Re: Atheists support evolution because evolution supports their worldview
- From: TomS <TomS_member@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 3 Oct 2008 07:57:34 -0700
"On Fri, 03 Oct 2008 07:23:45 -0700, in article
<2WpFk.2439$Ws1.1611@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, John Harshman stated..."
Suzanne wrote:
"John Harshman" <jharshman.diespamdie@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:w8Wpk.10879$vn7.8517@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Suzanne wrote:I'm looking over some past posts. I am sure I have missed
"raven1" <quoththeraven@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in messageThat's backwards from Ray's contention, of course. Ray claimed that I
news:6l0ca45oh4pvjv870ameg9h5k20hh2m6ae@xxxxxxxxxx
On Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:59:26 -0700 (PDT), Ray MartinezNo one can go back and undo Darwin in order to find
<pyramidial@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It is a self-evident axiomatic fact: Atheists support evolutionAtomic theory somehow manages to omit any reference to God. Does it
because evolution supports their worldview.
support the "atheist worldview" as well?
Richard Dawkins and JohnIf the evidence supported theism, I'd be a theist.
Harshman would not support Darwinian evolution if it supported Theism.
out if Richard Dawkins and John Harshman would
have ended up being atheists, if Darwin didn't give his
ideas to the world about evolution.
wouldn't support evolution if evolution supported theism; you are
wondering if I would have supported theism if there were no theory of
evolution. Do you see the distinction?
I contend that my atheism is not (or at least not primarily) the result of
my knowledge of evolutionary biology, but of a more general observation of
the world. There were of course atheists before Darwin. So I would answer
your speculation that I would still have been an atheist; can't speak for
Dawkins.
As for Ray's assertion, I would support Darwinian evolution if the
evidence supported Darwinian evolution, regardless of any implications it
might or might not have. And I still can't speak for Dawkins.
You may of course suppose that I am wrong about either or both of these
counterfactuals. I don't think it's necessary to go back and
experimentally undo Darwin in order to perform a valid test, though. It's
a common creationist failing to demand such direct experimentation. One
can, however, tell that humans are related to chimps without inventing a
time machine and observing who mated with whom for the last 5 or 6 million
years.
some. I wanted to tell you that I don't in any way hold
what your choice of belief is against you. I can see a lot of
good things about you. You are not a phoney.
Now, you say "one can, however, tell that humans are
related to chimps." Can you tell me how you believe it is
that one can tell that humans are related to chimps? I am
interested in what you believe and why you believe it. I
want to try to understand why someone believes that.
I just want to know what your thinking is. Thanks.
It's the massive amount of DNA sequence data that makes the strongest
case, though we had enough to go on long before DNA sequencing. Here's a
simple explanation.
If you compare the same DNA sequences from humans, chimps, gorillas,
orangutans, gibbons, and any monkey (pick one) using a phylogenetic
analysis program, you will find a consistent pattern: the first three
will always go together, the orangutan will be next to them, and the
gibbon will be next to the monkey. In about 60% of cases, the human and
chimp will be neighbors, but in about 20% it will be human and gorilla,
with another 20% chimp and gorilla. But the rest of the pattern will be
nearly 100%. This will be true for genes with important functions, and
for junk DNA with no function at all. And this is the nested hierarchy I
keep telling you about.
I think that it is very important to note that it isn't just a
matter of chimps being close to humans, but that there is a whole
tree of life, in which some living forms are closer to some than
to others, in a pattern of a "nested hierarchy". It isn't just that
the chimp genome is some high percentage similar to the human genome,
but that all these genomes fall into the pattern of the tree of life.
Creationists have on occasion ridiculed a single number by saying
that a watermelon shares the same composition (mostly water) with
a cloud. But the tree of life is not just a simple thing like that.
It is that some things are closer to some things than they are to
others. It isn't just that all living things are made of chemicals,
its that complex web of relationships of more-and-less similar that
makes up the tree of life.
And if you count not just the arrangement of species but the distances
separating them, the monkey will be farthest from the others, then the
gibbon from the great apes, then the orangutan from the African apes,
and the chimp will be a little bit closer to us than to the gorilla.
Further, the sorts of differences that separate all these species are
exactly the same sorts we see happening all the time as mutations. We
understand the processes that make these differences happen quite well.
In addition to the overall pattern, some of the individual genetic
differences are so strikingly inexplicable by anything other than common
descent that they are conclusive all by themselves. The biggest of these
is the fusion of two chimp (and other apes and monkeys) chromosomes into
a single chromosome in humans. This fused chromosome has the remnants of
an extra centromere just where we would expect it, and the remnants of
two telomeres just at the point of fusion.
Separate creation can't explain any of this, unless the dust of the
ground happened to contain a complete set of ape chromosomes.
I won't bother going into the anatomical and paleontological evidence.
We don't need it here.
I agree, but it is quite interesting, the anatomical evidence,
because is predates the genetic evidence. For, on the anatomical
evidence alone, we are led to the close relationship between
humans, chimps, and other apes; the somewhat less close
relatioship of those with monkeys; and so on through the tree of
life. This was demonstrated well before anyone had any idea of
the genetic relationships. Some of the information about the
genetic relationships was anticipated, and count as a fulfilled
prediction of the evolutionary explanation. It isn't just an
after-the-fact observation, but something that was to be
expected; and if the pattern of the relationships between genes
had not occurred, it would have been surprising.
If we didn't have a tree of life established, then there would
have been no way to single out certain animals as objects of
interest for genetic sequencing. Why was the chimp one of the
first of the animals to be sequenced? Of course, no one is
particularly surprised that the chimp genome is close to the
human genome. And, as more and more genomes are being sequenced,
no one is going to be surprised that the tree of genome
similarities is going to reflect the tree of anatomy
similarities, as well as the distribution in space (biogeography)
and time (paleontology).
--
---Tom S.
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."
attributed to Josh Billings
.
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