Evolution vs. Creationism

[Showbread]

I am afraid that if I put a both option out there then too many people would pick it as an easy out... Thoughts?

I don't think it's an easy out, it's my opinion, plain and simple. It's an opinion I've thought about a great deal, and the one that makes sense to me. I still think most would choose evolution, which is just fine.

 

[Frosty]

Ok I would add another option but I am not sure how to edit it

 

[Obsidius]

My friend and I were talking about religion the other day and she brought up that she doesn't believe in evolution. I asked her why she didn't since there was so much evidence to support it and she told me that she wasn't alone in her beliefs and that in fact creationism is the more popular opinion, and that in order to be a christian you had to reject evolution. I argued that you could believe in both, God created evolution, and that things are not so black and white. Anyways, I'd like to create a poll and see if in fact she was right, or if I am right in what the majority of the population truly believes. For the purpose of the survey, im going to limit it to the two answers below, but feel free to respond and explain in the comments.

Oh and sorry if this would be better suited in the religion section
So if you had to choose, creationism or evolution?

Your friend is a moron. Not just for denying evolution, that's just misinformed, but the fact that she thought creationism was the more popular opinion and is therefore supported in its veracity, or that creationism and evolution are mutually exclusive? Anyway, point her to the numerous experiments proving speciation in smaller insects, variations in selectively breeding foxes, the fact that bacteria becomes resistant to anti-biotics and therefore evolves, the recent speciation of salamanders in California, and the fossil record. Evolution has been proven, and I swear to god if I hear one more person say "it's called the THEORY of evolution", gravity and relativity are also labeled theories. Unfortunately, there are tons of ignorant creationists out there that will affirm her beliefs further.

 

[Bknight]

So... this is an "or" question. Interesting.

 

[Coriolis]

Evolution has been proven, and I swear to god if I hear one more person say "it's called the THEORY of evolution", gravity and relativity are also labeled theories. Unfortunately, there are tons of ignorant creationists out there that will affirm her beliefs further.

Actually, evolution has not been proven. Scientific explanations for natural phenomena are never really proven, they gain acceptance over time by not being disproven. They account for all available evidence, whereas discounted rival theories do not. Eventually some new evidence comes along that a theory cannot account for, and the theory is then modified, or sometimes entirely discarded. In this way, quantum mechanics builds on classical mechanics, explaining phenomena that the older theory cannot.

Arguing for any theory on the basis of popularity, however, is completely unscientific. Actually, it would be dumb to decide what spiritual "theory" to accept based on popularity, but the yardstick there is quite different.

 

[grey_beard]

Scientific explanations like evolution are not to be believed. They are to be accepted on the basis of evidence, until disproven by more convincing evidence. Scientific inquiry is not a popularity contest. We don't identify causes for natural phenomena by majority vote.

Correct!

But then the willfully ignorant would simply claim that God just made us think we had gone back in time and found the proof we sought, sort of like the end of Carl Sagan's novel Contact, or those people who claim the moon landings were faked.

OTOH, some skepticism can work the same way. "A skeptic is someone who denies the existence of anything he cannot explain away."
Or, since Christianity was mentioned, in one of the parables, one of the people in the parable is in Hell and begs for permission to go back and warn his brothers how bad Hell is, before they die, only to be told, that if they will not listen to the prophets, they would not believe, even if someone were to rise from the dead.

In other words, there can exist denial or willful blindness in all kinds of directions.

Part of the problem with evolution, to my mind, is with the popularizations of it: e.g. "The Ascent of Man" implying that each change in a species necessarily is an "improvement," which *necessarily* supplants, earlier forms, but that isn't always how things go.

but then, the mainstream press manages to screw up virtually everything it tries to explain.

 

[grey_beard]

I could take them to the future, so the future people can laugh at them.

 

[Coriolis]

OTOH, some skepticism can work the same way. "A skeptic is someone who denies the existence of anything he cannot explain away."
Or, since Christianity was mentioned, in one of the parables, one of the people in the parable is in Hell and begs for permission to go back and warn his brothers how bad Hell is, before they die, only to be told, that if they will not listen to the prophets, they would not believe, even if someone were to rise from the dead.

That is poor reasoning. Most people are more likely to act on a strong recommendation from someone they know and respect personally than a blanket injunction from a public figure. They don't acknowledge the seriousness of a situation until it hits close to home. (Consider Senator Rob Portman who changed his mind about gay marriage after learning his son was gay.)

Part of the problem with evolution, to my mind, is with the popularizations of it: e.g. "The Ascent of Man" implying that each change in a species necessarily is an "improvement," which *necessarily* supplants, earlier forms, but that isn't always how things go.

but then, the mainstream press manages to screw up virtually everything it tries to explain.

Generally true. Almost by definition, though, lasting changes in a species must be an improvement in terms of species survival or at least neutral. Otherwise over time, they would die out.

 

[grey_beard]

Actually, evolution has not been proven. Scientific explanations for natural phenomena are never really proven, they gain acceptance over time by not being disproven. They account for all available evidence, whereas discounted rival theories do not. Eventually some new evidence comes along that a theory cannot account for, and the theory is then modified, or sometimes entirely discarded. In this way, quantum mechanics builds on classical mechanics, explaining phenomena that the older theory cannot.

I'd agree with you in general, perhaps, but IIRC, relativity was not developed to account for any outstanding anomalies; and thermodynamics, while it accords quite well with the atomic / molecular theory of matter, was not developed with it in mind.

for any theory on the basis of popularity, however, is completely unscientific. Actually, it would be dumb to decide what spiritual "theory" to accept based on popularity, but the yardstick there is quite different.

At the risk of being accused of hijack, commenting on this point alone, this is why arguments for (say) anthropogenic global warming on the basis of surveys, or validation by peer-reviewed articles instead of data, is dangerous in terms of the misunderstandings about science which might be created (or evolve) in the minds of non-scientist laypersons.

 

[Coriolis]

At the risk of being accused of hijack, commenting on this point alone, this is why arguments for (say) anthropogenic global warming on the basis of surveys, or validation by peer-reviewed articles instead of data, is dangerous in terms of the misunderstandings about science which might be created (or evolve) in the minds of non-scientist laypersons.

Your point here is unclear. Are you saying there is no merit in seeing observations corroborated by multiple groups over time, as documented by separate accounts published in the peer-reviewed literature? Or are you discounting the role of meta-surveys, that gather already-existing data to support/refute some broader conclusion? There is utility and validity in both. Indeed the first is one of the hallmarks of scientific method: the need for reproducibility of results.

 

[grey_beard]

That is poor reasoning. Most people are more likely to act on a strong recommendation from someone they know and respect personally than a blanket injunction from a public figure. They don't acknowledge the seriousness of a situation until it hits close to home. (Consider Senator Rob Portman who changed his mind about gay marriage after learning his son was gay.)

Actually, it seems to have been borne out in practice: as those who plotted to kill Christ, also wanted to kill Lazarus, as his being raised from the dead only contributed to Christ's fame and detracted from their influence.

Generally true. Almost by definition, though, lasting changes in a species must be an improvement in terms of species survival or at least neutral. Otherwise over time, they would die out.

A little nitpick there: it depends on the exact *mix* of external causes of death, and those can change independent of the genetics of the creatures in question.
Posit for example the sickle-cell mutation. Great for resisting malaria. And yet it is a single-nucleotide polymorhphism: even if both parents are "carriers" (have one gene for it, one normal gene), there is only a 1-in-4 chance a child will have the disease.

What is the timing of when the sickle-cell mutation began and (as it were) became "established" in the human population, compared to when Malaria first began infecting people?

Or, going the other direction, sometimes the environment changes and mayhap the genetics will need some time to catch up :
squirrels zigzag across the road, which is great for avoiding larger, less sure-footed predators, but not so good at avoiding being smushed under tires.
And yet we see no tendency of squirrels to avoid zig-zagging.

Is the "selection pressure" not great enough? Or has not enough time passed?

I think one of the biggest issues to be investigated in evolution, is comparing the rate of environmental changes to the rate of mutations;
and a better characterization for "sensitivity analysis" between a given "unit" of environmental change and the expected/"required" genetic changes.

(Wouldn't it be likely, as organisms grow more complex, that there would be different evolutionary clocks, dependent both on the system and/or organism, and the rate of change of the environment? -- e.g. horseshoe crabs and sharks are pretty much unchanged, as far as we know, over 200 million years; but Smilodon died out with the most recent ice ages, being a flash in the pan of maybe 2-3 million years.
But how many generations did it take to grow those way cool fangs, what specifically favored them over normal sized choppers, and how much selection pressure must have been exerted -- or lack of a barrier -- to allow them those canines to grow to the proportions they did?)

 

[grey_beard]

Your point here is unclear. Are you saying there is no merit in seeing observations corroborated by multiple groups over time, as documented by separate accounts published in the peer-reviewed literature? Or are you discounting the role of meta-surveys, that gather already-existing data to support/refute some broader conclusion? There is utility and validity in both. Indeed the first is one of the hallmarks of scientific method: the need for reproducibility of results.

Mere assent based on popularity, is NOT science. Too much of what passes for AGW does not adhere to good protocol : e.g. "the dog ate my original data sets" combined with personal attacks on critics.
As Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." So sending your datasets to those who wish to refute your model, is a great way to refine the theory.

 

[indra]

Creationism is so lulzy as to make me sad.

 

[Coriolis]

Actually, it seems to have been borne out in practice: as those who plotted to kill Christ, also wanted to kill Lazarus, as his being raised from the dead only contributed to Christ's fame and detracted from their influence.

Not sure how killing Jesus or Lazarus relates to one's likelihood to take the word of your brother over that of a prophet.

Is the "selection pressure" not great enough? Or has not enough time passed?

I think one of the biggest issues to be investigated in evolution, is comparing the rate of environmental changes to the rate of mutations;
and a better characterization for "sensitivity analysis" between a given "unit" of environmental change and the expected/"required" genetic changes.

(Wouldn't it be likely, as organisms grow more complex, that there would be different evolutionary clocks, dependent both on the system and/or organism, and the rate of change of the environment? -- e.g. horseshoe crabs and sharks are pretty much unchanged, as far as we know, over 200 million years; but Smilodon died out with the most recent ice ages, being a flash in the pan of maybe 2-3 million years.
But how many generations did it take to grow those way cool fangs, what specifically favored them over normal sized choppers, and how much selection pressure must have been exerted -- or lack of a barrier -- to allow them those canines to grow to the proportions they did?)

I suspect the highlighted conditions. Also, that some species "luck out" and end up with a robust set of characteristics, while others keep getting the short end of the stick, or at least have traits that are less broadly suitable as the environment changes.

Mere assent based on popularity, is NOT science. Too much of what passes for AGW does not adhere to good protocol : e.g. "the dog ate my original data sets" combined with personal attacks on critics.
As Feynman said, "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool." So sending your datasets to those who wish to refute your model, is a great way to refine the theory.

What is AGW? Reproducibility is not popularity.

 

[grey_beard]

Not sure how killing Jesus or Lazarus relates to one's likelihood to take the word of your brother over that of a prophet.

Jesus told many parables with the Pharisees and Sadducees as their rhetorical target; the week before Passover, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead; rather than converting,
the chief priests decided to put Lazarus to death at the same time as conspiring against Jesus, since the buzz over Jesus' miracles was causing people to turn from
the conventional rabbinical authorities: thus *demonstrating* the conclusion in the earlier parable, that if people did not listen to the prophets (and the religious leaders
of the time were experts in studying the Law and the Prophets...), they would not be convinced, even if someone rose from the dead.

I suspect the highlighted conditions. Also, that some species "luck out" and end up with a robust set of characteristics, while others keep getting the short end of the stick, or at least have traits that are less broadly suitable as the environment changes.


What is AGW? Reproducibility is not popularity.

AGW= 'anthropogenic global warming'. And neither is popularity sufficient evidence of reproducibility (in a scientific sense, not the printing-press sense.)

 

[Obsidius]

Actually, evolution has not been proven. Scientific explanations for natural phenomena are never really proven, they gain acceptance over time by not being disproven. They account for all available evidence, whereas discounted rival theories do not. Eventually some new evidence comes along that a theory cannot account for, and the theory is then modified, or sometimes entirely discarded. In this way, quantum mechanics builds on classical mechanics, explaining phenomena that the older theory cannot.

Arguing for any theory on the basis of popularity, however, is completely unscientific. Actually, it would be dumb to decide what spiritual "theory" to accept based on popularity, but the yardstick there is quite different.

Oh, of course, I guess what I mean is that it's based upon probability. So, we have a phenomena, and explanations for said phenomena, and for this specific phenomena, Evolutions is just patently the most probable, by virtue of aforementioned and other evidence.

 

[ygolo]

I'd agree with you in general, perhaps, but IIRC, relativity was not developed to account for any outstanding anomalies; and thermodynamics, while it accords quite well with the atomic / molecular theory of matter, was not developed with it in mind.

I am fairly sure the anomalies that lead to relativity have to do with inconsistencies related applying Maxwell's equations in different reference frames. The speed of electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum is constant even when you switch to a moving reference frame. In addition, in the rest frame of an electron, it creates no magnetic field, but when we use a reference frame in which it's moving, the electron does create a magnetic field. Taken to an extreme, what happens then when we try to put ourselves into the rest frame of electromagnetic radiation?

I find the history of this fascinating, and you've prompted me to remind myself of it. But is the relevance to an evolution vs. creationism debate?

Thermodynamics is connected to the atomic theory through statistical mechanics. Boltzmann, Gibbs, and the others certainly had atomic theory in mind when they developed the statistical connections to heat.

Again fascinating, but, relevance?

A little nitpick there: it depends on the exact *mix* of external causes of death, and those can change independent of the genetics of the creatures in question.
Posit for example the sickle-cell mutation. Great for resisting malaria. And yet it is a single-nucleotide polymorhphism: even if both parents are "carriers" (have one gene for it, one normal gene), there is only a 1-in-4 chance a child will have the disease.

What is the timing of when the sickle-cell mutation began and (as it were) became "established" in the human population, compared to when Malaria first began infecting people?

Or, going the other direction, sometimes the environment changes and mayhap the genetics will need some time to catch up :
squirrels zigzag across the road, which is great for avoiding larger, less sure-footed predators, but not so good at avoiding being smushed under tires.
And yet we see no tendency of squirrels to avoid zig-zagging.

Is the "selection pressure" not great enough? Or has not enough time passed?

I think one of the biggest issues to be investigated in evolution, is comparing the rate of environmental changes to the rate of mutations;
and a better characterization for "sensitivity analysis" between a given "unit" of environmental change and the expected/"required" genetic changes.

(Wouldn't it be likely, as organisms grow more complex, that there would be different evolutionary clocks, dependent both on the system and/or organism, and the rate of change of the environment? -- e.g. horseshoe crabs and sharks are pretty much unchanged, as far as we know, over 200 million years; but Smilodon died out with the most recent ice ages, being a flash in the pan of maybe 2-3 million years.
But how many generations did it take to grow those way cool fangs, what specifically favored them over normal sized choppers, and how much selection pressure must have been exerted -- or lack of a barrier -- to allow them those canines to grow to the proportions they did?)

I find all these questions fascinating, and I am pretty sure there are plenty of others who have investigated similar questions.

The squirrels at my university do not zigzag, they run straight to where they are going.

Regarding modeling mutation rate, genetic drift, and such, there are actually many proposed models that do decent jobs of matching observations. (Models of DNA evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The Kimura two parameter model, and Jukes Cantor were the favorite ones that I learned. Many of the techniques to answer the questions you asked can be found bioinformatics coursework. Perhaps you have a second career in this field

The connection to evolution in these later questions is clear, but I am not sure how creationism ties in.

 

[grey_beard]

I am fairly sure the anomalies that lead to relativity have to do with inconsistencies related applying Maxwell's equations in different reference frames. The speed of electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum is constant even when you switch to a moving reference frame. In addition, in the rest frame of an electron, it creates no magnetic field, but when we use a reference frame in which it's moving, the electron does create a magnetic field. Taken to an extreme, what happens then when we try to put ourselves into the rest frame of electromagnetic radiation?

I find the history of this fascinating, and you've prompted me to remind myself of it. But is the relevance to an evolution vs. creationism debate?

Not directly; I suggested it was near to a hijack; and was prompted by something in the post I was responding to.

Thermodynamics is connected to the atomic theory through statistical mechanics. Boltzmann, Gibbs, and the others certainly had atomic theory in mind when they developed the statistical connections to heat.

Again fascinating, but, relevance?

By Thermo, I was thinking of *classical* thermodynamics -- Carnot cycles, reversibility, and the like.
Yes, stat mech gives the connection: but it is a testament to the earlier scientists' genius and rigor that their principles dovetailed so well, where other areas (ultraviolet catastrophe, photoelectric effect) went AGAINST classical physics and needed the atomic theory to 'save' them, not flesh them out.

Connection to thread is through the back door. (Macroscopic properties of systems, sensitively dependent upon averaged properties of many individual components.)

I find all these questions fascinating, and I am pretty sure there are plenty of others who have investigated similar questions.

The squirrels at my university do not zigzag, they run straight to where they are going.

Odd. Every squirrel I've ever seen on the road darts back and forth as though they can't make up their minds.
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side.
Why did the squirrel cross the road? Playing chicken with the traffic.

Regarding modeling mutation rate, genetic drift, and such, there are actually many proposed models that do decent jobs of matching observations. (Models of DNA evolution - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The Kimura two parameter model, and Jukes Cantor were the favorite ones that I learned. Many of the techniques to answer the questions you asked can be found bioinformatics coursework. Perhaps you have a second career in this field

The connection to evolution in these later questions is clear, but I am not sure how creationism ties in.[/QUOTE]

Hmm, skimmed wikipedia; interesting, but it looked more like the joke about the physicist asked to predict the best horses to bet on for a horse race, and he comes back months later saying he didn't have a definitive answer, but the case of the spherical horse was very interesting.

Codons only got mentioned in the last line; and it is codons which specify the amino acid ordering of proteins; there is no modeling nor discussion of the *feedback* from the environment to the population of individuals, and from the individuals to the alleles chosen...in other words, these models are starting at one end of a time series, with sequence S1...and comparing to a far later state of the time series, with sequence Sn. And these models are looking solely at the DNA sequence
in vitro as it were, and over time: I was considering the distribution *within a species*, and how that is a function of the environment; and then, how *that* changes over time, correlating to environmental changes.


The changes are not strictly random: for some changes to the gene, create disease states which result in the individual dying before breeding; other changes to the gene result in a survival advantage, and (over time) DNA sequences with that change show up more often in a population; but some genetic changes are the result of entire sequences being moved from one chromosome to another (resulting in correlation of certain frequency changes, rather than all independent point changes in frequency); and the survivability is dependent upon the external environment.


(Think of the nylon bug, for example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria); experiments on it basically had a bunch of germs of whatever species in a tank, incubated with plenty of moisture and heat, and no nourishment except the nylon; over time a series of mutations allowed some of the critters to *subsist* on nylon. IIRC, several rounds of the experiment showed that the same mutation kept recurring. But in the real world, you don't always get a large predation free environment, with just the one food source; this would affect the RATE at which such mutations propagate, should they occur. And presumably there are other complex organic substances which would never be able to be used as food without explicit genetic engineering.)

 

[grey_beard]

You had written:
I am fairly sure the anomalies that lead to relativity have to do with inconsistencies related applying Maxwell's equations in different reference frames. The speed of electromagnetic radiation in a vacuum is constant even when you switch to a moving reference frame. In addition, in the rest frame of an electron, it creates no magnetic field, but when we use a reference frame in which it's moving, the electron does create a magnetic field. Taken to an extreme, what happens then when we try to put ourselves into the rest frame of electromagnetic radiation?
*snaps fingers* -- I remember now. The title of the paper was On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies, but the first part -- which was all I'd read -- was on the definition of simultaneity. Which means I'd forgotten the introduction, and mistaken the setup of concepts and relation to familiar objects, for the motivation.

Sample link: http://www.fourmilab.ch/etexts/einstein/specrel/specrel.pdf

Thanks for the correction / reminder!

 

[Mane]

I'd like to create a poll and see if in fact she was right, or if I am right in what the majority of the population truly believes. For the purpose of the survey, im going to limit it to the two answers below, but feel free to respond and explain in the comments

Within the context of that poll, you will likely get more votes for evolution, but that has more to do with the progressive nature of the community. Globally I believe the UN survey was something like 86% follow organized religions, most of which preach creationism.

Either way, what does it matter how many people believe in it?