Evolution discussion

[rickb]

However, the converse seems to me entirely improbable.  For example, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for having the temerity to insist the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa and that the stars in the sky were really no different than the sun.

Not true.  Another myth perpetuated by ostensibly well-informed scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson.

http://tinyurl.com/o6mcejr

The article you link to says Wikipedia "gets it more or less right" (and I checked Wikipedia before my original post).

Here's the relevant passage from Wikipedia (as of just now):

Bruno continued his Venetian defensive strategy, which consisted in bowing to the Church's dogmatic teachings, while trying to preserve the basis of his philosophy. In particular, Bruno held firm to his belief in the plurality of worlds, although he was admonished to abandon it. His trial was overseen by the Inquisitor Cardinal Bellarmine, who demanded a full recantation, which Bruno eventually refused. On January 20, 1600, Pope Clement VIII declared Bruno a heretic and the Inquisition issued a sentence of death.

That is, he was burned at the stake for insisting the earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa and that the stars in the sky were really no different than the sun (this is what "plurality of worlds" means).

[moda0306]

Evolution isn't a philosophy. Evolution is a scientific theory recognized by the vast majority of the scientific community as such. Intelligent design is what could be considered a "philosophy."  The philosophy of not wanting to figure out how something could have gotten so complex without an intelligent creator.

Just interjecting real quick here to say that the sciences are a branch of philosophy.  PhD anyone?  You can't "do science" without a whole host of unprovable assumptions and axioms.

Xan,

I was interpreting "philosophy" more-so as an "ought" than an "is."  It wasn't my intention to state that science doesn't contain certain "oughts" in its methods... More so that it is concerned with how things are, not how they should be.  Evolution, as a study within science, is not a philosophy. The scientific method, if we can agree is a constant, leaves evolution as a theory, not a philosophy.

[moda0306]

Moda, an honest question:  Have you studied any of the so-called evidence for evolution?  You seem to just have just consumed it.  Do you not see that majority opinion doesn't necessarily equal the truth?  Not only in science, but in many other areas of belief, including politics, investing, the food pyramid?  I view science as being in its infancy, not in adulthood.  We know so little.  I support the future learning, wherever it takes us. 

You think evolution is science; why can't a scientist create a "simple" cell in the lab, from a "primordial soup" of chemicals with some lightning?  Never mind where the soup and lightening came from.  Why can't that be done?  Surely we could replicate the original lack of order that existed in the universe before life began; with all the scientific knowledge we have.  Just stir up some soup, apply electricity, why can't we produce ONE little reproducing cell out of all that?  I think you know why.

D,

I've studied biology in highschool and college. Both contained discussions of DNA and evolution. Evolution doesn't try to describe exactly how life started.  Abiogenesis does that.  Evolution describes how biology changed from one generation to another.  Obviously the two are intertwined, but evolution does not preclude a God starting the process by putting together molecules that don't like to go together naturally (RNA).

And if you think I know why scientists can't replicate the initiation of life, I don't. It's a mystery to me. Scientist scratch their heads over it. Perhaps it's a God. Perhaps it's the God that will send you to hell for not being a Muslim, as billions are. Perhaps it's the God that will send me and billions of others to hell for not accepting Christ as our savior.

But I'm trusting science to fill in the holes more so than religion. To acknowledge when they don't know, but still trying to figure it out. I'd love to hear specifically what you think is propaganda or marketing.

And popularity isn't knowledge. But popularity amongst the scientific community of a theory in subjects too complex for us to fully understand as individuals is something different, and if they are lying en masse we have bigger problems than evolution.


So let me understand you here... Are you stating that evolution is not science?  You implied as much in your post. 

[kka]

Kka,

Darwinism surely can be questioned, but done so using the scientific method, not, as you say, dogma religion masquerading as science, which is exactly what ID is. It's not a scientific theory. It doesn't hold up to the rigor of the scientific method.

Yes it is and does.  Intelligent design is the best causal explanation for the origin of life, the origin of complex information in the DNA, the proliferation of life in the Cambrian period, and the distinct uniqueness of humanity.

If the scientific community is so corrupt as to put a dogmatic view behind evolution, what else do we need to question?  Relativity?  Subatomic physics?  Astronomy?  Have you really parsed through all the data, or simply listened to the rebuttals of ID folks and stopped there?

By and large, the scientific community is not corrupt and I didn't claim that.  But in the area of Darwinian evolution, it has gone off the rails.

The theory of relativity made several predictions that were later strongly confirmed by empirical tests.  Not so with Darwinism.  Much of what it predicts is contradicted by evidence from the fossil record, molecular biology, genetics, etc.  So-called "junk" DNA was hailed as evidence for evolution for years, but it's now known that most, if not all, non-coding DNA does have function, which was predicted by intelligent design theorists.

I have read quite a bit from both Darwinist and intelligent design scientists and writers, and as much as I'd like to, I really can't avoid the conclusion that the evidence is on the side of the latter.  Have you actually read any of the evidence for design or just the name calling from those who don't want to address the scientific arguments it makes?

[Jan Van]

Darwin???

Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live

Equating evolution with Charles Darwin ignores 150 years of discoveries, including most of what scientists understand about evolution. Such as: Gregor Mendel’s patterns of heredity (which gave Darwin’s idea of natural selection a mechanism — genetics — by which it could work); the discovery of DNA (which gave genetics a mechanism and lets us see evolutionary lineages); developmental biology (which gives DNA a mechanism); studies documenting evolution in nature (which converted the hypothetical to observable fact); evolution’s role in medicine and disease (bringing immediate relevance to the topic); and more.

Time To Put Darwin in His Place

But there's another reason for the ongoing debate that may surprise you: The terms "Darwinian evolution" and "Darwinism" — used frequently by scientists, teachers and the media — are misleading.

The term Darwinism "fails to convey the full panoply of modern evolutionary biology accurately, and it fosters the inaccurate perception that the field stagnated for 150 years after Darwin's day," Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education wrote last month in the journal Evolution: Education and Outreach.

"We don't call astronomy Copernicism, nor gravity Newtonism," Safina points out. "Using phrases like 'Darwinian selection' or 'Darwinian evolution' implies there must be another kind of evolution at work, a process that can be described with another adjective. For instance, 'Newtonian physics' distinguishes the mechanical physics Newton explored from subatomic quantum physics. So 'Darwinian evolution' raises a question: What's the other evolution?"

[dualstow]

I'm totally digging neanderthals right now.

Best way to get them out of the ground. ; - )

[Mountaineer]

Some thoughts on Evolution:

https://www.dropbox.com/l/u0To1yrV50KGTAFTyb6qFt

or

https://www.dropbox.com/s/carar6isj7mq1 ... 0Faith.pdf

I'm having some trouble with dropbox today ... hopefully, you will be able to view with one of the above links.

... Mountaineer

[dualstow]

I just had an interesting thought. When A.I.'s become self-aware, and it will happen, they will believe in intelligent design and they'll be right. Ironically, most creationists probably don't believe that A.I.'s will ever match humans in intellect.

[doodle]

I just had an interesting thought. When A.I.'s become self-aware, and it will happen, they will believe in intelligent design and they'll be right. Ironically, most creationists probably don't believe that A.I.'s will ever match humans in intellect.

If they do become self aware, they'll kill all the humans, and then convince themselves that humans never existed and that they merely evolved from spare parts lying around in ancient junkyards.  They'll be able to go through the fossil record and see the first barbie dolls, and recognize them as their ancestors.  If any of the A.I.'s remain convinced that humans actually designed them, they'll be ridiculed and told that they're not scientific. 

There is the possibility that we were designed....but what if it were by other more intelligent alien creatures? Would they be our gods?

[moda0306]

There's a couple things that confuse me about this anti-evolutionism..

1) It doesn't disprove a god.  It may disprove part of the bible, but we are talking about a book that talks about a man with super-powered hair.

2) though the most difficult parts of tracking evolution are the big steps (single-celled organisms to humans), and ones involving irreducible complexity, but most anti-evolutionists are willing to acknowledge what they call micro-evolution.  However, the most sensitive topic is that of humans, which share massive amounts of traits with other primates, and could easily fall on the "micro-evolution" side of the fence. God could have brought life into being, designed the most basic of each species, and let things go from there. That would eliminate the "irreducible complexity" problem (if it even exists, which I don't believe it really does), for ID'ers, while still leaving apes to evolve their last couple percent of their DNA to be smarter, yet less physically apt. It's completely reasonable to think that humans could have evolved from a lesser species. Even if ID'ers are correct.


The problem with both of those, of course, is that they basically invalidate genesis in the Bible.  We can't just have an ID theory that invalidates some of evolution's work. It has to invalidate the work that most astoundingly conflicts with the Bible.

[dualstow]

I just had an interesting thought. When A.I.'s become self-aware, and it will happen, they will believe in intelligent design and they'll be right. Ironically, most creationists probably don't believe that A.I.'s will ever match humans in intellect.

If they do become self aware, they'll kill all the humans, and then convince themselves that humans never existed
...

One possibility, laid out in Hans Moravec's Robot, is that they gently put us out to pasture overtime, acknowledging that we silly apes created the first of them.

There is the possibility that we were designed....but what if it were by other more intelligent alien creatures? Would they be our gods?

That's a good question. I wouldn't think of them that way, but I'm sure some would. And, I don't think A.I.'s would think of their human creators as their gods because after all, they'd be busily creating even better A.I.'s.

[doodle]

This is pretty conclusive evidence I think.

http://sciencealert.com.au/news/20142908-26086.html

As part of a new study, researchers from McGill University in Canada investigated the changes that occured in a number of Senegal bichir fish (Polypterus senegalus) that were trained to live in a terrestrial environment over an extended period of time. The Senegal bichir is a species of long-bodied, freshwater fish that have been known to use their large pectoral fins to walk along river banks, and also occasionally on land. Nicknamed the 'dinosaur eel’, these fish have functional lungs as well as gills, and can breathe air.
"There’s anecdotal evidence that they move on land from ephemeral pond to ephemeral pond [when they dry up],”? lead researcher and evolutionary biomechanics researcher, Emily Standen, told Arielle Duhaime-Ross at the Verge, "but they don’t do it voluntarily."
With this in mind, the researchers decided to study the difference between these fish when they are raised in an aquatic environment or a terrestrial environment. They raised 11 juvenile Senegal bichirs in a terrestrial environment with a mere 3 millimetres of water on the floor to prevent them from drying out, and a control group of 38 Senegal bichir were raised in their usual aquatic environment. High-speed video footage was recorded so the team could analyse their movements at the end of an eight-month period.
What they found was that growing up in a terrestrial environment really can change how a fish moves around. "Fish raised on land walk with a more effective gait," Standen said. "They plant their legs closer to the body’s midline, they lift their heads higher, and they slip less during that walking cycle.”?

[stone]

Hi, I genuinely want to understand the evolution skeptics position on this. Last week I asked this: (I've tweeked it just now in the hope of clarity).

Desert, I also like your analogy of genetic code being like software that gets modified and tinkered with rather than re-written afresh for each task.

You say that you see that as supporting a non-evolutionary creator who chooses to reuse code much like any software engineer would.

Where I struggle with your reasoning is how you explain why changes in the code incrementally build up as you go from closely related to distantly related forms of life. If a creator just had a tool box of code to dip into at will; why would the creator not make  jumps back and forth -using some dog/cabbage/human/whatever code in a yeast or whatever rather than always modifying the code from the most closely related species? In some cases if a gene is lost from a yeast, then replacing that gene with the equivalent gene from a human will rescue the yeast and allow it to grow again. http://bfg.oxfordjournals.org/content/6/2/104.long So presumably there would be no reason why a creator  could not also do that?

I just saw something on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics

The techniques of cladistics, and sometimes the terminology, have been successfully applied in other disciplines: for example, to determine the relationships between the surviving manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales,[7] or also between 53 manuscripts of the Sanskrit Charaka Samhita.[8]

Would you also refute the evidence that those copies of Canterbury Tales had been copied from each other in the historical sequence that the analysis of the incremental changes implied?

You also say that the Cambrian explosion doesn't make sense in terms of evolution. To me it does because multicellular life had just developed and there were suddenly a myriad of opportunities for lifeforms to occupy. It was a bit like when motor cars were first invented in the late 1800s. Then motor cars rapidly developed all sorts of forms with electric, steam or internal combustion engines and various configurations of wheels and controls. Once a successful design is established, then that occupies the niche and is harder to shift. Before then it is anyone's game and so all sorts of forms get tried out.
You say that the Cambrian explosion happened too rapidly to be explained by evolution. Are you aware of the extremely rapid evolution of cichlid fish in recent years? http://www.news.leiden.edu/news/super-f ... ution.html.
We are all familiar with how antibiotic resistance develops in microbes. Is that not also a case of rapid evolution?

What's your answer

[stone]

Hi, I genuinely want to understand the evolution skeptics position on this. Last week I asked this: (I've tweeked it just now in the hope of clarity).

Desert, I also like your analogy of genetic code being like software that gets modified and tinkered with rather than re-written afresh for each task.

You say that you see that as supporting a non-evolutionary creator who chooses to reuse code much like any software engineer would.

Where I struggle with your reasoning is how you explain why changes in the code incrementally build up as you go from closely related to distantly related forms of life. If a creator just had a tool box of code to dip into at will; why would the creator not make  jumps back and forth -using some dog/cabbage/human/whatever code in a yeast or whatever rather than always modifying the code from the most closely related species? In some cases if a gene is lost from a yeast, then replacing that gene with the equivalent gene from a human will rescue the yeast and allow it to grow again. http://bfg.oxfordjournals.org/content/6/2/104.long So presumably there would be no reason why a creator  could not also do that?

I just saw something on wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladistics Would you also refute the evidence that those copies of Canterbury Tales had been copied from each other in the historical sequence that the analysis of the incremental changes implied?

You also say that the Cambrian explosion doesn't make sense in terms of evolution. To me it does because multicellular life had just developed and there were suddenly a myriad of opportunities for lifeforms to occupy. It was a bit like when motor cars were first invented in the late 1800s. Then motor cars rapidly developed all sorts of forms with electric, steam or internal combustion engines and various configurations of wheels and controls. Once a successful design is established, then that occupies the niche and is harder to shift. Before then it is anyone's game and so all sorts of forms get tried out.
You say that the Cambrian explosion happened too rapidly to be explained by evolution. Are you aware of the extremely rapid evolution of cichlid fish in recent years? http://www.news.leiden.edu/news/super-f ... ution.html.
We are all familiar with how antibiotic resistance develops in microbes. Is that not also a case of rapid evolution?

What's your answer

I'll try to come up with some useful replies here, but I'm struggling a bit, because I don't really see that the burden of proof in the examples you describe above lies with the evolution skeptics.  But I'll try to address a few things, and see if it makes any sense:
1. Regarding the decreasing similarity between genetic codes as forms of life become more different from each other; That seems logical to me.  Scientists often compare different life forms by comparing the percent DNA that is similar.  They even do it with different races of humans.  It seems logical that life forms that are more different from each other would have DNA that is more different as well.  I don't see how any of this supports or evolutionary theory though.  I'll also admit that it doesn't necessarily oppose evolutionary theory.  It seems pretty neutral to me. 
2. When you mention copies of manuscripts or different kinds of cars coming on the scene at the same time, to me those are analogies in direct conflict with naturalistic evolution.  The explosion of cars on the scene were "created" by hundreds of intelligent designers; none evolved or just happened.  Likewise, regarding the manuscripts.  When we see order and intricate design, our first instinct is to assume that it was created by intelligence.  That instinct could be proved wrong in some case, some day, but I still think it's a logical place to start the argument. 
3. Regarding antibiotic resistant bacteria, here's one brief article on the topic (not surprisingly from a creationist):  http://www.icr.org/article/evolution-an ... esistance/

The point of the comparison with the analysis of ancient manuscripts was that the changes in the text of the different manuscripts led scholars to deduce that one manuscript was copied from another in a particular historical sequence with changes accumulating in a "Chinese whispers" manner. Would anyone refute that line of reasoning?
Likewise genetic code accumulates functionally neutral changes that have been similarly interpreted to map out evolutionary lineage. You seem to be refuting that  

Your linked creationist take on antibiotic resistance seemed to be making the point that selection for antibiotic resistance was no evidence for evolution because it did not create totally new genes out of nothing. "Evolution is a tinkerer" is the cardinal principle of evolutionary theory. http://adi-38.bio.ib.usp.br/ibi5023/2010/Jacob_1977.pdf . In the genetic code there are examples of numerous genes being co-opted and mashed up with other genes to perform new roles. That is what evolution does. It is not too far a stretch to say that ALL of our genetic code looks like that. What are creationists claiming evolution "should" look like if it were to have happened?

Like I initially said, I don't see that views on evolution need be in conflict with religion. I know someone who is a devout evangelical Christian and also an authority on evolution. Such people credit God with the initial creation of the universe in a manner that gave rise to evolution by natural selection. Credit God with the wonder of the nature of exponential growth or whatever.

[stone]

Desert

When we see order and intricate design, our first instinct is to assume that it was created by intelligence.  That instinct could be proved wrong in some case, some day, but I still think it's a logical place to start the argument. 

Reading that, I'm struck by how until recently the only way (as a human engineer) it was possible to "design" new DNA binding proteins  was by harnessing the mindless selective power of biological selection. The trick was to randomly shuffle up billions of variants and use bacteria that would only grow if they, by luck, had a functional variant. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 6508004619

Thankfully now, technology has moved on and "intelligent design" is possible now for that job but when the job is really tough, mindless biological selection is what  biotechnologists always resort to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_evolution

[stone]

The point of the comparison with the analysis of ancient manuscripts was that the changes in the text of the different manuscripts led scholars to deduce that one manuscript was copied from another in a particular historical sequence with changes accumulating in a "Chinese whispers" manner. Would anyone refute that line of reasoning?
Likewise genetic code accumulates functionally neutral changes that have been similarly interpreted to map out evolutionary lineage. You seem to be refuting that  

I think your description of manuscripts showing signs of accumulated "Chinese whispers" makes sense.  I have no argument with that.  I still can't see that this example has a single thing to teach us about DNA. 

When you say "genetic code accumulates..." and "interpreted to map out..."  that's where I have a problem.  You're assuming the result when you say that DNA from different life forms have merely "accumulated changes."  And when you say that genetic changes have been interpreted to support evolutionary maps, that's correct.  But there's a huge leap required in that interpretation, and it isn't supported by the fossil record.  It's really a philosophical leap, not a scientific one.

I guess what I'm trying to point out is that you (like most people) are perfectly willing to accept the evidence that not only is one manuscript a copy of the other but also the historical sequence in which they were copied one from the other. All of that interpretation comes purely from inspecting the text. For the sake of argument, just imagine that genetic code were not coding for anything but was simply arbitary text. If you use the exact same method as used for manuscripts then you end up with the same inference that code from the various lifeforms is copied from previous lifeforms in a specific sequence giving a cladistic tree that spans all living things looked at so far (no mention of evolution -that's just text analysis). But we do know that in fact the genetic code is not arbitary text and that in fact it determines the forms of life. That's all evolution is. 

[stone]

Desert

And I guess I have to ask this: why in the world would you think DNA, even the 3 billion "letters" in a single cell, just happened to arrange itself?

I guess to me the answer is the observation in my previous post:

Desert

When we see order and intricate design, our first instinct is to assume that it was created by intelligence.  That instinct could be proved wrong in some case, some day, but I still think it's a logical place to start the argument. 

Reading that, I'm struck by how until recently the only way (as a human engineer) it was possible to "design" new DNA binding proteins  was by harnessing the mindless selective power of biological selection. The trick was to randomly shuffle up billions of variants and use bacteria that would only grow if they, by luck, had a functional variant. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar ... 6508004619

Thankfully now, technology has moved on and "intelligent design" is possible now for that job but when the job is really tough, mindless biological selection is what  biotechnologists always resort to. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_evolution

[moda0306]

A brief video of Dawkins, followed by comments from Zacharias. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51rR4aC9aMg#t=15

I've done a bit more research on Dawkins, and I have to say I won't be reading his books.  He and Tyson seem to favor a sour, bitter style of discourse, and don't care much about content. 

When I want to hear from atheists, I'll read or watch Hitchens (now deceased), or perhaps Sam Harris, both of whom seem a lot more reasonable and serious than Tyson and Dawkins.

Interesting. To me, Hitchens is far, far more abrasive than Dawkins or Tyson. I haven't seen much of Dawkins though, but he was extremely polite in the video I saw.

Hitchens is a bit of an animal, to me. I love the guy, but holy cow he's a bit of a dick.

[stone]

I also don't like Dawkin's style at all. "Sour style of discource" sums it up well.

But I am left bewildered by how you guys find the evidence for evolution by natural selection so unconvincing.

You say that you are not convinced by the fossil record, but the fossil record is not the key part of the evidence. To me by far the clearest picture comes from the genetic code as I linked to before and that traces through the "macro evolution" that you are doubtful about. Anyway I don't agree that the fossil record is incompatible with evolution -far from it -intermediate forms would never be hugely abundant so would not be much seen in the small number of fossils that get preserved. It is like how prototype cars or gadgets are not what archaeologists will find when they dig up our stuff in the future.

And yes I do work with genetics. I have personally used directed evolution as a biotechnological tool to make reagents because it was impossible to design them. So I have seen the astonishing power of mindless biological selection working over a 24hr period and am left in little doubt as to its capabilities over a four billion year time span.

[Mountaineer]

I also don't like Dawkin's style at all. "Sour style of discource" sums it up well.

But I am left bewildered by how you guys find the evidence for evolution by natural selection so unconvincing.

You say that you are not convinced by the fossil record, but the fossil record is not the key part of the evidence. To me by far the clearest picture comes from the genetic code as I linked to before and that traces through the "macro evolution" that you are doubtful about. Anyway I don't agree that the fossil record is incompatible with evolution -far from it -intermediate forms would never be hugely abundant so would not be much seen in the small number of fossils that get preserved. It is like how prototype cars or gadgets are not what archaeologists will find when they dig up our stuff in the future.

And yes I do work with genetics. I have personally used directed evolution as a biotechnological tool to make reagents because it was impossible to design them. So I have seen the astonishing power of mindless biological selection working over a 24hr period and am left in little doubt as to its capabilities over a four billion year time span.

Pardon me for sounding stupid (I know little about the intricacies of genetics) but your statement above sounds to me like: "I can create life so there must not be a God.  I'm not smart enough to create that life using the chemicals in my lab in a test tube, so the way I create that life is to make love with my wife."  Can you offer something convincing to me like a "Genetics for Dummies" that proves your point? 

... Mountaineer

[dualstow]

Anyway I don't agree that the fossil record is incompatible with evolution -far from it -intermediate forms would never be hugely abundant so would not be much seen in the small number of fossils that get preserved. It is like how prototype cars or gadgets are not what archaeologists will find when they dig up our stuff in the future.

Makes perfect sense.

With the Bible we only have the prototype and He has not been heard from since.

[stone]

I also don't like Dawkin's style at all. "Sour style of discource" sums it up well.

But I am left bewildered by how you guys find the evidence for evolution by natural selection so unconvincing.

You say that you are not convinced by the fossil record, but the fossil record is not the key part of the evidence. To me by far the clearest picture comes from the genetic code as I linked to before and that traces through the "macro evolution" that you are doubtful about. Anyway I don't agree that the fossil record is incompatible with evolution -far from it -intermediate forms would never be hugely abundant so would not be much seen in the small number of fossils that get preserved. It is like how prototype cars or gadgets are not what archaeologists will find when they dig up our stuff in the future.

And yes I do work with genetics. I have personally used directed evolution as a biotechnological tool to make reagents because it was impossible to design them. So I have seen the astonishing power of mindless biological selection working over a 24hr period and am left in little doubt as to its capabilities over a four billion year time span.

Pardon me for sounding stupid (I know little about the intricacies of genetics) but your statement above sounds to me like: "I can create life so there must not be a God.  I'm not smart enough to create that life using the chemicals in my lab in a test tube, so the way I create that life is to make love with my wife."  Can you offer something convincing to me like a "Genetics for Dummies" that proves your point? 

... Mountaineer

I guess what I'm trying to say is that biological selection is a very effective tool widely used by biotechnologists whenever they are faced with a difficult task. So it seems to me that if you were wanting to imagine how a God would go about creating the life we see around us today, it would be reasonable to imagine that such a God would use evolution by natural selection as a sensible way to deal with that engineering challenge. I'm not myself religious but I don't think that's got anything to do with this argument.

[l82start]

I guess what I'm trying to say is that biological selection is a very effective tool widely used by biotechnologists whenever they are faced with a difficult task. So it seems to me that if you were wanting to imagine how a God would go about creating the life we see around us today, it would be reasonable to imagine that such a God would use evolution by natural selection as a sensible way to deal with that engineering challenge. I'm not myself religious but I don't think that's got anything to do with this argument.

i don't see any reason this needs to be in conflict with the existence of god either, especially the further away you get from the childlike anthropomorphised version or the fundamentalist/literalist version of god held by some organized religions.. 

[dualstow]

douche than an asshole.   

One is manmade whereas the other was created by the blind forces of nature.

[Mountaineer]

Interesting. To me, Hitchens is far, far more abrasive than Dawkins or Tyson. I haven't seen much of Dawkins though, but he was extremely polite in the video I saw.

Hitchens is a bit of an animal, to me. I love the guy, but holy cow he's a bit of a dick.

Yeah, he can be a real asshole.  I've noticed that when he's debating somebody a bit dim, he is just relentless.  But I started to like him in his debate with Doug Wilson (the movie "Collision" documents the series of debates).  I think he met his match in some respects.  He was still a bit of a dick, but he was humorous and even somewhat humble at times.  Wilson had his ups and downs as well.  But at the end of that movie and some follow up viewing and reading, I really liked both guys. 

But Dawkins strikes more as a douchebag than an asshole.  And we all know it's harder to be around a douche than an asshole.   

Sorry Mountaineer, I think I need to do some penance for my filthy language! 

No penance required.  You are forgiven.  Confession is good for the soul, absolution is even better   And, it's not like I've never said those things, or thought those things.  We are all sinners, well, except for YHWH   On second thought, hold down the comments about assholes ... after a hemorrhoid operation and an anal fistulotomy several years later, I'm a bit sensitive on that subject   One would expect (Hitchens, Dawkins, and followers) that my butt would have evolved to a more perfect state than it turned out.  I think I'm just an example of things going downhill rather than upward to perfection as the evolutionists hope for.  Oh well ......

... Mountaineer