* The digestive system, the food to be digested, the appetite, the
ability to find and eat the food, the digestive juices, or the body's
resistance to its own digestive juice (stomach, intestines, etc.)?
* The drive to reproduce or the ability to reproduce?
* The lungs, the mucus lining to protect them, the throat, or the
perfect mixture of gases to be breathed into the lungs?
* DNA or RNA to carry the DNA message to cell parts?
* The termite or the flagella in its intestines that actually
digest the cellulose?
* The plants or the insects that live on and pollinate the plants?
* The bones, ligaments, tendons, blood supply, or muscles to move
the bones?
* The nervous system, repair system, or hormone system?
* The immune system or the need for it?
Well, enough writting; please forgive me my poor English, it's not my
maternal language... I just had to react, because these mistakes are allways
the same. One can talk about symbiotic origine of plastides thrice a day and
suggest to read those well-known books like Selfish Gene by Dawkins or Red
Queen by Ridley, or at least(!) Darwin's Origin of Species... all the same.
There will be still people asking the same questions all over again. But
it's all there! In those and other books, there are so many evolution
evidences that one may spend all his life digesting them... We don't know
everything. There are many gaps in our knowledge and we may (and probably
will) never found out everything, but that's not a bit an evidence of all
our existing knowledge being wrong. We have actually never seen the organic
soup which had life developped from? So what? Is there anyone who has
actually seen the Creator? No?! - I wonder why Christians don't think it a
valid proof of his nonexistence...
Original Message -----
From: "montik" <mon...@gmail.com>
To: "Towards a New Synthesis of Evangelical Christianity and Science"
<ssa...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2007 2:18 AM
Subject: Evolution just can't be true....
Also plant breeding has shown that breeding like weekness and
viability is produced by inbreeding, but the way to produce super-
prodective hybrids is to cross the the weak inbred lines. If we gave
animals credit for resource managemnt, maybe we would find that by
instinct or innate wisdom or whatever you want to call it, they are
practicing the best practices of plant breeders. We haven't seen it,
because we haven't looked for it!
What if most selection in life were artificial! That it is in fact in
the best interest of predators to let alone the weak, the young and
the sick (a recovered sick animal is often stronger that the
original), because in reality these all represent the best hope for
the future viability of the population they are managing? Let's give
organisms more credit for wisdom and see if in looking for this, we
now see what we have been missing all along
There is always an arms race in the world of biology against
parasitism and selfish behavior, but parasitism or self interest is
not productive of any life, it is a destroyer, a sickness of life but
it is a winnable fight. At the end of a biological age, when the
environment is super stressed by an asteroid explosion or volcanoe
eruption induced nuclear winter, the remnant of species involved in an
interlocking community of cooperation survive and the parasites die
(that's my theory).
> > * The immune system or the need for it?- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
However, I dont agree with you on the field of parasitism. I see parasitism
as a very productive natural engine that push evolution forward like no
other causes can do! Parasitical world is beautiful and complex and dificult
to understanding and... ok, et cetera. :)
Parasites are very good specialized, have many organs that other animals
don't and, which is most important, the play really very big role in every
ecosystem you can think of. They manipulate with behaviour of their hosts,
change host's fitness (the term that could mean both healt condition and
posiibility of reproduction), sometimes provides more food for their
definitive hosts (by causing their ancillary(?) host to be easily eaten) -
that can mean that by killing all the parasites of other specie you can
cause this specie to extinct as well!. And they are probably the first cause
of sexual selection... When we consider also the fact, that on the Earth,
there are much more species of parasites than those of freely living
animals, I think those little ceratures do much more than destroy life... on
the contrary, they are producing new forms of life in a few different ways
:)
I appreciate the role of parasites in ecosystemes very much. Some of them
are really dangerous, but some of them are very helpful, too. And they are
really beautiful in closer view :)
- I have just found this among Dawkins' quotations. I think it's
exact :D
You seam to not understand evolution and think all things at once as
if no line of evolution took place to make all such things in stages
that the most basic and simple are first of course and the last be the
more complicated ones.
Basically it is SHELTER, FOOD, PERCEPTION OF OTHER THAN FOOD,
MOVEMENT,REACTION TO MOVEMENT/LIGHT ... AND SO FORTH. It is all very
strait forward stuff.
Why do you go to the store and do not run to the sea and swim to the
middle of it and fish your own fish? Same kind of logic.
> > - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
> > (that's my theory).- Hide quoted text -
Excellent statement. Thanks for the tip.
By the way, I agree I'm not informed by all the arguments of modern
Darwinism. I do not have PhD in Darwinistic Biology from an Ivy
League College. But the truth is I actually have a BA from Swarthmore
College and and MA from the University of Pennsylvania both in
Biology. I know if I had gone on to get a PhD, I would truly have
been introduced to the highest levels of knowledge on this subject and
some of what I discuss is just ignorance and being simplistic. but in
some ways this is a strength.
Maybe my blade is not yet sharp enough, but engaging in discussions
such as this is a way of sharpening the blade or for my seeing the
need to go sharpen it more one my own with my own studies. It's kind
of an experiment with me, let's see what I can discover if I approach
things this way instead of with conventional wisdom.
It's also motivated by spiritual insight. I couldn't proceed in my
life with believing the nature of it was according to my understanding
of Darwinism. This change to a more Christian point of view, or lets
say radical Christian and was necessary for my proceeding with life at
all. I decided I had heard enough of Darwin and it was just going to
be more of the same. I'm seeing if this other way works better, and I
bet it does. To me my arguments are the most up to date necessary
extension of faith.
I bet all of life behaves this way, that is according to Scriptural
principles with most life being selfish, but they all being wiped out
at the end of an age ("The day of the Lord"), and only the unselfish
remaining standing. "Blessed are the meek or they shall inherit the
Earth".
I believe there is no divide man and beast just like Biology says,
however I extend this to there being no difference in consciousness,
spirit etc. other than those that can be proved as existing in
Scripture because this is my ultimate guide. I would say that the
best Biologists are Jesus and John the Baptist and I take their
metaphors literally...
By the way, I agree Lamarckianism may not usually be true.
Intelligence itself is kind of Lamarckianism but differs in that the
characteristic is passed on from parent to offspring after birth not
before.
1. the food
2. ability to reproduce
3.mixture of gases
4. RNA
5. flagella
6. plants
7. blood
8. nervous system
9.need for immunity
See? That wasn't so hard, was it? As with the chicken-and-egg
conundrum, there are several manifestations of elements of our
environment. We now know that dinosaurs hatched from eggs, long before
chickens evolved. Therefore, eggs precede chickens. Applying a
rational thought process is great, because it leaves one with many
mysteries solved and able to ponder new puzzles.