Why did god do this?

[bernee51]

This article begins "Scientists have unveiled the genetic code of the chimpanzee, showing that humans are biologically distinct from apes thanks to a small handful of important differences in DNA."

It goes on: "Of the chimp's 3 billion base pairs, a mere 35 million of them (less than 4 per cent) are different from a human's. Yet these scant differences have a huge impact. They have given humans an outsized brain, the ability to walk upright on two feet, develop complex language skills, adapt quickly to changing environments, as well as other uniquely human features."

It also notes that "...one ape gene, caspase-12, produces an enzyme that appears to protect the animal from Alzheimer's disease but does not exist in modern humans."

My question. Why would god do this?

Why would he obviously have the hardware to protect those "made in his image" from a debilitating disease of old age yet only give it to a 'lower' animal?

[bernee51]

This article begins "Scientists have unveiled the genetic code of the chimpanzee, showing that humans are biologically distinct from apes thanks to a small handful of important differences in DNA."

distinct from OTHER apes

Good point - I wish I had picked up on that.

[QED]

I dunno...it seems perfectly fine to imagine that god did things so they'd come out just the way they are, complete with evolution. It's even fine to build in mystical reasoning. As long as one's theology allows the world to exist as it is, and as long as none of it can be disproven (unlike The Flood), then I see no reason to suggest that it's weird theology. Sure, maybe god created chimps and humans exactly so that they'd be as similar as they are, and so that the transposable DNA elements would be in the same places, looking exactly the way that natural evolution would look. I think Bro Dave's philosophy falls into this rather broadly defined class of theologies.

What's hard to justify is a theology that denies the facts that god put into the world he created.

But we ought to be taking about contingency here: The left-over debris in the Solar system (just glance at the craters on the moon), the drifting of the continents... (get out your GPS and watch it happening) all this dramatically steers the course of evolution. Is it seriously being suggested that it's all been rigged to produce just one result: Humans. What is it with all the hubris in religion? I simply can't get my head around how important it is for certain people to see human beings as the ultimate product of the cosmos.

[Jose]

I agree entirely. It is completely wacky to think that George Bush is the pinnacle of evolution.

But this idea seems to be so deeply ingrained that people can't let go of it. It's an automatic, built-in assumption in ID. It was inherent in Aristotle's Great Chain of Being. But why isn't it just as likely that all of evolution has been aimed at producing lice, and we're just here for food?

All of that aside, I have no problem with theistic evolution, in which one imagines that the "decisions" of evolution were decided by god. As long as the real science is part of it, does it really matter whether the cosmic rays are truly random, or whether they are guided by god in such a way as to look entirely random to us? At least this position accepts the cosmic rays and the fact that the statistical calculations show that we can't see anything non-random in where they hit DNA.

Phrased differently, I can argue about the data and its interpretation quite happily. But when we leave the data and get into personal theology about unseen gods turning the crank, knowing that we can never demonstrate their existence, then sure, why not let people have their fantasies? It's when the theology insists on denying the facts that it is inexcusable--not just an academic exercise in what to believe, but potentialy dangerous.

[QED]

All of that aside, I have no problem with theistic evolution, in which one imagines that the "decisions" of evolution were decided by god. As long as the real science is part of it, does it really matter whether the cosmic rays are truly random, or whether they are guided by god in such a way as to look entirely random to us? At least this position accepts the cosmic rays and the fact that the statistical calculations show that we can't see anything non-random in where they hit DNA.

Yes but that's why I mentioned meteors and continental drift... theistic evolution has to include God hurling rocks at his Dinosaurs when he's done with them. Put in these terms it makes theistic evolution seem highly contrived. You're happy so long as the mechanisms known to biologists are acknowledged. I'll be happy if someone can show the necessary mechanism behind all the apparent contingency that goes with it.

[Jose]

You're right, of course, QED. Contingency has played a huge role in the Earth's history, and the history of the things living on it. Nonetheless, if it is necessary for someone to picture god hurling rocks at his dinosaurs (I guess because they sinned once too often), well, let 'em. As long as they have the historical and mechanistic details right, why not let 'em see god lurking behind everything that happens? Personally, I prefer imagining god saying "let there be a big bang" and then sitting back and watching the show. Or, maybe, saying "hey, cool! there's a big bang going on over there. I'll go watch."

I guess the logic here is that ya can't take a YEC and flip a switch, and viola (or is it violin?) there's an evolutionary biologist. As with learning anything, it's necessary to start where you are, and move a little bit toward the end goal. Accepting and understanding microevolution and its mechanism is a start. Once one knows this, it's possible to extrapolate it through time, and see that macroevolution of some kind is an inescapable outcome. But, they won't get there until they understand the mechanism--and they can understand the mechanism even within the YEC paradigm. Once one starts to recognize that a macroevolutionary pattern is a necessary consequence of how genetics works, then there may be a nagging back-of-the-mind question about how we might determine whether a macroevolutionary pattern gave rise to what we have now. How would you find out? Maybe a fossil or two would give us a hint. ...and so it goes. The notion of everything happening through contingency, but with god deciding which contingencies to unveil at which times, may be a necessary intermediate step in moving from YECism to scientific understanding. We won't be able to get everyone to the end of the journey, but if we can at least get 'em past kneejerk denial, I'd say we're making progress.

[QED]

Oh, I see... slowly slowly catchy monkey Wonderful.

I often try to imagine what the feeling might be like inside the head of someone who rejects evolution as a working mechanism... I mean I can still get a kick out of seeing natural selection at work; like the plant (is it honeysuckle?) that has a particular problem with a parasite (butterfly?) laying eggs on its stems. The plant is in the process of developing a countermeasure in the form of a bud which grows to resemble the egg.

Now with natural selection as an explanation this is easy-peasy: a leaf bud fails to develop fully as part of a genetic hiccup but rather than being a setback it prevents a passing butterfly laying its eggs because it looks as if the stem is already taken. With no hungry caterpillars munching on this particular plant it gains a competitive advantage on the forrest floor. The more realistic the dummy egg (leaf bud) the more effective the deception. Simple, effective and guaranteed to produce an accurate decoy.

So then I try to see this from the POV of a creationist but I immediately run into a problem... why has God gone to all the trouble of making butterflies that want to lay eggs on stems only to have to make the stems look like they've already got eggs on them! No sir. It just doesn't add up. And this should make people think about it objectively. But they don't because it conflicts with other deeply held beliefs.

The worst part then is that creationists like to accuse evolutionists of similar crimes of thought... living things look so very much like they've been designed by a conscious intelligence (so they say) but evolutionists ignore this 'glaring evidence' because of their strongly held beliefs. It turns out that the choice of words is critical here: natural selection can be considered as an unconscious intelligent designer because it ends up making intelligent decisions in an autonomous fashion. IDers are simply being taken-in by appearances. How do we know it's not the other way round? Because we would be seeing God wrestling with himself in a never-ending arms race amongst his creation.

[Bugmaster]

IDers are simply being taken-in by appearances. How do we know it's not the other way round? Because we would be seeing God wrestling with himself in a never-ending arms race amongst his creation.

Acting as the Angel's Advocate (tm) here, I could say,

"Well, the ways of the Lord are mysterious, surely this seemingly neverending arms race is part of His divine plan". :-)

[Scrotum]

"Well, the ways of the Lord are mysterious, surely this seemingly neverending arms race is part of His divine plan".

I always wondered about that. Do we know anything about this plan?

[Jose]

Indeed. Now that you've raised this point, I realize I hadn't looked at it exactly that way before. Of course we know that there are lots of "carefully designed" instances of plant/animal interactions that balance out very nicely. As long as we think of them as the endpiece of evolution, or the creator's final design, we might think that design is just as plausible as evolution (but much easier to learn). But, when we recognize that this kind of thing is going on even as we speak, and there is no final endpoint, then we have some thinking to do.

Did god create things 6000 years ago, and what we're seeing now is just a bit of microevolution that isn't a big deal? If so, we can say "yeah, but it's just sorting among existing genetic variations, so there's not real evolution going on." But if we do that, we kinda have this nagging bit in the back of the mind that says "uhhh, but why couldn't god have created things 10,000 years ago, and a little more of the diversity we see is from microevolution? Or, why not 100,000 years ago, with a bit more of the diversity being natural? Or, yikes! Maybe it all started billions of years ago...once I acknowledge microevolution, how can I justify denying the rest of evolution?"

And what's with this weird array of things that god has set against one another? There are the milkweeds and the monarchs. There are the salamanders and the garter snakes... And what about the pollination business--for a god who's so finicky about sex, why would he allow an orchid to develop flowers that look so much like flowers with female wasps on them that male wasps copulate with the flowers? Why's he telling people to be so prudish, but giving the wasps the go-ahead to have sex with plants, of all things? Does that mean people should have sex with plants? What's going on here?

A while back I read in Science or Nature about a species of palm that makes leaves with ragged edges, holes, and a generally ratty appearance. The leaves look like they've been eaten by insects. If you put pots of these palms and of palms from a species with non-ragged leaves into a greenhouse, and release some palm-eating insects, they go for the non-ragged palms. But, if you cut neat squares of both types of leaves, and give the insects a choice, then they eat both types equally happily.

Apparently, the rattty appearance of the leaves does just what the bumps you described do: make the insects think the plant is already taken.

Many plants produce toxins in response to being nibbled on. The ragged leaves of this species must look to the insects like the plant has already been eaten--and is therefore full of bad-tasting or toxic chemicals. So they avoid the ragged plants. Very clever...

...but why would god put the insects and the palms at war with each other like this? Why not just produce enough more palms to feed the insects, and still have plenty of palms left over to maintain the "kind"?

Apparently, the hypothesis that god is in charge leaves us with many more questions than it answers, while the theory of evolution answers all of them. Maybe we don't know the details of all of these plant/animal coevolution issues, but then, we don't know the details of how god works either. At least we have a chance of learning the former.

Yet, somehow, the possibility of learning about evolution is considered a strike against it, while being ignorant of god's plan is considered to be evidence for how great it is.

[Scrotum]

Yet, somehow, the possibility of learning about evolution is considered a strike against it, while being ignorant of god's plan is considered to be evidence for how great it is.

Clearly you have good knowledge about these things, and have the rhetoric ability to formulate yourself, so excuse my stupid question here, but how can you be aware of a plan which you are ignorant of? (refering to the Christian ones here)..... Its a contradiction per say.

How can someone say how great the plan is, if they dont know what it is?