How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Creationism, Evolution, and other science issues

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Purple Knight
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How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1

Post by Purple Knight »

This is not a question of whether or not evolution is crazy, but how crazy it seems at first glance.

That is, when we discard our experiences and look at claims as if through new eyes, what do we find when we look at evolution? I Believe we can find a great deal of common ground with this question, because when I discard my experience as an animal breeder, when I discard my knowledge, and what I've been taught, I might look at evolution with the same skepticism as someone who has either never been taught anything about it, or someone who has been taught to distrust it.

Personally my mind goes to the keratinised spines on the tongues of cats. Yes, cats have fingernails growing out of their tongues! Gross, right? Well, these particular fingernails have evolved into perfect little brushes for the animal's fur. But I think of that first animal with a horrid growth of keratin on its poor tongue. The poor thing didn't die immediately, and this fits perfectly with what I said about two steps back paying for one forward. This detrimental mutation didn't hurt the animal enough for the hapless thing to die of it, but surely it caused some suffering. And persevering thing that he was, he reproduced despite his disability (probably in a time of plenty that allowed that). But did he have the growths anywhere else? It isn't beyond reason to think of them protruding from the corners of his eyes or caking up more and more on the palms of his hands. Perhaps he had them where his eyelashes were, and it hurt him to even blink. As disturbing as my mental picture is of this scenario, this sad creature isn't even as bad off as this boar, whose tusks grew up and curled until they punctured his brain.

Image

Image

This is a perfect example of a detrimental trait being preserved because it doesn't hurt the animal enough to kill it before it mates. So we don't have to jump right from benefit to benefit. The road to a new beneficial trait might be long, going backwards most of the way, and filled with a lot of stabbed brains and eyelids.

Walking backwards most of the time, uphill both ways, and across caltrops almost the entire trip?

I have to admit, thinking about walking along such a path sounds like, at very least, a very depressing way to get from A to B. I would hope there would be a better way.

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1381

Post by Jose Fly »

Sherlock Holmes wrote: Mon May 23, 2022 1:27 pm Abiogenesis is based on extrapolation, it's quite reasonable (which is why so few really question it) but not rigorous and faces huge problems as Tour (and there are others) explains.
Yes, we know your argument is little more than "James Tour is skeptical and so am I".
But, the abiogensis faithful care not, they have faith that in some way, somehow the equivalent of shaking a box of Lego and a fully formed house emerging really can happen - AKA magic !
I'm (kinda) surprised you don't know this, but elements don't behave like Legos.
Perhaps we can even take a stab at a new definition of design:

To conform matter into a structure that cannot arise naturally

thoughts?
FYI, ID creationism is dead....even professional ID creationists have given up on pushing "design". So you can define it however you like; no one will really care.
Being apathetic is great....or not. I don't really care.

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1382

Post by JoeyKnothead »

EarthScienceguy wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 11:46 am [Replying to Difflugia in post #1377]
The soft part of me hopes you never find out otherwise.
Any time you want to go spiraling down in defeat again fill free. Until then chalk another one up for the Earthscience guy. :P
Dunning and Kruger deserve a royalty check every time you post.

Your claims regarding dead bodies hopping up have never been shown to be fact.
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1383

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #0]
I never said I think abiogenesis is more likely outside of Earth rather than on Earth. And we don't know what the first life forms were or how many nucleotides it had (or exactly how it formed). Panspermia is just the idea that it could have formed outside of Earth ... even before Earth formed ... and got transported here by some means at some point. It is an unproven hypothesis, but if we were to find microbial life (or life of any kind) outside of our planet or solar system, it would lend support to the idea that Panspermia is at least possible.
The problem in this discussion is not whether abiogenesis can happen or even how life came to Earth. All of your deep time theories say that life begins as a single-celled organism usually defined as cyanobacteria, which has only 4.5E6 nucleotides in its genome. The human genome has 3.6E9 nucleotides. That is 3 orders of magnitude increase. How did that happen?
What part of the resurrection are you saying is not a fact?
The resurrection part. I can happily believe that a preacher called Jesus was crucified by the Romans, but what happened to the body after death is much less clear. It is a story in a holy book (along with other stories of the dead being brought back to life), but to claim it is a "fact" is going too far. It would indeed be a "miracle", and if you believe that things like miracles are real events, then by all means argue that the resurrection miracle happened. But it isn't a "fact."
What other resurrection stories are you talking about?

There is no resurrection stories belief the time of Jesus. The earliest non-Christian belief is from the 2 century.



The resurrection is the central message of Christianity and it always has been. 1 Cor. 15
Paul says that he was a skeptic and persecuted the Church until he saw the resurrected Jesus.
Most scholars would say that the disciples believed they saw the risen Jesus.
They called Jesus the Messiah the king that was supposed to bring the glory back to Isreal.
Christianity started in Jerusalem the place where Jesus was crucified.

So what story are you using to explain these facts?
So the story goes, but I don't believe they actually did see a physically risen Jesus. Maybe they had too much mead or wine, or engaged in some sort of self-hypnosis and had "visions", or something like that. Or (more likely IMHO) maybe it is all just part of a made-up narrative to support the burgeoning new religion and create a good story. Who knows.
Are you serious? There were enough Christians in the Roman Empire by AD 67 that Nero could blame Christians for the fire that burned Roman. These were mainly Hebrews a conquered people. Christianity went from Jerusalem to Rome and everywhere in between in 30 years. Paul says that many saw the risen Jesus. So something had to happen to the body.
Some of it isn't, and some may be storytelling that is open to interpretation as to the validity of the stories. Second-hand and third-hand accounts are less reliable than original accounts.
Of any ancient documents, the Bible by far is the closest to the events that happen. Virtually all historians believe the above facts.
My bet would be that the resurrection account was made up as part of the effort to legitimize the claim of a Messiah and elevate Jesus to that position as part of the building of the religion.
Your messiah claim does not make sense. Because the Jewish Messiah was going to bring back the nation of Isreal to world prominence and Jesus never did that. The other problem with that belief is why would Romans come to believe that Jesus was going to bring Isreal to world prominence. Like in Isaiah 11

Why would Paul someone who persecuted the Christians suddenly become a follower of Christ?

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1384

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #1382]
Dunning and Kruger deserve a royalty check every time you post.
Am I supposed to know who Dunning and Kruger are?
Your claims regarding dead bodies hopping up have never been shown to be fact.
My position has been stated if you wish to take issue with any of my points.

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1385

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #1385]
All of your deep time theories say that life begins as a single-celled organism usually defined as cyanobacteria, which has only 4.5E6 nucleotides in its genome.
What? Who has ever said that cyanobacteria were the first life forms? They evidently are about 2 billion years late to the party:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6880289/

A lot of genetics can happen in 2 billion years! We don't know how many nucleotides were present in the very first life forms because we don't know what those even were. So any extrapolations are meaningless until we have more information, but we know they most likely were not cyanobacteria.
What other resurrection stories are you talking about?
I didn't mention any other resurrections ... I said "along with other stories of the dead being brought back to life."
Why would Paul someone who persecuted the Christians suddenly become a follower of Christ?
He changed his mind for some reason? People change religions all the time today, some abandon religion altogether, others convert to different religions, etc. Maybe Paul just decided he was wrong and chose to join the movement.
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1386

Post by Difflugia »

EarthScienceguy wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 1:58 pmAm I supposed to know who Dunning and Kruger are?
They're coauthors of an interesting paper.
My pronouns are he, him, and his.

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1387

Post by Diogenes »

EarthScienceguy wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 1:54 pm What other resurrection stories are you talking about?

There is no resurrection stories belief the time of Jesus. The earliest non-Christian belief is from the 2 century.
You're off by over 2000 years.

"The kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death – as Osiris rose from the dead so they would be in union with him, and inherit eternal life through a process of imitative magic."
"Man, Myth and Magic", Osiris, vol. 5, pp. 2087–2088, S.G.F. Brandon, BPC Publishing, 1971.
The Osiris myth reached its basic form in or before the 24th century BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris_myth

Resurrection myths were common long before the time of Jesus. The fact that they were common in ancient Greek mythology is one of the reasons the Christian resurrection story was ridiculed.
In ancient Greek religion a number of men and women became physically immortal as they were resurrected from the dead. Asclepius was killed by Zeus, only to be resurrected and transformed into a major deity. Achilles, after being killed, was snatched from his funeral pyre by his divine mother Thetis and resurrected, brought to an immortal existence in either Leuce, the Elysian plains or the Islands of the Blessed. Memnon, who was killed by Achilles, seems to have received a similar fate. Alcmen.e, Castor, Heracles, and Melicertes, were also among the figures sometimes considered to have been resurrected to physical immortality. According to Herodotus's Histories, the seventh century BC sage Aristeas of Proconnesus was first found dead, after which his body disappeared from a locked room. Later he found not only to have been resurrected but to have gained immortality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resurrect ... k_religion
Last edited by Diogenes on Tue May 24, 2022 3:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1388

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #1385]
A lot of genetics can happen in 2 billion years! We don't know how many nucleotides were present in the very first life forms because we don't know what those even were. So any extrapolations are meaningless until we have more information, but we know they most likely were not cyanobacteria.
That is fine if you would like to say that Archaebacteria was the first bacteria on Earth. But again that only exacerbates the problem because Archaebacteria has fewer nucleotides.

What other resurrection stories are you talking about?
I didn't mention any other resurrections ... I said "along with other stories of the dead being brought back to life."
What stories are you talking about? That was my point there were not any stories about the dead coming back to life until the death and resurrection of Jesus.
He changed his mind for some reason? People change religions all the time today, some abandon religion altogether, others convert to different religions, etc. Maybe Paul just decided he was wrong and chose to join the movement.
You are speaking of things that only happen in western society. Why would you think that those from a more oriental society like the Hebrews be anything like modern western society?

Do you know what the customs of 1st century Jews were? Before you could make any evaluation of why Paul changed you would have to know the customs of the Hebrews in the 1st century.

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1389

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to Diogenes in post #1387]
You're off by over 2000 years.

"The kings of Egypt were associated with Osiris in death – as Osiris rose from the dead so they would be in union with him, and inherit eternal life through a process of imitative magic."
"Man, Myth and Magic", Osiris, vol. 5, pp. 2087–2088, S.G.F. Brandon, BPC Publishing, 1971.
The Osiris myth reached its basic form in or before the 24th century BCE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris_myth
Tim Callahan could not defend that position and he is the one who wrote the book on this Osiris nonsense. He admits that there is no reference to the resurrection of Osiris before the 2nd century AD. That is the whole reason why I posted the video above I knew, I would sucker someone into this argument.

or here

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Re: How Crazy does Evolution Seem?

Post #1390

Post by JoeyKnothead »

EarthScienceguy wrote: Tue May 24, 2022 1:58 pm [Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #1382]
Dunning and Kruger deserve a royalty check every time you post.
Am I supposed to know who Dunning and Kruger are?
Well how bout that.
Your claims regarding dead bodies hopping up have never been shown to be fact.
My position has been stated if you wish to take issue with any of my points.
That's kinda my point.

Just saying something don't make it true.
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