mel turner wrote:

"Anne" <maxcharles@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1141842594.041517.302540@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

mel turner wrote:

"Anne" <maxcharles@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1141832267.445987.183240@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

Stop The War wrote:

[snip]

This paper merely rehashes ID arguments
for why natural selection

What is the force behind natural selection?

Why think natural selection needs a "force" behind it? It's just the
effect of differential reproductive success among genetically-
and phenotypically-varying individuals in a population of organisms.

If it's an effect, what's it's cause?

The cause is the interactions of the individual organisms making up
the population with their particular environment.

And the origin of these organisms is?

You can look at the environment as rather like a sieve, and the
population of varying organisms as like a mixture of particles of
varying sizes and shapes. After the interaction of pouring the mix
through the sieve, the effect is that there are now more of some
sizes and shapes and less of some others in the resulting pile than
there were in the initial mix. There is a net change in the overall
composition of the pile. The cause of the change was the filtering
by the environment/sieve.

Similarly, in any breeding population of organisms the individual
organisms vary quite a lot in many different ways. Some of this
variation has a heritable, genetic basis [all of which ultimately
arises by mutations which are continually adding new variation to the
population]. Some of this heritable variation happens to have an
effect on the relative reproductive success of the individuals in
their particular environment. Variations that happen to enhance a
given individual's likelihood of reproductive success will
automatically tend to increase in frequency in future generations of
the population, and those which decrease an individual's reproductive
success will naturally tend to become less common [this result
necessarily follows from the definitions of "heritable" and
"reproduction", etc.]. The population will therefore show net changes
in the relative frequency of the different genetic variations. The
change is called "adaptation", and this whole phenomenon is called
"evolution by natural selection".

Thank you for your patient explanation.

[Note that unlike the sand grains in the sieve example, the varying
organisms in a population are able to reproduce offspring similar
to themselves.]

Again, one can always choose to believe that God is somehow
behind it all, but that's not required.
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
http://evolution.mbdojo.com/evolution-for-beginners.html
http://evolution.berkeley.edu

mel turner wrote:

"Anne" <maxcharles@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1141842594.041517.302540@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

mel turner wrote:

"Anne" <maxcharles@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1141832267.445987.183240@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

Stop The War wrote:

[snip]

This paper merely rehashes ID arguments
for why natural selection

What is the force behind natural selection?

Why think natural selection needs a "force" behind it? It's just the
effect of differential reproductive success among genetically-
and phenotypically-varying individuals in a population of organisms.

If it's an effect, what's it's cause?

The cause is the interactions of the individual organisms making up
the population with their particular environment.

And the origin of these organisms is?

You can look at the environment as rather like a sieve, and the
population of varying organisms as like a mixture of particles of
varying sizes and shapes. After the interaction of pouring the mix
through the sieve, the effect is that there are now more of some
sizes and shapes and less of some others in the resulting pile than
there were in the initial mix. There is a net change in the overall
composition of the pile. The cause of the change was the filtering
by the environment/sieve.

Similarly, in any breeding population of organisms the individual
organisms vary quite a lot in many different ways. Some of this
variation has a heritable, genetic basis [all of which ultimately
arises by mutations which are continually adding new variation to the
population]. Some of this heritable variation happens to have an
effect on the relative reproductive success of the individuals in
their particular environment. Variations that happen to enhance a
given individual's likelihood of reproductive success will
automatically tend to increase in frequency in future generations of
the population, and those which decrease an individual's reproductive
success will naturally tend to become less common [this result
necessarily follows from the definitions of "heritable" and
"reproduction", etc.]. The population will therefore show net changes
in the relative frequency of the different genetic variations. The
change is called "adaptation", and this whole phenomenon is called
"evolution by natural selection".

Thank you for your patient explanation.

[Note that unlike the sand grains in the sieve example, the varying
organisms in a population are able to reproduce offspring similar
to themselves.]

Again, one can always choose to believe that God is somehow
behind it all, but that's not required.

http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-evolution.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
http://evolution.mbdojo.com/evolution-for-beginners.html
http://evolution.berkeley.edu

[snip]

cheers

Leif Erikson wrote:

Anne wrote:

mel turner wrote:

"Anne" <maxcharles@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:1141832267.445987.183240@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...

Stop The War wrote:

[snip]

This paper merely rehashes ID arguments
for why natural selection

What is the force behind natural selection?

Why think natural selection needs a "force" behind it? It's just the
effect of differential reproductive success among genetically-
and phenotypically-varying individuals in a population of organisms.

If it's an effect, what's it's cause?

You need to learn to think outside the box, annie. WHY
do you think there needs to be a cause? WHO told you
that every "effect" has a cause?

Mr. Erikson, an uncaused effect is a contradiction in
terms. By definition an effect is something produced
by an antecedent cause.

Isn't "effect"
sometimes something we create in our own minds?

You have a very limited view of the world, based on
your indoctrination into a *particular* and accidental
religious dogma.

Still, anyone is still free to believe that their preferred version of
God is behind all of evolution, and everything else for that matter.

There's nothing in evolution and natural selection or any other
science that requires or implies atheism. Plenty of "evolutionists"
are also theists. It won't ever be any part of the science, however.
This isn't a problem for chemistry or meteorology or developmental
biology, etc., so why should it be a problem for evolutionary
biology?

and evolution cannot explain the diversity
of life and then asserts that intelligent design is the only
alternative.

In other words, the usual creationist argument from incredulity, and
the usual distortions and misrepresentation of evolutionary science.

It's significant that there is no stand-alone ID research at all to
talk about, just a bunch of ill-founded attacks on mainstream
evolutionary biology. If ID did get equal time in classrooms, it
seems they'd have nothing much to teach. Perhaps they could combine
their time with the "moment of silence" sometimes offered in lieu
of school prayer.

[snip]

cheers