Posted on 11/29/2011 12:32:30 PM PST by SeekAndFind
For the last several months there has been a flurry of discussion—mostly online, of course—about the impossibility of a literal Adam & Eve (see, e.g., here and here and here). This ruling-out has been accomplished recently by the Human Genome Project, which indicates that anatomically modern humans emerged from primate ancestors about 100,000 years ago, from a population of something like 10,000. In short, science has confirmed what many of us already knew: there was not a literal first couple. So what else can we learn from this story?
Plenty, it turns out. Peter Enns, a biblical scholar who blogs at Patheos, has been following the discussion with some care. Lately he has done us all a great favor: written a series of posts pointing out recurring mistakes made by many of those doing the discussing. Many of these mistakes are rhetorically effective but collapse upon even modest inspection.
But not all of them.
On Friday, he listed one held mostly by the pro-science crowd: “Evidence for and against evolution is open to all and can be assessed by anyone.”
Enns declares that this is not so. “The years of training and experience required of those who work in fields that touch on evolution rules out of bounds the views of those who lack such training,” he writes.
This is true but it misses the point. The open-access-to-science cliché, usually trundled out by those who wish to contrast the transparency of science with the supposed obfuscation of religion, carries some truth.
Science actually is transparent in a way that religion is not. That’s because, in science land, there is nothing but to follow the evidence. It’s out on the table, after all, able and willing to be poked and prodded and analyzed and figured out and held up and turned around and looked at from new angles. Also, what counts as evidence in science is pretty well-defined. And if you do become an evolution expert, you actually will see that 99% of all scientists back evolution for a reason: the evidence demands it.
This is the great generosity of science, and its great strength: It is actually all right there, ready to be seen and understood. It is relievedly explicit. It takes effort, sure, just as Enns suggests; it’s not easy to become a professional research biologist. But the reason biologists agree on evolution is because it’s a relatively simple matter to be objective about fossils and genes. Unlike the objects of religion—the divine and humanity’s relation to it—the objects of science give themselves up for abstraction and analysis without a fight.
Therefore Richard Dawkins (for example) is right when he says, as he has on many occasions, that the evidence for evolution is there to be inspected by anyone. It is sitting out there on the table, waiting patiently for most of humanity to catch up to it, waiting to tell us it’s time to bid the historical Adam & Eve a final, if fond, farewell.
Not only that but Christ himself acknowledged Adam and Eve as being real as depicted in Genesis. If you reject the first three chapters of Genesis then you reject Christ by calling him a liar.
The whole notion of evolution is a bait-and-switch fraud. I repeat something which I posted here a couple of years ago. ...
I have several texts that supposedly deal with evolution. E.g. I have Freeman and Herron's Evolutionary Analysis 3rd Edition at hand; 802 pages. It has one chapter on speciation, which is all we're talking about here. The chapter begins on page 583. It runs on to page 614. The rest is primarily fluff, not very different from the stuff in Genesis where Jacob breeds spotted goats. The index references to speciation are: 37, 102-3, 574, 583-614. In other words a book on evolution has 36 pages out of 802 pages which even attempt to touch on the topic. I haven't looked at the speciation chapter recently but my recollection is that it doesn't do much to explain how a new animal species might arise; and answers no questions that I might raise.
ML/NJ
RE: If Adam and Eve are a myth, so is the Fall of Man. If the Fall is a myth, so is Original Sin. If Original Sin is a myth, so is the redemptive work of Christ on the Cross. If that’s a myth, the whole Bible is lies.
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Which is essentially what Dawkins has been saying all along...
Why is the most commonly recognized sequence in the human genome a degraded copy of reverse transcriptase?
My faith does not discard the possibility that something from the “creationist” view can be true. I can leave THAT as well as any truth of evolution to G-d.
“Education” (the rational, intellectual process) may be understanding one, the other, or both (evolution and/or creationism), but faith (my faith) requires only absolute belief in leaving the ultimate and absolute answers to G-d.
I might add that the recently discovered sophistication of DNA is one of the many conclusive proofs against macro-evolution since even the simplest of organisms are now know to be unfathomably complex. The structural nature of organisms precludes the remotest possibility of adding useful genetic information through mutation.
For this to be true, “the Human Genome Project, which indicates that anatomically modern humans emerged from primate ancestors about 100,000 years ago, from a population of something like 10,000” the amount of evolution that would have had to have transpired would be breathtaking.
Complete folly. Mendel published his work in 1866 (145 years ago) and peas are still peas because like produces like.
When pressed it seems that many Creationists don't even believe in “micro” evolution - that being the change (through either addition subtraction or substitution) in the genetic information that leads to better survival outcomes.
So how did all the species that exist on Earth come from those few species that could fit on the Ark?
Do you have a mechanism?
No actual mechanism needed because it was all magical?
RE: Rats and mice I have no opinion on the matter of where macro begins and micro ends. My personal opinion is that there must be some other mechanism to drive the development of new successful genetic information. Other than random mutation.
If everything we see on earth today was on the ark then there would be no way for you to infer a rapid development of genetic material. Until you can show what exists today but did not exist on the ark your whole point fails.
Well that is all Creationists really ever have - and you don't even have THAT!
Some OTHER mechanism? What is wrong with mutation and selection as a mechanism? Random mutation doesn't mean “beyond the control of God”, God's power doesn't stop at the casino door.
DNA replication is imperfect - as such just existing will introduce mutations into any population - and such mutational variations are then subject to selection - selection which tends to either increase or decrease the presence of that variation within the population.
What is going to STOP a 2% difference in genetic DNA from accumulating in different populations kept separate for a few million years?
Every species we see on Earth today couldn't POSSIBLY fit on the Ark - unless they were put there and kept there by magical means. Most creationists are of the opinion that there were only the primordial “kinds” of animals on the Ark - and they gave rise to all the different species - with each “kind” reproducing different species of the same “kind”.
'Evolution' is based on multiple logical fallacies invoked when convenient.
This one is known as the negative proof fallacy.
It is not logic nor is it an argument.
Micro-evolution is possible through the inheritance of recessive genes. If macro-evolution was a positively provable theory, you would not be retreating to negative arguments against the ark.
Please don't talk to me about the Ark (Tevah, actually) or Noah. I have not suggested that any such think actually happened.
You, however, must come up with some way to change chromosome numbers "gradually" or your whole "evolution" thing turns to $#i+.
Plants easily developed populations with different chromosome numbers - that didn’t happen either overnight or over millions of years.
And don't talk to me about plants. Plants are an entirely separate problem for you evos. Do you think animals evolved from plants, plants from animals, or was their evolution entirely separate? Your answer should be amusing.
I am quite aware of polyploidy among plants but this involve a doubling of chromosome numbers. You can do a lot of doubling and halving but you are never going to get from 20 to 21 or vice versa.
ML/NJ
If Dawkins’ position is that the rejection of Adam and Eve as literal history implies either lack of God or at least lack of a Judeo-Christian God, I agree with him. It’s just he takes the position that there is no God and I take the position that there was an Adam and Eve.
People trying to find a compromise position halfway along are in a difficult spot.
Says the guy who thinks the Sun goes around the Earth!
A recessive gene effects phenotype - it has no change in the allele frequency of the population.
Evolution is a change in the DNA of a population.
Hiding the recessive gene for blue eyes behind a gene for brown eyes is mixing and matching those alleles - it changes nothing as far as their prevalence within the population.
Your understanding of the very basics of biology is completely lacking.
Because it shows how ludicrous your position is?
I WILL talk about the Ark on a thread about Adam and Eve and evolution - they are part and parcel of the same subject.
Do you think the story of Noah is not literal?
Why not talk to you about plants? You didn’t carve out an exception for plants.
But here is a very basic education for you on how a population can change in chromosome number.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/04/basics_how_can_chromosome_numb.php
No. If an environmental change made blue eyes disadvantageous to survival and reproduction, that population would gradually “evolve” to possess DNA for brown eyes only.
That would be the fallacy of appeal to ridicule supported by a straw man.
The truth is so much more interesting:
“Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? […] The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS.”
Einstein, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics, p.212 (p.248 in original 1938 ed.); Note: CS = coordinate system
“The relation of the two pictures [geocentricity and heliocentricity] is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view.... Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.”
Hoyle, Fred. Nicolaus Copernicus. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1973.
"...Thus we may return to Ptolemy's point of view of a 'motionless earth'...One has to show that the transformed metric can be regarded as produced according to Einstein's field equations, by distant rotating masses. This has been done by Thirring. He calculated a field due to a rotating, hollow, thick-walled sphere and proved that inside the cavity it behaved as though there were centrifugal and other inertial forces usually attributed to absolute space. Thus from Einstein's point of view, Ptolemy and Corpenicus are equally right."
Born, Max. "Einstein's Theory of Relativity",Dover Publications,1962, pgs 344 & 345:
"People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations,” Ellis argues. “For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations.” Ellis has published a paper on this. “You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.”
Ellis, George, in Scientific American, "Thinking Globally, Acting Universally", October 1995
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