This is in response to a comment from my last "Think about it" post.
I am no scientist. I've done well in science courses that I've taken and I like Discovery Channel as much as the next person, but my degree is in music (or will be in May). I make no claims about having any sort of expertise in any field of science, but it doesn't take a scientist to figure this stuff out. It was not science that convinced me that there is no god. Science did, however, play a role in convincing me that Mormonism was bullshit (see previous post), and it also makes it pretty clear that the Genesis account of Adam and Eve cannot possibly be literal.
We evolved, just like all other life forms on this planet. It's true that evolution does not disprove the existence of God, but with regard to the Adam and Eve story, just think about it. What is the likelihood that at some point in evolution there were suddenly (remember, there is no sudden in evolution) two humans, exactly two humans, male and female (and where's the cutoff line for what's human and what's not?) and then God swoops in and points out a couple of trees and tells them not to eat from one of them but they do it anyway (to say nothing of the talking snake)? I have to concede I have no proof that this didn't happen, but I find it highly, highly unlikely. But as a couple of my readers rightly point out, the writers of the Bible obviously did believe the story was literal. And if they were mistaken about that, what else were they mistaken about?
As for it not mattering whether Eve ate first or Adam, maybe it doesn't matter to our wonderful, perfect, loving God, but it obviously did matter very much to many of His servants through the ages. If a human botched up the story somewhere along the line, it seems awfully cruel of God to make half the population pay for that mistake for centuries.
If you want empirical evidence from a scientist, use your Google. Spencer Wells is a great place to start, or you can rent The Journey of Man from Netflix.
And just to keep everyone happy, I'll offer my answer to my previous question post regarding whether or not Neanderthals were capable of sin. Were neanderthals capable of cruelty, brutality, jealousy and fornication? Undoubtedly. Were they capable of sin? No, because there is no such thing.
One thought on this statement: "there is no sudden in evolution". I am not a scientist either but I have heard of a concept called The Cambrian explosion. This is some of the phrases I came across after doing a google search: The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the seemingly rapid appearance of most major groups of complex animals....The seemingly rapid appearance of fossils....Charles Darwin saw it as one of the main objections that could be made against his theory of evolution by natural selection....The long-running puzzlement about the appearance of the Cambrian fauna, seemingly abruptly and from nowhere. Evolutionary speaking, this seems to be quite sudden.
ReplyDelete"I find it highly, highly unlikely" Would you say the sudden appearance of Adam and Eve was AS unlikely as the origin of life? Because that, as you know, was a very unlikely event. But since it only had to happen once we can allow it to be an extremely improbable event, many orders of maginitude more improbable than most people realize. If we give such odds to the origin of life why can't we give similar odds to the existence of Adam and Eve?
Just some food for thought because I DO think.
"Suddenly" in evolutionary terms of the Cambrian Explosion means about 5-20 million years.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Brian, for clarifying the difference between "sudden" in evolutionary time and "sudden" in the sense that we usually think of it.
ReplyDeletePatrik, it is true that the chances the life starting are infinitesimally small. I would put the chances of exactly the existence of two humans who fit the description of Adam and Eve in that same tiny realm of possibility. Who were THEIR parents? Did they suddenly emerge too? Was the generation of Adam and Eve the magic cutoff line for the species homo sapiens? I have no reason to believe any of the Adam and Eve myth actually happened.
On the other hand, even though the chances of life starting are equally remote, maybe even more so, the evidence that it did in fact start is irrefutable.
You propose two highly unlikely scenarios, but one has evidence and the other does not.
Brian, is that not, geologically speaking, the blink of an eye? Considering the age of the earth is 4.54 billion years that would be a period of .001% - .004% of time, with relation to the age of the earth, in which the majority of the complex animals emerged seemingly fully formed with nothing in the fossil record prior to that more complex than a jellyfish. Is that sudden?
ReplyDeleteI would say the sudden—and I mean "sudden" in the literal sense—appearance of two fully-formed highly-complex male and female human beings emerging from plain ol' dirt (oh, and one of them from a freakin' rib) is almost infinitely more impossible than relatively-non-complex self-replicating RNA emerging from basic gasses and sparks of lightning over the course of a billion or so years. 'Luck' happens, with the right conditions, and enough time.
ReplyDeleteAdam and Eve (or any complex life form) instantly emerging from dirt is so improbable it can be safely considered outside the realm of fact, right up there with invisibility cloaks, flying on broomsticks, or apples randomly falling up instead of down. Or walking on water. Or rising from the dead and flying up to heaven. Or the sudden appearance of enough water to submerge the entire surface of the earth (we're talking fuck-tons of water magically appearing out of nowhere and then magically disappearing just as rapidly). It doesn't take a scientist.
And 5 million years is still a very, very long time, even if it is much quicker than the rest of evolutionary progress. It's well within the realm of reason that diverse speciation could occur in that space of time. We're talking hundreds of thousands of generations, even with generous lifespan/age-of-fertility estimates. So I'm not sure what you're getting at. Perhaps you're creatively interpreting that the individual personages of Adam and Eve could have been formed 'suddenly' over the course of 5 million years or something? I'm not sure what your point is.
Mike, you have a problem with miracles (acts of God) in the Bible yet you don't have a problem with lightening giving life to chemicals? Is that scientifically verifiable? Richard Dawkins said that he wouldn't be surprised if chemists midwife a new origin of life in the lab some day but how would that be scientific empirical evidence of this happening without intelligent influence (chemists midwifing is hardly natural processes without intelligent influence)?
ReplyDeleteI was not trying to suggest that Adam and Eve "suddenly" appeared over 5 million years of evolution. My point was just to point out that some things are sudden in evolution as it was originally stated to not be. And if 5-20 million years is not sudden, evolutionary speaking, considering what appeared in the cambrian explosion then why did it confounded scientists and even Charles Darwin himself?
No, I don't have a problem with lightning and/or UV rays producing a chemical chain capable of reproducing itself. Have scientists been able to reproduce this phenomenon in a lab? No. But compared to nature, scientists have near-impossible odds at reproducing the effect. Scientists have only been at it for 60 years (versus nature's 1,000,000,000 years—that's 0.00000006% of the time) and their experiments have involved at most—I'm going to give a very generous estimate here—5,000 gallons of water/ammonia/methane/hydrogen/whatever, versus the earth's estimated 353,462,202,900,000,000,000 gallons (that number is the volume of earth's oceans—5,000 gallons is such a tiny fraction of that, my calculator is rounding it to 0%; hell, they could use 1,000,000 gallons and it would still only be 0.000000000000003%).
ReplyDeleteSo no, scientists have so far (understandably) been unable to re-create life without intelligent interference. However, the results of the experiments (amino acids and nucleotides from inert matter) indicate that it's the most likely possibility of how life started. All the observed data points to this as our best guess, and pins it as far more likely than any fairy tale contained in the bible (or any other mythical creation story for that matter).
Is there a possibility that Yahweh the God of the bible is real and the creation story of the bible might be true? Sure. Just like there's a remote possibility apples will start falling up tomorrow, or the earth will stop next week, or that a human woman might give birth to a litter of kittens, or that if we look at the end of enough rainbows we might find a pot of gold. We can't ever say for sure these things WON'T happen, but they're unlikely enough that they don't deserve equal consideration with what's been observed 99.99999999999% of the time.
As for the question of "sudden," you're comparing apples and oranges. When Leah said "there is no sudden in evolution" she was referring to "sudden" in the sense that humans usually think of it—sudden relative to a human lifetime, not relative to the planet's lifetime. Sudden as in "the course of one afternoon in which God supposedly created Adam and Eve" sudden. Not "5-20 million years" sudden. Leah was accurate in saying there is no sudden drastic speciation occurring in a literal 24-hour period. That's what she was getting at.
Yes, the Cambrian Explosion is "sudden" in evolutionary terms, and it puzzles scientists because it's unusual. It's an anomaly compared to the rest of the evolutionary timeline. However I've already pointed out that it's far from impossible, or even unreasonable.
Leah Elliott Hauge,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: ” It's true that evolution does not disprove the existence of God,”
Exactly and I would like to recommend the formal logical proof based on scientific premises of the existence of an Intelligent Creator and His purpose of humankind found in my blog: bloganders.blogspot.com (right menu).
Have a nice weekend!
Anders Branderud
Anders, thanks for your comment and for sharing the link to your blog. I love Kiva too and think it's wonderful that you support them!
ReplyDeleteYou are correct that evolution doesn't disprove the existence of God or an intelligent creator. However, we have abundant scientific evidence that the scriptures cannot possibly be true. While I concede that it's possible that a higher intelligence exists, I have to disagree that he/she/it has a purpose for us, or if he/she/it does have a purpose, that purpose is certainly not to be found in any book of scripture that we have.
Leah Elliott Hauge,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote: ” It's true that evolution does not disprove the existence of God,”
Exactly and I would like to recommend the formal logical proof based on scientific premises of the existence of an Intelligent Creator and His purpose of humankind found in my blog: bloganders.blogspot.com (right menu).
Have a nice weekend!
Anders Branderud
I would say the sudden—and I mean "sudden" in the literal sense—appearance of two fully-formed highly-complex male and female human beings emerging from plain ol' dirt (oh, and one of them from a freakin' rib) is almost infinitely more impossible than relatively-non-complex self-replicating RNA emerging from basic gasses and sparks of lightning over the course of a billion or so years. 'Luck' happens, with the right conditions, and enough time.
ReplyDeleteAdam and Eve (or any complex life form) instantly emerging from dirt is so improbable it can be safely considered outside the realm of fact, right up there with invisibility cloaks, flying on broomsticks, or apples randomly falling up instead of down. Or walking on water. Or rising from the dead and flying up to heaven. Or the sudden appearance of enough water to submerge the entire surface of the earth (we're talking fuck-tons of water magically appearing out of nowhere and then magically disappearing just as rapidly). It doesn't take a scientist.
And 5 million years is still a very, very long time, even if it is much quicker than the rest of evolutionary progress. It's well within the realm of reason that diverse speciation could occur in that space of time. We're talking hundreds of thousands of generations, even with generous lifespan/age-of-fertility estimates. So I'm not sure what you're getting at. Perhaps you're creatively interpreting that the individual personages of Adam and Eve could have been formed 'suddenly' over the course of 5 million years or something? I'm not sure what your point is.
One thought on this statement: "there is no sudden in evolution". I am not a scientist either but I have heard of a concept called The Cambrian explosion. This is some of the phrases I came across after doing a google search: The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was the seemingly rapid appearance of most major groups of complex animals....The seemingly rapid appearance of fossils....Charles Darwin saw it as one of the main objections that could be made against his theory of evolution by natural selection....The long-running puzzlement about the appearance of the Cambrian fauna, seemingly abruptly and from nowhere. Evolutionary speaking, this seems to be quite sudden.
ReplyDelete"I find it highly, highly unlikely" Would you say the sudden appearance of Adam and Eve was AS unlikely as the origin of life? Because that, as you know, was a very unlikely event. But since it only had to happen once we can allow it to be an extremely improbable event, many orders of maginitude more improbable than most people realize. If we give such odds to the origin of life why can't we give similar odds to the existence of Adam and Eve?
Just some food for thought because I DO think.