Originally posted by LtNarol
While I agree that a single random string of evolutionary changes creating humans is unlikely, keep in mind that evolution is a stage by stage process. First you have to get from that slime into multi-celluar organisms. More to the point, the universe is by inherent nature chaotic - it doesn't stop when one combination fails, it keeps going until it finds one that does work.
Evolution and modern organisms can be paralleled with a password and a descrambler. If one thing doesn't work, it tries another, and another, until it finally get its right.
First you state that evolution is a stage-by-stage process. I agree, and even emphasize it more - evolution is billions of stages, each building upon the successes or failures of its predecessors.
Then you compare it to a password and a descrambler. Inaccurate. Evolution can best be compared to billions of descramblers (life forms) trying to break an ever-changing series of passwords (survival in the ever-changing environment), with each wrong password guess neutralizing that descrambler ("bad" evolution, a mutation not working, would kill off that branch of evolved beings). The only advantage given to descramblers that get a password right the first time, and thus survive, is that they survive long enough to multiply into other descramblers that already know the correct password for the previous "level".
Originally posted by mikhael
A supreme being creating us from the aether would not be boring. It'd be pretty damned exciting. However, the evidence is to the contrary. There is a fairly conclusive fossile record dating back before the ~6000 year mark most Creationists believe in (I think there's some Biblical 'evidence' for that number. I am not sure). The problem with the Creationist theory is that it is not testable in any meaningful way. It is unscientific.
For a theory to be scientific, it must explain why things are as they are now, and make predictions as to how they will become. Creationist theory does the former, but fails the latter. What predictions can you make from Creationist theory? Do organisms evolve or do they just pop into existence (ie, are they created)? Evolution also explains why things are the way they are, but it also makes certain predictions about the future development of organisms. The predictions are borne out by observation of simple organisms (bacteria for example) and more complex organisms (such as reptiles and fish).
You argue that a Supreme Being is "simple". This is as far from the truth as one can get. Occam's Razor states, "one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything". Your invocation of a Creator that can not be detected, predicted, duplicated, observed experimentally, or otherwise be shown to exist, sounds like "increasing... the number of entities required to explain" the situation. I'll reserve my judgement on the existence of creator beings for private conversation. However, given the evidence at hand, I'm going with evolution from self replicating chemical compounds as the simplest explanation.
Personally, I've been "converted" from my basic 6000-year-old Earth upbringing by new realizations that fit the facts as well as being obvious in hindsight. This new look on the history of our planet is something I've explained a number of times in the past, so I won't go into detail here. I'll just refresh your memory that it is that theory which, due to time-dilation upon the Earth from rapid speed induced by the Big Bang, correlates the 16.7 billion years the earth is said to have existed with the events stated to have occurred on each of the 6 days of creation as stated in Genesis.
And as for your last sentence.... I simply can not understand how people can study the complexity and interdependancies all around us - ecological balance (read Charles Pellegrino's novel "Dust"), biological interaction and interdependance (look at our very bodies), and geological dependancies (temperature variances, radiation protection layers, etc)- and call it all happenstance, let alone the "simplest explanation".
Originally posted by mikhael
Read Dawkins. Evolution need not be entirely random. There comes a point where the process of self-replication is the driving force beyond mere random factors.
No. Evolution is the adaptation of a species to its environment. Self-replication is a species' way of continuing life, and has nothing to do with evolution, except for one thing: without self-replication, there can be no continuation of evolution's beneficial mutations.
Originally posted by mikhael
Steven Hawking has a wonderful take on this--two of them actually. From one perspective, the universe may not need a creator because it may have always existed (Brief History of Time, the chapter on 'imaginary time'). On the other side of the coin he puts forward the argument that the need for a Creator is a moot point as the laws of the Universe started with the creation of the universe, thus what came before is fundamentally unknowable and has no bearing on what exists now in any case. Either a Prime Mover is unnecessary or He is irrelevant. In both cases, the Universe remains the same.
*pilots 747 through "plot-holes"*
"...the universe may not need a creator because it may have always existed..."If one can accept that, then one should also toss out the window one's opposition to the existance of a Creator based on the "who made the Creator?" argument.
"...On the other side of the coin he puts forward the argument that the need for a Creator is a moot point as the laws of the Universe started with the creation of the universe, thus what came before is fundamentally unknowable and has no bearing on what exists now in any case..."Irrelevant on a couple of levels:
a) Your belief or disbelief in the rumors about Israel's possesion of nuclear weapons did not have the slightest effect on the actual truth that Israel does in fact have nuclear weapons.
In like manner, our inability to comprehend the existance of XYZ outside of our realm of physical laws has no bearing on XYZ's actual existance.
b) The concept or mindset of "if we can't affect it, it must be irrelevant" (
"...what came before is fundamentally unknowable and has no bearing on what exists now in any case...") is one I find surprisingly immature, as it shows a complete disregard for anything outside of "me". Continuing our analogy, if you tried with every means at your disposal to acertain the existance or non-existance of nuclear warheads under Israeli control, and yet were able to find out absolutely nothing, would it then not affect you if one of those nukes was detonated a dozen meters away? After all, knowledge of those nukes existing was unknowable for you, but you forgot that "you" are not the only thing in the universe.
