Darwinism is an interesting religion......

One of my favorites.

I used to be ''true believer". No really. I thought it was science. You know the pursuit of reality. What is. What was. How come. Stuff that is necessary for us to understand the world outside our skulls.

After a long time, say 30 years or so, i find more "true believers" simply prattle . Such as we know Darwin was correct because, well, everyone we know says so.

Or I read  it in school and they wouldn't teach it if it wasn't true. After all it's called science.

(How many angels can dance on the head of a pin was a valid debate at one time in Harvard).

Any ways, it's not politically correct to question it. Or global warming either for that matter.

However, since we are not fanatics or scholars let's do so and see where it leads.

A caveat is necessary: Evolution could be Gospel. But, let us not forget, Gospel is a faith.

But it could be true. Even if it's not in the bible. Heh heh.

 Darwin postulated that we start out as simple one cell organism and progressively changed over time until we get to where we are now.


Here's my problem with this particular faith:

It's my understanding that I was born because my mother didn't bleed to death during her prenatal lifetime (No rocket science here).

To be more specific, she lived through her menstrual cycle like all women before her.

How did women come up with that little miracle?

I guess they are the superior species.

To "evolve" from a one cell animal without bleeding to death before discovering blood clotting is, well, a miracle.

Ain't that old time religion wonderful!!

Oh well......

Thinking in Darwinian Lockstep by Fred Reed

A few questions:

It is asserted, though not demonstrated, that point mutations caused by, say, cosmic rays sometimes give an animal a slight advantage over others of its species, and that these advantages accumulate over countless generations and lead to major changes. Demonstrable fact, or plausible conjecture? I note that metaphysical plausibility often substitutes for evidence in matters evolutionary. The approach ignores hard questions, such as whether tiny advantages, if engendered at all, rise above the noise level, or what that level might be.

At any rate, the idea is that slight selective pressure (operational definition, please? Units?) over enough time produces major changes. The idea is appealingly plausible. But, for example:

(1) A fair number of people are deathly allergic to bee stings, going into anaphylactic shock and dying. In any but a protected urban setting, children are virtually certain to be stung many times before reaching puberty. Assured death before reproduction would seem a robust variety of selective pressure.

Yet the allergic haven’t been eliminated from the population. Why is it that miniscule, unobserved mutations over vast stretches of time can produce major changes, while an extraordinarily powerful, observable selective pressure doesn’t? The same reasoning applies to a long list of genetic diseases that kill children before they reach adulthood. (Yes, I too can imagine plausible explanations. Plausibility isn’t evidence.)

(2) Homosexuality in males works strongly against reproduction. Why have the genetic traits predisposing to homosexuality not been eliminated long ago?

(3) Pain serves to warn an animal that it is being injured, or to make it favor, say, a wounded leg so that it can heal. Fair enough. But then why did we evolve the nerves that produce the agony of kidney stones – about which an animal can do absolutely nothing?

(4) There are at least two ways in which a species might change over time. One is the (postulated) accumulation over very long periods of mutations. Maybe.

The other is the concentration of existing traits by selective breeding, which is nothing but deliberate natural selection. The latter is demonstrable, and can happen within a few generations. If a breed of dog has weak hips, for example, the defect can be rectified by interbreeding those with better hips until good hips become the norm. About this there is no doubt. If natural selection occurs as advertised, this is where we would expect to see it.