Evolution poll

[Dwagon]

I am currently conducting a scientific study regarding belief in evolution. In order to gather as much data as possible, I am posting this poll here.

So, for my little scientific study, I'd like you all to take a little poll regarding your belief in evolution, common descent, and natural selection. Please read the all the choices below carefully and vote for the option that most fits you in the above poll. The more people the better, so please vote!

Option 1: I believe that all living organisms on Earth share a common ancestor, and that through natural selection, this ancestor and its progeny evolved into the diversity of life seen today. I don't believe in any creator gods, or have no belief regarding their existence.

Option 2: I believe that living organisms on Earth share a common ancestor, and that through natural selection, this ancestor and its progeny evolved into the diversity of life seen today. One or more creator gods exist, and may have created the world and/or the first life, but did not interfere with the natural progression of evolution. In other words, evolution by natural selection was the tool used by the creator to create the life seen today.

Option 3: I believe that living organisms on Earth share a common ancestor, and that this ancestor and its progeny evolved into the diversity of life seen today. This evolution was directly guided in some fashion by a creator god.

Option 4: I believe that all living organisms on Earth were directly created by one or more creator gods. Since then, these organisms have remained as they are, without evolving or changing significantly. These organisms do not share a common ancestor.

It is not my intention for this thread to be a venue for debating creation and evolution. I am aware that the options are not all-encompassing; they have been designed to provide me with useful data, not to represent all beliefs. If you have any questions regarding the options, please ask before voting. Note that if you believe in multiple common ancestors, vote for the closest option aside from that.

[Shinji Kazuya]

Done.

Random for lolz ☟

http://wtfcontent.com/img/130200362575.jpg

[BIG OLAF]

I have also voted.

[Rashiid]

I voted.

[HUnewearl_Meira]

My general stance is that all theories of mankind's origins are likely to be wrong in specificity, though some of them may be correct in generality. I don't believe in Evolution, but I do believe that it is a good theory. It also relies a great deal on chance, though, which leads me to believe that it's unlikely to work at all, without intelligent guidance.

[Sinue_v2]

Generally I keep my personal beliefs out of my scientific understanding, and I don't feel compelled to try to mash them together, so when actually discussing the topic with others I tend to default to option #1. But this is about personal belief, so voted for option #2, although I'm not sure it would be accurate to say that evolution is a "tool" of that creator being. I find it more likely that god/gods/the universe/whatever didn't have much of a choice in whether or not evolution occurs. I don't necessarily ascribe qualities such as omnipotence or omniscience to such a being, and it seems rather likely to me that such a being may not even be aware of our existence.

If you were creating a simulation of the universe as a proof of concept to study some other hard to measure phenomena in our own universe, and that simulated universe happened to spawn life on one of it's planets, you would then be their god... and would be outside of their space and time - but you still had to write and compile that universe simulation according to rules of logic and computation, as well as not being able to interfere if that simulation relied on causality to produce emergent effects.


It also relies a great deal on chance, though, which leads me to believe that it's unlikely to work at all, without intelligent guidance.

No, only the mutation is random. Selection, however, is rigidly deterministic... and selection is the driving force of evolution, whereas mutation simply provides the stock material. And it works quite well, as we've been able to harness the principals of evolution to help us find solutions to extremely difficult engineering problems via Genetic Algorithms. Such as folding proteins (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022283683712581) to develop new vaccines and custom designing cochlear implants (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=1284495). They are extremely good at finding local maxima and minima - optimizing energy consumption for performance. However, on larger scale engineering problems, EA's do tend to "cludge" rather brilliant solutions that may fit the defined parameters, but not viable in the real world, because it's working only with what it has available, rather than being able to invent and implement entirely new structures and technologies the way a designer can.

Our brains are beautiful examples of "brilliant cludges" using modified versions of what was already there, and producing amazing computational capabilities at only a fraction of the energy required to run supercomputers that can output (at the moment) only a small fraction of what the brain can. But it doesn't show much sign of intelligent "overhaul" from an intelligent designer. Much of our bodies show similar cludge-logic, such as the trachea and esophagus sharing the same intake (making us prone to choking) and the retinal ganglion of the eye (which pick up light) being positioned behind the blood vessels.

The eye is a great example of unintelligent cludge design because it has so many problems with narrow fields of color perception, definition, inverted images, blind spots, etc. The real miracle of vision occurs in that giant photoshop program in your head called the visual cortex. However, because the visual cortex is made from slightly modified versions of the same stuff the rest of your brain is made of, you sometimes end up with perceptual errors wherein the different cortices process the same information - leading to synesthesia. Where the color orange tastes bitter, or the tone d flat is violet, etc.

[Sord]

The eye is a great example of unintelligent cludge design because it has so many problems with narrow fields of color perception, definition, inverted images, blind spots, etc. The real miracle of vision occurs in that giant photoshop program in your head called the visual cortex. However, because the visual cortex is made from slightly modified versions of the same stuff the rest of your brain is made of, you sometimes end up with perceptual errors wherein the different cortices process the same information - leading to synesthesia. Where the color orange tastes bitter, or the tone d flat is violet, etc.

I recall reading a book quite awhile ago, Phantoms in the Brain, by Vilayanur Ramachandran. I believe at some point it stated that the cortex apparently has potential to see colors/wavelengths that we normally cannot, the reason being because the eye itself cannot read that kind of input. Apparently that portion of the brain can still interpret it though, and certain brain disorders (including synesthesia I think,) can trigger a false perception of them, resulting in experiencing colors that no one else can see. Sounded fascinating, but the book did not touch on it much. The main focus was on phantom limbs (hence the title of the book,) but it touched on a few other neural topics as well. Good read though, even if you do not have advanced medical knowledge or anything it is written pretty plain text so it is not to hard and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the subject.

More directly on topic, I would have to go with two, if only because the sheer lack of explanation for the creation/beginning of anything is incredibly unexplainable or iffy at best as far as I know. So hell, maybe something did create the universe, but like Sinue said, that doesn't mean he/she/it necessarily cares or is even aware we are around.

[PhotonDrop]

Voted.

[Alucard V]

Same here.
Though I wonder what are the odds for sentient life. Because there I believe is there in lies the divine.

[Sinue_v2]

Option 2: I believe that living organisms on Earth share a common ancestor, and that through natural selection, this ancestor and its progeny evolved into the diversity of life seen today. One or more creator gods exist, and may have created the world and/or the first life, but did not interfere with the natural progression of evolution. In other words, evolution by natural selection was the tool used by the creator to create the life seen today.

Option 3: I believe that living organisms on Earth share a common ancestor, and that this ancestor and its progeny evolved into the diversity of life seen today. This evolution was directly guided in some fashion by a creator god.

By the way, it seems to me that Option 2 and Option 3 are the same thing, since option 2 does not make allowance for the existence of a creator god who does not have direct control over evolution. It looks like what you were getting at was that Option 2 is a scenario in which a creator god set the whole thing up like chain of dominoes which operates deterministically to arrive at predefined outcomes - while Option 3 is a scenario in which the creator god takes an active hand guiding the process as it occurs.

In any case, it doesn't change my voting result, as you could certainly see a predesignated plan in the unfolding causality of the universe... but it takes a presupposition to know the mind of god which I do not think is justifiable or defensible. And the arrogance is astounding; to think that such an insignificant speck of trace materials made up of the universe's residual byproduct (matter) when weighed against the scale and scope of the universe is the very reason for that universe to exist.

To see things that way reminds me of a supposed conversation between Wittgenstein and a friend in which Wittgenstein asked... "Why is it that people always say it was natural for man to assume that Sun traveled around the Earth, rather than just rotating?" To which his friend replied, "Because obviously it just looks that way".

"Well then, what would it have looked like if it had looked like the Earth was rotating?"

[Split]

By the way, it seems to me that Option 2 and Option 3 are the same thing, since option 2 does not make allowance for the existence of a creator god who does not have direct control over evolution."Well it's assumed that they don't have control over it, hence "created...but did not interfere with the natural progression of the universe. In option 3, the god(s) do guide it.

Whatever. Option 1 ftw.

[Palle]

Voted.

No soul here.

[HAYABUSA-FMW-]

Voted.

No soul here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMdjisEnkMI

--not even in "REVENGE of (the)" ?

No Kia Soul though or "Soul 2 Seoul (food)"

Seems to be more about ancestors from the option descriptors then an instant tie into dem demi Gods.

[Palle]

Seems to be more about ancestors from the option descriptors then an instant tie into dem demi Gods.
True. Mine's just a quip from a t-shirt I hang next to 'Punks Not Dead'.

[Sinue_v2]

Well it's assumed that they don't have control over it, hence "created...but did not interfere with the natural progression of the universe. In option 3, the god(s) do guide it.

Whatever. Option 1 ftw.

No, not if you consider god as a form of "LaPlace's Demon" in which such a being has absolute causal knowledge of all past, present, and future states of the system it's setting up. In such a case, it's very much possible to have direct and total control over an evolving system without having to take an active hand (the domino example). But to say "Did not interfere" is a subtle, and important distinction from "could not interfere". The former implies a choice not acted upon, or an ignorance not illuminating the possibility of that choice. Both of which say something (unfounded) about the god(s) one is speculating about.

I still think the current options are missing an important choice which Albert Einstein (though an atheist/agnostic) poetically stated when he asked "Did God have any choice in creating the universe?"

[Mantiskilla]

Voted

[Split]

No, not if you consider god as a form of "LaPlace's Demon" in which such a being has absolute causal knowledge of all past, present, and future states of the system it's setting up. In such a case, it's very much possible to have direct and total control over an evolving system without having to take an active hand (the domino example). But to say "Did not interfere" is a subtle, and important distinction from "could not interfere". The former implies a choice not acted upon, or an ignorance not illuminating the possibility of that choice. Both of which say something (unfounded) about the god(s) one is speculating about.Well this isn't really about the Gods themselves. "LaPlace's Demon" as you describe it seems to essentially be intelligent design. All I'm saying is that when thinking purely in terms of the choices in this poll (obviously there are so many other grey-area beliefs that people can and do have), a god that creates a world/universe/whatever in a manner that absolutely guarantees it to grow and change and yield life etc. in the way that said god intends is, in a way, pre-emptively interfering, like loading a die. Thus, the example you provided seems to fit nicely within option 3.

[Leviathan]

The lazy Deist has spoken/voted.

[iBaylin]

I voted as well. People don't do well with these kind of topics if it's different from what they believe in so I usually don't speak on it.

If it's possible I would like to know they results of your studies.

[Alisha]

i voted for choice 1. i might of chosen choice 2 or 3 if they didnt use the word god. i believe in the past there may have been alien beings here posing as gods.

[MESeele]

Voted.

[bns1991]

Voted^^;

[sCI]

Scientific explanations to how things began existing is as likely/unlikely as any religious explanation.

I don't agree with any of the four options, so no voting.

[16085k]

Voted option 1.

[AlexCraig]

I voted.

[washuguy]

Scientific explanations to how things began existing is as likely/unlikely as any religious explanation.

I don't agree with any of the four options, so no voting.

Hey, that's all I'm saying...

[Keilyn]

I believe that existence in itself is just that...existence. Evolution does work and has been proven, but no one has proven in how the world or universe has been created.

That in itself will always be upon question even after our own death.

I do believe people have to find their own destiny and fate and what they find won't always be what they think they will find, but that existence isn't tied to a "God-Plan" but an evolutionary circumstance that has its own survival mechanism.

I do believe that genetics in itself does breed its own mechanism for survival and as long as people exist, technology and genetics will clash. New skills will be learned and Old skills will be lost, but socially we will survive and I don't believe that humanity needs a "God" or a "Savior" but some direction and reason for existence.

This theory supports itself in war and tragedy. One can live more in five minutes than in five years in the spur of the moment that defines you. I've seen many dead, locked into an instance where they have regretted or benefited from the our choices. Many empty shells...many lacking personality. Some strong, some weak.

In every instance where a civilization has entered and survived a war across from the many dead from it including the disease and poverty it brings, motivation has allowed people to survive and give national purpose to people. Our two great world wars were a tragedy but resulted in a lot of rapid technological development, it brought the world closer in communication and transportation technologies, gave a reason to live to many in the aftermath.

This is a reason I've always believed evolution takes many forms.

Happens everywhere in the slightest form....Play a class you hate in an online game, but find its equipment....and discover you can play faster with it, watch yourself be consumed by it. Find you can evolve yourself, credibility and reputation in one location (be it offline or online) and as a survival mechanism watch that person be consumed by it.

Evolution takes many forms and shapes...not just biological, physical or genetic.

Well thats my take on it...

Happy Flaming Everyone. ^_^

[washuguy]

I believe that existence in itself is just that...existence. Evolution does work and has been proven, but no one has proven in how the world or universe has been created.

That in itself will always be upon question even after our own death.

I do believe people have to find their own destiny and fate and what they find won't always be what they think they will find, but that existence isn't tied to a "God-Plan" but an evolutionary circumstance that has its own survival mechanism.

I do believe that genetics in itself does breed its own mechanism for survival and as long as people exist, technology and genetics will clash. New skills will be learned and Old skills will be lost, but socially we will survive and I don't believe that humanity needs a "God" or a "Savior" but some direction and reason for existence.

This theory supports itself in war and tragedy. One can live more in five minutes than in five years in the spur of the moment that defines you. I've seen many dead, locked into an instance where they have regretted or benefited from the our choices. Many empty shells...many lacking personality. Some strong, some weak.

In every instance where a civilization has entered and survived a war across from the many dead from it including the disease and poverty it brings, motivation has allowed people to survive and give national purpose to people. Our two great world wars were a tragedy but resulted in a lot of rapid technological development, it brought the world closer in communication and transportation technologies, gave a reason to live to many in the aftermath.

This is a reason I've always believed evolution takes many forms.

Happens everywhere in the slightest form....Play a class you hate in an online game, but find its equipment....and discover you can play faster with it, watch yourself be consumed by it. Find you can evolve yourself, credibility and reputation in one location (be it offline or online) and as a survival mechanism watch that person be consumed by it.

Evolution takes many forms and shapes...not just biological, physical or genetic.

Well thats my take on it...

Happy Flaming Everyone. ^_^
LOL No flaming here. But we seem to have all the answers for everything, except how the universe got here. Where did the matter and energy come from to make the universe? What did it originate from? We can't answer those, but we know for a fact that we just came from other species and adapted into a human being. There are like 20 million different species on this planet, those other species can do a lot of things we can't do, and we can do stuff they can't. But naturally speaking, I say that level of evolution can't possibly be, cause it seems to me human intelligence, understanding, common sense, and sense of family is on a decline.

We still fight for shiny rocks, we barley feed ourselves properly, and we're so far from nature. Yet, the same animals we came from (supposedly) understand that we need nature to live and we're not supposed to destroy it, and each other. Something dose not add up properly... All I know is this, we all played pokemon right? When squirtle evolves into wartortle at level 16, does he loose his water gun? NO... He keeps his abilities from when he evolves, he just gets bigger and stronger. Same principle, if we come from monkeys, shouldn't we have tails? Shouldn't i be able to swing off trees from my feet? That's all I'm saying. YES, I just used pokemon to prove a point...

[Sinue_v2]

I'm going to disagree with you a bit here, but not necessarily because I support Keilyn's position.


LOL No flaming here. But we seem to have all the answers for everything, except how the universe got here. Where did the matter and energy come from to make the universe? What did it originate from?

I think we have a good grasp on the fundamentals of how everything operates, but we're quite far from a comprehensive understanding of everything (especially the origin of the universe). If anything, I'd say we've only just begun. However, I should note that Evolution is the strongest scientific theory out of any that we have. It has proven to have the explanatory versatility to become the grand unifying theory of biology, forming a twin nested hierarchy between the lines of evidence provided by genetics and morphology independently. This is something we're still desperately looking for in physics, because classical mechanics only work on the medium scale, special relativity only works on the large scale, and quantum mechanics only work on the small scale.


human intelligence, understanding, common sense, and sense of family is on a decline.

Intelligence, I don't think so. NSF polls, while showing a shocking ignorance of science and lack of critical thinking, have been steadily rising over the years. We're graduating more collage students than ever before. A standard issue of the New York times contains more information than most people a century ago were likely to come across in their lifetime. And while it may be true that folks in days gone by had more skilled perception and memory recall, I see that as more of an artifact of our externalization of memory which lessened the need to develop the mental tools to retain and recall information - first through books and now through the internet.

Common sense... eh, it's not something that should be all that glorified. Common sense is a kind of heuristic reasoning which forms intuition. The entire field of science is an affront to common sense, because it had to overturn intuitive reasoning to discover. If we could just look at the world and naturally divine it's operation based on prior experience, instinct, and observation - we wouldn't need science. Or a legal system for that matter.

Family is a bit of a subjective topic, especially if you're only assessing western culture, and I think we owe more to socioeconomic pressures of the ongoing industrial revolution to it's apparent "degradation" than to any inherent declining morality.


We still fight for shiny rocks, we barley feed ourselves properly, and we're so far from nature.

We're not far from nature. We are a part of nature. Just because we hide behind wooden and concrete walls and form societies to protect us from the bloody tooth and claw of nature... does not make us removed from it. That's just an illusion. Take a look at the human form from the eyes of a microbiologist. We are ecosystems unto ourselves. Our bodies are merely swarms of specialized single-celled organisms living in a collective to support the survival of the whole. But beyond that, between 2 to 10lbs of our body weight is accounted for in micro-organisms, with over 1,000 species on average living in and on us in numbers that FAR exceed the number of human cells*... and we rely on them to train our immune systems, protect us from infections, and break down our food to a form we can more easily absorb. Only about 1% of the DNA in and around the average human being is actually human DNA, and of that DNA which we call our own, almost 10% of that is viral and bacterial. By contrast, only about 2% of our genome actually codes for proteins. That means there is five times more viral DNA present in our genome than the stuff that actually makes us human!

* = (The reason why micro-organisms can be orders of magnitude more numerous than human cells, yet still only account for a few lbs of body weight is because human cells are eukaryotic which are much larger and heavier than bacterial, archaea, and viral flora... not to mention prions which are basically just rouge proteins.)

Furthermore, the whole "shiny rocks" schema is just an abstraction layer we invented to ease the flow of resource allocation. At it's base, a dollar, a diamond, or chunk of gold is representative of your ability to obtain raw materials, territory, food, and (at times) sex. In the wild, our closest relatives fight and even go to war over the same basic resources we use money to purchase (and at times go to war over). Even beyond that, studies in primate psychology have demonstrated that great apes, lesser apes, and many species of monkeys can be introduced to the concept of "money" using tokens that can be traded for toys, food, etc. From this we have observed they have a sense of reciprocity and theory of mind, giving rise to both unique cooperative and deceitful behaviors roughly analogous to some of the basic patterns of behavior we observe between humans using an exchange medium.


Yet, the same animals we came from (supposedly) understand that we need nature to live and we're not supposed to destroy it, and each other.

Actually, no, they don't. If there's any form of apparent balance, it's because there are ruthless checks on population (such as starvation, predation, competition) which prevent a species from growing outside of it's environmental capacity. Those species which find themselves with a means by which to ruthlessly and aggressively consume resources without those checks WILL expand and dominate at the cost of the local environment.

They are called invasive species, and we are one of them.


All I know is this, we all played pokemon right? When squirtle evolves into wartortle at level 16, does he loose his water gun? NO... He keeps his abilities from when he evolves, he just gets bigger and stronger. Same principle

If you're getting your functional understanding of evolution from Pokemon, you're doing it wrong. Whatever it is that Pokemon do in their fictional universe, it is not a reflection of how evolution works in the real world.


if we come from monkeys, shouldn't we have tails?

We do. It's called a Coccyx, your tailbone. The basal structure is present and identifiable in embryos, but it's usually resorbed back into the fetus as it grows. However, on occasion, the genes responsible for triggering the resorption will not activate and allow the tail to more fully form. This is called an atavism.

[spoiler-box]
http://bp1.blogger.com/_A0fZ9e8EpO8/R2KTi0Ty9-I/AAAAAAAAAC0/wLf5AECYhF0/s400/human_tails_10.jpg
[/spoiler-box]

Similar atavisms in whales produce hind legs, and "teeth" in chickens. In fact, there's an ongoing project to identify and intentionally trigger atavisms in certain bird species as a means to recreate a therapod dinosaur.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QVXdEOiCw8


Shouldn't i be able to swing off trees from my feet?

Apes don't have tails, yet chimpanzees and orangutans can swing by their feet from trees. Humans and Gorillas cannot. That's because humans and gorillas are the least arboreal of all the apes, with feet specialized for walking on the ground. Humans far moreso than Gorillas, although we still have some gripping capability left in them. If you've ever picked up a towel or your underwear off the floor with your feet after a shower, you know what I'm talking about.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tz52ivJgVx8