This is one of the best descriptions of evolution and the "debate" that I've ever read. It's absolutely worth your time! From now on, I will no longer say I believe "in" evolution (or "in" global warming).
When people joyously discover on Ancestry.com that they're related to, say, a medieval archduke or a notorious Victorian criminal, evolutionary biologists may be permitted to snicker. Because in actuality, we are all related: Humans all share at least one common ancestor if you go far enough back. You are related to every king and criminal who ever lived, to Gandhi and Paris Hilton and Carrot Top. You are even related to me.
But buckle up — that's only the beginning.
Humanity, after all, is but one ugly branch on the big tree of life. Go back far enough, and you'll find an ancestor common to you and to every creature on Earth. You are related to your cat — which may help explain why you get that stare all the time. You are related to a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and to the mosquito you just murdered, and to your houseplants.
The very notion of "species" is even a little misleading — a discrete-sounding artifice created for the convenience of people who live about a hundred years.
Listen, nobody wants to be related to monkeys. (Scientist 1, after the Scopes trial: "Well, that was a catastrophe." Scientist 2: "Yeah? Wait until they find out they're also related to friggin' carrots.")
So if someone asks, "Do you believe in evolution," they are framing it wrong. That's like asking, "Do you believe in blue?"
Now a bigger philosophical question would be: understanding that we are all related, why do we clash so much, and abuse nearly everything (plant and animal alike) related to us? Is it that we are ashamed/frightened that but for one tweak of a gene, or circumstance of birth location, or experience growing up that we could've been our worst nightmare instead (and for some, that's becoming a Jeffrey Dahmer, for others it's becoming a hippie liberal LOL), and it makes us so deeply, psychologically uncomfortable that we react emotionally and defensively, rather than wonderingly and embracingly at our relatedness?
Big picture ponderings thrill me! What do you think?
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
I thought we destroy and abuse everything because the world has limited resources and if you eliminate the other species that use the same resources there will be more for you and your heirs.
All related? Supposedly they have an app in Iceland, a very closed-in society with not enough genetic variation, that will tell you if the person you just met is too close of a relative for you to date.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
Wow....he uses a childish debate tactic right in the title! Either evolution from nothing is true, or you are an idiot. He diminishes any of his credibility right out of the chute. I don't respect people who, instead of debating the issue, demonize their opponent first. That is poor form.
Evolution (at least evolution from nothing) is not fact. It is a theory. As of yet, nobody has "proven" it. There is a vast difference between genetically modifying things, and having everything come from a single cell, which actually came from nothing. His straw man arguments are weak. Yes, I have no doubt that dogs came from wolves, and at some point, some freaky gene got messed up bad, and we ended up with poodles and chihuahuas, BUT....they are still dogs, not cats, lizards, or monkeys.
I do agree that we are all related. No question there.
I really don't understand how anyone can look at the world around us and how vastly different everything is, and "know" it all evolved from one cell, without any influence of a creator.
Too bad future generations aren't here to see all the great things we are spending their $$ on!!
RenegadeCJ wrote: Loved White Fang as a kid. I get to read again with my kid soon!
I loved Jack London as a kid. I am finding that my memory of his actual stories is either distorted or non-existent. It is like reading it for the first time. Awhile back my wife and I had a ferocious argument on if the man in "To build a Fire" lived or died.
IMO, he died. Great story. Loved White Fang and Call of the Wild, when I visited Alaska, I wanted to see Buck's descendents even though I knew he was fictional.
Thomas Sowell: There are no solutions, just trade-offs.
"Here's an update on the case of Alex Stone, the South Carolina 16-year-old who was arrested after penning an obviously fictional story about shooting a dinosaur as part of a class assignment. I spoke with Stone's lawyer, David Aylor, who told me the situation was handled "inappropriately from the beginning," by police and administrators at Summerville High School.
Stone's teacher read the story in the evening and then immediately emailed the principal. She was disturbed by a phrase in the story, "bought a gun to take care of business," even though the "business" was a dinosaur. The principal then notified the police.
The police report suggests that the entire incident was handled as if Stone was an active shooter, rather than a kid who had written an obviously fantastical story: "While administrators, Officer Floyd and I looked for the suspect all students were held in their homeroom classes, until the suspect was located, bookbag located, and locker was cleared with negative results for a weapon."...
ScienceChic wrote: Big picture ponderings thrill me! What do you think?
Big picture ponderings may thrill you because they are divorced from facts. If we consider the small picture, evolution is totally against the laws of genetics. Geneticists laugh at evolutionists.
That's hilarious, considering that I trained as a geneticist. It was one of the first disciplines to prove how changes could occur over time through mutation, genetic drift, punctuated equilibrium, and speciation. I highly recommend reading The Selfish Gene
and The Extended Phenotype
by Dawkins.
How are big picture pondering divorced from facts?
Renegade, my apologies for not getting back to you earlier. I do not think he intended the title as an insult at all, nor do I think he's trying to say that evolution occurred from nothing. Indeed, at the end of his writing, he said "But there's no reason for people of faith to reject the mountains of data and the evidence of their own senses. Reconciling is easy: Believe, if you want to, that God set up the rules of evolution among His wonders, along with the laws of physics, and probability, and everything else we can see and measure for ourselves."
Evolution does not attempt to answer the question of where/how everything began, it deals only with the process of how things have changed since then. There's not reason that a deity couldn't have created it as a system, and there's no reason that it couldn't just have occurred by following the laws of physics.
"Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another as if we were one single tribe.” -King T'Challa, Black Panther
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it. ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~Winston Churchill
It was one of the first disciplines to prove how changes could occur over time through mutation, genetic drift, punctuated equilibrium, and speciation. I highly recommend reading
The Selfish Gene
and
The Extended Phenotype
by Dawkins.
