Christians & Muslims & Creationists, what is your explanation for Human vestigiality?

reply to post by Jauk3


This is a wonderful explanation for intelligent design.

I'll stand with NuT on this issue. Now is it possible God could have created through evolution? Yes. Is that what Moses recorded him saying he did? Not at all. I've said it many times before and i'll say it again, until folks finally get it through their thick skulls. I don't care about what happened, i have all i need to know for salvation which is embodied in Jesus the Christ. Thats all i care about, i don't need to know every single thing about the workings of the universe, we're never going to know that stuff anyway so i don't give a sh*t.

Originally posted by winofiend

Originally posted by smyleegrl
I'm agnostic, but I've always wondered why people have such a hard time resolving creationism and evolution.

What if evolution is a god's creative act? In other words....evolution as the process by which a creator creates?

Because it's a cop out. For god to exist he must be omnipotent and made the world in 6 days.

But that doesn't sit well with people these days, so rather than argue an unwinnable argument they change the rules.

Now it's a case of god hasn't finished yet. Not rested on the 7'th day.

Well it still makes it all a sham.

Religion is fine and dandy. God is groovy and cool. But it's all man made.

How does that follow? Is it not possible for God to exist and for the Biblical account of creation to be symbolic or even flawed?

reply to post by smyleegrl

What if evolution is a god's creative act? In other words....evolution as the process by which a creator creates?

Then God is either hopelessly evil or else a moral imbecile – as well as being rather incompetent.

The process of evolution is cruel and wasteful. For every successful adaptation there are myriads of failures. The struggle for survival of the fittest leaves the losers to die, or live on in misery. Death as we know it is itself a product of evolution – it is not inevitable that living organisms should die, except that evolution demands it and natural selection enforces it.

Evolution is a stumbling, blindly erratic process which fails more often than it succeeds. If it is 'the process by which a creator creates', then the creator is neither benevolent nor omnipotent.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by smyleegrl

 

That's a lazy way to reconcile the two, unless you can prove that evolution is a divine process.

Do you feel like you have to be insulting every day or your day doesnt go right or something? Were you the fat kid who always got bullied in grade school so you throw around petty "your stupid im not and im better than you" insults on ATS so that you can feel better about yourself? You wouldnt talk to me like that to my face.

The resolution was solid. It makes perfect logical sense. I don't see how it could have been dumb enough to deserve an insult. But i dont guess it has to be dumb to get an insult from you. You insult to maintain your delusion that youre somehow smarter or better than everyone. Believe me, your arguments have rarely been as strong as you probably think they are. But thats an ego head for you. Typical.

replyly to post by Astyanax


Good point. I have a solution.

The creator is not mindfully making choices about how life forms should emerge, but rather, the life forms are responding to the presence of a creative force in unique ways. So this life force, our innermost essence, inhabited the material world which reacted freely to it.

Every day, we make choices, which if God was intentionally making, we wouldn't be. But our choices do come from God, but only as a response to the life force, that is God, within us.

reply to post by smithjustinb

The creator is not mindfully making choices about how life forms should emerge, but rather, the life forms are responding to the presence of a creative force in unique ways. So this life force, our innermost essence, inhabited the material world which reacted freely to it.

Ah, blaming the victim! A favourite resort of believers faced with the Problem of Evil.

So God is now simply a mindless 'creative force' that inhabits matter and causes it to take living forms? But why posit such a force at all, when the ordinary laws of nature are more than sufficient to bring life into being without any further conditions being met?

Or do you not believe that is true? Do you hold that life is unlikely, some kind of miracle, rather than an inevitable outcome in a naturally-ordered stochastic universe? That's a seriously outdated idea, and I'm afraid I have no interest in discussing it.

reply to post by Astyanax


I believe life is inevitable. I believe that life was in the making, built into the system, from the start. I think awareness, or whatever, exists independently of what we call, "animate life" almost like it is the 11 dimensional space itself or either what matter really is in its essence. And I think this awareness connects us all.

The more I write, the more I want to call awareness, "space". But we don't know half of the totality of space is, so both concepts elude us. The question is, "are we equally eluded by both concepts?"

reply to post by smithjustinb

I believe life is inevitable. I believe that life was in the making, built into the system, from the start.

Cosmologists call this the Anthropic Principle, and distinguish between two versions, the weak and the strong. To us, the universe looks perfectly attuned to life, and strong anthropists argue that it is, therefore, so attuned. But it doesn't have to have been designed that way; it's easy enough to see that it could well have taken a different form, one hostile to life, in which case nobody would be around to observe how ill-fitted for life it was...

I think awareness, or whatever, exists independently of what we call, "animate life" almost like it is the 11 dimensional space itself or either what matter really is in its essence. And I think this awareness connects us all.

Perhaps, but there seems to be no good evidence for believing this. Of course one often feels a sort of intuitive or emotional connexion with other life. I saw blue whales close by for the first time the other day and was struck by how vividly alive they were – despite their enormous size, they were obviously flesh and blood, full of that elusive quality we call 'vitality', which is something different from awareness. And I have spent time in the Himalayas and some of the world's desert places, so I know how, especially in solitude or near-solitude, an entire landscape can seem living, or even aware. But these feelings come from within us, not from the whales or the landscape; they are a response to these external things.

I am fond of such feelings, and treasure them on the rare occasions when they are evoked in me. However, I don't see in them something 'beyond the veil' of materiality. I think they are products, or possibly by-products (possibly even vestigial by-products ) of the way our brains and bodies have evolved to interpret and take advantage of the world. I understand that for many people such an explanation seems mechanistic and unsatisfactory; I can only reply that I find it more satisfying to experience such feelings than to speculate about them, and that my garden seems beautiful enough to me without fairies at the bottom of it.

The more I write, the more I want to call awareness, "space".

Why?

Explain why evolution made us sleep when we came from creatures (apparently) that never sleep

Can big bang or evolutionist explain why earth is the only known planet in the universe to have water in liquid form?

Explain this to me if everything evolved independently how is it that the majority of species are based on a male and female to survive. Seem awful risky if you ask me. I do not believe that there are any vestiges that the human species was ever self replicating with no need of the other sex. So how did we come about as a species? Since we are interdependent upon the other sex to survive.

Originally posted by Jauk3

In the context of human evolution, human vestigiality involves those characters (such as organs or behaviors) occurring in the human species that are considered vestigial—in other words having lost all or most of their original function through evolution. Although structures usually called "vestigial" often appear functionless, a vestigial structure may retain lesser functions or develop minor new ones.[1] In some cases, structures once identified as vestigal simply had an unrecognized function.[2]
The examples of human vestigiality are numerous, including the anatomical (such as the human appendix, tailbone, wisdom teeth, and inside corner of the eye), the behavioral (goose bumps and palmar grasp reflex), sensory (decreased olfaction), and molecular (junk DNA). Many human characteristics are also vestigial in other primates and related animals..

Human Vestigiality

The concept of vestigiality applies to genetically determined structures or attributes that have apparently lost most or all of its ancestral function in a given species. Assessment of the vestigial status must generally rely on comparison with homologous features in related species. The emergence of vestigiality occurs by normal evolutionary processes, typically by loss of function of a feature that is no longer subject to positive selection pressures when it loses its value in a changing environment. More urgently the feature may be selected against when its function becomes definitely harmful. Typical examples of both types occur in the loss of flying capability in island-dwelling species.

Vestigiality


We have various organs which we don't use or we still have a small part of that organ, like our third eye lid, our tail bone, appendix, wisdom teeth, etcetera. Why would God create us with these unused body parts which serve no purpose in our body?

Let me guess,''God made it that way to test to see if you would still believe in him'' or ''the devil created it to decieve you''

reply to post by guitarplayer


Nothing developed independently, and no scientist would assert such a thing. Everything is dependent on it's environment. Evolution occurs partly due to changes in the environment and partly because of random mutation. If the random mutation serves in the survival of an animal it will survive in it's given environment.

Ok then why the seemingly consistence in male and female to survive. How could we of possible evolved if we need each other to breed and survive? What came first the man or the woman?
Plant wise there are male and female parts of the plant same story why? It seems to me to be a very poor way to present a species that need and opposite to breed. Did everything evolve with the opisite all ready in place if so how did they survive how did nature come up with this situation? It would of had to of been from the begining male and female but is that possible?

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by guitarplayer

 

Nothing developed independently, and no scientist would assert such a thing. Everything is dependent on it's environment. Evolution occurs partly due to changes in the environment and partly because of random mutation. If the random mutation serves in the survival of an animal it will survive in it's given environment.

reply to post by Astyanax


Since awareness is within, it makes sense that the connection that you have felt is felt, within.

reply to post by Astyanax


I want to call awareness, "space", because it is the unchanging thing that allows for change. Time doesn't move, but the objects within time do move through time and by time. And the complexity of an additional 7 dimensions reminds me of the complexity of life forms believe awareness, like space, is not a thing. But space can be inferred through comparison of things. Space, like awareness, is always in the here and now.

reply to post by Jauk3

The entire thread seems somewhat broken to me.
It starts with the implicit assumption that all christians and muslims do not believe in the concept of evolution.
It also implies that the concept of "vestigiality" negates creationism.
It also implies that true vestigiality, as in organs or systems that have absolutely no function, exists.

So the axioms, premise, and implied conclusion all are basically flawed, and could be tackled from several of those levels...