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| quote: | Originally posted by Zombie0915
I would like to know more of the details about evolution theory, we have heard the basics so many times, the small details are where most of us seem to have problems I think. We see some feature about ourselves and have trouble comprehending how that feature could have possibly came to be through random mutation/natural selection cycles.
One example would be eyes, it is hard for lotsa people to understand how an eye could gradually develop all its intracate co-operating components over a large period of time, many would argue that something so specific could not be possible without intelligent design. I can imagine how to explain this one. Analogies in technology halp me come up with ways to explain it. Like an animal that had a cell that developed the ability to be sensitive to light. The light responsive creatures could avoid frying in the sun. After light sensing other capabilities could gradually develop to separate frequencies into colors, adjust for different brightness levels, much like cameras have evolved over time.
Those are the kind of explanations I find that I need in order to understand evolution. A big Christian apologetics guy calls it "The mouse trap problem" and explains it like this: You take some cheese, a block of wood, a spring, a hook, a smashing device, and a small metal rod, but those peices do not catch mice unless they are PUT TOGETHER. Evolution includes no explanation as to how the mouse trap is put together except to say that it exists because it fits with the environment. A mouse trap is completely useless before it is fully assembled, so how can it come to exist in its present working form by first spending an incredible amount of time surviving in a form that is completely useless and unfit for any purpose? Something that consists of intricate parts cooperating, much like a mouse trap, is hard to imagine developing gradually because people think that such things need to be put together and can't picture how they can be built out of random occurances filtered by natural selection.
That part of evolution theory is unclear to me, and most people that I know. People can imagine ways that such things could gradually develop but there really needs to be a generic explanation instead of supplying some fabricated story for how the system in question could have gradually developed.
I get over this by thinking of things like computers and cars and things like that, and how they didn't start in their complex forms that we see today, they too developed gradually. But the technology analogies cannot explain everything that has evolved, some things are hard to understand how they could be made possible by evolution.
I am not trying to say evolution is wrong, but I would like to understand this part of it better. |
Okay, first off I would probably direct you to a couple of websites. The first is www.talkorigins.org. There you can pretty much find any of the specifics you are looking for using their search engine. The second website I frequent often and is a pretty descent place to start off is www.evcforum.net. This is a forum website that again covers pretty much any given specific topic you can think of, including many religious topics as well.
The next thing I would ask is for you to go and actually read a book on evolution, and there's no better place to start than Darwin's Origin of Species. The next few books I would recommend would put you a little more up to date on the topic, considering back in Darwin's day there was no concept of genetics. The following books would catch you up well:
1. The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
2. Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Dan Dennett
3. The Blind Watchmaker - Dawkins
4. Out of Eden - Dawkins
5. Tower of Babel - Robert Pennock
6. Finding Darwin's God - Ken Miller
Now a few of these pertain to the more recent flavor of evolution - Intelligent Design (ID). #3,5, and 6 address this issue directly.
The underlying problem with people understanding evolution is that on the surface is a relatively simple idea, but when diving into the details it becomes pretty damn complex. Of course this is no different than many other theories out there like, say, quantum theory. To complicate things further, religious folks have a tendency to take out these specifics and either completely take them out of context or completely misunderstand and on many occasions, deliberately outright distort the meaning of those specifics. Two examples you have brought up are classic examples.
The first one is the eye - and you are actually on the right path here a bit. Darwin actually addressed that himself with the succession of gradual steps involved:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB301.html
The second example relates to the first a bit, and that is the example of the "mousetrap" from your Christian apologist friend. This example's origins actually come from Michael Behe, a biochemist who wrote "Darwin's Black Box" in 1994 and cited this analogy in order to boost his idea of what is called, Irreducible Complexity (IC). Since then another guy named Dembski who holds a PhD in Mathmatics went further by supposedly trying to support this idea of IC as well as what he calls "Complex Specified Information" through bogus mathmatical formulas. One of his formulas that he champions is called the "Explanatory Filter" in which he uses NFL theorems (No Free Lunch) to supposedly demonstrate the presence of ID. However, it is clear from the getgo that he completely abused the NFL theorems in the first place, in which one of the authors of the theorems outright states this in the following essay:
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/jello.cfm
You can also read more about Dembski here:
http://www.talkreason.org/articles/dem_nfl.cfm#32
As well as within those websites I gave you above. But to return to the example of Behe's mousetrap, what IDers and creationists alike refuse to understand or want to comprehend is the fact that this analogy is flat out false to begin with in it's attempts to relate to evolutionary pathways. Take the eye, for example - just as you had stated a number of intermediary pathways involving the evolution of the eye to where we are today, this is what occurs in most evolutionary pathways as well - PROVIDED that the environment as a stressor requires such changes to take place (and thus are naturally selected). So the mousetrap itself, yes there are intricate parts inovolved and yes if you take one of those parts away, the entire mechanism would no longer function.
Well, does this by default without any evidence to demonstrate that it must therefore be the result of some Intelligent Designer? Why make such a fallacious assumption without ANY POSITIVE, VERIFIABLE EVIDENCE to support such a notion? In logic circles, that would be considered a false dichotomy.
But more importantly - the steps involved to get to what we observe today do not have to be, and in most cases are not sequential steps in which one step relies on the next. Indeed, many intermediate steps occur on the way that may certainly serve an alternative purpose other than the supposed "end goal" of what we observe today. The classic example is Behe's bacterial flagella. The type-3 export system protein is a good example:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB200_1.html
So don't think of evolution as merely one step following another to get to some end goal. This is the fallacious thought process of IDers and why they misunderstand evolution in general. Rather, it's more like a big bush where one step can move up, down, sideways, backways, etc. and MAY OR MAY NOT lead to another successive step, which in turn MAY OR MAY NOT lead to another successive step, and so on. Again, it all depends on the environment and the fitness of the population in question.
So to recap - there's a reason why IDers and creationists are full of shit - not only do they have no evidence to support their assertions, not only do they have fallacious arguments from incredulity, God of the Gaps, and False Dichotomy, but they also continuously attack via Straw Man by not understanding or blatantly distorting evolutionary mechanisms in the first place.
Again, I would suggest those websites and a coupla books to get you started if you're really interested.
HTH.
p.s. - On a personal note, Behe has since recanted many of his original ideas outlined in his book, and concedes evolutionary mechanisms taking place (though he still is a bit of a hardhead on a few issues). Dembski, OTOH, is an outright fucking asshole that refuses to answer direct criticisms of his bullshit work, and if he does so he does it in a very dishonest manner. If you're really interested in this, I'd direct you over to www.pandasthumb.net where they take Demski's bullshit on directly quite often.
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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
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