The irresponsibility of ID

Is it not a wee bit arrogant to call humans the dominant organism on the planet. I'm no biological expert and I await inevitable correction, but aren't there countless other organisms that are vastly more "successful" than humans?

 

Are you kidding? Name one organism that is any threat to humanity that we don't have the power to destroy. Yes, diseases are organisms too - but they're parasites, and can't function outside of a living organism. Humans have overcome every obstacle nature has thrown at us. Thousands of species go extinct naturally every DAY on this planet. Yet we persevere. We can go anywhere, live anywhere, kill anything we want. That's dominance.

I don't think humans are the dominant organism because we're "the coolest" or something. It's just a fact - we rule this planet, and we will continue to do so until another organism wipes us out. That's what evolution is all about.

 

And just why does an organism have to be a 'threat' to be more successful or more fit than humans?

Huh? But there are BILLIONS of species on the planet and most have been around for millions and millions of years longer than humans. Humans have been around for a mere blink of an eye compared to most other organisms. That's not dominance, that's like a sports team that flukes one win in a season and claims to therefore be number one.

The history and ongoing story of life on this planet is a story of bacteria. They blow everything else away.

 

edit - Sorry, BTA - I was posting as you posted that.

Because that's how evolution works. Survival of the fittest. If your species doesn't survive, they go extinct. If they go extinct, they cannot pass on their genes and hence they cannot evolve.

Despite the overwhelming presence of bacteria, we still dominate it. Dominance doesn't come through numbers, it comes through survival. I can kill bacteria by using soap. Bacteria can't kill me unless I forgo everything man has created to stave off bacteria. Also, as part of man's evolutionary path, we have become increasingly immune to organisms like bacteria.

I hate to bring a Tom Cruise movie into this - but watch the last 10 minutes of War of the Worlds. I won't ruin it for you, but the message is that over the last several millenia, man has developed resistences to parasitic organisms (like bacteria) that have destroyed lesser species. We've earned our right to survive.

Of course there are BILLIONS of species that have been around longer than we have. But longevity doesn't equal dominance. And I think your sports analogy is flawed. I'm not saying we're the dominant species of all time. We're just dominant right now. We haven't always been, obviously. And like I said, we will continue to be until something comes along and wipes us out, or at least kills us off at a rate that halts our evolutionary progress.

 

Possibly. And I'm just a simple thinker with a loads of books, maybe too much free time( ), love for physics and some educated friends from various fields, so you beat me there. But I don't take anything granted, be it scientific or religious matter, so you have to rationally convince me even if it's near your specialiation. Sorry...

But possible. For a true scientist experiment, observation and newly discovered facts should always be the only priority, even if it means throwing away ALL theories that were working up to this point. And in fact that happened few times in the past...

That's exactly what I'm saying. So the question is who gave birth to the very first human ? In this broad sense - an animal ?

Yes, but that's irrelevant to origin of a man. I can easily accept that modern humans evolved from that primitive caveman.

Yes that's the point. But before you start, are you sure that this is purely scientific matter ?...I'd be much interested to know your point of view, but when definition of human being is discussed, I can't ignore my faith, i.e. matters like free will, soul...non-scientific ones...

For mutations yes, adaptations of various species due to many mostly enviromental changes, also. But I don't know any evidence of one of the advanced species changing into another.

Damn, I wasn't going to write such a long post...

[Edit - dear God, when I was beginning to write my post there were only two other on page four... ...]

 

It really depends on how you define "successful" HB. If you define successful as being around the longest, yeah, humans or still the new kid on the block, relatively speaking. In such an instance things like crocodiles and sharks are the most successful, as they've been around since before the dinosaurs, and thier body designs now are pretty much the same as they were hundreds of millions of years ago.

But successful usually is defined (from an evolutionary standpoint) in terms of how well a species can adapt in it's environment, and pass down it's genes to subsequent generations. In that regard, humans are extremely successful. It's not that we have a fur coat like a polar bear to survive in the arctic, or the ability to go months without eating like a snake, but rather our ability to modify the environment to ensure our survival and prosperity is certainly our greatest asset.

MAJOR EDIT:

First an apology to BTA and a ditto of DR's comments - I too posted when you put up the warning.

Arendil has shown an uncanny ability to respond to my posts while I am writing in response to someone else - now accomplishing the feat twice in the last few hours.

Anyway, Arendil, I'll do my best to answer your questions. The first problem is that you are asking me to answer the insoluable "chicken or the egg" question. And that question can be asked equally for any species - not just humans. Did the first bird hatch from an egg of a non-bird? Did the first dinosaur hatch from an egg of a non-dinosaur? Was the first dog born to a non-dog mother? Fortunately for me, you also asked for my personal insight, which I will need to draw upon if any answer to your question is possible.

First for the scientific answer to your question: science is very much divided as to when we became "human". The best answer I can give you is that evolutionary biologists say that any species in which they place the moniker "Homo" as their genus name is a human. Using that definition, the first humans were Homo erectus. What that doesn't answer for you is what gave birth to the first Homo erectus, which is where the "chicken or the egg" reference is directed towards.

It is here where I must interject my personal opinion, which is we haven't yet found fossil evidence of a true transition point to humans. And that is a problem that is not unique to human evolution, but is involved in many evolutionary chains.

The answer proposed by science is the existence of "intermediary species". As the name implies, these are species which are tranistion points between an earlier species and a later species. Intermediary species exist for only a short time and occur because a beneficial trait requires time to be passed through subsequent generations and become common enough that the trait is represented in the population as a whole. As these species are typically short-lived, there is precious little evidence in the fossil record, because 1.) there weren't that many to fossilize in the first place and 2.) the chance of any creature becoming a fossil are exceedingly low. Put the two together and you see the problem.

However, several examples in the fossil record of intermediary species do exist, which has lead scientists to posit that there are many more that remain unfound. That's why I think that a transition species for humans is out there, waiting for someone to discover it. There may even be another whole unidentified species before Homo erectus still undiscovered, and the transition point may actually exist between that undiscovered species and Homo erectus.

My personal view is this: Homo erectus is already very much "human" in the sense that it looks like us, acts in many ways like us, and is morphologically very similar to us. To me, it is clearly human. However, the current thought-to-be-predecessor of Homo erectus (of which there are between two and five canidates depending on who you ask) is to me, very much ape-like, and not very human at all. They even look like apes - they are very hairy, have rather smallish brains - and about the only human characteristic that they possess is the ability to walk upright. The difference between the two groups is big enough that I imagine some intermediary species must exist, or perhaps some whole new species not yet identified.

Having admitted that, I still must point out that these unanswered questions do not disprove the theory of evolution. It just shows that more work needs to be done. The fact that intermediary species exist (albeit in much smaller quantities than others) in the fossil record makes it reasonable to assume that the instances we have found are not unique. It also makes it reasonable to assume that it may take quite a long time before any such evidence is found given their rarity.

Evidence up to this point indicates the first human characteristic to evolve was bipedalism - the ability to walk on two feet. And by that I mean true bipedalism, not like what you have in chimps where they can walk on two feet, but always resort to four when travelling significant distances. I guess if I were to posit what an intermediary species would look like, it would have to be something like what we have already dicovered, but with a considerably larger brain, which would in turn, lead to other, more human characteristics.

[ December 14, 2005, 21:04: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

BTA, I think this debate is relevant because I believe it explains why this whole ID thing is such a heated topic and why it such an issue for American schools as opposed to any other science topic.

Well, sort of. But the ability of one species to 'wipe out' another is not the same as being the 'fittest'. That is defined more accurately by Aldeth as being the ability to adapt or survive in a particular environment.

And I would still argue against the human-centric views of both DR and Aldeth in this case. Bacteria survives in vastly more places on earth than humans. What humans live inside a sheep's stomach? What humans can live in a volcano? What humans can live in solid rock several kilometres below the surface of the earth?

Sure, you can wash a few bacteria off your hand with soap but that doesn't make you dominant. A lion can eat a man, but that doesn't make him dominant.

My real point is that the reason why the ID thing is such a big deal for some people is that the concept of evolution is a massive upheaval in the viewpoint that man is the mightiest beast on the planet. And that is something that many people cannot deal with and will fight tooth and nail to make sure is not taught in schools.

 

Aldeth, I have, at best, a vague idea of what I mean myself ... but I feel we might be pointing into the same direction here. I am struggling to confer that we are by no means the product of divine intervention - not a species standing completely for itself. We are subject to evolution, meaning we are coming from somewhere and are headed elsewhere. Where we are headed depends on the selection of our genes adaptability to our environment, as you suggested.
I understand Arendil having a problem with the idea that we have developed from animals. How was it possible that in one generation a creature was “subhuman”, still in the successive generations turned human. I think of it as a change of culmination, thereby nothing sudden. A process wherein the lines are blurry. There wasnt a clear cut after which each newborn was human, rather there was a beginning of a trend that resulted in current humans. For our ancestors intelligence proved to be an advantage in their fight for survival, as it allowed them to control and better exploit their environment. Thus those who sported that particular ability became dominant and thrived, while other, alternative strategies of survival were marginalized. Et voila, Homo sapiens sapiens entered the stage.

Oh, and the forces of evolution/selection are steadily at work. I just read we are growing increasingly fragile. In the last 30.000 years our facial skeleton structures seems to have lost up to 30 % of its robustness. How could it be different when our more comfortable lifes no longer press for survival of the sturdiest individuals.

 

I think we have another flawed analogy here. Sure a lion can eat a man - but a man can also eat a lion. There was a time when man feared lions, but then we figured out how to hunt and kill them. Today, if we wanted to, we could kill every lion on earth. In the space of a few days, we could make them extinct. Lions could never return the favor. That sounds pretty dominant to me. It's the same with bacteria. We can manage bacteria. Bacteria can't manage us. We can prevent bacteria from killing us, and while we could never make bacteria extinct (because their numbers are infinite), bacteria can't prevent us from killing it. Bacteria lives inside every human being. Every time you fart, that's bacteria saying "howdy." But we are still in control, and we can control how much bacteria is in, on or around our bodies at any given time.

Dominance.

By the way - soap kills bacteria, it doesn't just wash it off. That's why we use it.

 

Well, link or maybe a good example of a book would be handy if you could...especially those about changing the way species breed...

 

Yeah, but that doesn't make us any better or dominant or fitter. It's not a struggle of one species versus another. It's a struggle of surviving or not surviving. Of being or not being. It's not a war (unless you specifically have to defeat another species in order to survive).

And if we are talking about surviving and thriving, bacteria survive and thrive in vastly more ways than we do and will continue to do so long after any number of events (asteroid impact, nuclear war, killer flu, invasion by ninja zombies from another galaxy) which may result in the extinction of humans as we currently know them.

 

Sure it does. We survive IN SPITE OF bacteria. Bacteria has killed off countless other species who were too weak to stave it off. But it can't lick us. We also have the power to manipulate bacteria for our own ends. Penicillan, for example. Anti-viruses and vaccines. All instances where we've taken this harmful organism and used it to make us stronger.

In nature, these ideas are one in the same far more often than not. Most organisms survive easily in their natural environment. It's other organisms - be it predators or disease - that make life difficult. It's the organisms who overcome those obstacles and thrive despite the presence of threats that make them dominant. You're right - we've barely been on the earth very long at all compared to bacteria. But think of how far our species have come along in that short time. Bacteria can't effect the scope of the world in the ways we can. Bacteria is essentially the same as it was millions of years ago.

edit - I gotta run for now...Aldeth, please pick up the torch for me...

 

That's still a false analogy. Name one species of bacteria that can do all of those things on that list. That's not to say that there aren't individual species that can do those things individually, but no species can do all those things collectively. A bacteria colony living in solid rock would be killed if placed in a volcano. Maybe if there were millions of different species of hominids on the planet, all living in different environments you could make the comparison, but unfortunately I'm quite confident modern humans are the only surviving hominid on the planet. The problem is you're basically comparing one species to millions of other species.

Even then, you can turn that around. Can any of those species of bacteria make a computer? Or drive a car? Or develop a means to not be killed by anti-bacterial soap? You're always going to find differences when comparing vastly different species in what they can or can't do - in fact, that's why there are so many species.

 

In all reality, ID is just as mischaracterized as evolution: People looking for a rhetorical advantage have attached so many arguments to ID that it is being crushed by the weight of its less scrupulous proponents.

But as a notion, "ID" is quite interesting.

Right off the bat, the first half of the title is problematic: The word "Intelligent" is not being used as an adjective, as in "the house displayed an intelligent design", but rather it is being used as an adverb, as in "he intelligently designed the house"; and therein lies a rhetorical trick, for it implies something which is not present: a context in which to understand the verb that is being modified.

If I said to you the phrase: "he was a mobile runner", you would at first think I was being silly, but upon further reflection, you would assume a context existed in which, lets say, I was comparing a runner on the street versus a runner on a treadmill. But "Design" has no context in which "Intelligent" applies: Anything designed was done so by an intelligence. So really all the word "Intelligence" does is imply that we can compare a design created by an intelligence to a design that was not created by an intelligence, and the latter does not exist; so no context exists and the first half of the title, "Intelligent", is an incoherent hinderance that should be abandoned.

But if the first half of the title is removed, all that remains is "Design" and that certainly sounds less formidable as an argument.

But how can design be detected? How can it be proved? You have to be able to see an intelligence at work. But wait! We have that word right in the title! Unfortunately for the anti-biology crowd, titling an argument with its logical requirement does not make it valid.

 

Now I know why this debate is so heated. Not because it's so sensitive, but because it's because it is actually quite fun and there is probably no right or wrong answer than anyone here can prove.

To get back to the original topic again, I think that what we should teach children at school is the ability to critically evaluate concepts and to be able to debate them articulately as we are here.

 

@Aldeth - response to MAJOR EDIT

I understand, but what you wrote doesn't actually clear that matter. You talk about line of evolution like (something apelike)-(something between)-(homo erectus). But even if research finds this new species between them, that will NOT solve the problem, only will move it from one place to another. Let's say that this new creature will be "too human" to be direct descendant of this ape, and new research will begin...see my point ?...
Now I will ask from the opposite site - maybe in a little provocative way - what evidence, if any, would scientist require to accept that human is NOT a descendant of any ape-like creature, or any other creature at ALL ?

Also, what I found in your post is somewhat similar to what I found in article posted by BTA, on second page, and many other books - mythical/hypothetical creatures that have to be there because theory says so, but so far we have no evidence for that, but we hope that someday we will be able to do it. And guess what - they are placed in few most important places...

I must admit though, that through many books I did read number of this mythical creatures slowly decreases, so there is hope...

Then, this is only partially similar to "chicken-egg" paradox. And if you insist - for me answer to that one was egg, because from these two beings egg is a much less complicated one, so it has a little more chance to auto-create itself... ...

And I decided to resist the urge to write 50 more lines of this post... ...

(back to article...)