That theory of Evolution
Disclaimer: This is kinda long and I didn't write it. All the same, it is well written and thought provoking...
Just something that struck me last night. It's a curious thing...
What is the catalyst of evolution?
While it is true that there are many things that evolve and change, it is equally as true that many things do not. If an organism can exist long enough to proliferate its species, what in nature would prompt it to evolve into something else?
It just seems to be accepted that evolution is this normal, scientifically viable change that occurs in a species, when it is nothing of the kind. There is no way to explain the actual process that is evolution.
If you want to tell me that a finger evolved on the “hand” of an organism, it’s kind of important for you to be able to say why. You could say, “because the organism needed it to survive-creatures with fingers survived more than those without.” Fine, well and good. I don’t dispute that at all; it makes sense. But what in that organism prompted such a development? Do our cells have minds of their own that are connected to “nature” that say “I’m not doing so hot right now…perhaps if I could gather more cells in a cylindrical shape at the end of this nub, I might have a better chance of survival”?
In other words, where does the wonderful intelligence of evolution come from? If fingers developed out of necessity, it would have to be instantaneous to do any good. If evolution says “I need a finger”, and all it gets in the first try is a stump, what prompts it to keep going? How does it know it’s on the right track? “If I keep going this way, in a couple million years I’ll have what I need!”
Evolution, as described by anyone who talks about it, seems to have a mind of its own. There is an inherent intelligence in the organism that prompts or demands change. And by necessity, that need has to be perfectly communicated to the next generation for it to work. If one generation is inspired by evolution to start growing a limb, that understanding has to be handed down so that the next generation can pick up where the former left off. The DNA has to not only say what the organism is, but what it was working on and what it must become.
All indications would point to a type of chaotic evolution. If you would say that evolution is not intelligent-that it just happens at random and in many different ways to form new and improved species, how can it be so uniformed and resolved in purpose to continue in one vein of evolutionary development?
If you have a ball of clay, you can shape it in countless ways. You can pinch it, twist it, squish it, separate it…the options are endless. I don’t know how “dumb” evolution could be any different. Unless “it” can somehow recognize the need for something in particular within itself, it has to be trial and error. But if that’s the case, how does it know when to stop trying? How does it perceive error?
If some alligators evolve a fifth limb on their backs, and all the alligators with that extra limb die, that only leaves the normal alligators, right? …So why doesn’t the next generation take the same evolutionary tract? How does the “evolution” in the next generation of alligators realize “hey, that whole fifth-limb thing we tried earlier was a failure, lets not do that again!”? And if it is mores subtle (ie just the beginnings of a fifth limb that cause the alligator to die prematurely), why don’t future generations continue to try?
If evolution has no intelligence, how can it know what didn’t work before and never try it again?
The bottom line is that evolution is real, it makes sense, and I think it’s pretty darn cool. But it’s a little too smart for me to just think that it naturally and randomly happens. And if it’s not random, what is dictating the change?
Living is instinct. It’s what an organism does by default. Any organism that does not live by default will die and be no more. So living is necessary for anything to survive. But again, if that species can survive, what prompts it to do better? Even if there is a sudden and severe temperature change in a certain area, what in the local species says “crap! Gotta change or we’re gonna die! Need something to keep warm!” and start the evolutionary process to stay alive? How can a climate change, or any other natural change automatically alter the blueprints (DNA) of a creature so that its offspring begin to develop something the parent did not?
It is this magical catalyst that evolution without intelligence does not explain, and does not attempt to explain. If I put my hand up to a fire, I will pull it away instinctively. That is natural-it just happens. It’s the process of receptors in my hand sending a message to my brain that says “danger, pull back” and then sending that signal to the muscles in my arm for me to pull away.
But there is no message that says “need to change my body so that the fire doesn’t bother me.” What’s more, even if my body were to somehow say that, there’s no way for it to know how to go about doing it, or to pass the message along to my son or daughter to work on it. There is a difference between reaction and evolution that I think gets overlooked. Evolution is not instinct-if it was, we’d have new versions of everything (albeit with small differences) with each new generation. There would be no control in evolution…it would not be dictated by necessity, but rather simply occur because it has to. There is also a difference between evolution and adaptation. My father lived in Alaska for thirteen months, and when he returned to the states he would sweat even in air-conditioned rooms. His body adapted to the cold of Alaska so that he could live there in relative comfort, just like it adapted to a more deciduous climate once he returned. I think the body can adapt, even permanently, to adapt to a change that takes place. That is not evolution.
And for the extremists who believe that we somehow came from apes, the question is why? If apes and monkeys are alive and well today, then obviously there was no need for an evolution to take place. They survived and thrived just as they were. The same can be posed of a fish that supposedly grew four legs and crawled up on land. It doesn’t matter how gradual the changes were, there was no reason for a fish to come up on land, or even attempt to. And even if somehow the fish’s evolutionary angel said “I want you to experience land in addition to just this water” how did it know that four “legs” were necessary? How did it know where to grow them to enable the fish to walk? How did it know which muscles and bones needed to be developed to accommodate an impulse to walk?
It’s clear that neither science nor creationists can really explain the process, but the odd thing is that creationists really don’t have to.
If you have seen Star Wars, you’ve witnessed mind control, levitation, telekinesis, and a variety of other “out of this world” sort of displays. Why? Because of the mysterious Force that exists in the Star Wars universe. It’s a premise you must accept to appreciate and follow the plot. There’s no explanation (except the tragedy that was midichlorians) for the Force, it just is. It enables people to do supernatural things.
But if you took the same things (telekinesis, levitation, mind control, etc..,) and put them in a movie without The Force, you’ve got a humorous if not downright ridiculous flick. How do you explain those things in a world with physical limitations that negate them? Somehow you’d have to fabricate a convoluted story-line that tries to explain how hiccups or jolts in the physical universe allow such things to occur, and those hiccups can be manipulated by certain people.
It’s laughable, but nevertheless, that’s the only way to resolve the issue. The same goes true with creation verses evolution. For those believing in a God, the premise is that He exists, we cannot understand him or comprehend how or truly what He is. He is bigger than proof, and defies our logic. That’s the premise. You can’t use logic because he defies it. Just as Luke could draw his lightsaber to him because of The Force, so too can we exist because of God.
That said, people who believe in a God don’t have to explain or provide evidence because in their world He is beyond comprehension. But those who believe in the extreme version of evolution and/or atheists have to be able to explain how things occur. There is no incomprehensible being-everything must exist in the known physical realm. It must be able to be seen or measured or it does not exist. Their world is ruled by logic, and so logic must validate their position.
The problem is, to this point, there is no logical explanation for the creation of the universe or anything that has happened since. Evolution is just another aspect that defies explanation when you think about how complex it is. There are theories (and remember what constitutes a theory) out there, but most can and have been disproved by science and history. (For example, Darwin said originally there were 15 basic life forms that everything else came from, and that future fossil records would validate that theory. Now, many years later, we have discovered hundreds of fossils that belong to animals that existed at the same time.)
I don’t fully subscribe to evolution, but if it does occur, I think it makes a greater case for intelligent creation. As the old saying goes, “it takes just as much faith to believe there is no God as it does to believe that there is one.”
Just something that struck me last night. It's a curious thing...
What is the catalyst of evolution?
While it is true that there are many things that evolve and change, it is equally as true that many things do not. If an organism can exist long enough to proliferate its species, what in nature would prompt it to evolve into something else?
It just seems to be accepted that evolution is this normal, scientifically viable change that occurs in a species, when it is nothing of the kind. There is no way to explain the actual process that is evolution.
If you want to tell me that a finger evolved on the “hand” of an organism, it’s kind of important for you to be able to say why. You could say, “because the organism needed it to survive-creatures with fingers survived more than those without.” Fine, well and good. I don’t dispute that at all; it makes sense. But what in that organism prompted such a development? Do our cells have minds of their own that are connected to “nature” that say “I’m not doing so hot right now…perhaps if I could gather more cells in a cylindrical shape at the end of this nub, I might have a better chance of survival”?
In other words, where does the wonderful intelligence of evolution come from? If fingers developed out of necessity, it would have to be instantaneous to do any good. If evolution says “I need a finger”, and all it gets in the first try is a stump, what prompts it to keep going? How does it know it’s on the right track? “If I keep going this way, in a couple million years I’ll have what I need!”
Evolution, as described by anyone who talks about it, seems to have a mind of its own. There is an inherent intelligence in the organism that prompts or demands change. And by necessity, that need has to be perfectly communicated to the next generation for it to work. If one generation is inspired by evolution to start growing a limb, that understanding has to be handed down so that the next generation can pick up where the former left off. The DNA has to not only say what the organism is, but what it was working on and what it must become.
All indications would point to a type of chaotic evolution. If you would say that evolution is not intelligent-that it just happens at random and in many different ways to form new and improved species, how can it be so uniformed and resolved in purpose to continue in one vein of evolutionary development?
If you have a ball of clay, you can shape it in countless ways. You can pinch it, twist it, squish it, separate it…the options are endless. I don’t know how “dumb” evolution could be any different. Unless “it” can somehow recognize the need for something in particular within itself, it has to be trial and error. But if that’s the case, how does it know when to stop trying? How does it perceive error?
If some alligators evolve a fifth limb on their backs, and all the alligators with that extra limb die, that only leaves the normal alligators, right? …So why doesn’t the next generation take the same evolutionary tract? How does the “evolution” in the next generation of alligators realize “hey, that whole fifth-limb thing we tried earlier was a failure, lets not do that again!”? And if it is mores subtle (ie just the beginnings of a fifth limb that cause the alligator to die prematurely), why don’t future generations continue to try?
If evolution has no intelligence, how can it know what didn’t work before and never try it again?
The bottom line is that evolution is real, it makes sense, and I think it’s pretty darn cool. But it’s a little too smart for me to just think that it naturally and randomly happens. And if it’s not random, what is dictating the change?
Living is instinct. It’s what an organism does by default. Any organism that does not live by default will die and be no more. So living is necessary for anything to survive. But again, if that species can survive, what prompts it to do better? Even if there is a sudden and severe temperature change in a certain area, what in the local species says “crap! Gotta change or we’re gonna die! Need something to keep warm!” and start the evolutionary process to stay alive? How can a climate change, or any other natural change automatically alter the blueprints (DNA) of a creature so that its offspring begin to develop something the parent did not?
It is this magical catalyst that evolution without intelligence does not explain, and does not attempt to explain. If I put my hand up to a fire, I will pull it away instinctively. That is natural-it just happens. It’s the process of receptors in my hand sending a message to my brain that says “danger, pull back” and then sending that signal to the muscles in my arm for me to pull away.
But there is no message that says “need to change my body so that the fire doesn’t bother me.” What’s more, even if my body were to somehow say that, there’s no way for it to know how to go about doing it, or to pass the message along to my son or daughter to work on it. There is a difference between reaction and evolution that I think gets overlooked. Evolution is not instinct-if it was, we’d have new versions of everything (albeit with small differences) with each new generation. There would be no control in evolution…it would not be dictated by necessity, but rather simply occur because it has to. There is also a difference between evolution and adaptation. My father lived in Alaska for thirteen months, and when he returned to the states he would sweat even in air-conditioned rooms. His body adapted to the cold of Alaska so that he could live there in relative comfort, just like it adapted to a more deciduous climate once he returned. I think the body can adapt, even permanently, to adapt to a change that takes place. That is not evolution.
And for the extremists who believe that we somehow came from apes, the question is why? If apes and monkeys are alive and well today, then obviously there was no need for an evolution to take place. They survived and thrived just as they were. The same can be posed of a fish that supposedly grew four legs and crawled up on land. It doesn’t matter how gradual the changes were, there was no reason for a fish to come up on land, or even attempt to. And even if somehow the fish’s evolutionary angel said “I want you to experience land in addition to just this water” how did it know that four “legs” were necessary? How did it know where to grow them to enable the fish to walk? How did it know which muscles and bones needed to be developed to accommodate an impulse to walk?
It’s clear that neither science nor creationists can really explain the process, but the odd thing is that creationists really don’t have to.
If you have seen Star Wars, you’ve witnessed mind control, levitation, telekinesis, and a variety of other “out of this world” sort of displays. Why? Because of the mysterious Force that exists in the Star Wars universe. It’s a premise you must accept to appreciate and follow the plot. There’s no explanation (except the tragedy that was midichlorians) for the Force, it just is. It enables people to do supernatural things.
But if you took the same things (telekinesis, levitation, mind control, etc..,) and put them in a movie without The Force, you’ve got a humorous if not downright ridiculous flick. How do you explain those things in a world with physical limitations that negate them? Somehow you’d have to fabricate a convoluted story-line that tries to explain how hiccups or jolts in the physical universe allow such things to occur, and those hiccups can be manipulated by certain people.
It’s laughable, but nevertheless, that’s the only way to resolve the issue. The same goes true with creation verses evolution. For those believing in a God, the premise is that He exists, we cannot understand him or comprehend how or truly what He is. He is bigger than proof, and defies our logic. That’s the premise. You can’t use logic because he defies it. Just as Luke could draw his lightsaber to him because of The Force, so too can we exist because of God.
That said, people who believe in a God don’t have to explain or provide evidence because in their world He is beyond comprehension. But those who believe in the extreme version of evolution and/or atheists have to be able to explain how things occur. There is no incomprehensible being-everything must exist in the known physical realm. It must be able to be seen or measured or it does not exist. Their world is ruled by logic, and so logic must validate their position.
The problem is, to this point, there is no logical explanation for the creation of the universe or anything that has happened since. Evolution is just another aspect that defies explanation when you think about how complex it is. There are theories (and remember what constitutes a theory) out there, but most can and have been disproved by science and history. (For example, Darwin said originally there were 15 basic life forms that everything else came from, and that future fossil records would validate that theory. Now, many years later, we have discovered hundreds of fossils that belong to animals that existed at the same time.)
I don’t fully subscribe to evolution, but if it does occur, I think it makes a greater case for intelligent creation. As the old saying goes, “it takes just as much faith to believe there is no God as it does to believe that there is one.”