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Misinterpreting Evolution/Creation

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posted on Sep, 13 2014 @ 10:02 PM
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This is a post I've been considering making ever since I joined ATS last year, but didn't know hot to really structure it. I still don't but I'm going to try and keep this as short and simple as possible.

A little about my beliefs: I believe God exists, but I don't believe I or any human can ever understand just what God is or how it manifests itself. To me God is the universe itself, essentially the neural network that makes up all the electrical interactions between everything that EXISTS. God IS the laws of the universe, and potentially has the ability to present itself as a consciousness.

With that out of the way, I want to dispel some myths that I feel creationists have about Evolution.

When I was young and went to church, I was told that Evolution was the equivalent of believing that a tornado could hit a junkyard and build a Cadillac. Later I heard another analogy of a tornado hitting a library and building the Oxford dictionary. I have also heard it argued that Evolution is impossible because organisms have violated the laws of entropy by becoming MORE organized rather than LESS organized. Further more I've heard it argued that there must be a Creator simply because of how perfect each animal is for it's habitat.

If you are religious please continue reading as I don't wish to offend anyone, but rather unite people with a better understanding and some good examples.

1st thing to understand:
Evolution involves adaptation and recent genetic discoveries have shown feedback loops; in other words our DNA can actually respond to our environment and create better physical traits in just the NEXT generation. So believe it or not, if you dock a dogs tail, it makes a slight change to the genetic coding which has the potential to be passed down to its offspring. Also the recent walking fish study showed changes directly within the study group which was raised on land rather than in the water.

www.sciencedaily.com...


But the most important part of my post has to do with the perspective that we normally have about 'natural selection' and statistical odds. We look at things form the point of view of the end results, not realizing that the end results are the ONLY WAY things ever could be. Stay with me here.

Here's my personal example: I'm 1/4 Swedish, 1/2 Scottish, and 1/4 mix of western European. In the course of tracing my genealogy it was 2 parents, 4 grandparents, then 8, 16, 32, 64, etc. Very quickly you will find that you have 1,024 ancestors (only 10 generations back) and going through the records I found many ancestors who had died during childbirth or died of a simple disease as a young age. ( my own mother died only 2 years after I was born, so I barely made it!). It was at this point I had an epiphany:

Infant mortality rates 200-300 years ago were generally around 20%, (www.understandingyourancestors.com...) so if we analyze our own existence by a creationist standard of looking back, then statistically speaking, it is IMPOSSIBLE FOR ANY OF US TO EXIST! With infant and child mortality rates around 20%, 200 of your 9th-great grandparents died BEFORE having children, so your bloodline stops right there.

But it doesn't: What this misguided viewpoint never takes into account, is the fact that YOUR STORY comes down the path of only those who PROCREATED. By definition there is no story for those who did not have offspring. You can't look at things from the view of "if my grandfather had been shot 2 inches further left in WW2, I wouldn't exist" simply because if you don't exist, then you can't ask the question



Carrying this over to the evolution discussion, the animals that exist, are that way because THATS how they became, not because a need was identified and then an animal designed..... If these same animals were any other form, we would be saying the same thing ("Look how perfectly designed it is!") There are many fossils of extinct strange animals that were adapted to their current habitat, but the planet is a constantly changing environment, so the adaptation continues.

And to me, none of this stuff disproves God's existence one bit.

One quick anecdote that I witnessed myself one day which further refutes the claims of violation of the laws of entropy: In my twenties I had a car which had a coin holder for quarters, dimes and nickels. The pennies I always simply threw in the cupholder and never used. One day I actually lifted up the armrest which half covered the cup-holder and noticed that all my pennies were perfectly arranged in a sort of six-gun arrangement. It boggled my mind, who had arranged the pennies into the perfect pattern??? It was about 20layers deep (halfway up the depth of the cupholder.)

As I stared at it in wonder, I realized they had done something amazing: THEY ARRANGED THEMSELF.

The constant random vibration from the engine, taking turns, road bumps etc had settled all of the coins flat in the holder, and the diameter of the cupholder just happened to be the right size for 7 pennies to arrange themselves due to the size of the cup holder (2.4inch) and the size of the pennies (.750 inch). To me this was one of the most amazing things to have witnessed. It wasn't even an organism, yet due to the constraints of the environment and random shaking, they had arranged themselves into what looked like a logical pattern.

To summarize: You can't look at how things are and declare it to be perfect because if it were any other way as a result of different historical or environmental stimuli, then we would be sitting here saying THAT particular version (the 3headed 5legged human) was the perfect creation.
edit on 13-9-2014 by 8675309jenny because: streamlined

edit on 13-9-2014 by 8675309jenny because: (no reason given)



posted on Sep, 13 2014 @ 11:48 PM
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a reply to: 8675309jenny

I'm not religious. Moreover, I am highly sceptical of the kind of Lamarckist transformation you refer to in part of your post.

However, I agree entirely with the thrust of it, and was particularly charmed by your example of the coins. You are probably right to interpret it in the way you did. You might find this thread I started interesting, if you haven't seen it already: Abiogenesis not probable but inevitable, says physicist.


edit on 13/9/14 by Astyanax because: it evolved.



posted on Sep, 13 2014 @ 11:51 PM
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It is kind of funny. I'm an Archaeologist and my mom is a Christian. She believes in Evolution through God and I let her have that because at least she isn't denying its existence. We have a happy truce on it.
edit on 9/13/2014 by MonkeyFishFrog because: (no reason given)



posted on Sep, 14 2014 @ 12:46 AM
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originally posted by: Astyanax
a reply to: 8675309jenny

I'm not religious. Moreover, I am highly sceptical of the kind of Lamarckist transformation you refer to in part of your post.



Read the walking fish study. The way the fish learned to walk actually had effected SKELETAL changes on them.


Headline: Lamarck's bizarre theory of evolution may turn out to be right after all
io9.com...

And these:
newsroom.cumc.columbia.edu...
www.evolutionnews.org...



posted on Sep, 14 2014 @ 06:53 AM
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a reply to: 8675309jenny

I'm familiar with all that stuff. RNA interference is a minor, tangential effect. The walking fish don't pass on their somatic changes to their offspring, the changes are already coded into their DNA.



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