A Place for Reason on the Web

What do we think about Convergent Evolution?

theism — Thu, 15 May 2008 06:03:43 +0000

Electronic gadgets have been converging for years. My phone has a camera in it; the next one, when this stops working, is likely to also have GPS. These different technologies are converging, they’re becoming as one. That’s not completely true – the camera in my cell phone hardly deserves to be called that, and the same is true for cell phone/mp3 players – but at first blush it seems overwhelmingly the case.

We see the same thing in plants and animals. Bats, dolpins, and whales are experts in the art of sonar. This isn’t always the case. Most animals have eyes; each species changes some of the details, but inherits the idea from a common ancestor. Different styles of eyes have evolved parallel to each other. There are many examples of two ( or more ) species with the same trait, who didn’t inherit it. In this case, they must have “invented” – evolved – it separately. Or: god really likes some creation styles?

That’s what I’m wondering, actually. How do bats flying through the night sky, and whales swimming in the murky depths, both using echo-location, fit into the creationist worldview? This knowledge would have been very difficult for evolution to explain before Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

Thorns, spikes, prickles, and the like are found in too many plants to list.
Four species of anteater make the same living as twenty varieties of armadillo, eight pangolin, four echidna, the numbat, and the aardvark.
Koalas have finger prints, like humans.
A possum in Australia has the sort of long tongue you’ll see on a butterfly, to drink nectar from flowers.
Vultures live in the old and new worlds, both eating carrion. In the west, they find it exclusively by eye-sight, while in the Middle East smell plays as much a role in locating food.
The sabre-tooth tiger had a distant cousin, the false sabre-tooth or nimravids, pictured at right. There was a third version, a marsupial that carried its young in a pouch.
Hummingbirds are virtually indistinguishable from Australian Sunbirds.
Some crabs who live on dry land smell in almost the same way as many insects.

Random chance is a very small part of evolution. Mutations arise at a low rate, and either get spread into the gene pool, or don’t. Only those that give some type of advantage to their bearers make it into the next generation, and have a chance to spread. Randomness works under tight constraints.

Put another way, some designs are just good. Thorns protect roses and blackberries alike. Being able to digest carrion is tremendously helpful if you live in the desert, or on the steppe. Sabres coming out of your mouth can be an efficient way to take prey down. And so on. I have to admit, I don’t know what gave rise to finger prints – twice.

If there’s a reason why a god would prefer so many designs while inventing so many others, and discarding most of them, I’d like to know what it might be?

Help Me Understand Intelligent Design

theism — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 04:40:01 +0000

The eye is a fascinatingly complex piece of machinery. So complex, in fact, that when looking at a diagram, a person can’t help but get the feeling it might have been designed for a purpose; much like the camera it mimics.

Why, then, do we have a blind spot near the center of our vision? Biology points to an optic nerve, carrying the newly gathered information back to the brain to be processed.

The theory of intelligent design ( “your father’s creationism” ) begs to differ. I’m hoping somebody who finds this blog might be able to suggest an answer? A human engineer would be fired for this type of design flaw in a camera; surely the all-knowing could be expected to hold down a job at Nikon, if he so chose.

Natural selection would favor a good, but imperfect, eye if it gave its owner an advantage at survival and procreation. The genes for making a flawed eye would quickly spread through a pool for not making any sort of eye. The information being gathered by our rods and cones has to make it back to the brain somehow. If a small blind-spot is the price for sight, this puts creatures with an eye at an advantage.

But God is all-powerful and all-knowing, unencumbered by simple physics. In creating the universe, God must have created the laws of the universe, to his satisfaction. He could easily have designed us with no blind spot. Or, of course, with a better resistance to disease, without such a foul temperament, or any number of ways more befitting the image of our creator.

How does the theory of intelligent design explain these and other design flaws?

The Question of All Time

theism — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:55:06 +0000

From where did we come; how did we get here; do we have a purpose? These questions may never be answered, doomed to be repeated throughout the ages. Science may never have a satisfying answer to these and other queries, causing their repetition. These aren’t even the subject of most scientific endeavor, lacking commercial appeal.

We’ve found many answers to the list of questions. God. Natural processes compounded over time, or, more generally, cause and effect.

By now, it should be clear which of the answers at our disposal I follow. This site will be a testament to rationality, and my contribution to a better collective understanding of our world, small as that may be.