Their Eyes Were Watching God


BAMF

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We evolved through chance because our nature currently is congruent to the universe.
No - we did not evolve thru 'chance' - that is almost always the strawdog used apposing 'being created', neither of which is true... chance is not the alternative - we evolved thru consequence, cause and effect relationships... and the difference between us and dinosaurs is that we can be pro-active, while all the other animals are reactive, which is why they did not survive - now, does that mean an inevitability of surviving? no, for so true, circumstances may come in which NO survivability is possible [in which case life goes on elsewhere in the universe, again as consequence]...
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We evolved through chance because our nature currently is congruent to the universe.
No - we did not evolve thru 'chance' - that is almost always the strawdog used apposing 'being created', neither of which is true... chance is not the alternative - we evolved thru consequence, cause and effect relationships... and the difference between us and dinosaurs is that we can be pro-active, while all the other animals are reactive, which is why they did not survive - now, does that mean an inevitability of surviving? no, for so true, circumstances may come in which NO survivability is possible [in which case life goes on elsewhere in the universe, again as consequence]...

Some mutations are random.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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We evolved through chance because our nature currently is congruent to the universe.
No - we did not evolve thru 'chance' - that is almost always the strawdog used apposing 'being created', neither of which is true... chance is not the alternative - we evolved thru consequence, cause and effect relationships... and the difference between us and dinosaurs is that we can be pro-active, while all the other animals are reactive, which is why they did not survive - now, does that mean an inevitability of surviving? no, for so true, circumstances may come in which NO survivability is possible [in which case life goes on elsewhere in the universe, again as consequence]...

Some mutations are random.

Creationists sometimes criticize evolution as mere random chance.

However, even though no terrestrial animal larger than a housecat survived the KT extinction, you wouldn't say that smaller animals were evolved to survive asteroid impacts. Evolution is usually taken to have a random component and a selective component. The effect is radically contingent and historical. Gould wrote various essays on contingency.

Edited by Ted Keer
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Creationists sometimes criticize evolution as mere random chance.

The variation of the genome is random (in nature). Mutations and chromosome cross linking occur at random. The natural "selection" of a genome that produces reproductive fitness is a result natural processes operating accord to physical laws. So there is both a random element at work and a causal element at work to produce biological entities that fit the local survival landscape. Mutation and cross linking random; selection according to physical law.

Evolution does not produce ultimate perfection. It uses the material at hand to get the best fit or a good fit to the conditions of the world.

There is no conscious design of organisms at work in natural (i.e. Darwinian) evolution. At least not until humans got into the business of selective breeding. It is interesting to note that humans may the first species intelligent enough to participate consciously in their own evolution and the evolution of other organisms. Humans can, to some degree make Lamarckian principles work. The would mean the Lysenko might have been on the right track after all. (Holy Moley!). Think of designer genes.

Please note that "fitness" means reproductive fitness which is the only fitness that nature "cares" about.

For good background material read almost anything by Ernst Mayer and do read -Darwin's Dangerous Idea- by Daniel Dennitt.;

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Without mutation there would be no evolution, since there would be no change in genetic makeup.

Mutation is random. It is caused by cosmic and environmental radiation and free radicals and toxins interfering with the replication of DNA.

Environmental factors provide the selective element. If f those factors are regular, such as a long term climate trend, or an escalating predator-prey interaction, the selective pressure is not usually viewed as random.

But there is no way of describing such events as an asteroid impact as regular or, say, the extinction of the Panda's foodsource by a disease that kills off bamboo as regular. The fact that some birds and mammals and small or semi-aquatic reptiles survived the KT asteroid impact, while all land animals larger than a cat went extinct, cannot be attributed to their being adapted to survive asteroid impacts. Events like this add a radically contingent component to evolution.

Creationists often criticize evolution as being entirely random. This is silly. Small changes repeated over the long term do have directional consequences. Just a very small fractional advantage adds up when environmental forces remain constant. Think compound interest.

Creationists are terribly bad thinkers, even on their own terms. I read last night a comment by a woman asking, if evolution is true, why aren't monkeys still evolving into humans. And religious opposition to evolution raises the obvious question, is it God who is too stupid to have created evolution, or is it just you who are too stupid to understand the theory?

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Rand's favorite painting was of Christ crucified.

Ted,

Did she ever say why? I find that really interesting...intriguing, and in a positive way.

~ Shane

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Rand's favorite painting was of Christ crucified.

Ted,

Did she ever say why? I find that really interesting...intriguing, and in a positive way.

~ Shane

I think Peikoff (podcast?) may have commented on it, but I don't know that Rand did in writing. There was a very short comment somewhere - the exact sense of which I don't remember for sure - but would guess it had to do with the subject not expressing suffering. Sorry can't be of more help

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Ayn Rand's favorite painting

I just received Ayn Rand by Jeff Britting. On flipping through it, I became highly intrigued when I saw a Dali painting in it. Here is the picture caption from Britting's book:

Salvador Dali, Corpus Hypercubus, oil on canvas, 29" by 23", 1954. Rand's favorite painting - she spent hours contemplating it at the Metropolitan Musuem of art. She even felt a kinship between her personal view of John Galt's defiance over his torture in Atlas Shrugged and Dali's depiction of the suffering of Jesus.

Corpus Hypercubus

by Salvador Dali

Dali_CorpusHypercubus1954.jpg

Yes, it was the Britting comment I was thinking of.

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