Willful Ignorance of Evolution?

[_dartagnan]

Seriously, have you read anything about evolution?

I have heard assertions but nothing that sounds remotely plausible. From what I can tell it seems to be mostly a circular argument that takes evolution for granted, and then assumes this must account for the existence of life in all its varieties.

But the issue is the ignorance of evolution and whether or not it is understandable or "willful" as Schmo asserts. I think it is telling that so far two hard hitting proponents have disagreed with each other in this thread (Schmo says it is ignorance to say humans evolved from apes, whereas EAllusion says that it is a fair and accurate statement), and then Tarski proposed to answer something the dude said couldn't be answered because it was a non sequitur - so far I am in the middle of an analogy that is put on hold until step two finds its way into the thread. Now you're responding to a sincere question with a question.

If the answer is so readily available and obvious, why does it feel like I'm pulling teeth here?

[_EAllusion]

I'll clarify further on the first point:

People opposed to evolution often will complain that they did not evolve from a "monkey" or "ape." Often they mean they did not evolve from Bonobos, Chimpanzees, Gorillas,Spider Monkeys etc. This is a fundamental misunderstanding, as it's not likely that these primates are direct ancestor populations of humans and no one really thinks otherwise. That "Our Father" jab in that Chick Tract is just plain off. What is true is that we share a common ancestor. We are close branches on the evolutionary tree. It has become cliché' to say this in response to antievolution types when they talk about "comin' from apes". For some of the more lightly educated defenders of evolution it stops at that handy phrase. I was just going one step further and pointing out that our shared common ancestor likely would be called an "ape" as we use that term in common parlance.

On the second point, I think you first have to understand how it makes sense for a subpopulation of organisms to evolve into a new species while other organisms in that population remain of the old species. Once you get there, your personal incredulity over the evolution of humans from other primate populations can be addressed. But first, I think you need to see the error of the, "If we evolved from apes, how come there are still apes?" argument.

[Guest]

The Dude called your question a nonsequiter because while nothing necessarily prevented population X evolving along with Y's into Y, it's not as though something needs to prevent this from happening in order for it not to happen. Your question implied some weird inevitability that is confusing. It's as if you think apes will evolve into humans unless something stops them. There were just differences in circumstances that affected subgroups within the population. On a further point, he could also note that it would be very hard to know the exact differences in environmental/hereditary circumstances that led to divergent populations in this case in the kind of detail that question implies.

Tarski, taking a different route, attempted to explain to you population splitting and evolutionary relationships.

They aren't mutually inconsistent replies. They're different ways of attempting to penetrate your fog of confusion.

[_Moniker]

About evolving from apes. It's been my experience that those that say this are saying humans evolved from the MODERN ape -- that is certainly not true. That the modern ape and humans share a common ancestor that is ape-like is completely different than what they are implying with their statements, in my experience.

[_bcspace]

Uh, polyploid speciation occurs with some frequency in plants. That can be drastic and within a generation or two.

Cool. That would go towards countering the antievolutionary argument about species arising suddenly. Either way, it's a win win for the Church and for evolution. The real question is do you have something on the order of cows turning into whales in just a few generations?

[_Moniker]

Apes didn't stay the same.

How do we know?

And if apes and humans all come from the same source, what prevented the current species of apes from evolving into humans? I'm trying to understand the logic here.

A highschool student from Arkansas had this same question!

http://www.thetech.org/genetics/ask.php?id=150

[_dartagnan]

What is true is that we share a common ancestor.

Which is, what exactly?
And we know this, how exactly?

On the second point, I think you first have to understand how it makes sense for a subpopulation of organisms to evolve into a new species while other organisms in that population remain of the old species.

I'm still not seeing how this answers my question. Pointing out my failure to understand what has yet to be explained, isn't really helping anyone here.

Once you get there, your personal incredulity over the evolution of humans from other primate populations can be addressed

This is where the rubber meets the road, so I'd like it if someone would address it now. I understand how natural selection and adaptation work. What I do not understand is how this can in any way explain why humans evolved into what they are today while their ancestors took a different genetic path. Most Natural Selection articles I have read offer easy to believe examples, like green beetles going exinct because they were the wrong color and birds liked them, or adaptation as survival mechanisms such as camoflauge. I get all of that.

What I don't get is how any of this explains the more complex scenarios. Like why humans gradually lost the monkey shaped facial features (is there a plausible explanation as to why humans could have survived better with less hair, blonde hair or blue eyes?) most of their body hair (what possible purpose did that serve?) most of their physical strength (seems to go against the entire idea of survival), their posture (did monkeys originally live in small caves that required them to hunch low? Did their future generations eventually leave the caves, leading to their upright posture?), etc. Saying it is about ecological pressures just seems like an easy way of bypassing a serious question that demands a serious and specific answer. There are clearly some well educated posters on this thread who have read extensively on this subject. Is this really the best answer available?

But first, I think you need to see the error of the, "If we evolved from apes, how come there are still apes?" argument.

It isn't an argument. It was a simple question. I'm not having much luck here getting answers to direct questions.

The Dude called your question a nonsequiter because while nothing necessarily prevented population X evolving along with Y's into Y, it's not as though something needs to prevent this from happening in order for it not to happen.

I didn't say it was needed. But clearly the evolutionary logic here is that those who evolved into humans were exposed to something that the rest were not. I used "prevent" in the sense that something prevented that exposure. I think Tarski better understood what I was getting at while Dude did not, and read too much into it.

Your question implied some weird inevitability that is confusing. It's as if you think apes will evolve into humans unless something stops them.

No, that is not my argument. You're saying ecological pressures causes apes to evolve into humans. I'm simply saying this would be more believable if you could at least provide some plausible exmaples of such ecological pressures. Also, the fact that an evolutionist has to appeal to the magic of large numbers, doesn't invoke much confidence either. Meaning, you cannot show by way of proof that this is how humans evolved. It is just assumed that given enough time (say tens of thousands of years) that this is the kind of mutation/evolution that would occur.

On a further point, he could also note that it would be very hard to know the exact differences in environmental/hereditary circumstances that led to divergent populations in this case in the kind of detail that question implies.

Yes, of course. Which is a hole for the evolutionary argument since it relies on an explanation of ecological factors that it simply assumes, while not being able to illustrate any.

Tarski, taking a different route, attempted to explain to you population splitting and evolutionary relationships.

He did? So far we are stuck in step one of three. I'm an ant left dangling on a giant tree stuck between two smothering clouds of fog.

They're different ways of attempting to penetrate your fog of confusion.

My confusion would be better lifted if answers would follow questions instead of psychoanysis of my "incredulity" and ignorance.

[_Tarski]

If you've got steps, I'm willing to hear you out.

Thankyou.

I can picture it.

Good. I have no way of knowing if you have the correct picture but lets go.

But I sense you're doing what some have already started doing.

No way, I haven't mentioned religion and I may not need to.

Just stay with me.

The picture takes time as the upward direction. This is standard space-time visualization. Is is extremely simplified just to make some philosophical points. That needs to be clear.
In the analogy, only what is at a certain altitude is visible. That is the present. But the horizontal 2-dimensional plane is not supposed to be space literally. It is to stand in for the extremely high dimensional space of all possible instruction sets or if you like to the body plans which are the expression of those genes. There is much unused space for two reasons. 1) Most instructions sets are nonsense. 2) Not all possible viable instruction sets are actually extant. I have added in the idea of the branched having differently shaped cross sections as an extra aid to imagination but it is really the position in this large space of possibilities)

Now, since each little island appears unique and of lower dimension than it real is (indeed it is unique at that altitude---(read: point in history))) and humans be as they are, these shapes become familiar and are part of what we expect to see in the world. We categorize and try to pigeon hole the world naturally. We all do it.
These shapes may even seem inevitable, essential or even eternal like numbers or geometric shapes. They do seem unchanging. That’s an elephant shape, that’s a cat, that’s a chicken etc.)

Now imagine that if someone comes along and says that there is a branching structure and that if we could lower the plane of visibility (move backwards in time) we would see these shapes change (and their locations is shape space) move around. But every now and then they come together as we move back in time (downward in the picture). That’s because of the branching.
Now our own little shape is our won and so it the point of reference. We seem so special and familair, we seem beautiful to ourselves.
A Rat Terrier is more different from a Great Dane than any human is in appearance from an ape. But to us it seems a large difference.
Sufficiently different primates always seem ape-ish. It’s a prejudice on our part but perhaps a good one (perhaps it would be bad for our health and solidarity if we tried to mate with them)

Now back to the analogy.
As we move back we see that our shape has a history and there was a branching event. Was there a first human or first primate on our branch? No! Not if you look at the tiny scale. At the small time scale all sorts of details appear and it is hard to say what was the first instance representing that branch. The branch itself is a fuzzy mess if we include individuals in the picture rather than just types of individuals

But at that point the shapes would have looked ape-like to us and to any other modern primate would have looked just as strange. But we group all these as ape-like by habit of thought. To us they all look pretty nonhuman.

Moving down further we see lots of these branching points.

Now come back up to the present. Would you look at another branch, say that of a modern ape, and ask why doesn't that branch turn into this branch? Huh? Now that doesn't even make sense. Why would the branches, free to meander under the pressure of natural selection, meandering through a space of unimaginable dimensions somehow come to the same point in "shape space"? Even for a tree where there are only two dimensions at each level, you almost never (or never) see branches coming together to make one branch. Even if it happened it would happen at another location in shape-space so that So to ask why apes don’t evolve into humans is like the above backward branching coincidence. Could they come together again? Why would they, there is an infinity of things to evolve toward and in the mean time we are evolving too.

So when we view evolutions as a branching in a space of possible body plans of extremely high dimension then there is no reason to think that the human form is inevitable or to expect other primates to be funneled toward that body plan. In fact, it is essentially impossible for probablistic reasons (unless thereare what we marthematiciansd would call unexpected attractors)

Evolution is not a line of body shapes marching forward, it is a highly complex branching process through a high dimensional set of possibilities. So very complex it could not really be pictured in detail.
Now for the religion:

The tree of life turns out to be far more glorious and numinous that one might have thought. So rejoice with other Christian biologists like Ken Miller.

[Guest]

Seriously, have you read anything about evolution?

But the issue is the ignorance of evolution and whether or not it is understandable or "willful" as Schmo asserts. I think it is telling that so far two hard hitting proponents have disagreed with each other in this thread (Schmo says it is ignorance to say humans evolved from apes, whereas EAllusion says that it is a fair and accurate statement),

Humans evolving from the MODERN ape is not the same as saying we share a common ancestor with the MODERN ape. EAllusion was not completely disagreeing with Schmo -- he was just attempting to give some more detail... which, in all actuality probably confused the situation. I think, when dealing with those, that state simple myths (such as descending from the MODERN ape -- which is OFTEN stated) it is critical to point out how this is just not so. Then one can elaborate from there...

Do you believe that evolutionary theory suggests we somehow evolved from the MODERN ape, dart? I take all of your comments together to suggest that you do so. EAllusion was attempting to flex his evolutionary theory mighty muscles and go into depth...

[_Moniker]

As I understand it, natural selection is when favorable herditary traits become more dominant and unfavorable ones are gradually dropped. It seems unlikely that this process could happen without some kind of goal in mind, specifically survival. Adaptaion explains why some species can camoflauge themselves naturally.

The hereditary traits are passed on from those that survive -- they can't WILL themselves to adapt and survive. Unfavorable traits aren't just dropped by a population through will power! :) Those with certain traits that make survival less likely don't pass on their genes since there are less of them to do so because they are NOT surviving! They don't survive = don't pass on these genes.

You talk about camouflage-- a certain type of beetles may start out with some green beetles in their population and some black beetles in their population -- those that are less likely to be eaten by predators (perhaps the green beetles are not easy to spot against the backdrop of leaves) will pass on the trait of green to offspring 'cause they are still living! The black beetles are being gobbled up by birds and they are not camouflaged and do not pass on the black trait since they're dying in record numbers. :)

The green beetles are surviving in higher numbers and pass on the green trait 'cause they are NOT being eaten -- so this isn't themselves WILLING themselves to adapt (camouflage) and not be eaten -- it just occurs 'cause they happen to survive. I hope that makes sense....