Christians prove Evolution.
Offline Isn't it ironic that Christian irrational thinking helps prove man evolved from lower primates and mammals that did not possess the ability for rational thought? That we are genetic cousins of animals that don't posses the ablilty to rationally understand the world.
If all humans were completely rational thinking, we would wonder how this could have occurred. How could nature have created all humans with such a perfect ability of reason. Instead, we can clearly see thanks to our religious 'friends' that rational thinking is still an evolving feature in our species subject to deformity and malfunction, it is not something that is perfectly developed yet.
It's just like the human eye. The fact that so many people have defects, deformities and genetic mutations demonstrates that the eye was not created perfect by a perfect god, but rather it is an evolutionary product by means mutation and natural selection.
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not whether evolution occured. The debate is whether natural selection acted alone to get us where we are today. It is interesting that all people on earth are currently thought to descend from several hundred common ancestors as late as 6000 years ago who survived some extinction event. This provides a reason that our species dominated. Those who have written the bible should not have known about this and yet the bibles timeline for human activity has some credence. Its an interesting coincidence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve
But the real question is not how we evolved. Its more why did we evolve? Could we have just as easily evolved into a much different form with some slight perturbation millions of years ago. Or is there something else about nature that forced us to this form. Are genes programmed to evolve a certain way?
JAB,
Did you even read the misconceptions section of that wikipedia article?
Why we evolve? It is so that we can survive and have another generation. We change over time to better suit our habitat or changing climate. The species that can't adapt go extinct. The ones that do survive-- they pass on those traits to the next generation. Are you expecting something more spiritual or divine?
Remember how you figured out there is no Santa? Well, their god is just like Santa. They just haven’t figured out he’s not real yet.
That's been answered for quite some time, what your asking isnt' why we evolved, but how come this form, which if you follow evolutionary tree, you would see because we come from primates, specifically the great ape side of it all, and not monkey like some dumbass like to say (not saying your a dumbass), as such we evolved different from other great apes because of or due to our brains really. Our evolutionary branch really was the brain. As for the Most Common Recent Ancestor (MCRA) statement, it's not true at all. No extinction event occurred at all 6000 years ago per se, no bottleneck or first few humans or thousand of humans, but that the MRCA of everyone alive today could have co-existed with a large human population, most of whom either have no living descendants today or else are ancestors of a subset of people alive today between 15,000 years ago and 1000 years ago, depending on where you are talking about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_recent_common_ancestor as such there have been other that have left no decendants, either due to warfare, natural disasters, genetic traits (sterile or other) etc, etc, etc. With that said, human gene really goes back 140,000 years ago with the mitochondrial eve and the Y-chromosomal Adam is estimated to have lived around 60,000 years ago. (biblical story got it wrong it was eve first and then adam, but eh really who is actually taking the bible at it's word right?)
I don't think the "real" question is why we evolved. I cannot comprehend that stance... How is that an interesting question?
You are going about it wrong.
The question is "why not?"
Well I was born an original sinner
I was spawned from original sin
And if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done
There'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin
It is not about getting better, it is about getting by to survive another generation. "Better" is not what evolution is about, otherwise humans would be projected to outlast cockroaches.
Along with the adaptation is luck.
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Where did you pull 6000 years from? This is the first I've heard of any such thing happening except from apologist websites who refuse utterly to back up any claims. There is no co-incidence there, just apologists twisting and inventing things for their own desires.
Organised religion is the ultimate form of blasphemy.
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There is no evidence of a catastrophe about 6000 years ago, so they got that wrong.
From Wikipedia:
"Research on many (but not necessarily most) genes find different coalescence points from 2 million years ago to 60,000 years ago when different genes are considered, thus disproving the existence of more recent extreme bottlenecks (i.e. a single breeding pair)."
Even if there had been, there is no reason why that would lead to our "dominance" - reduced genetic diversity from such an event normally tends to reduce the ability of a species to adapt to changes in the environment, or to new geographical regions.
The Genesis story is wildly in conflict with what we now understand about the origin of the earth and life on it, and is therefore very strong evidence against any divine inspiration. It is obviously a rehash of one or more earlier origin stories from other religions.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
the 2 wikis together...the toba catastrophe "Genetic evidence suggests that all humans alive today, despite their apparent variety, are descended from a very small population, perhaps between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs..[.[4][4]
and the MRCA of a possible 6000 bc and got a little overly excited. Since the "real" adam is 60000 years ago, but the biblical adam is 6000 years ago I was wondering if something happened with the dawn of language. I know I'm not going to find any support here but....supposing we do have a soul that previous hominids did not have. Then the biblical adam would be the first man with a soul. (I know thats reaching.) But it is interesting that there are at least 3 words for soul: neshama, rouach, and nephesh. Animals can be soulish (nephesh) but somewhere there seems to be a leap. Adam was the first man with a neshama. The holy spirit gives rouach perhaps. By soul I mean mind mostly. Its difficult to seperate the definitions for soul, spirit, mind, heart...etc because they are overlapping somewhat.
The idea that all living humans descended from a small number of individuals at some point does NOT mean that the actual human population at the time was that small, just that the number whose lines have not left any living descendants was that small, just as the idea of Mitochondrial Eve does NOT mean that there was only one woman alive at the time.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
and when would you say this was?? Would they have been around the same times (in thousands of years)?
The 'Adam and Eve' story is definitely disproved.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
at some point we had to change species to homo sapien sapien. Even though there are lots of homonids up until then. Was that a gradual change or was there a first "man" or "woman" that mated with another hominids and eventually became humans. Technically was there a first man at some point?
Mitochondrial Eve gets her distinction by virtue of having several daughters, who in turn had several daughters, who in turn had several daughters etc......... The preponderence of daughters in her blood line is why her gene is still with us on the female side, this cluster of mitochondrial was not the only one in her day, the others had a preponderence of sons and very few daughters, or no decendents at all. Eve also had a mother, grand-mother great-grand-mother etc......
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
Should I add a caveat; Since the male sperm decides the XX vs. XY chromoson it was not Eve's genetic make up that created 6 billion plus decendents it was merely the luck of the draw. Haveing more daughters then sons was her mate(s) fault not hers.
Eve's tribe would have been no more then twenty-five persons, all ages & sexes. Haveing two or three daughters then three to six granddaughters, then 8 to 10 great grands etc.... would have made a big differnce in her local gene pool. Including neighboring tribes.
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
You would never see the children as appearing to be any more different from their parents than normal. 'Species' is an arbitrary classification to an extent, you can look at a whole line of related individuals, where the ones at each end are clearly quite different, to the extent that we would see them as different 'species' even, but not be able to point to any point along the line where one individual was dramatically different from those on either side, or from their parents or children.
It just requires some generally consistent tendency for those descendants with more of some feature, that significantly increased their chances of surviving to have children themselves, for the process of evolution to occur.
It is not one mating pair that would be a new species, it is a group thing as individuals mate within the group and any genes that ultimately turn out to assist survival spread through the group.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Thanks BobSpence1, noones ever been willing to explain it to me like that...