tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3116442395849122822.post8826116990911454193..comments2024-03-12T14:31:50.264-07:00Comments on Bits and Pieces: A Question about Creationism I Don't Really Want AnsweredHarry Lewishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17088418333536732728noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3116442395849122822.post-25335208353568436222013-02-05T15:19:24.013-08:002013-02-05T15:19:24.013-08:00Dave,
The speed of evolution is a legitimate scie...Dave,<br /><br />The speed of evolution is a legitimate scientific question, which in fact is well studied (also the pace, etc.). So your question of "why" certain transitions have happened but not others at certain time scales is perfectly amenable to scientific inquiry.<br /><br />Your last sentence is just silly, however. The simplest answer to any scientific question is to posit divine magic as the explanation. All questions are then settled. Theists have been doing that since man was at the center of the universe, losing ground at every step of our understanding our real place. But as long as there are unanswered scientific questions, they will keep doing it, since in fact they are not extrapolating the existence of god from the data, but simply invoking the name of a god they already somehow "knew" exists wherever they think the unanswered question may be.<br /><br />The trick in human knowledge of the world is to make sense of the world by invoking the laws of the universe--and of course updating those laws as human understanding expands. Harry Lewishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17088418333536732728noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3116442395849122822.post-6268578313020790252013-02-05T07:07:43.366-08:002013-02-05T07:07:43.366-08:00This just in, unedited:
Your friend Harry makes t...This just in, unedited:<br /><br />Your friend Harry makes two valid points.<br /><br />1.) The family resemblance is undeniably there<br />2.) An upright vertebrae is vulnerable and gravity exerts ill effects on the whole of the human frame. <br /><br />The logical fallacy I see in the conversation is the assumption that evolution, and intelligent deign for that matter, aims to overcome vulnerability. <br /><br />Our book reads that in eternity future a king will reign as a lamb that was slain, not an invulnerable super-being. <br /><br />The fork in the road is not evolution vs. creation/ID as I see it, but what it means to be human. <br /><br />bp<br /><br />Bill Pearson, Ph.D.<br />Asst. Professor, Cellular Biology & Anatomy<br />Medical College of Georgia<br />Georgia Regents UniversityDave Thomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14254306930930841053noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3116442395849122822.post-60064096107589303362013-02-05T04:30:45.204-08:002013-02-05T04:30:45.204-08:00Harry, I don't have an answer for why your bac...Harry, I don't have an answer for why your back is bad and mine is great. At 37 I started doing squats in the gym and at 52 I still do 400 pounds at a time and I have no joint or back pain anywhere. So I'm not just walking upright, I'm stressing my back and hips and knees and feeling no ill effect. So I think it would be categorically inaccurate to stress, as you are, that human backs are poorly designed. Somehow, yours is poorly designed or poorly used, but you alone do not a category make. I'll ask an evangelical anatomist whom I know what he thinks of spine & rib design and report back (ha!) to you. Quick question: if backs have evolved, why haven't they evolved with the very much greater differentiation that you think would have been more appropriate? Why would mammals doing very different things day to day still be birthed looking very similar in several respects? (Two eyes, one mouth, two ears, fore limbs, hind limbs, naughty bits, etc?) Wouldn't these features benefit from extreme design make-overs? And yet the relative similarities in features beg questions of "why?" of The Great Evolver's wisdom. Though I realize that Gould would say that asking "why" of The Great Evolver would be a categorical mistake. On the other hand, if there's a creator, similarity in design (similarity vs. carbon-copy) makes a bit more sense or is at least understandable. Dave Thomhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14254306930930841053noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3116442395849122822.post-90936351163330719522013-01-26T14:55:06.170-08:002013-01-26T14:55:06.170-08:00But it was surely a terrible hack to take that spi...But it was surely a terrible hack to take that spine and just stand it upright when making the bipedal version, leaving me and lots of other people my age with back pain. Intelligent design my eye.Harry Lewishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17088418333536732728noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3116442395849122822.post-14106894274018988692013-01-26T09:34:43.537-08:002013-01-26T09:34:43.537-08:00Sure I can see the family resemblance. And as a re...Sure I can see the family resemblance. And as a recovering software engineer, I could argue that God showed us the first practical demonstration of reuse in elements of design. I think I even heard once jokingly argued that what He had done in all the non-gene sequence DNA was write comments. Like<br /><br />// Added extra 'wisdom' teeth. Must remember<br />// to add extra room to jaw later<br /><br />and <br /><br /> /* struct g_spot */<br /><br />I also think there's room for a more nuanced view of creationism. Did God simply take what he had done already to a new level with man? I don't know. Is the creation story simply the only way He could explain evolution to folks who didn't Ph.D.'s from Harvard and Yale?<br /><br />I think there's room for some mystery. Evolution is, after all, only a scientific theory. Has science devolved in to fact by marketing fiat? Should a theory have exclusive access to children's minds?<br /><br />I don't think so.Mauricehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00762719361348572568noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3116442395849122822.post-58736674020084606962013-01-25T07:46:14.782-08:002013-01-25T07:46:14.782-08:00There used to be some information up about the wha...There used to be some information up about the whale skeletons hanging over the stairwell, but I guess it got moved sometime recently. If you look carefully at the lower skeleton (the one not pictured here), you can actually see where two of its ribs on the left side were broken, so you have something else in common.<br /><br />There's a great little exhibit on this (similarities in bone structure across species) in the mammal hall in the natural history museum. <br />Marchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01811197656670528577noreply@blogger.com