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

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Tuesday, July 26, 2011, 22:05 (4868 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

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. 
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> >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. 
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> 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.
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> 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.-Tony,-I won't continue this discussion with you because you didn't attack a single example of any of the things I said Natural Selection explains. The Beta-Lactase experiment by itself is a perfect example of a bacteria gaining a completely novel protein by entirely random mutation. (I provided links.)-Evolution is clearly more complex than pure random mutations, I don't argue this, but to say it explains NOTHING borders ignorance. I'm sorry for using such a strong term, but unless you treat the material I provided, I stop here.

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"