Thanks for all your posts on this, its been interesting to see so many differing and intelligent viewpoints; like the previous poster suggested, the matter is one left open for considerable debate, just as our definition of God is.
Evolution & Creation... can they co-exist as theories?
by diamondblue1974 22 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Midget-Sasquatch
I suppose they could co-exist in the minds of believers. The current understanding of physics hasn't been able to enlighten cosmologists on what happened at the very instant of the Big Bang or before it. (But a mindbogglingly close fraction after it). If they want to posit a supernatural cause, I don't think there'd be an objective way for science to disprove that , it being in the dark beyond that point.
Darwin thought that evolution was an inherently progressive process, but the current understanding says there aren't any guarantees. The two key components: mutations and selection, are not inherently going in any one direction. The mutations that provide variation are random. The environment that provides the selective pressures on the organism, may drive adaptations in one direction for a while, but when it changes then other adaptions may be more favoured. Sure the given body plan limits the possible changes, but its not impossible to have some kind of "retrograde" if its favoured.
An interesting spin is sexual selection and how our ancestors contributed to their own selection process by favouring certain traits, temperaments etc. in mates. I guess thats where the process is more genuinely intelligent.
But one does wonder why an "Intelligent creator" would rig things such that life would come about by struggle and be essentially amoral, with alot of natural pain etc. Whats the message in that?
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Abaddon
Midget
An interesting spin is sexual selection and how our ancestors contributed to their own selection process by favouring certain traits, temperaments etc. in mates. I guess thats where the process is more genuinely intelligent.
Yup. In fact, the big weakness in evolutionary thoery is human intelligence. If evolving intelligence is so useful for survival why is it thus far unique on Earth (as far as what most people would define intelligence, though obviously one can take the Douglas Adam's approach towards dolphins)?
It seems quite possible to survive and be stupid; what mechanism can explain it? Environmental change et. al was experieneced by many species - it's hard to convincingly argue that intelligence evolved due to environment change as has been done, else there would be more examples of it happening.
One theory is that the males who were interesting had more mates; bit like the bower bird, except instead of woven twigs and shiney stones human males had bright and shiney minds. A peacock tail on the inside.
Another theory relates to the human penis (yup, trust me ;-) ). Unlike the other primates it has no bone; chimps et. al have a bone in the penis. In terms of size it is absolutely ginormous in comparison to the primates; way beyond any size requirement to ensure intromission of semen.
Now, under evolutionary theory the human penis would have changed from the chimp penis due to selection pressure. Those human ancestors with more chimp like willies were less likely to have offspring. Maybe small chimp dicks with bones in them were not very satisfying for the females?
It is quite reasonable to speculate that female human ancestors preference for interesting males with large yet flexible penises was the foundation of the human race as we know it.
Now either the genes responsible for being interseting - i.e. those confering higher intelligence, are not sexually linked, so that unlike the peacock the human female also got the benefit of their own 'preference' for smart genes. Or maybe the smarter males also tended to select smarter females.
This means that sisters really did do it for themselves - not so much making man in their image but how they would rather he'd be.
It also means that size DOES matter. But I think we all really knew that anyway.