the only surviving member of the genus homo, species of bacteria and archaea have thrived (for the most part; the Great Oxidation Event did limit their geographic distribution) for far, far, far longer than our species, or even our genus. It's only from anthropic bias (exemplified so wonderfully in the classic depiction of Darwinian evolution, in which increasingly erect "apes" become "humans") and the fact that, after over 100,000 years in which we luckily didn't get wiped out, we finally began to do things (e.g., farming) which actually seperated us from other members of our genus (or even, to some extent, other primates).

But this isn't the norm. Simple isn't always better, but neither is it always worse (and by "better" or "worse" I am using casual language to stand in for the formalism behind fitness functions). Whether we approach the issue from a standpoint of pure mathematics (entropy, complexity, information, phase space, etc.) or simply survey life as it exists today (and which species are more or less unchanged after millions upon millions of years) the only motivation for equating evolution with increased complexity is anthropic bias and arrogance.


Because rather than being random mutations that are then "selected" by the enivronment, they occur because of the environment (e.g., stress-induced mutagenesis). Additionally, as complex systems are also dynamic (i.e., chaotic) systems, simple random mutations can have drastic consequences. It stands to reason that biological systems, therefore, in addition to various possible mechanisms through which they respond to their environment through (epi-)genetic change, also have systems for holding mutation in check. In other words, given the complexity of biological systems and the tendency for such complexity to tend towards non-equilibrium or to simply break down (tend towards a resting state), and the ability for mutations to do this so easily, it is hard to imagine that biological systems are simply enslaved to constant random mutations.



I didn't say anything about ignoring the question. It's an area of active research:

You're avoiding the answers that you "supposedly" know. I know DNA is involved in biological processes. Once again, the question is simple, what activates DNA?

So, you agree that humans are more complex than a single celled amoeba BUT you're previous post claimed that the idea of increasing complexity was incorrect when applied to evolution. Basically this is what's happening, scientists can't say there is increasing complexity because that means that there is a direction to evolution which violates current evolution theories.

Anthropic Bias does not explain evolution. It's simply any rule or law that any scientist wishes to come up with has to allow for the life that we see today to exist.
It's like saying "If we want to figure out where everything came from we have to take into account what exists". AB in itself does not explain any part of evolution, certainly not increasing complexity.

You don't have an answer to the question of how life began? Right, so my sentence where the student asks the teacher "How did life begin?" is correct. In an Intelligent Design class the student would get an answer.

 

[McBell]

You don't have an answer to the question of how life began? Right, so my sentence where the student asks the teacher "How did life begin?" is correct. In an Intelligent Design class the student would get an answer.

How about you answer the question?

so, how did life begin?

 

[Super Universe]

Have you ever actually been in an "evolution class", normal or otherwise?

Your post suggests you haven't.

I was a science major in college.

You seem to have left out the answers. Hmm, I wonder why?

 

[Super Universe]

How about you answer the question?

so, how did life begin?

Nucleotides were assembled in order on the earth and placed inside a protein shell.

Three times the primitive cells did not proliferate enough and died out. The fourth time it worked.

 

[McBell]

Nucleotides were assembled in order on the earth and placed inside a protein shell.

Three times the primitive cells did not proliferate enough and died out. The fourth time it worked.

prove it.