The randomness of Evolution

[Graybeard]

Evolution is a powerful surging force within the present cycle of manifested existance.

regards michael.

Michael ... The Randomness of Evolution is a powerful force within the present cycle of Existence.

In Australia we have Rivers that are dry for 99.99% of the time. When a Cyclone manages to cross the Great Dividing Range in Northern Queensland it dumps millions of litres on the far side of the range. This flows down towards the dry Inland Sea (Lake Eyre) through rivers with names like, The Paroo, Coopers Creek and The Diamantina.

The fall of the river beds in these areas can be as low as 10 millimetres every 100 metres. Consequently as these rivers flood they are free to spread and can reach between 30-60klm in width.

With such a low fall rate, a small rock, a tree branch, a dead kangaroo, all of these can easily alter the the course of the headwaters of the approaching flood, and have a direct impact on the course of the river.

I see the Randomness of Evolution in the analogy of these Rivers. Evolution can change its course at the smallest of setbacks or opposition to its flow. It simply goes with the flow. Provided the new 'direction' is a successful selection it will continue on that course, until a better selection reveals itself.

It motions all its charges into fuller and more expansive receptabilty to stimuli and responsiveness.

It dynamically urges its charges to unfold into a more open and vibrant aspect of itself.


regards michael.

In this regard your post is perfect. We see eye to eye in this matter.

cheers ..... greg

[mkirkpatrick]

Absolutely mate,thanks for kind words cobber,theres a cheque on its way to you as I
type?

The randomness as you say mate,the dead roo,and the fallen tree,can and do divert the
flow of the newly formed river,that is indeed random,but back of all that randomness
lies the universal law of evolution,which does embrace randomness in its remit?

Nothing happens or occurs in isolation,and the law of evolution is no exception,until the
time that we as units of consciousness,became self-aware,then another dimension that
although operated automatically previously,before the dawning of self awareness,and
ego-consciousness,we now enter the conscious orbit of Karma,where by an act of will,
we can in effect,cause delay,in the operations of effects,use defience to resist the inner
prompts of conscience,and to bring into our path of evolution negitive shudderings of
unresolved energy pathways.

We need to align ourselves with the flow of expansive energy outworkings,and thereby
limiting the negitive impacts of unwise decisions.

Evolution is to me an outworking of a infolded principle,its purpose seems to indicate a
movement toward a greater abilty to respond to stimuli,and to unfold toward a goal of
eventual self-consciousness?This is I believe the reason for this relentlessness in pressure
to promote the unfolding sequence until it achieves self awareness,up until this time,the whole process has been automatic,although randomness seems a permissible extension?

When self awareness is achieved,although the process remains somewhat automatic.we
can and do make an impression upon the unfolding sequence,by the nature of our conscious will,and also by our ability to "resist" the pressure of change?

Universal evolution,all is outrolling toward a far distant goal,when realisation creates a quantum jump in conscious awareness,so that the eventual goal of man is beyond his
imagination at this present moment.

This great law holds us all firmily within its grasp,releasing us enough to function and exorcise our "free" will,as we evolve we grow in understanding,and recognise that there is
an intelligence behind it all.

[mkirkpatrick]

Greg this thread of yours needs attention,while you ponder your reply,I will say this,we as
human beings are in a unique position as to the unfolding sequence of evolution,in that
we are aware of the process taking shape,can indeed reflect on this fact,and also because we are self aware,actually influence whats happening!


mtf.



regards michael.

[Belgium101]

Randomness is the problem with evolution. Yes, the process of DNA mutations over billions of years has created a human on Planet Earth. But I believe it NOT was a random event. Of course not. Two things to live by come from excepting genetics and creator simultaineously, know that the universe is unfolding as it should, or we might not be here, and know that the one who controls this unfolding is NEVER RANDOM!

[Graybeard]

Randomness is the problem with evolution.
.........................
and know that the one who controls this unfolding is NEVER RANDOM!

Hmmmmm ........ this is a very old thread you've jumped into here.

Can't quite match your profile to your User name ... ??

Welcome to the forum Belgium101.

Firstly, I don't think you have read the entire thread.

Secondly, your profile says you have a thirst for knowledge. But your quote above gives no indication of it, more like you have a thirst for teaching. You tell me to 'KNOW' this, and 'NEVER' that

Thirdly, you provide no proof, no backing evidence, just a statement of your personal opinion ....

Hardly the behaviour of a Guest entering the Host's house for the first time, regardless of beliefs ... Where are your manners ??

See to it buddy ... cool bananas ... greg

[Belgium101]

I apologize for speaking upon unheard ears. Greybeard, my beliefs are simple and they allow for a simple understanding of events that surround my life and those who I encounter,especially the event of evolution. I imagine life with faith, impossible to live faithfully, unless you except that everything happens for a reason. Don't worry your knowledge impeded within this thread will be noted.
Thank You and God Bless,
Rich A Nelson

[Graybeard]

I apologize for speaking upon unheard ears.

Don't worry your knowledge impeded within this thread will be noted.

Not sure exactly what you mean by this ... but I'll take it the best way possible.

I do understand that you're opinion is that things happen for a reason.

So do you believe in a creator, or do you support Intelligent Design. Do you wish to discuss this ... or were you just flying by on the wings of passage ?

Your more than welcome to state your views and receive a good hearing. I am quite willing to discuss and accept that we may not reach a common point of agreement.

over to you ...

cool bananas ... greg

[Belgium101]

It can only be taken in the best possible way! All unheard ears means is that we did not have a common line of hearing, or that we did not see eye to eye. Personally I have the tendency to do this, even if I agree with someone, devil in me I guess. Back to evolutions of things. I believe that what we have stumbled upon with the discovery to evolution by natural selection, is an intelligent design break through. "The randomness of evolution" of living things has a mechanism, and a fine machine it is DNA. SO now it is time to locate the other machines of nature!

[austintorn@aol.com]

Of Figmentations

While roaming the imagination, I approached a semitransparent theistic-looking Embellishment who was holding out an eyeball in His hand for me to take note of.

It proclaimed, “I am the God of Intelligent Design. I was discerned when the Creationists noted an inexplicable complexity in Nature and so promulgated the theory that Nature must have a Grand Designer, for how could it have come about merely by chance?”

I replied, “You’re right about chance, but wrong about chance, for very little greatness, if any, comes about by mere chance, especially not some giant leap in one bound up the sheer cliff side of Richard Dawkins’ Mt. Improbable—to find on top the great complexity of something like the eye that you show; however, it is an error to suppose that Chance is the alternative to Intelligent Design. Natural Selection is the means of your Design; it, unlike a one-shot chance, is a cumulative effect that winds and climbs slowly and gently around the other side of Mt, Improbable to eventually arrive at the great height of complexity from which we can view the beautiful sights through the eye.”

“But the widespread Watchtower publications always say that biological designs were created by Me instead of by chance! Just look at these eyeballs and the optic system hanging behind them! How could that come about by chance?”

“You, like your followers, may listen, but do not hear. IDers deceive by this approach, whether they mean to or not. Chance is not the opposite of Nature’s design; the Evolution of the Species through gradual Natural Selection is the path to complexity. A flatworm has an optical system that only senses light and dark, but it sees no image; Nautilus has a ‘pinhole camera’ eye about as good as half a human eye, that sees but very blurry shapes; these are examples of vision at intermediate stages. ‘Rome’ can not be built in a day by chance—chance is not a likely designer at all! Really now, could a 747 be assembled by a hurricane blowing through Boeing’s warehouse of complete parts?”

“No, quite unlikely—that’s why we misleadingly use this 747 argument as a contrast to ID. So, then, Chance and Intelligent Design are not the two candidate solutions to the riddle posed by the Improbable? It’s not like a jackpot or nothing?”

“Your ID ideas persist, as all repetitions do, but, again, Chance, for one, is not a solution to the highly improbable Nature, and no sane anti-creationist or scientist ever said that it was. Intelligent Design is not a solution either—because it raises a bigger question than it solves, as You will see in a short while.”

“I’ll be darned. Natural selection is a good answer; it is a long and summative process, one which breaks the problem of improbability into small pieces, each of which is only slightly improbable, but not prohibitively so—the product of all of which would be far beyond the reach of chance. The Creationists have been looking only at the end product, thinking it a single event, not even understanding the power of accumulation. They didn’t know much else, not having any other ideas at all, so they outright claimed that God did it, namely Me.”

“You see the light of the accumulative power and elegance of Evolution.”

“But what is to become of Me? I only “exist” through the speculations of these Creationists. In fact, the improbability of Me is so HIGH, so much more so, compared to that of “simple” Nature, that My origin…”

“…is a near-infinitely LARGER problem for the Creationists, the kind that they love to hate, that is, You can therefore only be explained by a higher Intelligent Designer. Far from terminating the regress, You’ve aggravated it with a vengeance that is way beyond repair—as beyond as could ever be yonder of!”

With that, the poor Guy faded toward oblivion, which, remarkably, which was the very place I was visiting, and thus he soon reappeared, but in another guise:

“Hello, Austin, I am the God of Irreducible Complexity.”

“That you are—and so it shall become your downfall.”

“Eh?”

“Your believers have given You new clothes: Intelligent Design is falsely based on Irreducible Complexity now—I recognize You as the God of ID.”

“That I am is what I really am now.”

“Well, Darwin said long ago that his theory would break down if Irreducible Complexity were shown to be true, and, yet, no proposal or test has ever stood up to analysis.”

“Yet, here I am, alive by mere possibility, Myself indeed irreducibly complex—the be all and end all—the Prime Maker. I keep tabs on every form and particle of the Universe and its constituents that I designed. Simple I am NOT. Yes, I am an extremely complex system, yet I have no parts, for then My parts would be even more absolute than Me!”

“If you existed you would surely be very very very complex, and irreducibly so…”

“…so…”

“…so, by the Creationist Theory, You cannot be explained except by a larger ID.”

“I’m falling…”

“…into the hole that they dug for you.”


Yet another Theity appeared. “I am the God of the Gaps. I Myself personally fill all the gaps in present-day knowledge or understanding, albeit a large and unwarranted assumption, but I do fill all—through the fiat of the Creationist’s endorsement.”

“These gaps shrink as science advances.”

“And so there is less and less for Me to do.”

“What worries me is not that you may be eventually laid off, but that Religion thinks it is a virtue to be satisfied with not understanding enigmas; scientists exult in mystery—it drives them onward.”

“Yes, but My believers exult in mystery remaining as mystery, and so they go no further, but, it keeps Me going. They worship these gaps as Me.”

“With no justification?”

“We have a ‘get out of jail free’ card; we have immunity to the rigorous proofs of science; we just claim things by their say so. All must respect that.”

“Then You lead a charmed life. You seek ignorance in order to claim victory by default; You’re like a weed thriving in the gaps of science’s fertile fields. Scientists rejoice in (temporary) uncertainty, whereas You halt all inquiry. You are the same God of Intelligent Design by a more desperate nom de plume.”

“I repeat that I intervene to fill the evolutionary gaps.”

“We researchers fill gaps in the fossil record.”

“Now there are twice as many gaps.”

“I’d laugh, but I know You’re not joking.”

“No joke. Lack of complete documentation of Evolution means that I helped it along.”

“This is not a good default stance. So, do we let criminals go because we don’t have a video of their every intermediate foot step to and from the event?”

“No, of course not, but We are a precariously perched theory. Also, you made a typo—it’s a God default stance, certified by nothing more than proclamation and our bull of decree.”

“An edict, huh. It was also once avowed that evil spirits, those that You Yourself allowed to exist, produced physical illnesses, but, thank God—just an old saying—that scientists persevered, and still do, in finding out about the immune system—our defense against the non evil spirits of germs, viruses, and bacteria.”

“Yes, that claim was dead wrong, but evil spirits still cause the nonphysical mental ills that are called sins and bad thoughts, crimes even.”

“Still trying to halt scientific inquiry, I see. Mental lapses called sins or crimes stem from wrong learning and/or low serotonin, not to mention differences in culture such as religion that people think undermines their own belief’s credibility.”

“Okay, I give up. Go on with your work to discover important truths about reality, but some fossils are missing.”

“Only a tiny fraction of corpses fossilize; however, not a single fossil has shown up in the wrong geological stratum.”

“Sad, but true, but I’d love to find a fossil rabbit in the Precambrian.”

“Dream on. Lazy reasoning is all that’s behind the declarations of irreducible complexity.”

“Yes, but this ignorance of the possible steps of Nature has begotten Me.”

“And has just as soon forgotten You, in truth, but for the forever delusioned creatures who sustain your near-being.”

“Wait, what about an arch of bricks? Pull one away and the arch falls apart—it cannot survive the subtraction of a part, so, how, then, was it built in the first place?”

“Scaffolding, the same as has been seen in Evolution.”

With that, the Gap God fell apart and nearly evaporated to become a discontinuity Himself, but the Creationists held Him together with their gullibility for this penultimate nonsense that preceded their last ditch effort.
(continued in next post)

[austintorn@aol.com]

Another God appeared, a mere Deity (no intervention possible), and said, “Forget those Theities. I am the God of Evolution. It was I that set Evolution in motion—that was just My elegant way of possibly creating some kind of life.”

“I thought You were all powerful—why not just make 20-40 million species all fully formed, along with their natural habitats, like most Gods do? What energy loss could that be to You.”

“None, but Evolution is a too stable for some Creationists to scoff at, so they have assigned Me as Nature’s Instigator. I am not a Theity and I must remain aloof. Of course now I have very little to do and so I am not much needed, for I can’t even muddle with their lives. I might really just as well retire, for I am superfluous.”

“At least You’re still kind of near to our Universe, not completely outside it, where I suppose your successor will have to be placed. At least You made some basic primordial stuff and foresaw all the billion years of combinatorial results, predicting every turn, or at least knowing that something alive might probably come out of it, which was still quite a feat.”

“Thank you, but it was nothing.”

“On the contrary—You’re the Scientist, an Engineer Par Excellance—the Ultimate Inventor of All Time—much better than than the old God of ID.”

“Yes, I am a Scientist and all that—I HAD to be, but it was no big deal.”

“You’re too modest.”

“It was just a little quark and an electron and some forces.”

“But look what became of it—astounding complexity through stages from simplicity itself, although exactly the same as evolution could have done, given billions of years. We’ve traced the composites back to simple substances.”

“Well, um, it did really take that long for My design, too; however, I guess I’m just as surprised that, when when some people examine substance and get down to these simple subatomic levels of unadorned things, they then take a giant leap back to the composite complexity of Me. Isn’t complexity a much higher product of combination upon combination, and thus not lower than simplicity itself?”

“Yes, it would seem so. Then I suppose You’re some Great Alien Scientist highly evolved from somewhere else, but not really God.”

“True. You, as a scientist, should seek what underlies all, not what oversees all, for there is none.”

“Wise thoughts. Well, whatever on the Alien thing, but the Creationists are not at all keen on scientists, for scientists regard the honest seeking after truth as a supreme virtue. If they ever found out…”

“They know not what they have made Me. As a Scientist Myself, I truly value honest skepticism over the dishonestly faked belief of theirs.”

“The Founding Fathers of America liked You, although more than a few of them, like Thomas Jefferson, were atheists, for You just started things up and couldn’t interfere.”

“Funny how President Bush’s America has strayed so oppositely from its humble beginnings.”

“Not to mention that the rest of the world’s peoples, as well, are squandering their precious time worshiping a Theity, sacrificing to Him, begging, fighting, and dying for Him, threatening the world with atomic destruction.”

“What a waste.”

“Are you real?”

“No, but some like Me.”

“So, what’s really fundamental?”

“The fundamentals just below what you call ‘fundamentals’ have always existed, as you will discover some day.”

“There’s perhaps no time of ‘forever’ at that level for Your ‘always’.”

“True, they just are, and had to be, for a state of nothing is quite impossible.”