Creationism vs evolutionism

[bib]

I was hesitating about opening the can, now I'm glad I did. There are so many talents in our community that it would have been a shame to keep focusing on our stupid fractals when there are so many crucials topics.

Let's keep this thread about creationism, and if one wants to continue the environment discussion, please create another thread.

[David Makin]

Hobold I have to disagree with some of your opinions - I'm essentially with Tglad, but in particular:

> If you feel that strong about opposing it, it's almost as if you're afraid that your own beliefs will be undermined by creationism

No, the problem here is that if creationism really starts taking hold then for one thing eventually study of anything related to evolution is going to disappear and I consider that a very serious undermining of potential future benefits to humanity plus forcing *any* religious belief on others as part of the standard education system is *wrong* and *evil* IMHO but that is how most creationists (of all denominations) think things shoud be.

However I will add that *everything* beyond "I think therefore I am" has to be taken on faith and is therefore just a belief.

My belief is that there is a God, but this God is not the Creator but the *sum of all things* and in terms of good/evil is entirely neutral but fits the ideas that "the Kingdom of Heaven is within you" and "God is everywhere" because I believe *Existence is a Multifractal* and it contains infimite copies of itsef within itself - for example we'll always find that our "fundamental particles" (whatever they are at the time) are made of even smaller ones that last for even shorter periods of time.
As for morality, I take that from the account of Jesus' life - for example he taught "God is Love" - and from various other religious teachings not necessarily Christian, such as Buddhism.
Like Stephen Fry and my dad I would call myself a Humanist rather than simply an Atheist.

[hobold]

I might have an easier time tolerating creationists, because I am not confronted with them on a day to day basis. But I have had my own clash with a theology teacher in primary school. The only reason why I got out of that relatively unscathed was because my father was a self taught botanist and zoologist with a bit of local fame in the area. When he spoke up and demanded a good scientific education for the kids, the debate ended right there.

What I wrote above was meant to reveal a fundamental weakness in the theory of intelligent design: intelligent design does in no way imply a godly creator. The intelligent designers can realistically emerge from evolution. The history of life on earth is easily long enough for that to happen more than once. Whenever a creationist tries to use the concept of intelligent design as an existence proof for god, he is failing at basic logic.

However, the concept of evolution through selection also has limitations. There are a few episodes in earth's history (as documented by the fossil record) of extremely rapid appearance of new species. And there are precious few examples of currently existing species that have ... "fragile" traits. Fragile in the sense that they cannot be traced back along a continuous and gradual path of predecessors that each were useful, effective, and efficient for the individuals so endowed. The pure and simple concept of evolution is apparently contradicted by the laws of statistics there, because even 450 million years are not long enough that such an unlikely chain of events could realistically occur.

Let me repeat that this does not mean a god were necessary to close the gaps in the theory of evolution.


As for the creationists who try to use the language of science to discredit the scientific method ... look around yourself. We bent the world to our will. Not with ideologies, but with technologies. The quest for ever more knowledge has been extremely successful. Which church today, which formal belief system can match the sheer creative power of modern science? (Yes, we got more effective at warfare, too. But how many of those were holy wars? How many of the inventions/discoveries were holy inventions/discoveries?)

And yet, no man-made artifact can compare to the world itself, the greatest creation of all. Exploring the world, understanding it, is the pillar of science and an act of worship at the same time. Scientists (their stereotype, at least) may not be part of formal churches, and they may not believe in any made-up definition of deity. But scientists, in their quest for the final answer, for the ultimate truth, will inevitably come closer and closer to whatever god there may or may not be.

[panzerboy]

In not sure many evolutionary biologists today think that evolution is an exclusively gradual process. Species may find themselves in isolated ecosystems with unexploited niches, in such circumstances evolution is quite rapid. I think the term is 'punctuated equilibrium', most of the time evolution is gradual but then changing environment and catastrophes cause bursts of rapid evolution. Mammals would not have become the dominant land animals they are today were it not for the demise of dinosaurs leaving unexploited niches for mammals to fill. The earth is a wonderful evolutionary laboratory, generally stable but with occasional rapid changes to ecosystems caused by ice-ages lowering sea levels and allowing land bridges for species to mix from separate continents and fight it out for the evolutionary winners. Were it not for climate changes in Africa our ancestors would not have had to come down from the trees an onto the savannah and walk upright and consequent rapid evolution to exploit this new upright condition.
Thus I have a problem with the application of statistics to evolution, poisson distribution is a bad model for circumstances when the 99th percentile is constantly being selected for, as in the case of novel niches to be exploited.