What is your view of the Creator (if you believe in that kind of thing)?

GladiatoRowdy · Mar 24, 2005

Basically, do you subscribe to the Bible or some other text literally, have you hybridized the beliefs of a religion, or do you have your own, unique perspective. If you feel comfortable, please share, but try not to bash. This thread is not an attempt to espouse one idea or another as "right" or "wrong," but I kept it in the D&D just to be safe.

Personally, I have hybridized my belief system from the ideas that have rung true for me in my studies of various religions and philosophers, prophets, and everyday people.

I believe in the idea of God as what I describe as the "Collective Unconscious." At least, that is how I feel that we receive communication from Him. Basically, all knowledge (hence omnipotence) is gathered in a collection of all of the souls in existance with a "Great Light" at the center of it all. The souls and God are only marginally separate when we are in our "natural" or non-Earthly human state. In addition, when we are in our natural state, I believe we have the ability to manifest ourselves on the human plane in a limited way, which is how I explain ghosts (at least some of them), channeling, and many other "paranormal" phenomena, and this also explains what I see as God's omnipresence, as souls that are close to us watch over us pretty much constantly (angels).

We all have a connection to this collective unconscious while we are in our human state, though some have a clearer connection than others. I believe that people like Jesus had such a strong connection that for them, it might have seemed like the collective conscious to them since I assume that they had much better communication with Him than I do. The collective unconscious manifests itself in a variety of different ways. I believe that our "conscience" or sense of right and wrong is really just God telling us what right and wrong are and then stepping back to let us choose our path.

Right and wrong or "sin" I see as the one universal truth and it makes the most sense to me in the context of the Buddhist term "karma," though all of the major and minor religions I have studied have had this concept in them somewhere (Christians have the Golden Rule, the saying "judge not...," and "what you sow...", Buddhism has karma, even Wicca incorporates the idea of "thrice good, thrice bad") and I take this to mean that whatever energy you put out will revisit you eventually, if not in this life then in a subsequent one (I believe in reincarnation because I don't think you can learn everything about the human condition in one lifetime).

This is kind of how I see "heaven" and "hell," too. If you are a mass murderer who kills 35 people, I believe that part of your "penance" is to suffer the same fate in other lives that you live, meaning that said murderer will have to experience being murdered 35 times to repay the negative karma. I think that most negative karma tends to revisit you in the lifetime you are currently in, but for some of the worst offenses, you may have to repay those in another lifetime. Heaven might work in the same way, though I am not so sure on that. I think that simply being with the Creator would be reward enough, but let's say you live several very pious lifetimes filled with good deeds and positive karma that isn't repaid in that lifetime. Maybe part of your "reward" is a vacation life as the king of a Polynesian kingdom alongside your Queen, who happens to be your soulmate.

I also believe we are affected by predestination, but we have complete free will to do what we want. I believe that when God created the universe, he created everything, including every choice we could possible make in our lifetimes. This gets into a little bit of Quantum Theory, which as I understand it says that every time we make a choice, an entirely new universe is created where we made the other choice and both universes exist alongside each other on different planes. Basically, God created every possible universe for every single person and as we experience this life, we get to choose our own path through it. I also think that we have the ability to experience the same "life" multiple times, making different choices each time.

See why I don't completely agree with any of the major religions?

MadMax · Mar 24, 2005

I think you know my policy.

GladiatoRowdy · Mar 24, 2005

Originally posted by MadMax
I think you know my policy.

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Straight Bible thumper, I know.

MadMax · Mar 24, 2005

Originally posted by andymoon
Straight Bible thumper, I know.

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Word (get it?? Word?? get it?? )

I prefer the name, straight up Jesus freak.

3814 · Mar 24, 2005

God, as the Bible states, is my view of the Creator.

FranchiseBlade · Mar 24, 2005

God created the earth. Evolution is just the 'how' God managed it and continues to manage it.

No Worries · Mar 24, 2005

Originally posted by FranchiseBlade
God created the earth. Evolution is just the 'how' God managed it and continues to manage it.
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Ahhh. Intelligent Design, mostly.

FranchiseBlade · Mar 24, 2005

Originally posted by No Worries
Ahhh. Intelligent Design, mostly.
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I can't remember all the components of intelligent design. It could be. I am a firm believer in science, and the scientific method. Have scientists made mistakes before? Sure, but following the guidelines of scientific method, we end up with fact. I'm a huge fan of Stephen Jay Gould on the matter. He has pointed out that most scientists don't follow the idea that we came from an ape or a monkey. If that were true there would still be apes that occasionally had mutated babies that were human.
Anyway here is a lengthy essay by him, with links to at least on other interesting and informative essay.

Evolution as Fact and Theory

by Stephen Jay Gould

irtley Mather, who died last year at age ninety, was a pillar of both science and Christian religion in America and one of my dearest friends. The difference of a half-century in our ages evaporated before our common interests. The most curious thing we shared was a battle we each fought at the same age. For Kirtley had gone to Tennessee with Clarence Darrow to testify for evolution at the Scopes trial of 1925. When I think that we are enmeshed again in the same struggle for one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of science, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

According to idealized principles of scientific discourse, the arousal of dormant issues should reflect fresh data that give renewed life to abandoned notions. Those outside the current debate may therefore be excused for suspecting that creationists have come up with something new, or that evolutionists have generated some serious internal trouble. But nothing has changed; the creationists have presented not a single new fact or argument. Darrow and Bryan were at least more entertaining than we lesser antagonists today. The rise of creationism is politics, pure and simple; it represents one issue (and by no means the major concern) of the resurgent evangelical right. Arguments that seemed kooky just a decade ago have reentered the mainstream.

The basic attack of modern creationists falls apart on two general counts before we even reach the supposed factual details of their assault against evolution. First, they play upon a vernacular misunderstanding of the word "theory" to convey the false impression that we evolutionists are covering up the rotten core of our edifice. Second, they misuse a popular philosophy of science to argue that they are behaving scientifically in attacking evolution. Yet the same philosophy demonstrates that their own belief is not science, and that "scientific creationism" is a meaningless and self-contradictory phrase, an example of what Orwell called "newspeak."

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"—part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus creationists can (and do) argue: evolution is "only" a theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is less than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science—that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."

Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" does not mean "absolute certainty." The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been clear about this distinction between fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory—natural selection—to explain the mechanism of evolution. He wrote in The Descent of Man: "I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to show that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change. . . . Hence if I have erred in . . . having exaggerated its [natural selection's] power . . . I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations."

Thus Darwin acknowledged the provisional nature of natural selection while affirming the fact of evolution. The fruitful theoretical debate that Darwin initiated has never ceased. From the 1940s through the 1960s, Darwin's own theory of natural selection did achieve a temporary hegemony that it never enjoyed in his lifetime. But renewed debate characterizes our decade, and, while no biologists questions the importance of natural selection, many doubt its ubiquity. In particular, many evolutionists argue that substantial amounts of genetic change may not be subject to natural selection and may spread through the populations at random. Others are challenging Darwin's linking of natural selection with gradual, imperceptible change through all intermediary degrees; they are arguing that most evolutionary events may occur far more rapidly than Darwin envisioned.

Scientists regard debates on fundamental issues of theory as a sign of intellectual health and a source of excitement. Science is—and how else can I say it?—most fun when it plays with interesting ideas, examines their implications, and recognizes that old information might be explained in surprisingly new ways. Evolutionary theory is now enjoying this uncommon vigor. Yet amidst all this turmoil no biologist has been lead to doubt the fact that evolution occurred; we are debating how it happened. We are all trying to explain the same thing: the tree of evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy. Creationists pervert and caricature this debate by conveniently neglecting the common conviction that underlies it, and by falsely suggesting that evolutionists now doubt the very phenomenon we are struggling to understand.

Secondly, creationists claim that "the dogma of separate creations," as Darwin characterized it a century ago, is a scientific theory meriting equal time with evolution in high school biology curricula. But a popular viewpoint among philosophers of science belies this creationist argument. Philosopher Karl Popper has argued for decades that the primary criterion of science is the falsifiability of its theories. We can never prove absolutely, but we can falsify. A set of ideas that cannot, in principle, be falsified is not science.

The entire creationist program includes little more than a rhetorical attempt to falsify evolution by presenting supposed contradictions among its supporters. Their brand of creationism, they claim, is "scientific" because it follows the Popperian model in trying to demolish evolution. Yet Popper's argument must apply in both directions. One does not become a scientist by the simple act of trying to falsify a rival and truly scientific system; one has to present an alternative system that also meets Popper's criterion — it too must be falsifiable in principle.

"Scientific creationism" is a self-contradictory, nonsense phrase precisely because it cannot be falsified. I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know, but I cannot imagine what potential data could lead creationists to abandon their beliefs. Unbeatable systems are dogma, not science. Lest I seem harsh or rhetorical, I quote creationism's leading intellectual, Duane Gish, Ph.D. from his recent (1978) book, Evolution? The Fossils Say No! "By creation we mean the bringing into being by a supernatural Creator of the basic kinds of plants and animals by the process of sudden, or fiat, creation. We do not know how the Creator created, what process He used, for He used processes which are not now operating anywhere in the natural universe [Gish's italics]. This is why we refer to creation as special creation. We cannot discover by scientific investigations anything about the creative processes used by the Creator." Pray tell, Dr. Gish, in the light of your last sentence, what then is scientific creationism?

Our confidence that evolution occurred centers upon three general arguments. First, we have abundant, direct, observational evidence of evolution in action, from both the field and laboratory. This evidence ranges from countless experiments on change in nearly everything about fruit flies subjected to artificial selection in the laboratory to the famous populations of British moths that became black when industrial soot darkened the trees upon which the moths rest. (Moths gain protection from sharp-sighted bird predators by blending into the background.) Creationists do not deny these observations; how could they? Creationists have tightened their act. They now argue that God only created "basic kinds," and allowed for limited evolutionary meandering within them. Thus toy poodles and Great Danes come from the dog kind and moths can change color, but nature cannot convert a dog to a cat or a monkey to a man.

The second and third arguments for evolution—the case for major changes—do not involve direct observation of evolution in action. They rest upon inference, but are no less secure for that reason. Major evolutionary change requires too much time for direct observation on the scale of recorded human history. All historical sciences rest upon inference, and evolution is no different from geology, cosmology, or human history in this respect. In principle, we cannot observe processes that operated in the past. We must infer them from results that still surround us: living and fossil organisms for evolution, documents and artifacts for human history, strata and topography for geology.

The second argument—that the imperfection of nature reveals evolution—strikes many people as ironic, for they feel that evolution should be most elegantly displayed in the nearly perfect adaptation expressed by some organisms—the camber of a gull's wing, or butterflies that cannot be seen in ground litter because they mimic leaves so precisely. But perfection could be imposed by a wise creator or evolved by natural selection. Perfection covers the tracks of past history. And past history—the evidence of descent—is the mark of evolution.

Evolution lies exposed in the imperfections that record a history of descent. Why should a rat run, a bat fly, a porpoise swim, and I type this essay with structures built of the same bones unless we all inherited them from a common ancestor? An engineer, starting from scratch, could design better limbs in each case. Why should all the large native mammals of Australia be marsupials, unless they descended from a common ancestor isolated on this island continent? Marsupials are not "better," or ideally suited for Australia; many have been wiped out by placental mammals imported by man from other continents. This principle of imperfection extends to all historical sciences. When we recognize the etymology of September, October, November, and December (seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth), we know that the year once started in March, or that two additional months must have been added to an original calendar of ten months.

The third argument is more direct: transitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common—and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. The lower jaw of reptiles contains several bones, that of mammals only one. The non-mammalian jawbones are reduced, step by step, in mammalian ancestors until they become tiny nubbins located at the back of the jaw. The "hammer" and "anvil" bones of the mammalian ear are descendants of these nubbins. How could such a transition be accomplished? the creationists ask. Surely a bone is either entirely in the jaw or in the ear. Yet paleontologists have discovered two transitional lineages of therapsids (the so-called mammal-like reptiles) with a double jaw joint—one composed of the old quadrate and articular bones (soon to become the hammer and anvil), the other of the squamosal and dentary bones (as in modern mammals). For that matter, what better transitional form could we expect to find than the oldest human, Australopithecus afarensis, with its apelike palate, its human upright stance, and a cranial capacity larger than any ape’s of the same body size but a full 1,000 cubic centimeters below ours? If God made each of the half-dozen human species discovered in ancient rocks, why did he create in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features—increasing cranial capacity, reduced face and teeth, larder body size? Did he create to mimic evolution and test our faith thereby?

Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am—for I have become a major target of these practices.

I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record—geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis)—reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological microsecond. It represents much less than 1 per cent of the average life-span for a fossil invertebrate species—more than ten million years. Large, widespread, and well established species, on the other hand, are not expected to change very much. We believe that the inertia of large populations explains the stasis of most fossil species over millions of years.

We proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium largely to provide a different explanation for pervasive trends in the fossil record. Trends, we argued, cannot be attributed to gradual transformation within lineages, but must arise from the different success of certain kinds of species. A trend, we argued, is more like climbing a flight of stairs (punctuated and stasis) than rolling up an inclined plane.

Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. Yet a pamphlet entitled "Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax" states: "The facts of punctuated equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge…are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the picture that Bryan insisted on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible."

Continuing the distortion, several creationists have equated the theory of punctuated equilibrium with a caricature of the beliefs of Richard Goldschmidt, a great early geneticist. Goldschmidt argued, in a famous book published in 1940, that new groups can arise all at once through major mutations. He referred to these suddenly transformed creatures as "hopeful monsters." (I am attracted to some aspects of the non-caricatured version, but Goldschmidt's theory still has nothing to do with punctuated equilibrium—see essays in section 3 and my explicit essay on Goldschmidt in The Pandas Thumb.) Creationist Luther Sunderland talks of the "punctuated equilibrium hopeful monster theory" and tells his hopeful readers that "it amounts to tacit admission that anti-evolutionists are correct in asserting there is no fossil evidence supporting the theory that all life is connected to a common ancestor." Duane Gish writes, "According to Goldschmidt, and now apparently according to Gould, a reptile laid an egg from which the first bird, feathers and all, was produced." Any evolutionists who believed such nonsense would rightly be laughed off the intellectual stage; yet the only theory that could ever envision such a scenario for the origin of birds is creationism—with God acting in the egg.

I am both angry at and amused by the creationists; but mostly I am deeply sad. Sad for many reasons. Sad because so many people who respond to creationist appeals are troubled for the right reason, but venting their anger at the wrong target. It is true that scientists have often been dogmatic and elitist. It is true that we have often allowed the white-coated, advertising image to represent us—"Scientists say that Brand X cures bunions ten times faster than…" We have not fought it adequately because we derive benefits from appearing as a new priesthood. It is also true that faceless and bureaucratic state power intrudes more and more into our lives and removes choices that should belong to individuals and communities. I can understand that school curricula, imposed from above and without local input, might be seen as one more insult on all these grounds. But the culprit is not, and cannot be, evolution or any other fact of the natural world. Identify and fight our legitimate enemies by all means, but we are not among them.

I am sad because the practical result of this brouhaha will not be expanded coverage to include creationism (that would also make me sad), but the reduction or excision of evolution from high school curricula. Evolution is one of the half dozen "great ideas" developed by science. It speaks to the profound issues of genealogy that fascinate all of us—the "roots" phenomenon writ large. Where did we come from? Where did life arise? How did it develop? How are organisms related? It forces us to think, ponder, and wonder. Shall we deprive millions of this knowledge and once again teach biology as a set of dull and unconnected facts, without the thread that weaves diverse material into a supple unity?

But most of all I am saddened by a trend I am just beginning to discern among my colleagues. I sense that some now wish to mute the healthy debate about theory that has brought new life to evolutionary biology. It provides grist for creationist mills, they say, even if only by distortion. Perhaps we should lie low and rally around the flag of strict Darwinism, at least for the moment—a kind of old-time religion on our part.

But we should borrow another metaphor and recognize that we too have to tread a straight and narrow path, surrounded by roads to perdition. For if we ever begin to suppress our search to understand nature, to quench our own intellectual excitement in a misguided effort to present a united front where it does not and should not exist, then we are truly lost.

[ Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," May 1981; from Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994, pp. 253-262. ]
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html
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FranchiseBlade · Mar 24, 2005

Here is the linked story which goes into some discussion about the macroevolution connection.

The Return of Hopeful Monsters

by Stephen Jay Gould

Big Brother, the tyrant of George Orwell's 1984, directed his daily Two Minutes Hate against Emmanuel Goldstein, enemy of the people. When I studied evolutionary biology in graduate school during the mid-1960s, official rebuke and derision focused upon Richard Goldschmidt, a famous geneticist who, we were told, had gone astray. Although 1984 creeps up on us, I trust that the world will not be in Big Brother's grip by then. I do, however, predict that during this decade Goldschmidt will be largely vindicated in the world of evolutionary biology.

Goldschmidt, a Jewish refugee from Hitler's decimation of German science, spent the remainder of his career at Berkeley, where he died in 1958. His views on evolution ran afoul of the great neo-Darwinian synthesis forged during the 1930s and 1940s and continuing today as a reigning, if insecure, orthodoxy. Contemporary neo-Darwinism is often called the "synthetic theory of evolution" because it united the theories of population genetics with the classical observations of morphology, systematics, embryology, biogeography, and paleontology.

The core of this synthetic theory restates the two most characteristic assertions of Darwin himself: first, that evolution is a two-stage process (random variation as raw material, natural selection as a directing force); secondly, that evolutionary change is generally slow, steady, gradual, and continuous.

Geneticists can study the gradual increase of favored genes within populations of fruit flies in laboratory bottles. Naturalists can record the steady replacement of light moths by dark moths as industrial soot blackens the trees of Britain. Orthodox neo-Darwinians extrapolate these even and continuous changes to the most profound structural transitions in the history of life: by a long series of insensibly graded intermediate steps, birds are linked to reptiles, fish with jaws to their jawless ancestors. Macroevolution (major structural transition) is nothing more than microevolution (flies in bottles) extended. If black moths can displace white moths in a century, then reptiles can become birds in a few million years by the smooth and sequential summation of countless changes. The shift of gene frequencies in local populations is an adequate model for all evolutionary processes—or so the current orthodoxy states.

The most sophisticated of modern American textbooks for introductory biology expresses its allegiance to the conventional view in this way:

[Can] more extensive evolutionary change, macroevolution, be explained as an outcome of these microevolutionary shifts? Did birds really arise from reptiles by an accumulation of gene substitutions of the kind illustrated by the raspberry eye-color gene? The answer is that it is entirely plausible, and no one has come up with a better explanation. . . . The fossil record suggests that macroevolution is indeed gradual, paced at a rate that leads to the conclusion that it is based upon hundreds or thousands of gene substitutions no different in kind from the ones examined in our case histories.

Many evolutionists view strict continuity between micro- and macroevolution as an essential ingredient of Darwinism and a necessary corollary of natural selection. Yet, as I argue in ["The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change"], Thomas Henry Huxley divided the two issues of natural selection and gradualism and warned Darwin that his strict and unwarranted adherence to gradualism might undermine his entire system. The fossil record with its abrupt transitions offers no support for gradual change, and the principle of natural selection does not require it—selection can operate rapidly. Yet the unnecessary link that Darwin forged became a central tenet of the synthetic theory.

Goldschmidt raised no objection to the standard accounts of microevolution; he devoted the first half of his major work, The Material Basis of Evolution (Yale University Press, 1940), to gradual and continuous change within species. He broke sharply with the synthetic theory, however in arguing that new species arise abruptly by discontinuous variation, or macromutation. He admitted that the vast majority of macromutations could only be viewed as disastrous—these he called "monsters." But, Goldschmidt continued, every once in a while a macromutation might, by sheer good fortune, adapt an organism to a new mode of life, a "hopeful monster" in his terminology. Macroevolution proceeds by the rare success of these hopeful monsters, not by an accumulation of small changes within populations.

I want to argue that defenders of the synthetic theory made a caricature of Goldschmidt's ideas in establishing their whipping boy. I shall not defend everything Goldschmidt said; indeed, I disagree fundamentally with his claim that abrupt macroevolution discredits Darwinism. For Goldschmidt also failed to heed Huxley's warning that the essence of Darwinism—the control of evolution by natural selection—does not require a belief in gradual change.

As a Darwinian, I wish to defend Goldschmidt's postulate that macroevolution is not simply microevolution extrapolated, and that major structural transitions can occur rapidly without a smooth series of intermediate stages. I shall proceed by discussing three questions: (1) can a reasonable story of continuous change be constructed for all macroevolutionary events? (my answer shall be no); (2) are theories of abrupt change inherently anti-Darwinian? (I shall argue that some are and some aren't); (3) do Goldschmidt's hopeful monsters represent the archetype of apostasy from Darwinism, as his critics have long maintained? (my answer, again, shall be no).

All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record—if only one step in a thousand survives as a fossil, geology will not record continuous change. Although I reject this argument (for reasons discussed in ["The Episodic Nature of Evolutionary Change"]), let us grant the traditional escape and ask a different question. Even though we have no direct evidence for smooth transitions, can we invent a reasonable sequence of intermediate forms—that is, viable, functioning organisms—between ancestors and descendants in major structural transitions? Of what possible use are the imperfect incipient stages of useful structures? What good is half a jaw or half a wing? The concept of preadaptation provides the conventional answer by permitting us to argue that incipient stages performed different functions. The half jaw worked perfectly well as a series of gill-supporting bones; the half wing may have trapped prey or controlled body temperature. I regard preadaptation as an important, even an indispensable, concept. But a plausible story is not necessarily true. I do not doubt that preadaptation can save gradualism in some cases, but does it permit us to invent a tale of continuity in most or all cases? I submit, although it may only reflect my lack of imagination, that the answer is no, and I invoke two recently supported cases of discontinuous change in my defense.

On the isolated island of Mauritius, former home of the dodo, two genera of boid snakes (a large group that includes pythons and boa constrictors) share a feature present in no other terrestrial vertebrate: the maxillary bone of the upperjaw is split into front and rear halves, connected by a movable joint. In 1970, my friend Tom Frazzetta published a paper entitled "From Hopeful Monsters to Bolyerine Snakes?" He considered every preadaptive possibility he could imagine and rejected them in favor of discontinuous transition. How can a jawbone be half broken?

Many rodents have check pouches for storing food. These internal pouches connect to the pharynx and may have evolved gradually under selective pressure for holding more and more food in the mouth. But the Geomyidae (pocket gophers) and Heteromyidae (kangaroo rats and pocket mice) have invaginated their cheeks to form external fur-lined pouches with no connection to the mouth or pharynx. What good is an incipient groove or furrow on the outside? Did such hypothetical ancestors run about three-legged while holding a few scraps of food in an imperfect crease with their fourth leg? Charles A. Long has recently considered a suite of preadaptive possibilities (external grooves in burrowing animals to transport Soil, for example) and rejected them all in favor of discontinuous transition. These tales, in the "just-so story" tradition of evolutionary natural history, do not prove anything. But the weight of these, and many similar cases, wore down my faith in gradualism long ago. More inventive minds may yet save it, but concepts salvaged only by facile speculation do not appeal much to me.

If we must accept many cases of discontinuous transition in macroevolution, does Darwinism collapse to survive only as a theory of minor adaptive change within species? The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the major creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that natural selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well. Selection must do this by building adaptations in a series of steps, preserving at each stage the advantageous part in a random spectrum of genetic variability. Selection must superintend the process of creation, not just toss out the misfits after some other force suddenly produces a new species, fully formed in pristine perfection.

We can well imagine such a non-Darwinian theory of discontinuous change—profound and abrupt genetic alteration luckily (now and then) making a new species all at once. Hugo de Vries, the famous Dutch botanist, supported such a theory early in this century. But these notions seem to present insuperable difficulties. With whom shall Athena born from Zeus's brow mate? All her relatives are members of another species. What is the chance, of producing Athena in the first place, rather than a deformed monster? Major disruptions of entire genetic systems do not produce favored—or even viable—creatures.

But all theories of discontinuous change are not anti-Darwinian, as Huxley pointed out nearly 120 years ago. Suppose that a discontinuous change in adult form arises from a small genetic alteration. Problems of discordance with other members of the species do not arise, and the large, favorable variant can spread through a population in Darwinian fashion. Suppose also that this large change does not produce a perfected form all at once, but rather serves as a "key" adaptation to shift its possessor toward a new mode of life. Continued success in this new mode may require a large set of collateral alterations, morphological and behavioral; these may arise by a more traditional, gradual route once the key adaptation forces a profound shift in selective pressures.

Defenders of the modern synthesis have cast Goldschmidt as Goldstein by linking his catchy phrase—hopeful monster—to non-Darwinian notions of immediate perfection by profound genetic change. But this is not entirely what Goldschmidt maintained. In fact, one of his mechanisms for discontinuity in adult forms relied upon a notion of small underlying genetic change. Goldschmidt was a student of embryonic development. He spent most of his early career studying geographic variation in the gypsy moth, Lymantria dispar. He found that large differences in the color patterns of caterpillars resulted from small changes in the timing of development: the effects of a slight delay or enhancement of pigmentation early in growth increased through ontogeny and led to profound differences among fully grown caterpillars.

Goldschmidt identified the genes responsible for these small changes in timing, and demonstrated that large final differences reflected the action of one or a few "rate genes" acting early in growth. He codified the notion of a rate gene in 1918 and wrote twenty years later:

The mutant gene produces its effect . . . by changing the rates of partial processes of development. These might be rates of growth or differentiation, rates of production of stuffs necessary for differentiation, rates of reactions leading to definite physical or chemical situations at definite times of development, rates of those processes which are responsible for segregating the embryonic potencies at definite times.

In his infamous book of 1940, Goldschmidt specifically invokes rate genes as a potential maker of hopeful monsters: "This basis is furnished by the existence of mutants producing monstrosities of the required type and the knowledge of embryonic determination, which permits a small rate change in early embryonic processes to produce a large effect embodying considerable parts of the organism."

In my own, strongly biased opinion, the problem of reconciling evident discontinuity in macroevolution with Darwinism is largely solved by the observation that small changes early in embryology accumulate through growth to yield profound differences among adults. Prolong the high prenatal rate of brain growth into early childhood and a monkey's brain moves toward human size. Delay the onset of metamorphosis and the axolotl of Lake Xochimilco reproduces as a tadpole with gills and never transforms into a salamander. (See my book Ontogeny and Phylogeny [Harvard University Press, 1977] for a compendium of examples, and pardon me for the unabashed plug.) As Long argues for the external cheek pouch: "A genetically controlled developmental inversion of the cheek pouch may have occurred, recurred, and persisted in some populations. Such a morphological change would have been drastic in effect, turning the pockets 'wrong side out' (furry side in), but nevertheless it would be a rather simple embryonic change."

Indeed, if we do not invoke discontinuous change by small alteration in rates of development, I do not see how most major evolutionary transitions can be accomplished at all. Few systems are more resistant to basic change than the strongly differentiated, highly specified, complex adults of "higher" animal groups. How could we ever convert an adult rhinoceros or a mosquito into something fundamentally different. Yet transitions between major groups have occurred in the history of life.

D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, classical scholar, Victorian prose stylist, and glorious anachronism of twentieth-century biology, dealt with this dilemma in his classic treatise On Growth and Form.

An algebraic curve has its fundamental formula, which defines the family to which it belongs. . . . We never think of "transforming" a helicoid into an ellipsoid, or a circle into a frequency curve. So it is with the forms of animals. We cannot transform an invertebrate into a vertebrate, nor a coelenterate into a worm, by any simple and legitimate deformation. . . . Nature proceeds from one type to another. . . . To seek for steppingstones across the gaps between is to seek in vain, forever.

D'Arcy Thompson's solution was the same as Goldschmidt's: the transition may occur in simpler and more similar embryos of these highly divergent adults. No one would think of transforming a starfish into a mouse, but the embryos of some echinoderms and protovertebrates are nearly identical.

1984 will mark the 125th anniversary of Darwin's Origin, the first major excuse for a celebration since the centenary of 1959. I hope that our "new speaking" these few years hence will be neither dogma nor vacuous nonsense. If our entrenched, a priori preferences for gradualism begin to fade by then, we may finally be able to welcome the plurality of results that nature's complexity provides.
http://www.evolutionary.tripod.com/gould_nh_86_22-30.html
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MR. MEOWGI · Mar 25, 2005

My problem with the the judeo/christian idea of the creator is that you have to believe that god created us, is all around us, intervenes with human existence and yet is not a part of us. They call it a "great mystery" because they can't come to terms with nonduality. If God is a part of us then we are a part of god, so basically we are god in a sense. We are not separate from the ultimate reality, it's our ego that fools us into believing that we are. The western mind doesn't dig that.

Here is a decent summary of the Buddhist idea of creation. It's not this is what I completely agree with because it's really above my head, it just makes more sense to me than the dualistic "great mystery": http://www.purifymind.com/BuddhismCosmology.htm

Buddhism and Cosmology

What are the consequences of the concept of interdependence on cosmological ideas in Buddhism? The concept of interdependence implies that the elements of the conventional reality we are all familiar with do not possess an existence that is permanent and autonomous. This thing exists because something else exists, that happens because this has occurred. Nothing can exist by itself and be its own cause.

Everything depends on everything else. Suppose that there is an entity that exists independently of all the others. This implies that it is not produced by a cause, that is, either it has always existed or it does not exist at all. Such an entity will be unchanging since it cannot act on others and others cannot act on it. The world of phenomena could not function. Thus interdependence is essential for phenomena to manifest themselves.

Because the concept of interdependence implies that nothing can exist by itself and be its own cause, it goes against the idea of a creative principle, a First Cause or a God that is permanent, all-powerful, that has no other cause than itself, and which created the universe. In the same vein, Buddhism rejects the idea that the universe can be born out of nothing - a creation ex-nihilo - because the universe has to depend on something else to emerge. If the universe was created, it is because there was a potentiality already present. The coming into being of the universe is merely the realization of that potentiality. One can thus interpret the Big Bang as the manifestation of the phenomenal world emerging from an infinite potentiality already in existence. In a poetic language, Buddhism speaks about of "particles of space" which carry in them the potentiality of matter. This is strongly reminiscent of the vacuum filled with energy that is thought to have given birth the material content of the universe in the modern Big Bang theory. Material phenomenon and things are not "created" in the sense that they go from a state of non-existence to one of existence. Rather they go from an unrealized state to a realized state. Once it has come into existence, the universe goes through a series of cycles, each composed of 4 stages: birth, evolution, death and a state where the universe is pure potentiality but has not manifested yet itself. This cyclic universe has no beginning nor an end.

MadMax · Mar 25, 2005

Why is the Eastern view of dualism necessarily right? Why does the East ALWAYS have the right answer?? I'm certainly not saying they're always wrong! It just seems fashionable to assume that if it's an Eastern thought, it's superior to a Western thought. Kinda like me wearing cargo pants and listening to DMB, I guess.

I think there is a distinction between Creator and created. I think even at my best, I'm not the purity that God is. But I do believe we were all created in His image...not physically, but something else. The power to create...the power to dream and reason. That's all very much a part of God in me.

Luke 17:20 Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”

By the way..flat out dualism is not something prevalent in Christian theology. It's challenged by Christian theology, and particularly was in the 1st century. It is challenged perhaps most profoundly through the concept of the incarnation itself. Dualism presents itself in Christianity a lot like it does in Taoism. Good/evil. But not every distinction is a dualism. And I don't think Creator and created, though distinct, is dualistic.

MR. MEOWGI · Mar 25, 2005

Originally posted by MadMax
Why is the Eastern view of dualism necessarily right? Why does the East ALWAYS have the right answer?? I'm certainly not saying they're always wrong! It just seems fashionable to assume that if it's an Eastern thought, it's superior to a Western thought. Kinda like me wearing cargo pants and listening to DMB, I guess.

I think there is a distinction between Creator and created. I think even at my best, I'm not the purity that God is. But I do believe we were all created in His image...not physically, but something else. The power to create...the power to dream and reason. That's all very much a part of God in me.

Luke 17:20 Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”

By the way..flat out dualism is not something prevalent in Christian theology. It's challenged by Christian theology, and particularly was in the 1st century. It is challenged perhaps most profoundly through the concept of the incarnation itself. Dualism presents itself in Christianity a lot like it does in Taoism. Good/evil. But not every distinction is a dualism. And I don't think Creator and created, though distinct, is dualistic.
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I've been into this stuff for a while, and I hate to be trendy. To me it's right because it makes sense and the implications are incredible. I just think they developed the techniques to come to deeper understandings, (around 600 bc, which is nuts) through a lot of meditation and practice. Science is starting to understand it's effects of meditation on the mind, it's amazing. You can see the trandescendce and peace in the face of the great Buddha statues of Polannaruwa etc. And I think we could use some of that, and that's why it is becoming popular. It will only become more. So when it comes to issues like this, I just trust them. But it also makes a lot of sense to me. It sounds right and good. Plus I just enjoy skewing my perceptions of reality, and that of others. We all can use some of that too.

Luke 17:20 is very profound. I can't think of anything more.

MadMax · Mar 25, 2005

Mewogi, I wasn't trying to call you out in that way. Truly, I wasn't. Was just making a broader comment...I know you've told me this has been influential on you for a very long time.

I agree...I'm also reading stuff about the effects of meditation and prayer on health....very interesting reads.

MR. MEOWGI · Mar 25, 2005

Originally posted by MadMax
Mewogi, I wasn't trying to call you out in that way. Truly, I wasn't. Was just making a broader comment...I know you've told me this has been influential on you for a very long time.
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Yeah Max, we all know you're an *******.

Bring it on.

MadMax · Mar 25, 2005

Originally posted by MR. MEOWGI
Yeah Max, we all know you're an *******.

Bring it on.
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dude, i don't "bring it on" to anyone that has any relationship to Pat Morita. I saw what that guy can do. no, thanks!

Troy McClure · Mar 25, 2005

God seems like an all right dude if you ask me... A little "high and mighty", but if he ever needed a ride home from a bar or his chick's place or something I'd help him out.

He's cool.

triplet · Mar 25, 2005

Sorry, but this guys has absolutely no idea about biology.

Originally posted by FranchiseBlade
He has pointed out that most scientists don't follow the idea that we came from an ape or a monkey. If that were true there would still be apes that occasionally had mutated babies that were human.
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thegary · Mar 25, 2005

i parse the flux, that was neither created nor can be destroyed, with occam's razor. that's it in two nutshells and a carrot stick.

Sishir Chang · Mar 25, 2005

Some interesting stuff here that I've only been able to skim but will reread in more detail later.

In answer to the title of this thread I will say I have no particular view of the Creator. I believe that there is a God but I've given up trying to understand what God is.

No Worries · Mar 25, 2005

Straight Bible thumper

that's it in two nutshells and a carrot stick.

Here is what I think of God:

The EB symbolizes all that is good and right with the world.

While the chocolate eggs, ... we will leave that for another day

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