spacecowboy86 said:
Dann661 said:
I am a Catholic, but I still know that evolution exists, and I agree that it is appalling that most people don't don't know about it. However, I do not think everyone should be forced to believe in evolution, if people don't want to, why make them? Intelligent design is still a possible theory, as is the theory of evolution, I think God guided evolution but, I'm not going to go around and try and make people teach this in schools everywhere.
yes, this exactly. The reason I believe in this is because I find it to be a ridiculous theory that a fish was randomly born with nubs and the ability to breath air, and it was somehow able to use that to survive better.
Boy, you really don't understand evolution, do you? Seriously.
If there was a #2 misconception regarding evolution, it might be the notion that it can somehow be "guided." But it can't. That's the whole point: evolution by natural selection *means* that it just happens naturally, no intervention (divine or otherwise) required, as a necessary and logical consequence of the way the world is. Darwin's theory can best be expressed by a kind of syllogism:
(A) Within the same species, there is (genetic) variation. (By the way, it's not really important to understanding natural selection, but the amount of variation isn't fixed. New variation comes from new, random mutations arising in the DNA, most of which have no effect, and some of which can be either good or bad for the organism, depending on its environment.)
(B) In nature, there is competition for limited resources: space, food, mates, whatever. There are always more organisms born than could ever survive and reproduce.
(C) Given enough time, ANY edge, however slight, is meaningful. If that edge is hereditary -- that is, it comes from the organism's genes and gets passed onto its offspring -- that particular trait will spread through a population down through the successive generations.
(D) This "genetic change over time", with beneficial traits naturally selected for by differential survival and reproduction (which is a blind, mindless, directionless sorting algorithm -- not "random chance" by any means, but neither is it a guiding, intelligent force of any kind), is evolution.
(E) The cumulative result of lots of evolution over a long time is speciation. When a population of organisms is divided into more than one population for whatever reason (such as, for example, an isolating geographic barrier), gene flow between the two groups ceases, leaving them free to evolve in different directions, via (random) genetic drift and (non-random) natural selection.
In other words, *if* there is competition in nature, *if* there is variation within species, and *if* those variations are hereditary (spoiler alert: all three are true), then evolution *must* occur, given sufficient time. The logic is so airtight that empirical evidence is almost unnecessary. (But, of course, said empirical evidence does exist, in spades. Molecular biology and modern genetics being merely the best examples we have to date, which is not to discount the fossil record, comparative anatomy, bio-geography, etc.)
So... where does that leave the idea of "guided" (or theistic) evolution? Well, evolution just happens on its own. The only time that random chance ever inserts itself into the process is when mutations actually arise in the DNA. As I mentioned before, most mutations don't do anything. They might occur in the junk DNA, or they might change a codon to another codon that actually calls for the same amino acid (meaning, no effect on the phenotype). But if you get a point mutation that actually does code for a different amino acid, and therefore builds a different protein (or, say, a chromosome-level mutation where whole stretches of DNA get duplicated or rearranged), well, then something interesting has happened. The mutation will have an effect on the organism then, and whether it's good (and gets passed on) or bad (and doesn't last a generation) just depends. Mutations themselves are the one facet of evolution that really are random... so if you think that God is actually pulling the strings from behind the scenes, this is where He's working His Divine Mojo.
In other words, to believe in guided evolution, you have to believe that every time DNA gets copied wrong (whether it will result in a good mutation or a bad one, or have no effect at all), it's not just a natural occurrence and a chemical fluke of the way DNA replicates; it's a miracle caused by some supernatural force extrinsic to the universe, or the dictum of providential Fate. At which point, of course, you might as well also posit that nothing in nature is really random, and every time you roll a die or pick a card, invisible angels and demons are the ones controlling the outcome. Which is patently absurd.
Simply put, there's no gap for God in evolution... *unless* you believe that God has foreordained the motion of every particle and the outcome of every event in the history of the universe. (Which would also mean that free will can't exist, so good luck convincing even a theist that this is, in fact, really true.)
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And that's #2. If evolution has a #1 misconception, it's the positively asinine idea expressed by the quoted poster above that a fish could suddenly grow nubs and lungs. There's nothing "sudden" about evolution! Evolution doesn't happen in jumps! This can't be repeated enough:
THERE HAS NEVER BEEN, IN THE HISTORY OF LIFE, AN ORGANISM THAT DID NOT BELONG TO THE SAME SPECIES AS ITS IMMEDIATE PARENT(S) AND OFFSPRING. An unbroken chain of parent-and-child relationships connects EVERY life-form currently alive on Earth (us included) to the first prokaryote.
More importantly, evolution does not happen to individual organisms. MUTATIONS happen to individual organisms. If those mutations produce beneficial traits, the traits spread through the population. That's evolution. Evolution, therefore, happens to POPULATIONS OF ORGANISMS -- and it doesn't really make sense to think of evolution happening on a smaller scale than that of the population.
This, of course, is precisely what makes evolution so controversial in the ultra-religious USA. Liberal, mainstream Christian denominations and the Roman Catholic Church like to paper over the rather obvious fact: geneticists know that the hominid population that gave rise to modern Homo sapiens can never have been smaller than, say, ten thousand individuals. We never had a pair of "original parents": it's outright impossible for that to ever have been the case. Adam and Eve are mythical characters who cannot possibly have ever existed. That being the case... Original Sin can't be taken literally. There were never a "first man" and "first woman" to sin for the whole human race. This, of course, makes the doctrine of salvation equally nonsensical. (This is, of course, setting aside the whole morally repugnant notion that mankind could be held accountable for one man's sin and then subsequently redeemed via another's sacrifice. Here I'm just talking about whether it really happened.)
Since there can't have been an Adam and Eve to have sinned, there is no literal need whatsoever for a Christ to do any redeeming. "Original sin" is, at best, a metaphor for humanity's general tendency towards douchebaggery. This makes "salvation" (again, at best), metaphorical as well. If you need your metaphors to cope with the world and be a good person... that's fine, I'm certainly in no position to judge. But for me, given the fact that these things can't possibly be literally true (which we know for a fact, thanks to our understanding of evolution), I'd rather just dispense with the religious gobbledygook and be done with it.
