Posts by rawe

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

"A few statistics.... they say man was about a population of 1 million about 10, 000 years ago. There are about 4 generations (for arguments sake) in 100 years. So to get from 2 people doubling each generation (going by the bacteria illustration), that would be roughly 20 generations. At that very slow rate it would take only 500 years to reach a million. We are talking about 500,000 years, a thousand times longer!"

I'm not sure if this is the correct way to look at the math. I tend to think of population as hour glass with a hole also in the bottom. You add to population by giving birth to children and subtract by having people die. If the rate of birth and death were in perfect balance it would not matter how many generations you had the number would not go up.

To make the number go up, you need a rate of birth that exceeds the rate of death. If you had a perfect 50-50 split between male and female and they all were mated, all pairs would need to produce at least two children to keep the population from declining. If instead a few produced 3 and most produced 2, then it could increase. So you need to think in terms of all the variables that could impact the birth rate -- for example polygamy could increase it, but polyandry (where a woman has more than one husband) could decrease it. If either men or women are compelled to spend a lot of time in pursuit of something other than sex, then birth rates would decline. Then you would need to think of all the things that could impact death rate, including things that kill humans before they are old enough to reproduce.

The very odd thing about this argument is the theory of evolution actually faces the other problem. The theory of evolution demands time and reproduction bumped up against selective pressures. Thus if the rate of reproduction is too slow the time variable becomes a problem. Darwin tackled this directly in Origin of Species by working out rates of reproduction for elephants. His conclusion was there is indeed enough time available even with animals that take a long while to reproduce.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi James,

"I can see the idea that we are made of stardust. I don't believe they have ever found anything in space that is not here on earth. At the same time they haven't done much exploration of space." The actual quote from Carl Sagan was in his series Cosmos...

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff

As I understand it, all of this relates to our current understanding of the formation of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. Helium for example is understood to be formed in stars like our Sun via nuclear fusion. The Wikipedia article on it talks about much of helium in the universe being formed in 1 to 3 minutes after the Big Bang event. As we move on to heavier stuff, like carbon, current understanding suggest supernova star explosions are required. Thus all the elements that made the earth and ultimately resulted in living things like us, can be said to come from 'starstuff' as Carl said.

Cheers,

-Randy

ps. Thanks for your comments about reading to children. To be honest they grumble a bit as we get started, but it only takes a few minutes, so it works out not too bad. And I do hope they will have fond memories of this.

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi Cofty,

"Genesis says god made Adam as a special creation from the dust and then breathed magic breath into him." To be sure, I am not suggesting that Carl Sagan views are in agreement with broader scope of Genesis. I am only making the very narrow application of "from dust" to suggest the connection between some of the thinking you see and Genesis and what has later been illuminated through science. Science starts with observation and moves on from there. I think it is reasonable to assume the writer of Genesis did make some observations, such as death leads to decay and thus back to dust, so perhaps that too is where we came from. His observations were of course pretty superficial and even technically inaccurate since most decay after death would be considered a biologiclal process.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi James,

Ist Theselonians 5:21 says "Test everything that is said, hold on to what is good". To be up front, I am an atheist. While I don't believe it is possible to prove God does not exist, I see no reason to believe he does. Nonetheless I see many parts of the Bible as writers explaining their philosophy, as was so often the case with the writings of Paul. Or in other ways indicating a quest for truth.

I highlighted your 1 Thess 5:21 quote, since we just read this in our family Bible reading. As a family we read 2 pages of the Bible three or four weekdays per week. Since leaving the faith in 2007 I saw no reason to stop that. Although I have now added reading another book of interest to my children to the mix. Right now we're on the second book of the Harry Potter series. Anyway...

Paul is often wrote out lists. Things that were good, things that were bad, etc. In this case he is concluding his later with a list of good things to do...

Always be rejoicing.

Pray incessantly.

In connection with everything give thanks. For this is the will of God in union with Christ Jesus respecting ? YOU .

Do not put out the fire of the spirit.

Do not treat prophesyings with contempt.

Make sure of all things; hold fast to what is fine.

Abstain from every form of wickedness

I see all that as pretty good advice, although now, I wouldn't use the word "pray" but insead "think-upon" or "self-reflect", etc. You'll notice several folks here provided suggestions about judging what is trustworthy vs not and why. I actually don't feel there are simple answer. I think there are techniques. Reading books from authors you're sure you'll disagree with is a good technique and I agree with you on that. A Christian friend gave me a David Bentley Hart's book Atheist Delusions, that countered Richard Dawkins God Delusion. The Book did not substantially change my views, but I would say it expanded my views on the subject. For example, some atheists are fond of asking Christians, "Why don't you believe in Zues?" Hart's book made my appreciate more deeply the Christian answer, namely that Christianity with its focus on Jesus as the Christ, is a triumph over competing ideas.

Getting back to the Bible, when God pronounced sentence on Adam he said...

In the sweat of your face you will eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken. For dust you are and to dust you will return. (Genesis 3:19).

From just these few words we can reach some interesting conclusions, for example that the writer was familiar with the process of baking bread, which relates to farming. But the idea of "dust to dust", which you sometimes hear at funerals is intriguing. I now see modern science taking us beyond what such ancient people could observe. They could see dead bodies decayed and went back to the ground. Coming to the conclusion we come from the ground is a pretty insightful too. Now that we have data from science we can now speak to how right that is. The atoms that make up the 60 trillion cells of our body literally come from material on earth. In fact consevation of energy gives us confidence some of the atoms in our body trace back in time to the very start of the universe. Thus when Carl Sagan talked about us being "star dust" he and writer of Genesis are hitting upon the same idea.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi James,

"It's hocus pocus. People who live off tax payers dollars in the education system trying to confuse the masses with their mumbo jumbo." To me this is a key thought in one of your posts. One that I was hitting on as well. That is, in regards to knowledge and expertise to there is a question of who to trust. And, it does relate to motivation. Maybe what is going on is most in the scientific community know their dating methods are bogus, that the theory of evolution is nonsense, but are trapped in a system wherein they need to promote a sort of orthodoxy in order to get paid. In fact we make a point very much like this in regards to the leadership of Jehovah's Witnesses. They are trapped, they simply cannot say things they might otherwise know is true.

So... how can we sort this out? How can we tell if the data we are being handed is not tainted by bias?

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi Cofty,

'Which when translated means, "I will stick with my precious dogma and don't upset me with your goddamned facts."' The point I was making in post was I found that as a Witness I did trust scientific understanding and many ways. I knew medications used on humans had been tested on animals. I knew cancer researchers used mice. In both cases the theory of evolution was at play, since the common ancestor between mice and humans allowed such research to reach reliable conclusions. Likewise I had no reason not trust quartz crystal ocsillator made a digital watch a great time piece. Or that packets of data could be modulated over a radio waves to make cell phones work. So it was, that I found myself more and more in the camp of "I will go with scientific understanding 99.9% of the time, but hold contrary views, even in closely related areas, solely because such upsets my Biblical view of the world."

I think as Witnesses the break away from this, can if looked at correctly, be easier. Because modern Witnesses accept dating for the age of elephants and the earth, but do special pleading only in the case of humans. Thus it became obvious to me I was being extremely selective and sometimes willfully ignorant, of what I was accepting as scientific knowledge and what I was rejecting.

Cheers,

-Randy

ps. Very much enjoyed this thread -- thanks to everyone for posting!

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi Cofty,

"Some young-Earth proponents recently reported that rocks were dated by the potassium-argon method to be a several million years old when they are really only a few years old. But the potassium-argon method, with its long half-life, was never intended to date rocks only 25 years old." There is of course a basic question in all this. That is do we understand radiation well enough to draw conclusions? And is radiation a stable sort of thing? I appreciate this comment isn't a reference to carbon dating, but the same principal applies. That is carbon-14 will decay, whereas carbon-12 is much more stable, thus a ratio between the two is inevitable and the ratio will change over time.

Can our understanding of all this be so flawed that wild range errors will creep into all dating methods? I just don't think that is very likely. I'm a software engineer by trade and I know that understanding how phyiscal systems work, including precise timing, is key to how a computer operates. Likewise a microwave over shows that something is known about physical systems involving radiation work. Solar panels likewise and the list goes on and on. So when someone asks us to believe rocks at Mt. St. Helens were dated incorrectly and that shows our potassium-argon dating methods are flawed, should we not at least ask, is there some religious motivation in play here?

I do believe, some of this comes down to a question of trust. And I am not a radiometric dating expert, so I have to trust someone. But even I can reach a conclusion something is fishy when someone with a religious bias starts asking for a sample of only a few years age to be dated with a method where the half life is 1.2 million years! It is like asking someone to measure the distance between features on a modern CPU with a yard stick, then declaring the yard stick is useless to measure the width of my living room.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi TD,

"He shows a picture of a dog, a coyote, a wolf and a banana." For any given example of a wolf we can reasonably assert it come from a parent form. Likewise for the banana. But if we followed the ancestory of a given wolf and a given banana back in time, assuming we had perfect record, would they ever converge on a single ancestor? The theory of evolution asserts that they would! The reality of this is breathtaking. Although it may seem unlikely from outward appearance we now are able to directly compare the DNA C, G, A and Ts for a banana and a human and see exact sequences match in many places. It is a bit like looking at our hair and fingernails and being told they are the same material and finding that hard to believe -- yet it is in fact true.

After leaving the faith and study more about evolution I have found the reality incredible. It explains so much of the world around us, from why one can eat a banana and get nourishment to how genetically modified plants have been created. The dramatic outside appearance of life really does disappear as one looks at the DNA level.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi DATA-DOG,

"Say whaaatt!!?? I doubt the above statement. Unless it's because they are already dead and time machines are impossible." Indeed it is because they are dead and we don't have time machines.

I'm attempting to make the point physical isolation is not just a function of geography. Time also creates a separation. For a species to survive it is important that mating and reproduction of offspring is possible. From an evolutionary perspective it is unimportant that humans alive 200 years ago were the same species as us. Since they are dead, they obviously cannot be our mates. Likewise humans that will be alive 200 hundred years into the future cannot be mate for someone alive today.

For evolution to work, species must remain, in general stable, but even the temporal consideration shows such stability is not of the ulimate importance.

Cheers,

-Randy

427

If man evolved?

by tornapart in

i know anyone who believes in evolution is going to say that there is no 'if' about it.

however.... if man evolved over hundreds of thousands of years ago, why were there only about 200-300 million people alive 2,000 years ago?

surely there'd have been many billions by then?.

rawe

Hi Lost,

"That millions of years ago, species accidently wandered off and seperated far from each other" I mentioned earlier that is is unlikely that under the current circumstances humans will split into two species that live at the same time. Because there is no physical separation between one group of humans and another. However, if a group of humans left earth and colonized Mars it is possible, in fact almost certain, Martians would evolve into a new species. In the future it may then be hard to imagine the very different looking Humans and Martians once had the same a great-great-great-times-X grandmother.

If the theory of evolution is true one of the things we should see this effect. Namely we should see that when a life form becomes isolated it takes a different path and becomes unique to its environment. That is why islands were such interesting places to Darwin. Yet, the idea all have a common ancestor, should show that even a very odd life form on a remote island has some relation to another species on nearby larger land mass.

It is also important to consider every form of separation. The most common one is time. While it is important for the survival of humans that a current male and female can mate and reproduce a fertile off-spring that grows to maturity and repeats the cycle. We must remember it is impossible for a human today to mate with a human who lived 200 years ago. So for evolution to be believable we want to see some evidence of balance here. We don't want evolution so loose that new species are generated willy-nilly because the inability to inter-breed would lead to extinction. Yet evolution would not be possible if species were so solidly established that they litterally could not change.

The example of hair lice I mentioned earlier wasn't a case of wandering as much as the body (land if you will) itself changed wherein a huge vast desert of hairless region between the head and the pubic area developed. This combined with basic texture difference lead to a distinction between head lice and pubic lice. Kind of a eeewww example, but a facinating nonetheless. Maybe one day there will be an Awake! article on these wonderful creatures ;-)

Cheers,

-Randy