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svenster wrote:

Thus the  alleged "tower of Babel" incident is what caused the racial variations to emerge.

It is a possibility - but not one I claim has any evidence to back it up, AFAIK none of the Babel stories (either in the Bible or similar stories from other cultures/continents) make any such suggestions. I personally think it is far more likely to be the result of natural selection with respect to where the various groups settled after that event.

Natural selection not in the sense of new genes - but natural selection in the sense of fancy pigeons, which all come from rock doves but look like different species - yet are the result of selective breeding, not new genetic material (darwin confirmed this with one of his experiments, though he mis-interpreted the results because he knew nothing about genes)

You seriously don't think this was simply the human body evolving slowly to adapt to the climate that early humans relocated to over thousands of years.

Did you even read my post?

resedit earlier post wrote:

These "races" which aren't really races are possibly the result of natural selection in the area where the people settled. Eskimos tend to be short and stocky - which is better suited for where they live (less surface area to lose heat). The equator tends to be populated by darker skin - better for living where the sun can be quite intense, etc.

It isn't uncommon for people to get natural selection, evolution, and the mythical darwinism (whatever that is) mixed up.

svenster wrote:

Res,

I did read your post and fail to see how your "natural selection" suggestion is anything but saying that evolution caused humans in certain regions to "evolve" in different physical characteristics that are better suited to their predominant local climate.

Natural selection != evolution

Evolution produces new features, natural selection selects from a menu of what is already available in the gene pool. I really wish they would do a better job of teaching that in school, it is a very common mis-conception, one that I have even heard staunch evolutionists complain about.

-=-
Darwin did an experiment with fancy pigeons - one you can duplicate fairly easily - though you may require a permit in some areas.

He took four different breeds of fancy pigeons- I'll call them A, B, C, D
He crossed A and B and also C and D to produce mongrels, and then he crossed the monrels - to produce a pigeon that was 25% A, 25% B, 25% C, 25% D.

That "mongrel" was very much like a rock dove - and today, we know that all fancy pigeons are really the same species as the rock dove.

human selective breeding of rock doves resulted in the fancy pigeons. These are not new genes that evolved, but rather, physical characteristics that result from selecting certain trates and breeding out the genes that don't produce those traits.

When you mix up the different breeds, you get something that is like the original bird breeders started from because the selective breeding has been removed. Rock doves have within their gene pool already the genes necessary to make the fancy breeds, they just rarely if ever come together in the right way to make the fancy breeds that we produce through selective breeding.

The same is in fact true of humans - Asians are not different from Africans are not different from Native Americans. Different combinations of genes are far more common due to isolation and natural selection - that does NOT mean that new genes evolved. And in fact I'm pretty sure it has been established that with the exception of some genetic diseases, all genes from one location exist in the others - the probability of them coming together to produce someone who looks African in a European couple is just mathematically extremely low by random chance.

To be fair, that phenotype isn't isolated to 1 gene. It is more of a complex interaction of several genes and the products they create. But yes, not all information is coded in the genome. It is more about small changes that can be amplified or not depending on the various systems in the cell.

Ah, yes. The fall of man monomyth. The Jainist version is particularly depressing.

So rounding is a "fairy tale?"

Darwin on Pigeons: Part 1 Part 2

It would be quite nice to be able to refer to point mutations, frame shifts, and the like, but the pigeon genome has not been subject to large scale sequencing.

2+2=5 for large values of 2.

Metacell wrote:

jerwin wrote:

Ah, yes. The fall of man monomyth. The Jainist version is particularly depressing.

You wouldn't know a good link that tells it would you?  I find Jainism fascinating.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. But consider Campbell's
agenda.

jerwin wrote:

Metacell wrote:

jerwin wrote:

Ah, yes. The fall of man monomyth. The Jainist version is particularly depressing.

You wouldn't know a good link that tells it would you?  I find Jainism fascinating.

The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell. But consider Campbell's
agenda.

I've never noticed Campbell having any agenda (for us) other than enlightening us to the human condition.

jerwin wrote:

[Tycho?] wrote:

resedit wrote:

2+2=5 for large values of 2.

I guess I dont get the refference.

It shall be explained

Thanks.

Pro_ wrote:

so which fundamental part of evolution have the goofy creationists been able to falsify?

What fundamental part of evolution have the goofy evolutionists been able to provide a falsification test for?

For example - with relativity, Einstein gave several falsification tests - if his theory was correct, light should bend around the gravity well of the sun in a predicted fashion during a solar eclipse.

Next opportunity, he tested it - and it did what was expected.

Darwin said evolution was true, the fossil record should be teeming with intermediate forms.
So far all we have found are frauds and excuses ... and modifications to the theory that say that doesn't falsify it, yet the modifications don't provide a falsification themselves.

Last edited by resedit (2005-07-03 12:23 pm)

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