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Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: Need some assistance:RNA is assembled by accident?
« on: 09/04/2016 02:42:48 »
Also, a few comments about "god gaps"
We will always have gaps in our understanding. Whether it is biology, evolution, cosmology, or acoustics... Invoking God when we don't have the answer is at best setting religions up for failure. In the past, reilgious figures and texts have made claims about how the world works, or why things are they way they are, and have repeatedly been shown to be false (or probably not true). Questions have since come up that couldn't have been contemplated millenia, centuries or even decades ago (What does the bible say about quantum teleportation?), and we have repeatedly seen religious figures persecute the scientists, philosophers and inventors that have raised the questions they couldn't answer or provided the answers the haven't questioned.
When discussing the evolution of animals, (or any other species) our fossil record is very sparse in some regards. We don't have an obvious map of the evolutionary tree from one fossil to the next because there have literally been billions of generations, creating countless different variations from one organism to the next. Our own taxanomic differentiation and classification of species is imperfect and imprecise. And if we go by fossil record alone, every time a new fossil is found that links one organism and one of its ancestors, two new gaps are formed (we went from the A—B gap to an A—C gap and a C—B gap).
This also holds for the gaps at the ends of our understanding (rather than between things we understand). Well what's smaller than X? Y is smaller than X. And what is smaller than Y? Z is smaller than Y.... What's bigger than X? W.... What happened before that, and what happened before that, etc. etc. etc.
The scientific process is all about asking these questions, but it also involves looking for the answers. Unfortunately the religious approach has often been one of "we already know--God did it. Case closed!" And it's fine if people don't want to open their own minds to the miraculous world that we live in--even if God did it, don't they want to know how? But I take issue with those who would draw the wool over others' eyes, even if it is their own children.
But now, I have to go light some candles, bless some wine and bring in the shabbos...
We will always have gaps in our understanding. Whether it is biology, evolution, cosmology, or acoustics... Invoking God when we don't have the answer is at best setting religions up for failure. In the past, reilgious figures and texts have made claims about how the world works, or why things are they way they are, and have repeatedly been shown to be false (or probably not true). Questions have since come up that couldn't have been contemplated millenia, centuries or even decades ago (What does the bible say about quantum teleportation?), and we have repeatedly seen religious figures persecute the scientists, philosophers and inventors that have raised the questions they couldn't answer or provided the answers the haven't questioned.
When discussing the evolution of animals, (or any other species) our fossil record is very sparse in some regards. We don't have an obvious map of the evolutionary tree from one fossil to the next because there have literally been billions of generations, creating countless different variations from one organism to the next. Our own taxanomic differentiation and classification of species is imperfect and imprecise. And if we go by fossil record alone, every time a new fossil is found that links one organism and one of its ancestors, two new gaps are formed (we went from the A—B gap to an A—C gap and a C—B gap).
This also holds for the gaps at the ends of our understanding (rather than between things we understand). Well what's smaller than X? Y is smaller than X. And what is smaller than Y? Z is smaller than Y.... What's bigger than X? W.... What happened before that, and what happened before that, etc. etc. etc.
The scientific process is all about asking these questions, but it also involves looking for the answers. Unfortunately the religious approach has often been one of "we already know--God did it. Case closed!" And it's fine if people don't want to open their own minds to the miraculous world that we live in--even if God did it, don't they want to know how? But I take issue with those who would draw the wool over others' eyes, even if it is their own children.
But now, I have to go light some candles, bless some wine and bring in the shabbos...
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