Re: Sincere incredulity in Creationists

On Dec 4, 3:01 pm, "Rodjk #613" <rjka...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 3, 4:26 pm, Iain <iain_inks...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Dec 3, 5:50 pm, "Rodjk #613" <rjka...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Dec 2, 8:26 pm, "Steven L." <sdlit...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Iain wrote:
On Dec 2, 8:07 pm, Puppet_Sock <puppet_s...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 2, 10:19 am, Iain <iain_inks...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:> I have often been puzzled by Creationists’ assumption that order and
fineness of structure automatically support their argument, and not
evolution. They presuppose that evolution must be a sloppy and
inefficient force and they do not think it worthwhile to explain this
presupposition.
[snip rest of post]

The only complaint I can find here is, evolution *is* a sloppy
process.

Consider the human eye. (And the eye of many reasonably
closely related species, I suppose.) Why do we have a blind
spot? Because the pressure to get rid of it was not large enough,
and the step from having it to not having it was large enough,
that evolution never got rid of it. Or consider that it is possible
to choke on your food because your air passage and your food
passage overlap. Consider the combination of the urinary tract
with portions of the human male reproductive system and all
the complications this can produce. Consider how much pain
and, um, dislocation is involved in human birth.

Consider the human knee.

There are many compromise structures. Sloppy jerry-rigged
Rube Goldberg structures that, if enough time went by after
they were put in place, got tweaked a bit to clean them up
a bit. But because evolution works on tiny steps and relative
improvement, not absolute improvement or big steps, lots
of messy stuff stays.

As to efficiency, well, um. I guess that would depend on how
you measure it. Efficiency implies some kind of value out for
value in. Or effort out for effort in or some such. Things such
as it taking "x" years (or generations or whatever) to get a
result that was worth "y" years of effort, then dividing y by x.
I've no idea how to get numbers to assign an efficiency to
natural evolution. I do know that evolutionary strategies in
computer programs *can* be efficient at finding certain types
of solution in certain contexts. That is, they can find the
solution in less compute cycles than other algorithms.
Socks

Yes, that's an additional point to be made on top of the one I just
made.

Evolution is not absolutely efficient -- it's juuuuuuuuust as
efficient as we'd expect.

It also cares only about evolving the organism to improve its fitness
for reproducing its genes. Once the organism can no longer do that,
evolution quits.

There are a lot of things that can go wrong with a human in old age..
But there's no evolutionary pressure to improve that situation, because
the human has already passed the point at which she was last able to
reproduce.

Isn't there a benefit to surviving into 'old age'?
Passing on knowledge and wealth to support and aid your offspring?

Nah. By the time most people enter geezerdom, their offsrping already
have enough wealth and wisdom to facilitate comfortable spunking of
sundry twats.

~Iain

Well, ok...but seriously.
It does not have to be full blown geezerdom, but support can and does
continue beyond the reproductive years. So even though someone cannot/
does not reproduce does not mean that they cannot affect the
continuation of their family.

Yes, but, in a prehistoric context, what can a grandfather do that a
father cannot(that influences the likelihood of the youngest
generation reproducing)?

In ye olde prehistoric times, you'd have done most of your reproducing
before you hit 25. So, you're 25. Your dad(if alive) is probably 40,
and so still able-bodied. So what's the point in grandad? What wisdom
and wealth can he provide that dad cannot? If grandad's dead, then dad
gets the same wealth anyway.

And, in a prehistoric context, only a certain amount of wisdom affects
the odds of reproduction. And wealth consists of the family spear or
whatever. It's just not a big factor.

~Iain

.

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