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Yeah, but if humans came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys ? I bet you can't answer me that. (cough)
There are two funny things: - Evolution itself is pretty much outdated theory. Genetics, biochemistry and ethology are light years beyond Darwin. It is like discussing Copernicus while scientists are working on quantum gravity. - Evolution does not disprove creation and vice versa. God could use evolution as a tool. And God could also create Earth with all those fossils underground just for a joke. :-)
> Evolution itself is pretty much outdated theory.
Evolution as an abstract model is pretty old, but it's not likely to ever be outdated. To this day, it describes accurately what is going on with any kind of adaptive system, not only in biology but also computer science and information theory, and one could make some convincing arguments for physics as well.
> Genetics, biochemistry and ethology are light years beyond Darwin.
It's true that Darwin didn't necessarily know much about the inner workings of what he was observing. All he could do is make the actual observations, and reason about them. This led to a key idea about how organisms develop, and it is this idea that became part of the basic tool set of any scientist, it's right up there with Pythagoras and Newton. Genetic and biochemical research didn't really exist in Darwin's time, but the principles he described are found everywhere you look in these fields. And if it hadn't been for Darwin, someone else would have found this out, it became gradually more inescapable the more data we gathered. In fact, today it wouldn't be called much of an achievement at all, since the mechanism is so obvious and ubiquitous whenever you look at bio data.
> - God could use evolution as a tool. And God could also create Earth with all those fossils underground just for a joke.
Those two are actually somewhat mutually exclusive. Either you believe that some kind of deity "uses" evolution as a tool, at which point people should ask themselves what the point of having gods is if they're not actually doing anything measurable at all.
The second point, although you meant it as a joke, is actually harder to argue with - because it leaves reason so far behind it becomes difficult to have any meaningful discussion about it at all: there is nothing in principle to say against the argument that our whole environment and history could be manufactured. We would have no way of knowing that, in fact there would be no way of knowing the actual age of the universe. It could be 2 seconds old in that case. All we have to reason against this approach is an argument from plausibility and Occam's razor.
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You're at least asking the question at the right level. Most people get bogged down arguing about how the something that already was became different stuff that was. "Why is there something and not nothing at all?" is an excellent philosophical base to start building a cosmology on.
I was just thinking this when I read your comment. It is probably the largest thing that is holding me to my faith in an a God. Whether or not evolution is true, it explains _how_ our world was created, but not why.
There are two funny things: - Evolution itself is pretty much outdated theory. Genetics, biochemistry and ethology are light years beyond Darwin. It is like discussing Copernicus while scientists are working on quantum gravity. - Evolution does not disprove creation and vice versa. God could use evolution as a tool. And God could also create Earth with all those fossils underground just for a joke. :-)
And as for your second point, it's true. God could use evolution as a tool. God could hide fossils as a joke. God could just be having fun by letting us build up our quaint little theory of evolution before suddenly dumping a herd of unicorns in the savannah. God could, if he existed, do pretty much anything for any reason completely incomprehensible to us. And that's precisely where creationism falls down as a scientific theory - any flaw is just covered by "maybe God did it just because" and it can't be disproved.
For many of these people, science and religion simply deal with different realms. Science deals with natural causes for natural phenomena, while religion deals with beliefs that are beyond the natural world. I think scientists are too quick to diffuse the religion vs science arguement. Maybe religious scientist can enlighten me on this. When one bases beliefs on essentially nothing ('gut feelings', apparitions, what…
What proof do you offer?
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Complex organs have developed from simpler organs in a series of small incremental improvements, while the organ all the way have been fully functional. Think of it like iterative developing a program by adding or modifying one line at a time, while still keeping the program runnable. You can start from a simple program and develop it into a complex program with this method, although it will be a very tedious and ine…
If you add to your analogy that you have no knowledge of the existing codebase, and you have no idea what you're adding or modifying, then you understand my difficulty grasping the concept. Thanks for the reply though!
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No, that is sort of what I meant to say, except that I would never use the word bliss for describing the state of a host brain. You could argue about the meaning of ignorance, but I really don't think this catch phrase fits well with the statement I tried to make. Competitive inhibition is a more apt term for what's actually going on.
Ah, yes! It just hit me. [Here was an incoherent rambling from someone who really should go to sleep]. Your explanation fitted my biased model but I focused on my beliefs, not yours. My mistake, sorry. Don't know if I made much sense, really sleepy now :] On a related note, I remember Dawkins spoke about memes and how ideas can be seen as some kind of virus that are subject to evolution.
> On a related note, I remember Dawkins spoke about memes and how ideas can be seen as some kind of virus that are subject to evolution.
I haven't read his books yet, but this stands to reason. Memes share a lot of characteristics with organisms, and humanity has built a great eco system for them in recent years. The first time I realized that ideas are actually evolutionary programs was in the 90s when I read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.