Evolution vs. Creationism

Dean wrote: jampa17 wrote: Well, I didn't read the whole thread because you are using too much technical and quemical knowledge that I don't understand, at least in english... well, what I have to say is that I refuse to believe that we are only a lucky step, followed by other lucky step followed again by other lucky step... I think evolution is a little more complicated that just natural selection process, and BTW, I believe we are special because we havee porpuse, meaning... we don't come here to mess around -funny, i'ts just what we're doing right now- but I believe in the existence of a perfect essence who guide us... so, I believe in evolution guided by a holy hand... It's a shame you didn't read the whole thread because I tried to show that luck has nothing to do with it. Just becuase a series of steps looks lucky to you it is simply because they happened. If they never happened none of us would be here to say "Coo, that was lucky". It's not luck, chance, fate, kismet or destiny, it's just things that happened.

Only the genes are passed on - experiences are accumulated in the mind, not in eggs and sperms. Every new animal starts as a single cell, so I fail to see how experiences should reach the offspring by any other means than learning.

Edited by Mr ProgFreak - December 01 2009 at 09:43

jampa17 wrote: Well, I didn't read the whole thread because you are using too much technical and quemical knowledge that I don't understand, at least in english... well, what I have to say is that I refuse to believe that we are only a lucky step, followed by other lucky step followed again by other lucky step... I think evolution is a little more complicated that just natural selection process, and BTW, I believe we are special because we havee porpuse, meaning... we don't come here to mess around -funny, i'ts just what we're doing right now- but I believe in the existence of a perfect essence who guide us... so, I believe in evolution guided by a holy hand...

It's a shame you didn't read the whole thread because I tried to show that luck has nothing to do with it. Just becuase a series of steps looks lucky to you it is simply because they happened. If they never happened none of us would be here to say "Coo, that was lucky". It's not luck, chance, fate, kismet or destiny, it's just things that happened.

I'm an atheist; the closest I can get to agnosticism is equating the entire matter, energy and time with some sort of divinity; or with 'sky mechanism' to be more precise.

I won't even state my opinion about the subject -- I can not comprehend how someone in modern era can deny evolution. (I can understand believers that believe in evolution+god).

But there's something else. It's not only that I'm not embracing divine intervention...I don't like the idea.

I feel proud being of descent of some string of animals that evolved, enhanced intelligence and stood up from the mud - this is what I am - we are - a living example what life on Earth had achieved, and it still developing.

The idea of being created by some god, and obliged to show eternal gratitude and kneel is not for me.

The believer might throw the argument's of God's love, but that won't help much because humans remain a priori inferior to him.

This may sound antropochauvinistic , but I have no problem acknowledging some alien species, or dolphins, or ants being superior to humans - if evidence provided.

As creatures of knowledge, emotions, technology and art we're alone on this little planet. All our wonderful achievements are ours, all the horrific things are our mistakes (we can blame evolution and our reptilian brain cores but that's only an excuse). We are on a way of becoming a deity. If we fail, that will be our original way to hell (figuratively speaking).


A hypothetical God-That-Will-Walk-On-Earth-One-Day-Again, speaking from the point of personification, deserves to be convinced for imprisonment for the eternity. I don't like the idea of god, much less so various religions envisioning him/her/it.

I feel sympathetic for people who believe in whatever -- if they're benevolent and willing to share their beliefes as messages of kindness and love. Unfortunately, there's no method for these folks to argue with myself (and people who share my (dis)belief) without touching the nerve of each other and sounding nasty.

^ sorry, but there's a character limit on the choices. Obviously what I meant was "evolution with natural selection as the main driving force, and without divine intervention".

I removed "only" from the choice ... I doubt that it changes the outcome of the poll though.


Edited by Mr ProgFreak - December 01 2009 at 08:55

Well, I didn't read the whole thread because you are using too much technical and quemical knowledge that I don't understand, at least in english... well, what I have to say is that I refuse to believe that we are only a lucky step, followed by other lucky step followed again by other lucky step... I think evolution is a little more complicated that just natural selection process, and BTW, I believe we are special because we havee porpuse, meaning... we don't come here to mess around -funny, i'ts just what we're doing right now- but I believe in the existence of a perfect essence who guide us... so, I believe in evolution guided by a holy hand...

^ With a name like ''The Truth'', I would expect something at least half-way logical to come from you. Have I assumed too much?

Dean wrote: Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ that's not *entirely* accurate. Indeed any fixed sequence of events is just as likely as any other "version" of that sequence, provided that each variation of the elements of the sequence has the same probability. But if the creation of life (or the preparation of the "scene") required several crucial steps that had to happen in a certain sequence and each of those steps was unlikely, the whole process would simply be highly improbable to have happened "by chance". But, given the time frame, why not? We can also take into account that there must be billions of planets that also had a chance to develop life. Maybe it is so extremely unlikely that it only occurred on Earth - or only on a dozen planets in the universe. The event that I'm talking about is the creation of the first bio-chemical "entity" that was able to replicate itself. It would probably have contained RNA or a predecessor of it, for all we know today, and it would not have looked like a living thing at all - maybe indeed just a molecule that was able, in the right environment, to multiply. Multiplication in this case probably means that the molecule served as a catalyst for certain chemical reactions that resulted - probably through chain reactions - in the formation of other instances of the same molecule. This multiplication process wouldn't have been flawless and perfect, and of course instances of the molecule could have been altered by chemicals or radiation, leading to slightly different versions. And, during a very long time, it might have evolved into a version that during replication not only copied itself, but also created byproducts in the process that were able to help with the replication - for example enzymes (proteins). From that point on (a combination of RNA/DNA and proteins) natural selection (plus a few other RNA/DNA related mechanisms like genetic drift) did the rest.    okay, I was addressing Kele's comment that creationists complain about the random chance element of evolution. I gave simplified examples of random events not being governed by chance, the probability of the last coin turning up heads is exactly the same as the probability first coin turning up heads. A complex molecule such as RNA (and DNA) is a chain of smaller less complex molecules composed of Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Carbon, formation of those simpler molecules is a chemical reaction equivalent to the flipping of a coin, their combination into RNA is no different to achieving ten "heads" in a row. Again - that's in (non-fear inducing) simplistic terms, the formation of molecules of simple nucleic acids is more "difficult" than just putting Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen in a bowl and giving it a damn good stir.   However, I agree with what you have said, yet abiogenesis requiring a specific sequence of low-probability events to occur does not imply that chance is the overriding factor. Several stages in that sequence may be a logical consequence of preceding steps and that many of those events could be interdependent, providing feedback and feedforward paths that result in a closed-loop system (or at least one of many possible closed, open and partially closed loops, only one of which is required to result in a self regulating system). While it may appear as chance governing the initial conditions, the resultant cyclic behaviour is anything but and through self-regulation maintains and replicates those initial conditions and thus propogates through self-replication. The chemistry behind the initial conditions is not random, it is predictable and repeatable, as is the physics (quantum or otherwise).   My point is that regardless of how improbable this is given then vast number of initial conditions that result in failure, the existence of RNA and DNA indicates that the initial conditions resulting in success (a sequence of ten heads) did occur.

I agree. I think. Haha.

I don't think we currently know enough about abiogenesis to say if it's based on chance or not. I think there is a possibility that given Earth's conditions, life itself may be inevitable. Miller-Urey's experiment (which had the false initial conditions, I believe) and subsequent experiments have shown that chemicals like amino acids are commonly produced in an early Earth. Perhaps some replicating chemical is equally as likely. *shrug*

Also, wouldn't it be more accurate to call such processes probabilistic, rather than random?


Edited by Kestrel - November 30 2009 at 17:43

Seriously, I think that creationist theory is something like cruel joke. First I laughed, but then I was worried that some people actually can think about it as a fact. Evolution is simply everywhere around us, in human's life, in nature, so why man (another animal, just intelligent one) should be exception. 

Sorry, could not resist.

Mr ProgFreak wrote: ^ that's not *entirely* accurate. Indeed any fixed sequence of events is just as likely as any other "version" of that sequence, provided that each variation of the elements of the sequence has the same probability. But if the creation of life (or the preparation of the "scene") required several crucial steps that had to happen in a certain sequence and each of those steps was unlikely, the whole process would simply be highly improbable to have happened "by chance". But, given the time frame, why not? We can also take into account that there must be billions of planets that also had a chance to develop life. Maybe it is so extremely unlikely that it only occurred on Earth - or only on a dozen planets in the universe. The event that I'm talking about is the creation of the first bio-chemical "entity" that was able to replicate itself. It would probably have contained RNA or a predecessor of it, for all we know today, and it would not have looked like a living thing at all - maybe indeed just a molecule that was able, in the right environment, to multiply. Multiplication in this case probably means that the molecule served as a catalyst for certain chemical reactions that resulted - probably through chain reactions - in the formation of other instances of the same molecule. This multiplication process wouldn't have been flawless and perfect, and of course instances of the molecule could have been altered by chemicals or radiation, leading to slightly different versions. And, during a very long time, it might have evolved into a version that during replication not only copied itself, but also created byproducts in the process that were able to help with the replication - for example enzymes (proteins). From that point on (a combination of RNA/DNA and proteins) natural selection (plus a few other RNA/DNA related mechanisms like genetic drift) did the rest.

  okay, I was addressing Kele's comment that creationists complain about the random chance element of evolution. I gave simplified examples of random events not being governed by chance, the probability of the last coin turning up heads is exactly the same as the probability first coin turning up heads. A complex molecule such as RNA (and DNA) is a chain of smaller less complex molecules composed of Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Carbon, formation of those simpler molecules is a chemical reaction equivalent to the flipping of a coin, their combination into RNA is no different to achieving ten "heads" in a row. Again - that's in (non-fear inducing) simplistic terms, the formation of molecules of simple nucleic acids is more "difficult" than just putting Hydrogen, Oxygen and Nitrogen in a bowl and giving it a damn good stir.  

Edited by Dean - November 29 2009 at 05:27