Talk:Introduction to evolution: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 16:59, 15 January 2007

Revision as of 00:25, 18 January 2007

Line 845:

I removed the Haeckel image. i agree it is inaccurate. Definitely a case of conformation bias for the idea of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”. While this might be an interesting historical aspect of evolution a link to that is enough for this article. [[User:David D.|David D.]] [[User talk:David D.|(Talk)]] 16:59, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

== Creationism and ID ==

The article states "Some religious persons and groups object to evolution on religious grounds, and propose Creationism as an alternative view of the origin of the species on earth. A variation of such beliefs called Intelligent design claims that the variety of life forms that is observed on earth is the result of the actions of an outside intelligent agent, such as extraterrestrial intelligent beings or a God or set of gods."

As I understand it creationism is different from ID in that creationism doesn't state any process but that species were created fully in-tact. ID says that evolution did occur but that it was directed and not via natural selection. So I don't know that it is correct that ID is a variation on creationism, but a seperate idea.

Creationists believe in a young universe, but ID proponents do not.

I seem to see them lumped together all the time and I think there it reflects a bias in that a creationist is happy to reject scientific evidence but ID does not. It simply interprets it differently (sure it's unpopular and widely condemned in the scientific community, but it's still different then creationism). Personally I think ID is interesting but darwinistic evolution may be correct or directed evolution may be correct...of course the reason people argue over this is not over the theory but over a battle concerning a theistic vs. atheistic world view.

IMO, theists waste their time making a big deal about it because it's really irrelevant. I find the evidence of cosmology and the nature of consciousness far more compelling in putting forward a theistic argument then the details of evolutionary process. At the same time I find atheists reject any criticism with religious vigor.

Anyway, I want to propose that ID not be characterized as a "variation" of creationism, because if you fairly look at them (even if you think both are a complete joke) you will see they are not the same at all.

A second thing I want to ask about in the "misconceptions" section it says:

"Evolution does not imply any "progress" towards an ultimate goal. In fact, evolution is not goal driven. Organisms are merely the outcome of random mutations that succeed or fail, dependent upon the environmental conditions at that time."

I think that evolution does have a goal, it's "goal" is to transmit genetic information between organisms. That's a minor point but I wanted to throw it out there. - [[User:AbstractClass|AbstractClass]] 00:25, 18 January 2007 (UTC)