Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Humans were never perfectly in synch with our environment?

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No, says Dr. Marlene Zuk, professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, College of Biological Sciences, University of Minnesota:

Today, it seems everyone is fond of paleofantasies, stories about how humans lived eons ago, and we use them to explain why many elements of our lives, from the food we eat to the way we raise our children, seem distant from what nature intended. One need only look at the self-help industry’s output of books predicated on the notion that our behavior and bodies evolved under a certain set of circumstances—circumstances from which we deviate at our peril. Implicit in this idea is the assumption that we are no longer evolving, or at the very least, that evolution requires so much time that we can’t expect to have adapted to our current circumstances.

But popular theories about how our ancestors lived—and why we should emulate them—are often based on speculation, not scientific evidence, and they reflect a basic misunderstanding about how evolution works. “In fact,” says biologist Dr. Marlene Zuk, “there was never a time when everything about us—our bodies, our minds, and our behavior—was perfectly in synch with the environment.”

Gosh. Just think what that means, taken seriously.

(I’m not claiming Dr. Zuk takes it seriously. Maybe she does, but I am not claiming that. Girl needs her job.)

It certainly means that we humans must have some other dimension to ourselves than just nature.

I can assure you that the chipmunks, squirrels, ravens, jays, and Canada geese in my neighbourhood are perfectly in synch with their environment. And would be whether humans ever existed here or not.

She is actually saying that the philosophers are right (how shall we then live?), but wisely daren’t admit it in so many words.

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Comments
Things change. Change never ceases. Evolution is change. Evolution never ceases. Evolution is change. Change is evolution. IDiots.Mung
November 18, 2014
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Evolution never stops, certainly not for humans. No organism can be completely in sync with its environment because the environment constantly changes. Direct observation of natural selection in the wild support this notion of constant evolution in response to evolutionary change.Zachriel
November 15, 2014
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Bornagain77, I could not agree more. To me the scary thing is that there might be strategies that think we should break the fitness of bacteria to save lifes. That might just be the way we end all life at our own hands. We need to get the paradigm fixed and fast... If there is too much at stake for the metaphysics of materialists to get to design, then at least call it "built in genetic engineering" and admit that we are simply reverse engineering and find the reason why good bactaria go rough. That is useful science.mullerpr
November 14, 2014
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mullerpr, in your linked video, he basically takes bad analogy to a whole new level. According to him, antibiotic resistant bacteria are the cheetahs of evolution and we are like the gazelles. But if he were to take that analogy out to its full logical extent, instead of just using it for a scare tactic, he would realize that, due to the extreme disparity in reproductive rates, that, evolutionarily speaking, bacteria are indeed like cheetahs, but we are more like stationary stacks of prime rib steak, just sitting there on the savanna waiting to be eaten. In other words, if evolution were actually the truth about how all life came to be on Earth then the only 'life' that would be around would be extremely small organisms with the highest replication rate, and with the most mutational firepower, since only they would be the fittest to survive in the dog eat dog world where blind pitiless evolution rules and only the 'fittest' are allowed to survive. The logic of this is nicely summed up here:
Richard Dawkins interview with a 'Darwinian' physician goes off track - video Excerpt: "I am amazed, Richard, that what we call metazoans, multi-celled organisms, have actually been able to evolve, and the reason [for amazement] is that bacteria and viruses replicate so quickly -- a few hours sometimes, they can reproduce themselves -- that they can evolve very, very quickly. And we're stuck with twenty years at least between generations. How is it that we resist infection when they can evolve so quickly to find ways around our defenses?" http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/07/video_to_dawkin062031.html
i.e. Since successful reproduction is all that really matters on a neo-Darwinian view of things, how can anything but successful reproduction be realistically 'selected' for? Any other function besides reproduction, such as sight, hearing, thinking, etc.., would be highly superfluous to the primary criteria of successfully reproducing, and should, on a Darwinian view, be discarded as so much excess baggage since it would, sooner or later, slow down successful reproduction. Moreover, in further insult to analogy, he wants to use, of all things, 'intelligence' to help us out evolve antibiotic resistant bacteria. :) Perhaps he should take a bit of his own advice and use his own intelligence to realize that antibiotic resistance is not an example of unlimited evolution, but resistance always occurs at a fittness cost to the bacteria:
Is Antibiotic Resistance evidence for evolution? - 'The Fitness Test' - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYaU4moNEBU
Of related note to developing an antibiotic that is beyond Dr. Behe's 'Edge of Evolution', (i.e. beyond what Darwinian processes can overcome), ‘drug cocktails’ seem to surpass the 2 protein-protein binding site limit that Dr. Behe found for the ‘edge of evolution’
Guide of the Perplexed: A Quick Reprise of The Edge of Evolution - Michael Behe - August 20, 2014 Excerpt: If there were a second drug with the efficacy of chloroquine which had always been administered in combination with it (but worked by a different mechanism), resistance to the combination would be expected to arise with a frequency in the neighborhood of 1 in 10^40 -- a medical triumph. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/08/guide_of_the_pe089161.html
In fact, the multiple drug cocktail that has been so effective in controlling HIV uses much the same exact strategy of being beyond the 'edge of evolution' that Dr. Behe has elucidated:
When taking any single drug, it is fairly likely that some mutant virus in the patient might happen to be resistant, survive the onslaught, and spawn a resistant lineage. But the probability that the patient hosts a mutant virus that happens to be resistant to several different drugs at the same time is much lower.,,, it "costs" a pest or pathogen to be resistant to a pesticide or drug. If you place resistant and non-resistant organisms in head-to-head competition in the absence of the pesticide or drug, the non-resistant organisms generally win.,,, This therapy has shown early, promising results — it may not eliminate HIV, but it could keep patients' virus loads low for a long time, slowing progression of the disease. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/medicine_04
Here is research of a promising new antibiotic that could, singly, or perhaps in combination with other antibiotics, surpass Dr. Behe's 2 protein-protein binding site limit:
New class of antibiotics discovered by chemists - March 7, 2014 Excerpt: Researchers who screened 1.2 million compounds found that the oxadiazole inhibits a penicillin-binding protein, PBP2a, and the biosynthesis of the cell wall that enables MRSA to resist other drugs. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140307165953.htm
bornagain77
November 14, 2014
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I was listening to this Darwinian paradigm to antibiotics and lots of challenges posed by our influence in natural processes. What strikes me is the very poor even useless useless explanation that the Darwinian view pose. It is screaming futility and ignorance of what actually drives biological gene variations. This is what are being sold to the minds of the people that need to solve the issues. The reality is screaming at us, asking us to look for design degeneration / alterations in the living systems being put under pressure from human interventions. If it is selective breeding or drug resistance all of these ask us to know what the code changes actually is, genetic and epigenetic,that happen in these systems... Useing a notion that we have to evolve faster is stupid and takes away from the real issue... Can we read the code and intentions of the Coder and us humans? What behaviour can reconcile these and preseve life? Ramanan Laxminarayan: The coming crisis in antibiotics http://on.ted.com/g0av9mullerpr
November 14, 2014
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When you think about it, humans are fairly out of sync with Darwin's 'Nature red in tooth and claw' vision of the world. Chimps, stripped of their ability to swing through the trees, would be fairly helpless on the African savannas. In fact, contrary to popular thought, as far as morphology and physiology are concerned, despite superficial similarity, we actually share very little morphology and physiology with chimps docile The Red Ape - Cornelius Hunter - August 2009 Excerpt: "There remains, however, a paradoxical problem lurking within the wealth of DNA data: our morphology and physiology have very little, if anything, uniquely in common with chimpanzees to corroborate a unique common ancestor. Most of the characters we do share with chimpanzees also occur in other primates, and in sexual biology and reproduction we could hardly be more different. It would be an understatement to think of this as an evolutionary puzzle." http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2009/08/red-ape.html Moreover, the one attribute that humans possess, that most distinctly separates us from animals, is not an attribute of brute force, such as deadly teeth, speed, endurance, or strength, as would be expected on a Darwinian, 'Nature red in tooth and claw', view of things, but is the rather docile attribute of intelligence.
Darwin's mistake: explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. - 2008 Excerpt: To wit, there is a significant discontinuity in the degree to which human and nonhuman animals are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (PSS) (Newell 1980). We show that this symbolic-relational discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture alone can explain,,, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18479531 Evolution of the Genus Homo – Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences – Ian Tattersall, Jeffery H. Schwartz, May 2009 Excerpt: “Definition of the genus Homo is almost as fraught as the definition of Homo sapiens. We look at the evidence for “early Homo,” finding little morphological basis for extending our genus to any of the 2.5–1.6-myr-old fossil forms assigned to “early Homo” or Homo habilis/rudolfensis.”,,,, “Unusual though Homo sapiens may be morphologically, it is undoubtedly our remarkable cognitive qualities that most strikingly demarcate us from all other extant species. They are certainly what give us our strong subjective sense of being qualitatively different. And they are all ultimately traceable to our symbolic capacity. Human beings alone, it seems, mentally dissect the world into a multitude of discrete symbols, and combine and recombine those symbols in their minds to produce hypotheses of alternative possibilities. When exactly Homo sapiens acquired this unusual ability is the subject of debate.” http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100202
Moreover, this unique attribute of intelligence of humans, to 'mentally dissect the world into a multitude of discrete symbols, and combine and recombine those symbols in their minds to produce hypotheses of alternative possibilities', i.e. to process information, though obviously not directly related to the 'red in tooth and claw' mantra of Darwinists, is directly related to the Christian notion that we were made in God's image.
John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and that life was the Light of men.
In fact, the three Rs, reading, writing, and arithmetic, i.e. the ability to process information, is the very first thing to be taught to children when they enter elementary school. And yet, very interestingly, it is information processing, i.e. reading, writing, and arithmetic, that is found to be foundational to life:
Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer - video clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVkdQhNdzHU
Moreover, it is information, not 'material', that is found to be foundational to the universe itself,,
Conversations with William Dembski--The Thesis of Being as Communion - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAsaU9IvnI
Verse and Music:
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." Casting Crowns - The Word Is Alive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9itgOBAxSc
bornagain77
November 14, 2014
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