Evolutionism vs creationism

[gut]

First of all, I don't like using words like 'creationists' or 'evolutionists', as those
are mostly used for namecalling in side-A vs side-B arguments.

> I understand how, to a creationist, these things are seen as interelated

That smacks a bit of your previous sentence about understanding how
'creationists' invented the words 'macro' and 'micro' evolution out of desperation.
It says a bit more about the understander than the understandee

> So if the chance of humans appearing on one planet over a certain period of time is only one in a billion

You got that number how? You prefaced your number by saying you don't know if
it's true. That chance, the 1/1 billion one, is more along the lines of simple
lottery ticket drawing rare. You start with a task you don't even know is
possible, add to it conditions you can't possibly account for (think meteors
hitting planets), then extrapolate mathematical probabilities I certainly don't
agree with.

To say that evolution isn't the same as 'order comes from chaos' is wrong. All
arguments for evolution do pivot upon the ability of order (life) to be first
produced by chaos (ocean debree).

When I look at the complexity of man-made things, I can usually judge how much
intelligent design went into their manufacture. I see a pencil and rank it low,
though I still don't think one could happen by chance. A computer is a step up
in complexity, and thus implies it took a higher intelligence to produce. Indeed,
prolly several thousand higher intelligences than mine all working together. Then
you have the next level. Trees. For all our technology, for all our teamwork and
resources, we will never be able to produce something so eloquent and marvelous
as a tree. Remember my 'solar panel' argument? We may take the existing genetic
material and change it, but that isn't the same as creating.

Alas, somehow, bits of raw material did get together and form a tree. To many
minds it is a simple thing. Bits of raw material bump against one another for
a long enough, and a tree will naturally form of its own accord. Simple because
all of the bits that didn't form into trees would not have been able to compete,
and thus would have died out. That just isn't enough for my mind though.

[Grey]

> with a time frame of several billion years to work with,
> there's plenty of room for a whole lot of coincidences

A few of those coincidences, yeah, but start chaining those
things together and your %'s start going down the drain. It
wouldn't just take a few coincidences to explain order
coming from chaos, it would take absurd chains.

You need to consider the scale more. Billions of years and billions upon billions of planets (though the last is not proven, it seems very likely). Imagine playing the lottery and winning every week for a year. Unlikely? Sure. Impossible? Nope. Do it for 5 billion years and it could happen. Have lots of people doing it for billions of years across billions upon billions of planets around the universe and one of them will get lucky enough to win 52 times in a row. That person will think they are absolutely blessed, but what they perceive as some sort of miracle is in fact just the result of chance. Order out of chaos.

Also, as has been stated evolution is not chaos, though there are chaotic elements. The survival of the fittest rule means that change is actively encouraged. It's also a misnomer in many ways, since "fittest" only really means "fittest in the current environment". It's a very flawed system overall, much more flawed than any divine act of creationism. I'm pretty sure any particularly intelligent god would not have given us an appendix or a blind spot, or a spine better suited for walking on all fours... There's still chaos in the system

[Grey]

Alas, somehow, bits of raw material did get together and form a tree. To many
minds it is a simple thing. Bits of raw material bump against one another for
a long enough, and a tree will naturally form of its own accord. Simple because
all of the bits that didn't form into trees would not have been able to compete,
and thus would have died out. That just isn't enough for my mind though.

Do the White Cliffs of Dover or the Grand Canyon look like they were designed? How about the moon and the sun and the rings of Saturn and the shapes of galaxies? There is a lot of quite fascinating stuff out there that is far more complex and interesting than mere organic, on hugely bigger scales. And yet we have a very good scientific understanding of how they happened over long periods of time.

[JellySlayer]

First of all, I don't like using words like 'creationists' or 'evolutionists', as those
are mostly used for namecalling in side-A vs side-B arguments.

Many proponents of creation theory self-identify as creationists. It's not normally considered a pejorative term.

> I understand how, to a creationist, these things are seen as interelated

That smacks a bit of your previous sentence about understanding how
'creationists' invented the words 'macro' and 'micro' evolution out of desperation.
It says a bit more about the understander than the understandee

That wasn't meant to be glib. To a creationist, the Big Bang, the origin of life, and the diversity of life all have the same cause--therefore these are related topics. To a scientist, there are largely unrelated phenomena that are described by different theories.

As I mentioned, I was apparently wrong about the micro/macro being coined by creationists.

To say that evolution isn't the same as 'order comes from chaos' is wrong. All
arguments for evolution do pivot upon the ability of order (life) to be first
produced by chaos (ocean debree).

No, evolution doesn't require this. If you want to assume that life was created instanteously by God, that's fine, it doesn't affect evolutionary theory in the slightest. Evolution describes how populations of living things change in time. It doesn't describe how life came about to begin with.

Our understanding of the original origin of life is fairly limited, but is essentially based on ideas in organic chemistry: carbon atoms are generally more stable in complexes than alone, and fairly large complexes can arise rather spontaneously. Certain molecules (like DNA/RNA, as well as other simpler compounds) are self-replicating given enough time, available resources, and energy.

Alas, somehow, bits of raw material did get together and form a tree. To many
minds it is a simple thing. If bits of raw material bump against one another for
a long enough time, a tree will naturally form of its own accord. Simple because
all of the bits that didn't form into trees would not have been able to compete,
and thus would have died out. That just isn't enough for my mind though.

A tree arising spontaneously from nothing would disprove evolution. Evolution proposes that complex organisms arise from small modifications from simpler ones. Take your computer analogy again. The computer wasn't invented wholescale from nothing. It was built up from previous, less sophisticated models in a slow, gradual process. Less popular features were weeded out by market forces--given the choice between a mouse and trackball, people wanted the mouse, so the trackball died out, for example--and more optimal designs were kept. The idea of a modern laptop appearing suddenly on the market 40 years ago is just as ridiculous as a tree spontaneously appearing solely from its raw materials. To get to a tree, you might have say gone through: self-replicating simple organic molecule -> RNA -> DNA -> virus -> bacteria -> algae -> seagrass -> land grass -> shrub -> bush -> tree (note: COMPLETELY MADE UP evolutionary history), with many, many tiny modifications between each step.

[vogonpoet]

[edit]I just want to point out that evolution does not require that a species have an evolutionary advantage over its parent per se. If you have two populations of the same species that are isolated from each other, and different selection pressures are applied to each, you will end up with different species over time. This is particularly common in birds, plants, and some insects.

A good point I completely failed to address in my glossing over ramble. I I seem to have misplaced the book right now, possibly lent to someone, but Dawkins talks about this in the previously mentioned Ancestors Tale. From memory (doubtless contains many errors, but gist should be ok):

Dawkins uses some Lizards from (I think) California whilst discussing what constitutes a different species - how different do two animals have to be before they are classed as a species. A fairly standard answer is "if you can reproduce with someone, then you are of the same species", but the animal kingdom has enough crazy diversity for their to be grey areas such as "I could reproduce with this other being, but I won't, unless tricked by scientists in the lab".

Then there are these lizard people living in some hills. The hills basically form a crescent shape around a plain, with a small passage between the two ends of the crescent. Like an open, hilly mordor.
Letters represent different coloured lizards on top of hills, and ^ are of course hills in my crap diagram:

...^^^..
..^^c^^..
.b^...^^.
.^^...^^..
..a^..d..
..........

So, basically, the 4 groups of lizards are different colours. Lizards A and B mate with one another, lizards C and D mate with one another, lizards B and D mate, and very occasionally lizards A and C are observed to mate as well. However, lizards A and D can't/don't mate, and are therefore a different species. But where do you draw the different species line?

This is just one example of geographical isolation - there are loads of others, like fish in lake Victoria which live on corals. The corals are like underwater island habitats for the wee fish, and are separated by some distance of water. The fish almost never leave their own coral, even though they could theoretically swim over to a different one, and different very similar species of fish are now found in different locations within a single lake.


:edit:

Oh, and the trackball didn't die, it evolved, and still survives to this day, with many users insisting that their trackball is the bees knees and dogs bollocks. Takes all sorts

[grobblewobble]

A fairly standard answer is "if you can reproduce with someone, then you are of the same species"

The standard definition is slightly more complicated: if two organisms can have fertile offspring, they are said to belong to the same species. (Otherwise, donkeys and horses would also belong to the same species.)

Besides the problems of the kind explained above, it also doesn't work for asexual life forms. In the end, there just is no clear cut way to tell if organisms do or don't belong to the same species.

[gut]

> Do the White Cliffs of Dover or the Grand Canyon look like they were designed?

No.

> You need to consider the scale more. Billions of years and billions

Raw materials can bump together for googles of years for all I
care, I'll never believe they will form themselves into a buick.

> Have lots of people doing it for billions of years

Hope there are no diseases or other disasters in those billions of years,
otherwise your math goes out the window.

> one of them will get lucky enough to win 52 times in a row

No, they won't.

> god would not have given us an appendix

Might or might not have. For reasons you do or don't understand. How do
you know what god would or wouldn't have done? Remember, I'm not saying
creationism and evolution are mutually exclusive.

> . To a creationist, the Big Bang, the origin of life, and the diversity
> of life all have the same cause

I disagree. By your definition of creationist, I'm not one. I don't believe
in the big bang at all, let alone that it was created by god. I also don't
disbelieve evolution.

> Evolution describes how populations of living things change in time. It
> doesn't describe how life came about to begin with.

I disagree. I can't remember a single science book that taught evolution,
that didn't simultaneously teach the 'primordial ooze' philosophy. Maybe
they changed things at some point and nobody told me.

>> A tree arising spontaneously from nothing would disprove evolution

That's not what I said, is it? I think what I said was " If bits of raw material bump
against one another for a long enough time, a tree will naturally form"

> Evolution proposes that complex organisms arise from small modifications from simpler ones.

That is an aspect, but not the entirety of evolution. Aside from that, I don't think
we are disagreeing. Yeah, little fish can turn to big fish and vice versa, I'm not
debating that, as the order is already there.

> Certain molecules (like DNA/RNA, as well as other simpler compounds) are self-replicating

The order is already there, so I'm not debating that either. I'm debating that order doesn't
come from chaos.

[Silfir]

There is no such thing as order or chaos

[gut]

Indeed. Only corruption, and those too weak to seek it.

[grobblewobble]

But there are many examples of order arising spontaneously from chaos. Take snowflakes, for example. Beautiful symmetric structures forming out of nowhere. Or take any crystal. Or the market, where a stable equilibrium price spontaneously forms, out of control of any individual buyer or seller. The formation of stars and planetary systems out of a huge cloud of dust and debris. The formation of mountains, clouds, rivers..

Self-organisation is everywhere.

I think the apparent contradiction arises because we feel life is a miracle that can't be produced by ordinary matter. If we accept that, how do we differ from a falling stone? If life has formed from non-living matter, you might as well say it IS non-living matter. How can something with a conscious mind evolve from something mindless?

My answer to this dilemma is that life is not as mechanical as non-living matter, but that non-living matter is in fact alive. According to quantum theory, elementary particles behave fundamentally unpredictable. This can be interpreted as them having a free will. Yes, you may call me a nut now.