Is Mankind A Fluke?

[Bear Wild]

I enjoy all the good things science has brought to my table, but it is not my religion. Granted, religions of this world have done some harm in their path, but I award science with the worst possible evil on this planet, 3000+ nuclear warheads sitting on rockets waiting for the order to destroy millions of worlds. If you find my blasphemy disturbing, so be it. Science is nothing more than a tool for good or evil, imo.

No science is a method to understand our world to the best humans can. You confuse technology and science. The worst possible evil on this planed is the human behavior that harms others and the world we live in. Not science.

 

[Valjean]

There is a doctor who hosts the youtube channel 'chubbyemu' who regularly explains medical things. He does one video on a body part called the 'Recurrent laryingeal nerve' which he says is strong evidence for blind evolution. This nerve seems badly designed making a long u-turn in the neck, going all the way down into the chest, around the aorta of the heart, then back up towards the chin again. In Giraffes it can be many meters long. It could be much shorter and do the same job or better.

I don't see such a thing as hard evidence of blind evolution, however at minimum the human body does seem sculpted rather than snapped together. There are many such pieces of evidence besides the recurrent laryingeal nerve which testify to a sculpted human rather than one formed from clay and animated.

There's a lot of such sub-optimal engineering in plants and animals.

Evolution can't make major redesigns or alterations. It has to modify existing architecture. What you end up with is a lot of jerry-rigging and outright Rube Goldbergs; engineering that would get a first year engineering student a failing mark.

This is exactly what you'd expect from evolution, and not at all what you'd expect from an intelligent designer.

 

[Valjean]

Mankind is closer to being fated than being a fluke. Our existence was inevitable through the causal chain of events that have happened. It’s impossible to say whether or not things could have been other than what they actually are. The long process of physical, chemical, biological, neurological, technological, and socio-cultural evolution has brought us to now.

Why was an intelligent, bipedal plains-ape inevitable?
Why did it take so many billions of years for us to appear just a few thousand years ago?

 

[Brickjectivity]

...Evolution can't make major redesigns or alterations. It has to modify existing architecture...

So far and according to the physical evidence that I am aware of and the general consensus of biologists, yes. There could be exceptions. We may encounter some creature that only evolves perfectly. What then? Then your argument becomes "Except for this one creature."

 

[Brickjectivity]

This is exactly what you'd expect from evolution, and not at all what you'd expect from an intelligent designer.

Yes from evolution but also from some designers. It is how designers design things. They never start with nothing. They start with something and make small changes. That's how designing works.

The difference to me is that an intelligent designer might have noticed that the recurrent laryingeal nerve was too long and moved it above the aorta, but maybe as long as it kept working a designer would have left it as it was following the "if its not broken don't fix it" philosophy. Some designers would find this unacceptable but not all.

 

[Valjean]

An engineer can start from scratch, or make major alterations. They can replace a carburetor with fuel injectors, or an engine with electric motors. Nature can't do this, so the changes are often haphazard.

 

[Bear Wild]

So far and according to the physical evidence that I am aware of and the general consensus of biologists, yes. There could be exceptions. We may encounter some creature that only evolves perfectly. What then? Then your argument becomes "Except for this one creature."

With the same logic I might be able to see reindeer pulling a sleigh tonight. That would present a real challenge to evolution theory and the theory of gravity as well as general physics. Until then I will just continue to enjoy the mythology of Santa Claus and Frau Holle (the female Santa Claus version).

Hope you have a happy holiday.

 

[Straw Dog]

Why was an intelligent, bipedal plains-ape inevitable?
Why did it take so many billions of years for us to appear just a few thousand years ago?

I don’t mean inevitable as in being specially important, divinely inspired, or the center of the universe. I just mean the inevitable result of the evolutionary forces that played out in our universe. We can speculate about things having ended up other than what they are, but the fact remains that we are here.

 

[MikeF]

If a tornado set down on a junkyard for millions of years, then?

A 747 doesn't reproduce. No 747 babies. When we are talking about life, we are looking at the odds of life-producing chemical pre-cursors forming, not a human being coming into existence from dirt and water mixed by a tornado.

 

[Thief]

A few million years is very close to the *blink-of-an-eye*, in the grand scheme of the universe.

...After the last white dwarf dwindles into darkness, and the age of suns comes to an end, then the age of black holes will begin, only to fizzle out themselves. And it will be the year 589 million, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion... The time it took the first living thing to evolve into a human, suddenly looks like nothing.

which leans then to the notion.....
the chemistry had some....assistance

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Not only did feathers develop independently in flying dinosaurs, and birds, but Anseriformes and Galliformes also developed feathers with similar patterns independently from one another... This makes little sense as far as selection is concerned. It is surprising.

Evolutionary pathways to convergence in plumage patterns | BMC Evolutionary Biology | Full Text



That's right, you don’t. You may only need multi-faceted intelligence at the micro-level.

Birds are dinosaurs and anseriforms and galliformes are both bird subgroups that share the same common ancestor that developed feathers once.
Your link isn't about the development of feathers but feather color patterns (bars, stripes and spots). And the study certainly does not conclude that the convergence of these pattern development makes no sense through natural selection process, quite the opposite.

Really helps to read the sources you plan on using.

 

[Ponder This]

If a tornado went crashing through a junkyard and left behind a Boeing 747, fully fueled and ready to go, would that be a fluke?

View attachment 46308
pexels.com

fluke: an unlikely chance occurrence, especially a surprising piece of luck

So the tornado leaving behind a ready-to-go Boeing 747 would probably be a fluke.

Probability is like this: statements aren't true or false even if they are 100% probable or 0% probable.
It's just wise to be a bit careful when you argue using probability.

Is mankind a fluke? Sure. Why not?
Probability arguments are like this. Which is why they sometimes don't give us the answers that we think they are giving us.
Cows are a fluke too. And pidgeons. And the entire universe. It's all just an incredibly unlikely event. How do we know? Well... we don't! That's what makes it so incredibly unlikely!
What was the alternative? Possibly there was no alternative.... Or maybe there were infinite alternatives! What do you believe? If deterministic, then it was inevitable. If we don't know how it was done, then it's impossible!

Do Boeing 747's exist? They do! But what are the chances mankind would make a Boeing 747? Almost negligible! So all Boeing 747s must be flukes! Clearly the Eobing DGD was far more likely to occur.
Probability arguments are like this.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

Well, I personally agree with the atheists here. If you ask me personally, I think you are confusing abiogenesis [life arising out of non-life by natural forces] with evolution of living orgasm via natural selection.

I think your analogy is more suited to be analogous to abiogenesis rather than evolution.

Even abiogenesis goes through a non-random selection process. Just a different one. Chains of chemical structures form or break down depending on their environment, the ones more suited to their environmental conditions remain and continued expected chemical change happens as the environment changes.

When you start getting to the point of self-replicating peptides (which grow and replicate but are not living) you even have a basic pseudo-reproductive cycle where certain passed on forms will have better structural integrity and more likely to continue self replication.

Tornado in a junkyard might make more sense if we were talking about going from simple chemicals to a bacteria in one step. But we aren't.

 

[blü 2]

Not sure what this means. You can't argue about 'intelligent design' IMO because you could never define the term.

The argument put at the Dover trial for ID was the purported existence of "irreducible complexity" in nature. Michael Behe defined it as

a single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional . . . Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, then if a biological system cannot be produced gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on.
​

The examples proffered were the bacterial flagellum, the complex biochemical cascade that causes blood clotting, and the immune system.

First, at the trial all these examples were explained by the evolutionary process of exaptation, the employment of an existing feature which had evolved for purpose A so that it became employed for purpose B. An example is the fine bones of the ear, which began as parts of the hinged jaw. Behe had earlier acknowledged his 'irreducible complexity' hypothesis did not take such processes into account and stated his intention to amend it to do so; but he did not achieve this in the four years between his saying so and the trial, and he has not achieved it in the fifteen years since.

Second, it would make no difference had he done so. All he would then have succeeded in doing was to point to problems in the theory of evolution that were presently unsolved. In particular, the existence of such problems would not imply the existence of his "intelligent designer".

 

[Cooky]

Birds are dinosaurs and anseriforms and galliformes are both bird subgroups that share the same common ancestor that developed feathers once.
Your link isn't about the development of feathers but feather color patterns (bars, stripes and spots). And the study certainly does not conclude that the convergence of these pattern development makes no sense through natural selection process, quite the opposite.

Really helps to read the sources you plan on using.

I said "patterns" in my post... You just quoted it.. It's the first word in line 4. There was two different parts to the post, one was about feathers themselves, and then I said "also" before starting in on the feathers being similarly patterned through convergent evolution as described in the link. Also, the first birds did *NOT* have feathers. They were fuzzy... Meanwhile there were dinosaurs who had actual feathers... So feathers developed independently in birds, and are not directly passed on from dinosaurs.

Also, birds are not dinosaurs... Birds are descended from dinosaurs, just like mammals are descended from reptiles.

Meet your ancient ancestors, who are directly descended from reptiles, but also happen to be the first mammals... The Therapsids...

...Birds are no more dinosaurs than mammals are reptiles.

 

[PruePhillip]

The argument put at the Dover trial for ID was the purported existence of "irreducible complexity" in nature. Michael Behe defined it as

a single system which is composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional . . . Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, then if a biological system cannot be produced gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on.
​

The examples proffered were the bacterial flagellum, the complex biochemical cascade that causes blood clotting, and the immune system.

First, at the trial all these examples were explained by the evolutionary process of exaptation, the employment of an existing feature which had evolved for purpose A so that it became employed for purpose B. An example is the fine bones of the ear, which began as parts of the hinged jaw. Behe had earlier acknowledged his 'irreducible complexity' hypothesis did not take such processes into account and stated his intention to amend it to do so; but he did not achieve this in the four years between his saying so and the trial, and he has not achieved it in the fifteen years since.

Second, it would make no difference had he done so. All he would then have succeeded in doing was to point to problems in the theory of evolution that were presently unsolved. In particular, the existence of such problems would not imply the existence of his "intelligent designer".

Oh, okay, thanks.
You could say that the physical variables are "intelligent design"
or that an evolving mutli-verse is "intelligent design"
and so forth.
I don't understand where creationists come from on this - Genesis 1
does not really support them, and it's their primary text.

BTW, Genesis states that the early earth was dark. Just this month
we have the first evidence that earth's atmosphere was similar to
Venus' at one stage.

 

[ADigitalArtist]

I said "patterns" in my post... You just quoted it.. It's the first word in line 4. There was two different parts to the post, one was about feathers themselves, and then I said "also" before starting in on the feathers being similarly patterned through convergent evolution as described in the link. Also, the first birds did *NOT* have feathers. They were fuzzy... Meanwhile there were dinosaurs who had actual feathers... So feathers developed independently in birds, and are not directly passed on from dinosaurs.

Also, birds are not dinosaurs... Birds are descended from dinosaurs, just like mammals are descended from reptiles.

Meet your ancient ancestors, who are directly descended from reptiles, but also happen to be the first mammals... The Therapsids...

View attachment 46335 View attachment 46336

...Birds are no more dinosaurs than mammals are reptiles.

There is a lot wrong with this. Firstly, again, yes, birds are dinosaurs, for the same reason you are a primate.
Are Birds Dinosaurs? | Live Science
Why most scientists think birds are dinosaurs - and you should too | OUPblog
Evolution of Feathers
Secondly, the most basal extant birds are fuzzy, but their common ancestor with the most basal paraaves weren't. Complex feathers rose way high in the dinosaur tree, before the avian line got started.
The blueprints for all feather types already existed before there were birds.

 

[Cooky]

There is a lot wrong with this. Firstly, again, yes, birds are dinosaurs, for the same reason you are a primate.
Are Birds Dinosaurs? | Live Science
Why most scientists think birds are dinosaurs - and you should too | OUPblog
Evolution of Feathers
Secondly, the most basal extant birds are fuzzy, but their common ancestor with the most basal paraaves weren't. Complex feathers rose way high in the dinosaur tree, before the avian line got started.
The blueprints for all feather types already existed before there were birds.

There are 5 classifications of animals:

-Mammals
-Reptiles
-Fish
-Amphibians
-Birds

So to say that a bird is to a dinosaur as a human is to a primate, seems out of order... It would make more logical sense to say that a bird is to a dinosaur as a mammal is to a synapsid.

- Or -

...humans are to synapsids, like chickens are to dinosaurs.

 

[PruePhillip]

There are 5 classifications of animals:

-Mammals
-Reptiles
-Fish
-Amphibians
-Birds

So to say that a bird is to a dinosaur as a human is to a primate, seems out of order... It would make more logical sense to say that a bird is to a dinosaur as a mammal is to a synapsid.

- Or -

...humans are to synapsids, like chickens are to dinosaurs.

Well this five category can't be correct because the avian and non-avian dinosaurs are not in it.
And those flying wonders the pterosaurs are not dinosaurs, and so on, so on.

 

[PruePhillip]

I

...Birds are no more dinosaurs than mammals are reptiles.

Actually, your average chicken is closely related to t-rex.
Birds are the only dinosaurs that survived The Big One, 65 m years ago.