posted
It's been too long since we had a proper evolution debate. Let me start off by considering what evolutionists term 'macro-evolution', that is, change from one 'kind' to another. This is to be taken as distinct from 'microevolution', change within a species. For example, a bacterium evolving resistance to antibiotics is apparently microevolution, as is a wolf changing to a dog, while elephant to whale is (I think) macroevolution. I say 'apparently' and 'I think' because both concepts are rather nebulously defined. Therefore I'd like to start by figuring out what is the minimum change required for 'macroevolution' to have occurred. Would it be sufficient for a dog species to change into a cat? Chimpanzee to human? Hippo to whale?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Wow, great thread for me to join Hatrack on.
As I recall from my admittedly long ago biology classes, a species is defined by animals able and willing to produce fertile offspring. Thus a horse and a donkey are different species because their progeny (mule) cannot breed. If this definition is correct, then the process of macro-evolution involves a change which prevents future breeding with an animal from prior to the change.
However, I think your final question is moot, or at least doesn't really apply. While different modern species have common ancestors, I don't believe it is accurate to say that one modern species evolved from another. To clarify, as I understand it, man did not evolve from chimpanzee, both evolved from some other ancestor, which may have been more chimp-like than man-like.
It should be noted that I'm not a scientist of any useful sort, so I'm likely to be totally off-base.
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Raventhief, welcome. Both your objections are excellent, but you are missing some context in the debate. Creationists consider macro-evolution to be distinct from what biologists term speciation, which is what your donkey/horse/mule example refers to. It is not sufficient, as I understand their argument, for two individuals to be unable to interbreed; they must also look markedly different, or they are merely changes 'within a kind'. (This from Genesis, you understand, where Noah took a pair of all the animals 'according to their kind'. This is one solution to the problem of how he stuffed two animals of each of several thousand species into his hand-built wooden boat : He didn't, he used maybe ten or twenty 'kinds' instead, and all what we see micro-evolved later.) So I am wondering what is the minimum change required for us to recognise 'macro-evolution' to have occurred. In other words, a definition of 'kind'.
Your other point is of course correct, but I was merely using chimpanzee to human as an example of things that could conceivably be regarded as sufficient, not suggesting that it had actually occurred. Although really, the point is moot : Whatever the common ancestor looked like, we would certainly classify it as an ape.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
Seems like this is a question to ask creationists rather than evolutionists. Or at least those who believe in a synthesis of the two. Pure evolutionists would tend to retort that macro-evolution is merely a specific form of speciation. Unless I misunderstood you...
To try to answer your question, I'd say that switching from fins to legs would be macro, as would switching from paws to feet and/or hands. But those are probably obvious, and you'd need someone who believes in macro-evolution more than I to answer specifics.
Posts: 354 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Clearly, yes. Presumably, Jay, Farmgirl, or starLisa will be logging on at some point. Although perhaps they won't enter a thread started by me.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Out of curiosity, what does this thread have that the last one did not? It hasn't been all that long.
Or has it been too long since you had a chance to snark nastily in someone's direction? Really, KoM. It's almost like you're trying to get yourself banned.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, I don't think this specific question came up. Also, it's been at least a month, surely? In Internet Time, that comes to a good few years.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I realize there must be a history here, but KoM seems to be polite and logical at this point and a premeditated strike by rivka toward KoM without actual participation in the thread is kinda harsh.
I like evolution of all kinds, if only because both macro and micro-evolution are observable. I tentatively believe that the unobservable is inherently theoretical, and forever unproveable. Right?
Posts: 1156 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
In rivka's defense, I was perhaps a little unduly provocative in a thread yesterday.
I think you'll find few creationists who agree with you on the macro being observable, though - indeed, this is the crux of their argument, that we've never seen one 'kind' changing into another. As the saying goes, every time we find a transitional fossil, we create two more gaps. But I thought I'd start by defining the terms properly, since 'kind' seems generally to be defined as 'whatever difference is sufficient that some kind of argument can be made for us not having seen it.'
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Isn't Noahs arc the size of a modern Aircraft carrier? You could concievably fit every species that he could regionally get his hands on that weren't amphibious when the animals are little babies, you'll save spave and they wont eat each other.
IP: Logged |
posted
Well, if you're defending Biblical literalists, Blayne, you'll have to discard the "regionally get his hands on" modifier. The kangaroo, for instance, either had to be on the ark or have some ancestor on the ark. (Of course that begs the question of how they got to Australia and/or became modern kangaroos, but one step at a time).
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Noemon: How many square cubits of floorspace does an aircraft carrier have?
Tough call. A cubit is the tip of your middle finger to your elbow if I was taught correctly. Since humanity has gotten taller through the years, it won't be exact.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Is that really what a cubit is? I always wondered. I suppose it would change from person to person as well, right?
Posts: 1789 | Registered: Jul 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Evie3217: Is that really what a cubit is? I always wondered. I suppose it would change from person to person as well, right?
That what I was taught in my Reform Jewish classes growing up. Makes sense when I hear about other early measurements. I was once told the "foot" was once based on the size of the current monarch's feet. That last one could be urban legend, but sounds true.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, going on some dimensions I found, you're talking roughly 85,000 square cubits on the flight deck. VERY rough numbers though, and I can't vouch for how accurate the dims I found are.
Edit: Also ballparked a cubit at 18"
Posts: 880 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oh, and KoM the Macro/Micro argument is a non-argument from what I can tell. They claim that while small changes are provable and obvious, large changes are impossible. Yet what I understand evolution to mean is that these large changes are the results of many, many small changes--each of which happen over time.
What makes the descendants of one animal change species from its antecedants? Neither Nature nor God worries about categorizing creatures by species. Only Man, with his desire to place things in his understandable order, worries about putting things in categories.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Raven, even switching from paws to hands wouldn't be enough; monkeys/chimps/apes have hands, but since humans are obviously not evolved from apes, that would still be macro-evolution.
This thread reminds me of how shocked my sister was when she realized that if everyone was descended from Noah, and even earlier from Adam, somewhere along the line someone had to marry their brother. Yuck. Posts: 1522 | Registered: Nov 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Raventhief: What's worse, I don't recall Adam and Eve ever having daughters, only sons...
On that note, when Cain was sent to wander the Earth he was marked so he would be recognized for what he did, and no one would kill him for it. Who besides Adam, Eve, and later Seth would there be to meet.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Beren One Hand: "And the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were eight hundred years: and he begat sons and daughters" (Genesis 5:4).
*Darn Karl's quick fingers*
Yeah, but I have both hands. Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Dan_raven: Oh, and KoM the Macro/Micro argument is a non-argument from what I can tell. They claim that while small changes are provable and obvious, large changes are impossible. Yet what I understand evolution to mean is that these large changes are the results of many, many small changes--each of which happen over time.
You are obviously quite correct. But it's no use the two of us agreeing; I want to convince a creationist. In order to do that, we're first going to have to sgree on some kind of definition.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Micro evolution is pretty obviously a fact. Macro evolution on the other hand.
KoM, I'm a creationist. But more, I don't believe there was death before the Garden of Eden (a Mormon doctrine). The lack of death rules out the possibility of *any* evolution before Adam came into existance. As far as macro evolution after Adam, the "Fall," which marks the start of death, didn't happen that long ago and that doesn't allow as many years for macro evolution as is required.
So obviously these religious beliefs don't agree too well with things like the existance of dinosaurs. I'm satisfied that they can co-exist still. In fact, there are several things that make it very easy for me to believe them both and even more that researchers might discover.
First, there was a "change" at the time of Noah, as people before Noah lived several hunred, almost a thousand years. That just makes no sense at all to us. Can we rule it out as impossible? I doubt it. What sort of change could cause this?
Also, the word "created" in the Bible is interpreted differently for some. I believe it was the Catholics who decided it meant "created from nothing." Another interepretation means "organized from unorganized matter". Which could mean a planet that wasn't a part of our solar system or whatever.
Second, the idea that it is possible to exist without death raises the idea that there is a lot we can't even begin to understand. A. Lot.
My point is, I think I'm much more willing to accept that the explaination of what we have found on Earth could be even crazier than the theory of evolution because I'm willing to believe things like death isn't a universal constant, humans could live 1000 years even when there is death, and God can move planets at will.
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: Also, the word "created" in the Bible is interpreted differently for some. I believe it was the Catholics who decided it meant "created from nothing." Another interepretation means "organized from unorganized matter".
Both of these possible explanations predate Catholicism.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: Also, the word "created" in the Bible is interpreted differently for some. I believe it was the Catholics who decided it meant "created from nothing." Another interepretation means "organized from unorganized matter".
Both of these possible explanations predate Catholicism.
posted
oh. ok. Well, one of them is right. Or both of them are wrong.
And I think the one where God creates everything from nothing is even more extrodinary as it implies God does all kinds of stuff we can't imagine. The one where he organizes sutff implies he works within some bounds or rules or he at least had some wacky reason to organize it rather than to just materialize it out of thin nothingness.
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
The literal Garden of Eden is considered "dogma" for LDS? That's new to me. Am I correct in believing that many or even most LDS are not literal fundamentalists?
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:First, there was a "change" at the time of Noah, as people before Noah lived several hunred, almost a thousand years. That just makes no sense at all to us. Can we rule it out as impossible? I doubt it. What sort of change could cause this?
I read a book when I was younger, I can't remember by whom, but it was a fictional account of the flood, complete with Noah, his kids, cherubim, and seraphim. The explanation given in the book for our ancestors' longevity was their small stature. It was basically the inverse of the reasoning given for Bean dying young of Giagantism. Smaller cranium and smaller body == longer lifespan.
I don't know, I was little when I read it, but it seemed to make sense then.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
Um, yeah, LDS believe Adam was a real person and that events happened very similarly to the way explained in the Book of Genesis. Perhaps some things are figurative, like taking a rib from Adam's side to make Eve, and that the 7 days are very probably not days as we know them. AFAIK, there is no room in LDS doctrine that allows its members to say Adam or the Fall are figurative.
In fact, the Fall is one of the most absolute core doctrines of the LDS church. We believe the purpose of Christ's life was to overcome the Fall (which effects include God casting humans out of his presense and not letting us back in and death entering the world). He overcame the Fall by sacrificing his life (which was perfect (which means he didn't disobey God like Adam did), and as an act of mercy, the Son of God (we believe Jesus was God's son--literally) has the power to do this). Because of what he did, we can 1) be resurected back to our bodies and live forever w/ them (free) and 2) live again with God if we obey God's commandments (not free).
Maybe there are different types of Mormons around here, but that is what I have been taught over and over (in various forms) all my life, and what I was taught to teach (in various forms) on my mission and when I read the scriptures, that is what I see them teaching me (in various forms--the Book of Mormon teaches this much more clearly than the Bible, but I still believe those teachings are there in the Bible).
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I suspect that if you were to take the Bible, old and new testement, and parse each verse, you would find most Mormons believing more verses than most "literal fundamentialists". I also suspect that you would have most "literal fundamentialists" disagreeing with that statement.
How's that for broad generalizations.
Posts: 1167 | Registered: Oct 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Okay this is total space doctrine and feel free to call me nuts. It in no way represents a doctrine, but just for fun... here goes...
I haven't read all this, but LDS believe that God created all things spiritually before they were created temporally/physically. I have always believed that this distinction leaves LDS a LOT of wiggle room in the literalness of Adam and Eve's physical situation. At a certain point, Adam and Eve's spirits entered physical bodies and they and THEIR children began the process of mortality (death), which led to the dominance of man upon the earth. Remembering that Death is a seperation of the spirit from the presence of God, and that spiritual death occurs relatively early in that all men have sinned... One might theorize that the process of God's spirit children entering and leaving bodies is what was put into motion... the existence of some kind of Cro-magnon man, without the proper genetic tweak may not have been compatible with the type of Spirit appointed to pass through the mortal existence.
I've always wondered if the degeneracy of the mortal condition occurred due to mingling with this animal element... tehre's some wierd stuff in the apocrypha about the Nephilim.
posted
Could Adam and Eve be the core part of the whole evolution debate? If there are no Adam and Eve, then the whole Christian idea of orginal sin sort of gets blown away.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Why does having evolution mean no Adam and Eve? At some point, pre-humans became humans. God calls the first two Adam and Eve (or Adam and Chava, actually ) and imbues them with souls.
posted
I don't feel strongly about humanity originating with a single pair, one way or the other. I personally think it extremely unlikely that the earth is as young as human_2.0 seems to believe, though. I also am disinclined to believe that humans ever had lifespans in the hundreds of years.
(None of this is intended as an effort to convince anybody of my beliefs, but rather to more fully understand where my beliefs and those of others diverge.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Presumably, Jay, Farmgirl, or starLisa will be logging on at some point. Although perhaps they won't enter a thread started by me.
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
But I thought I'd start by defining the terms properly, since 'kind' seems generally to be defined as 'whatever difference is sufficient that some kind of argument can be made for us not having seen it.'
![[Razz]](tongue.gif)
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Blushing]](graemlins/blushing.gif)
)![[Laugh]](graemlins/laugh.gif)
Karl.![[Wave]](graemlins/wave.gif)
![[No No]](graemlins/nono.gif)
![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)
