Science Breakthrough of the Year: Evolution

I also side with this argument. I only get annoyed when "intelligent design" attempts to disprove something that's quite testable and valid. Go a step above that, and you pretty much reach the threshhold of our collective understanding. For now.

And Kevn, I'm really done with that line of reasoning at this point. I've made my case. We'll have to agree to disagree.

Biology, Microbiology, Cellularbiology, DNA are tools of evolutionism? That's funny

Try to explain what the appendix does without evolution. If you're aware of current medical biology you will know that currently it holds excess poisons. But previously it was used to break down ruffage (highly fibrous leafy greens). You also won't find it in creatures that never evolved a need to digest leafy greens in the manner apes do. Evolution tells us that since it was once part of our digestive system, that is why it accumulates poisons (like kidneys currently do) and can be a problem to us in the future. Previous to this tool, the appendix got it's name from people who did not know it's function and assumed it was 'extra' somehow.

So how does ID explain the appendix?

That's fine. My points have been made. I doubt we will ever agree on this issue. Just as I will not agree with certain religions. You hold any beliefs you wish, and I'll do the same. You follow your priests (evolutionists) and believe everything they write in a book. Then tell me how silly I am for accepting the writings of men.

That doesn't answer the question. "Naturally" is a vague and debateable term and belies the question of why? What is causing that to happen in the first place? Where did the set of rules that drive it come from? Jeffrey's answer was much more dead on. When you take a step above evolution, you reach the wall in our understanding. We know what happens, but we do not know why or how - only that it does happen.

"The human appendix—once scorned by evolutionists as a useless ‘vestigial organ’—long ago earned the respect of medical doctors. Unfortunately, this truth has not filtered down to textbooks and the popular press. Just recently, the Associated Press distributed an article to US newspapers on the appendix 1, warning readers that doctors often misdiagnose other ailments as ‘appendicitis’ and opt for removal. (A major study found that 15% of removed appendixes were normal.)

The AP article reinforced the persistent belief that the appendix is a useless organ, leftover from our evolutionary past, by claiming ‘the appendix … has no real function.’

We all might be dead, in fact, if we were born without an appendix.

You see, the appendix is a highly specialized organ with a rich blood supply, not what you would expect from a degenerate, useless structure. It has long been known that the appendix contains lymphatic tissue and has a role in controlling bacteria entering the intestines (see Frederic H. Martini, Fundamentals of Anatomy and Physiology, 1995).

A clue to the appendix’s function is its strategic position where the small bowel meets the colon. The colon is loaded with bacteria that are useful there, but which must be kept away from other areas. The appendix’s main role is likely to be in early childhood (see ‘Your Appendix: It’s there for a reason’). The organ’s highly concentrated lymphoid follicles, which play an important role in the immune system, develop about two weeks after birth—at the same time that the colon begins to be colonized with the necessary bacteria.

At one time evolutionists postulated there were 180 ‘vestigial’ structures in the human body. Today this list has shrunk to virtually zero. No organ should be removed without good reason!

For in-depth information, please read ‘The Human Vermiform Appendix—a General Surgeon’s Reflections.’

Reference
Tanner, L., Study urges appendix caution, Cincinnati Enquirer, 15 July 2002. [RETURN TO TEXT]

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It is interesting to me to watch these arguments, because evolution and intelligent design are not mutually exclusive. A big problem is in the way you are arguing it. A huge difference between the writings on evolution, and religious writings, however, are that evolution is something that can be observed, reproduced, proven. It is a scientific fact that it occurs. You are not taking someone's word on blind faith - you can reproduce the process yourself through scientific testing. The same cannot be said of religion, where much is based simply on the word of others, with no proof - thus faith.

Denying that evolution exists is like trying to deny that DNA exists, or biology - it is futile. Its existence in now way however disproves that it is not brought about by some higher power - that the wonders of evolution, DNA, of life itself were not brought about by something. It is that "something" that crosses into religion, and where people get uncomfortable. You don't have to be religious, however, to believe that there is more to all of this than just chance and circumstance. Even then, however, that does come back to faith in something, as we have no proof of that.

I'm not sure why you quoted an article that neither detracts from what I posted, nor supports ID. If you're good at reading medical terminology, you will also note it says some of what I said as well.

So. How does ID explain the appendix?

Christiano,

I have supported micro-evolution through out. Anything that is tested and verified I have supported.

The changing of an animal into another animal, not a cat to another cat, but like a cat to a monkey. Or from a worm to a frog. We all recognize adaptation and breeding etc, but we have not seen a mutation make new DNA instructions to change an animal into a new animal, or even change it's function. We see no testing of this, and it's really a story of what they say happened long ago.

I posted many quotes from very highly educated people that its not a fact, but rather a religion.

complete fossil records of reptile to bird wasn't enough?

To me, this seems to be akin to asking "Well why, really does 2 + 2 equal 4?". In the very simplest terms, evolution is about taking a random walk in some space of possible "organisms" (or robot walks, or whatever), but where the landscape has dips and valleys, and you're more likely to go downhill than up. And guess what, you end up going downhill most of the time. (It's a bit more nuanced than this, but I don't see any great cosmic mysteries here).

Hmm. Actually, as I'm phrasing it, you could probably set it up as some sort of question about stochastic processes, and prove that things tend to move around in the space of possible organisms towards some attractors. But would that aid our understanding really? It might help a few doubting mathematicians, but I doubt it would make it any more intuitively obvious.

Maybe I'm missing some part of your question. Perhaps if Siro/Jeffrey would elaborate on their answers?

With regard to why 2 + 2 = 4, you might refer folks to Russell and Whitehead's Principia Mathematica, which managed to prove 1 + 1 = 2 after 362 pages.

An excerpt from that page: http://www.idt.mdh.se/~icc/1+1=2.htm

But of course, anyone named Seifert Surface already knows about Principia Mathematica...

To be honest, I don't have any desire to explore the area before it all started, or how that happened or what caused evolution to begin. I was pointing out that at this point it is the realm of metaphysics and largely nonscience. The people who need to elaborate their answers are those who are really trying to pose and answer those questions. I am just allowing that they might indeed pose and seek to answer them.

Well yes, indeed, and (not having read it) I wouldn't imagine that one would read it and come out understanding more clearly why 1+1=2. Or at least feeling that you understood it better.

At some point, trying to "dig below the bedrock" of understanding doesn't work very well. 1+1=2 is at bedrock for me, and maybe if why evolution works isn't quite at bedrock, it's pretty damn close.

If evolution only worked in, say, biological situations, then there would be more to explain, but given that it works in other contexts says to me that its just what happens when you follow those kinds of rules.

With all due respect, I don't follow this school of thought because it's the written word on the page. I follow it because, like Mathematics and Physics, it makes perfect sense in an additive way, is readily testable in the laboratory (which I've witnessed and taken part in from gradeschool through college), and does not rely on "faith" of the written word alone to get the point across.


This is coming from someone that questions the higher schools of Physics for the same reason. Relativity, string theory, black holes, dark matter, et cetera are all amusing what ifs, but we've just begun to scratch the surface on them. I question physicists very often in a similar way I question religion - it's only when I can prove their theorems work that I begin, tenuously, to accept them.


And that, as they say, is that.