Science vs. Religion: (Chapter 4) (Humans)

by Balance_Maintained , U.S.A., Wednesday, July 13, 2011, 20:32 (4677 days ago) @ xeno6696

What I meant by that statement is that saying things like Natural Selection 'explains' why we are here instead of the Neanderthals holds not a stitch of explanatory power. When you make that sweeping statement, you write off any and all valid explanations with this gross oversimplification of the situation. ->Natural Selection explains why we're here and not Neanderthals. It explains how life traveled from single-celled to what we see today. It explains how most people living in Northern Europe are resistant to Bubonic Plague. It explains why you find polar bears in the arctic and not in the sahara. It explains why taking antibiotics too frequently can harm you. (Google mRSA.) It explains how, at least one bacteria was able to eventually eat lactose again after having that part knocked out of its genome. It explains why software projects work better using agile vs. waterfall. -How does NS explain how life traveled from single-celled to what we see today? It doesn't. If it did, there would not be so much contention about it now and we would have been able to test it, repeatedly, in a laboratory in order to prove it. NS doesn't provide a mechanism for it, it doesn't detail a process, it doesn't EXPLAIN anything.-If you and I were in a race, and you won, we could call it 'Natural Selection'. Would it explain the fact that you trained an additional six months, or that on that one day my shoe laces were not tied tightly thus reducing my running efficiency? Does it state that you changed your diet in order to become more efficient at running. No. It says you won. Nothing more, nothing less. In that sense, it holds no explanatory power whatsoever, and that is what I meant by my statement. It is a cop out for biologist who do not understand something. If they can not explain it, they call it natural selection and go on like they made a major contribution to science. If someone comes along and explains what really happened later, they keep it under that same umbrella of NS and so the idea gains more credence though it has done nothing.