Hi Jonathan, Platt, all interested
I've followed silently and enjoyed the "creationism" thread. Like Platt, I
also was struck by Jonathan's:
> > After spending years thinking about it, I find myself teary-eyed and
amazed
> > at the extreme beauty of Darwin's idea. It is so amazingly simple at its
> > core, yet leads to apparently infinite sophistication. I find it to more
> > sublime and more divine than any "supernatural" philosophy. One might
even
> > say that evolution is the ultimate expression of God's omnipotence!!
It actually reminds me the words of a Catholic priest who told me once he
had no problem about accepting Darwin's evolution, as in his opinion
evolution is just the way we see God's creation. In his opinion, the fact He
created and used such a complex and amazing mechanism to have this world as
outcome, just confirms His greatness..... hmmm... a teleological view that
did not and don't convince me, but at least I recognize that there is a
plenty of Catholic priests who don't buy literally the Genesis' tale, and
that's IMO good.
Anyway, as I've read over the posts that the evolution theory can't be
scientifically tested, let me offer a simple experiment you all can perform.
Probably it can't confirm the whole theory, but I think it helps. [my source
is "Genes, Peoples and Languages" by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza]. You just
need a pack of cards.
Let's imagine that hearts and clubs represent two different genes (the RH+
and RH- blood factor, for example). Let's take 5 hearts and 5 clubs: like to
say we have a population of ten, 5 RH+ and 5 RH-. Another assumption is that
overtime the population is constant, so we have 10 new individuals per
generation, replacing the old 10 parents.
Now, let's shuffle the ten cards and extract one. It represent the first
child of the new generation. In my test, It's hearts (RH+). Of course, any
parent can have 0, 1, 2.. or many children, so a given gene can be
reproduced 0, 1, 2 or many times. According to that, we put again the
extracted RH+ in the pack and extract another one. And one again, up to 10
children. Indeed, every newborn baby has 50% of RH+ chances and 50% RH-,
but we will have probably a different output. In my example, I get 7 times
RH+ and 3 RH-. That means that at the next generation the 70% of the
population is RH+ and the 30% is RH-. So, I change accordingly the
population and start a new round.
At this second round, even if the RH- has less chances, is apparently more
lucky, and actually I end with 6 RH+ and 4 RH-. The process can go on for
few or many generations. We will see that a single gene sometimes rises up
to the 90%, sometimes it goes down to 10%. Anyway, the process will surely
end sooner or later with 0% and 100% (in my example, RH- gets the 100%
after 8 rounds). It is clear that the final result will change if you try
again. The only rule is that the smaller the population, the less are
usually the needed rounds to end the process.
This process is known as "genetic drift". At a first sight it looks like a
sort of a biological entropy, as it leads to a uniformity, but it has also
the opposite result. It creates diversity. In facts, if we take a group of
twenty individuals and separate them into two groups of ten, considering
that they have thousands of genes, the two populations will start their own
path and will end after few dozens of generations into two different kinds
of individuals. Each one will eliminate one or more genes from their
heritage. Just like two message-bottles drifting in the ocean, starting
from the same point and pursuing two different unpredictable routes. While a
mutation is a rare event, the genetic drift silently operates continuously.
The geneticist Motoo Kimura, maybe half joking, has defined this genetic
drift "survival of the luckiest", as in many cases our genes have been just
more lucky. I was struck by that: when a scientist uses terms like "luck" or
"chance" I read DQ at work. This "survival of the luckiest" is actually as
important as the more famous "survival of the fittest". In facts, the great
part of our genes never had to deal with some fight for survival. For
example, the blood of the 100% of the native Americans is group 0, while
their Asian ancestors have also A and B. There is no evidence that 0 is
"better" than A or B in America. Just it probably happened that the genetic
drift operated within a population of a few dozens of individuals. That is
true for a lot of "products" of evolution. We have tigers in Asia and lions
in Africa, for example. Well the contrary was perfectly possible. The
considerable genetic variability we can observe among the various
populations of Homo Sapiens is due to the drift of the early separated
ancient tribes.
Studies have shown that the "genetic distance" between two populations is
proportional with the time elapsed since their definitive separation. After
many generations, it can happen that the two branches are not anymore
sexually compatible: here we have two different species. By the way, this is
the only scientifically acceptable discrimination. Two individuals are
components of the same species if they can procreate. Other terms,"race" or
"kind" for example, have no scientific value.
Back to creationism and teleology, let me believe in my atheism :-). I find
the theory of evolution rather "true" (elegant to my eyes, in accordance
with my experience, fundamentally easy to understand and explain). I don't
need a supernatural God's will (or mind), nor I can buy a teleological
interpretation of evolution. On this, I think it's impossible to state that
Pirsig supports teleolology: if the end -Quality- is undefined, there is no
teleology. Fittest or luckiest, in both cases DQ operates within nature
toward the indefinable better.
Ciao,
Marco
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