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Post by tonya on Jun 2, 2007 16:16:25 GMT -5
I found these comments by Ronald Mirman SSSBB@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU on this website: units.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/2006/january/letters.cfmPhysicists should be Defending Evolution Evolution is under continuous attack, its defenders are losing, badly. The blasphemous (un)intelligent design views are winning. Why are we failing? In part we do not understand what the fight is about so offer irrelevant, thus ineffective, arguments. We are treating the wrong disease (and that badly).This is about neither science nor religion, but self-image and group identity. Unless we deal with these our position is hopeless. "Those who believe in God are good people, those who do not are bad". "Those who believe in evolution do not believe in God thus are bad people. Being opposed to evolution shows that I believe in God and am good." Actually evil people who believe in the blasphemous creation and ID theories are angry at God because It did not create the universe the way they want. They think they are better than God, showing contempt for God, regarding words of humans as superior to those of God as shown in Its work, the natural world. They push these blasphemous theories in order to flaunt their anger at ,contempt for, God. Evolution leads to morality, thus they oppose it. This must be stressed again and again. Here is a brief outline for action, discussed in depth in my next book "Our Almost Impossible Universe: Why the laws of nature make the existence of humans extraordinarily unlikely". We must not ask students to believe in evolution. Belief is a religious word. They should know: what evolution is, how it works, why it is valuable, how that is determined, and why no other theory is. They can believe anything they want. They can believe the earth is flat, but know the evidence that it is (roughly) spherical. They can believe in ghosts. Schools should not have courses in ghosts. Force them into ridiculous positions where they have to admit they do not know what they are saying. How did the creator create? Did it draw pictures, blueprints, write a computer program, ...? Which part of its brain developed the design? Its prefrontal cortex? Does the designer's brain have neurons? With myelin sheaths? And on and on. How did it interact with matter to make that conform to its designs? Does it have hands? Did it blow on matter? Else how? If they cannot answer they have to admit that their words are meaningless--- hot air. To give sense to what they claim they must regard the designer as a human being, perhaps a superior one but a human nevertheless, clearly blasphemous. Challenge them. Present many examples of how evolution is valuable, helps us understand nature, guides us to learn more, to cure diseases, ... . Then ask how their beliefs do so. What explanatory powers, values, do they have? Prove it. Examples are given in my book. A web site with more would be invaluable. It is our responsibility to teach, not only biology, but the meaning of science, how it works, why. The fight about evolution emphasizes our incompetence, cowardliness, failure, irresponsibility. This issue is something I have struggled with throughout most of my life, almost convinced scientists had to be right. Note I said "almost". But the more I read, the more I hear, but especially the more personal experiences I have, the less doubt I have that there is a God. I realize scientists have no solid proof that the biblical version of God and Creation are not correct. Tonya
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Post by IncogNITO on Jun 2, 2007 17:42:06 GMT -5
I have never had a problem with Science explaining how things really happened. I have no problem with a world where the 7 days described in Genesis took 7 billion years or more. I do have a problem with people who want to put Humans and Dinosaurs side by side in a museum. No amount of wishful thinking can change the fossil record. We were given minds and so far no one has been able to touch the big mysteries. How the universe was started, why only this world did life begin and not on the dozen or so others we believe will support life. One could point to the Big Bang or the Inflationary theory but who did they get started? What triggers evolution? we know all kinds of contributing factors but we can't reproduce it so something else had to have happened. To clarify we can force change and have done so but we can not cause natural spontaneous evolution like we as humans went through to be who we are today. No matter what science comes up with I can see the hand of God behind it.
JMayo
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Post by IncogNITO on Jun 2, 2007 20:00:25 GMT -5
JMayo, thank you. You have a unique ability to punch holes into some theories and bring a semblance of order to these topics. I don’t know of any thinking person who buys into literally the 7 day theory. Having said that, when considering the vastness of the universe and the uncounted and unexplained mysteries there is also no way to escape the hand of God. So JMayo, could I have your take on this then? travel.nytimes.com/2007/05/24/arts/24crea.htmlAdam and Eve in the Land of the DinosaursBe well B I have always wanted to go see the wonderful wizard of oz. I'd not as for one brain but thousands. Science is a wonderful thing it puts things in place and gives it order. This is an an attempt to protect an ideology a way of life for a group of people who want to believe that every word in the bible is 100% true. I feel for them but Christ asked us to open our eyes and accept the world as it is and each other as we are. If we refuse to look at our beliefs and examine them. We not doing as he taught us. JMayo
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Post by tonya on Jun 2, 2007 21:11:15 GMT -5
I'm getting confused here! AAARGH! Tonya
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Post by IncogNITO on Jun 3, 2007 0:35:27 GMT -5
Sorry Tonya!
Right now there are two factions at war. Scientist who believe only in evolution with no room for God and a faction of Conservative Christians who believe the bible is 100% accurate and that there is no room for science and when 100% proof like dinosaurs are introduced they make up explanations like the fossil record is wrong and teach that man and dinosaurs lived together and that man hunted them to extinction. The now have a museum that is going to be used to teach children that and that all the sciences are wrong. There is in that museum an area that shows woman how to behave and instructs them on being subservient to their husbands. Things like having dinner ready when he gets home and not talking to him about politics and voting as he tells you to. Not something I think girls in todays world needs to learn. They are not evil or bad but they believe with all their heart that the history of the world happened just as it is stated in the Bible with no room for any other thought. Their belief is under pressure from the mountains of evidenced saying otherwise and this museum is an attempt to save that belief.
The Scientist who want nothing to do with God at all as their inability to explain many of the mysteries comes under fire are also up in arms and trying to pressure the others. Not a happy time for these two groups. Belief is not something that can be changed by a court of law. If all the facts are present to a growing child then they will find the way that is best for them.
Removing God or removing evolution from our education is only presenting half the theories. Why couldn't the 7 days in the Bible not really been 700 million years. Does God know time? If I tried to write 700 million years of daily history it would be impossible for anyone to read much less fit on the planet. But I can take and write the highlights like the 4th million set of years God brought forth all the creatures. He may have done this by warming the primordial waters life spring from so that acids could flow together forming the first single cell organism. There are so many animals that did not could not have existed if we go by the Biblical version alone. To many people trying to force what we know of our evolution into a frame work that just doesn't support it. You can't cram that much time into a few days. You also can't say there is no God when you can't say how or why evolution began. When conditions much like earth have been found and with out life. Why did life start here and not there? We get the same solar winds and all the same light, but here we have life. I believe that creationism and evolution to be the same coin just different sides. God created the Universe and if he did that by causing the big Bang that is ok by me. He can create life any way he wants. I am just not man enough to tell him how to do and how he did his job. I will say this if a child has all the information at his disposal not just one side or the other and allowed to make his own mind up even if he is a 100% evolution or 100% Creationist they will not be hateful and spiteful to the other.
JMayo
Beegee, any time you don't give all the facts to a growing mind you are cheating them. In some cases where a child may be brainwashed into a belief structure and is then force to see more then he or she was allowed you could have some bad problems. Like the Abortion bomber.
JMayo
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Post by Barb on Jun 3, 2007 12:35:48 GMT -5
Is it stupid to believe that it's possible that Adam and Eve were ape-like? Therefore, God and evolution fit hand in hand?
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Post by KathyInArkansas on Jun 3, 2007 12:36:39 GMT -5
Is it stupid to believe that it's possible that Adam and Eve were ape-like? Therefore, God and evolution fit hand in hand? Uh oh, you've started it now...
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Post by KathyInArkansas on Jun 3, 2007 12:43:16 GMT -5
Why is so hard for some people to accept that evolution may have been God's plan for the earth to begin with?
And when do some believe that Adam and Eve came, before or after the "cave man" for which there is much scientific proof?
I may be mistaken, but I think that many who believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible, believe that the era of Adam and Eve was a mere 5,000-6,000 years ago. The cave man era was long before that...
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Post by Barb on Jun 3, 2007 13:31:33 GMT -5
oh.....well, then...
Factoring in time...my theory may not work.
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Post by tonya on Jun 3, 2007 20:38:30 GMT -5
Is it stupid to believe that it's possible that Adam and Eve were ape-like? Therefore, God and evolution fit hand in hand? Uh oh, you've started it now... No, Kathy I started it and no Barb it wouldn't be stupid to think that is a possibility. That's the same question I'm grappling with. There is scientific evidence regarding DNA comparison that can't be ignored: SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/238852_chimp01.htmlChimp, human DNA comparison finds vast similarities, key differences Thursday, September 1, 2005 By TOM PAULSON SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER An international team of 67 scientists, led by a top genome researcher in Seattle, may have moved us a few steps closer toward figuring out precisely what in the genetic code makes us human -- or, at least, not chimpanzees. "By comparing the human and chimp genomes, we can see the process of evolution clearly in the changes (in DNA) since we diverged from our common ancestor," said Robert Waterston, director of genome sciences at the University of Washington and lead author of a report on the project in today's edition of the journal Nature. Niki Desautels / P-I UW researchers Evan Eichler, left, and Robert Waterson co-authored a new paper analyzing the chimpanzee genome. The photo in the background depicts Port, a chimpanzee at the Gombe National Park in Tanzania. Humans and chimps each have some 3 billion base units of DNA in their genomes, differing by only 1.2 percent when compared in this way. Other methods of comparison estimate a genetic difference of at most 4 percent. "We're not that different," Waterston said. But we have language, cars, espresso machines and psychotherapy. How could all that result from just a comparatively small number of genetic changes in the overall blueprint? Waterston acknowledges that scientists are a long way off from answering such questions. But we're getting closer, he says. He noted one gene, known as FOXP2, that may help explain why we talk and chimps don't. An earlier study of a British family with an inherited, severe deficit in speech discovered the cause of the disorder -- an altered form of FOXP2. "It turns out chimps have the same (genetic) sequence as that family with the speech deficit," Waterston said. Comparing the human and chimp genomes, he said, shows that the speech-friendly form of FOXP2 really took hold in humans some 150,000 years ago. "That gene went through a selective sweep," said Evan Eichler, a co-author and top genome scientist who recently joined Waterston at the UW. That's genome-speak, Eichler explained, for saying that those humans who got the chatty form of FOXP2 went on a reproductive binge and overwhelmed those who remained genetically at a loss for words. The researchers, known as the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium, took the human genome sequence -- a first draft of it was completed in 2001 -- and compared it with the 3 billion bits of DNA obtained from a blood sample taken from a chimp named Clint at Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta. Waterston launched the project, supported by the National Institutes of Health's National Human Genome Research Institute, when he was still at Washington University in St. Louis. Much of the sequencing work was done there, as well as at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Harvard University. The scientists did find differences. Out of the 3 billion units of DNA, the human-chimp comparison revealed some 35 million simple changes, or mutations, in the single units of the overall sequence. They also found about 5 million additions to or subtractions from the genome involving chunks of DNA sequence. "We can use these to identify evolutionary events," Waterston said. The changes, he said, also help point them toward the exact sequence of the common ancestor. And of the 25,000 genes both species have, only about 580 genes appear to have undergone the kind of "positive selection" seen with FOXP2. Many are likely to be critical in differentiating the two primate species, he said. But it will be further analyses and in-depth comparisons of the genomes of many different species that bring us closer to determining what precisely it is in our genes that makes us humans. "Despite the article's technical content, the team led by Waterston concludes with an urgent plea to improve conservation efforts for chimpanzees in the wild as well as to create better protections for chimps in captivity. The Nature report written by the UW scientist and his team ends: "We hope that elaborating how few differences separate our species will broaden recognition of our duty to these extraordinary primates who stand as our siblings in the family of life" -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- P-I reporter Tom Paulson can be reached at 206-448-8318 or tompaulson@seattlepi.com. Does anybody have a banana? Tonya
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Post by tonya on Jun 3, 2007 21:57:30 GMT -5
I just want to clarify my stance, and it is no matter who came first, ape or man, that we are all a creation of our eternal God. Tonya
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Post by reason on Jun 4, 2007 0:02:23 GMT -5
The evidence of a God having created the universe and all that is within it is as great as the evidence that THe Flying Spaghetti Monster created all of it. See for yourself (and hold onto your skepticism until you've educated yourself):
www.venganza.org/Go ahead, try to refute it. I particularly want Tonya's analysis.
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Post by happy-feet on Jun 4, 2007 5:21:19 GMT -5
Viruses exhibit evolution clearly. Species evolve to survive. I'm with Mayo on the time frame.
A good scientist friend (phd Berkeley in forestry) told me the more he learns about life on earth, the more convinced he becomes there was a master plan. Some feel that plan was initiated by their God; others that a scientific force without conscience or knowledge invoked it. Either way - be good to each other. We know we share this time and place. ;D
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Post by javajoe on Jun 4, 2007 9:29:21 GMT -5
I for one believe 'real science' and 'religion' can work hand in hand and that neither should be concerned of what is truly discovered with empirical evidence. What I have noticed, with the little attention I pay to the subject of creation vs. evolution, is that two camps have formed to seek the Holy Grail of who is correct. It seems that data or information is not supplied for discussion as much as each camp wants to put the other in a 'defensive' mode of 'show me facts.' That even happens within the ranks of evolutionists and literal scripture believes. That posture accomplishes absolutely nothing.
Whether it be ID (intelligent design) or the Big Bang or Cambrian Explosion or punk eek (punctuated equilibrium) or Darwin or Huxley or literal Bible believers, it is all philosophical theory, conjecture or hypothesis as evolution is nothing but a theory.
If one believes in God, then our human mind cannot grasp his ways in trying to equate him in human form. He would not have to 'create' within our understanding of creating something, he simply would 'will it to be.'
Does evolution exist? Perhaps, in some fashion we cannot grasp. But I always ask the question of the 'strict evolutionist' of: how did something evolve from nothing? If something/s is/are to evolve, then something had to exist to begin with. Where did the 'something/s' come from? In turn, I also ask the Bible 'literalist' to explain to me why the Bible should be the sole rule of belief and faith and understanding? Christ said there are things that we cannot be taught now or understand and even in John (21:25) he states that "Jesus did so many things that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written."
To me, I certainly am not going to lay awake at nights trying to figure it all out--because I don't have enough 'grey matter' to begin to comprehend it all. It is a mystery to me, as God is a mystery in total. Yet, that mystery leads me to faith in God, for surely I was not put here for no reason or simply by a random accident.
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Post by Barb on Jun 4, 2007 10:30:37 GMT -5
The evidence of a God having created the universe and all that is within it is as great as the evidence that THe Flying Spaghetti Monster created all of it. See for yourself (and hold onto your skepticism until you've educated yourself):
www.venganza.org/Go ahead, try to refute it. I particularly want Tonya's analysis. Sure glad you asked Tonya and not me. Where God is concerned, I'm a blind sheep. I just believe in Him and want to have the hope that I will leave this world for a better one.
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