by cofty 70 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Terry - The science shows that many of our differences - if not all of them - are strongly influenced by our genes.
However our environment also influences the expression of genes.
Your other point is interesting. Matt Ridley addresses it in the book. Rather than risk getting it wrong I will have a look and summarise his comments later.
being provocative again cofty
Is that because you are an expert or because you prefer your personal opinions to inconvenient evidence?
Matt Ridley shares a lot of imaginative personal opinion and speculation and freely admits to doing so. As a thinking person I can disagree with his opinion and speculation. I particularly diverge from him in how he makes genes so deterministic as to human behavior and so involved with their own survival of the fittest scenario as to almost make them gods of their own fate and destiny. This is quite far from Darwinian evolution wherein survival of the fittest was closely associated with adaptation to the environment rather than adaptations within an already evolved human mind (Matt Ridley openly admits that this is the speculative thesis he argues from). Evolutionists today who diverge from privileging the mind to the extent that he does are arguing for Darwinian evolution as process and argue for more open endedness and that this holds for human behavior too.
Matt Ridley shares a lot of imaginative personal opinion and speculation and freely admits to doing so.
Can I have a reference in context for that please?
Ridley is very clear in his book when he is explaining the results of scientific research and when he is expressing opinion. The central point that our personalities are very strongly influenced by our genome is not speculation. Religiosity is very much genetic.
I particularly diverge from him in how he makes genes so deterministic as to human behavior
He is very careful to avoid a "deterministic" position. The key point of his book is that the "nature v nurture" debate is a false dichotomy. That is why he called his book "Nature Via Nurture". Genes very strongly influence our personality and choices. They are not deterministic.
This is quite far from Darwinian evolution wherein survival of the fittest was closely associated with adaptation to the environment rather than adaptations within an already evolved human mind
This could not be more wrong. NOTHING adapts to its environment. Lamarck was wrong - Darwin was right. You are 150 years behind science.
Ruby you made it clear you have no intention of reading the book and yet you feel no embarrassment about disagreeing with the evidence you have not seen.
NOTHING adapts to its environment.
I haven't been in on the conversation, just clicked on it, so I hesitate to interject myself in the middle of what seems to be a lively discussion.
But I will anyways. :P
Cofty: What do you mean by "NOTHING adapts?" Do you mean physiologically? Behaviorally? I think we can all agree that organisms can and do adapt behaviorally to their environment, to a limit. However, I was also under the impression that Darwinian evolution provided for the possibility of physiological adaptations, albeit over an extended period of time.
My view of Darwinian evolution, though it may be an oversimplification, is survival of the fittest. I'm not an expert, by any means. But, I was under the impression that what was "fit" was surviving because of some kind of physiological change that gave one line of genetics an advantage over another in it's environment. Is that incorrect?
Perhaps I'm using the term adaptation incorrectly. Or maybe I'm using the term environment incorrectly. Would ecosystem be a more accurate word to use then environment?
cappytan - Evolution is about the changes in the frequency of alleles in a gene pool over time.
Put (over)simply - Individuals who have particular versions of a gene that makes it more fit than others in the population have more chance of successfully passing on that gene to the next generation. In time that version of a gene - or that version of the gene that controls other genes - becomes ubiquitous in the gene pool
It is a common misunderstanding that living things have some ability to adapt to their environment. They don't. That was what Lamarck proposed but Darwin showed how he was wrong.
The changes in the genes is caused by random mutation. The preservation of the mutation is non-random natural selection.
Keep in mind that "fit" does not always mean biggest, strongest of meanest. It can mean having the brain chemistry or architecture to cooperate, love, bond for life and care for young. Its all genes.
So when talking about "adaptation" above, we're definitely referring to physical/physiological (whichever is the proper term) adaptation and not behavior. Correct?
In that case, then yes, I agree that NOTHING adapts physically to its environment.
You can take an infinite number of dogs and place them all in the middle of the pacific ocean, thousands of miles from any land, and none of them will ever develop fins or gills before they drown. Some might get really good at swimming. But with no food, no fresh water and not being able to breathe under water, they're all shark bait.
An example: The poison used to kill cockroaches worked effectively for a while. It was laced with sugar to make it more appealing to the cockroaches. The cockroaches who did not like sugar didn't eat it; the ones that liked sugar, the majority, did and died.
After a few generations, in cockroach land that's a short time period, the majority of cockroaches had the gene for an aversion to sugar and the poison didn't work because they wouldn't eat it.
It would be nice to think that the cockroaches talked with each other, sent out bulletins, talked with each other on their tiny cell phones, etc. to avoid the damned sugar, but the reality of it is the 'fittest' cockroaches, in this instance those with the fairly rare aversion to sugar, survived, and the others died.
I sometimes use the same expressions about adapting, but I don't mean it in the same context.
