Questions on Evolution and the Existence of God and...

by ILoveTTATT 130 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  ILoveTTATT

  I know this is one HUGE rant, but I want to put my own questions and doubts in writing.

  I am a fading JW who has become Agnostic... I still believe in "God" and "Jesus," but I simply cannot explain to people why I believe in them. I just do.

  About the existence of God: It is an infinite regress. "All things were created by someone"... well... who created God? If there IS a God, how do I know that this person is benevolent/wise?

  Why do I still believe in God?

  I think it has to do with the fact that I still pray, and believe that I DO get answers to my prayers. But it leads me to think, what if I felt that my prayers were not being answered? What about the billions of humans on this Earth who suffer, who need to work 6 days, 12 hours per day, to be able to have enough money to buy the Starbucks coffee I just drank? WHY??? WHAT MAKES ME SO DAMN F!CKING SPECIAL, WHY DON'T YOU CARE ABOUT THOSE PEOPLE!??!?! If there IS a God who is helping ME but not billions of other people, then that is one EXTREMELY PARTIAL God... what if His "blessing" turns into "displeasure"? Therefore, I cannot believe in God just based on perceived prayers answered. There must be some sort of PROOF to Him.

  I don't believe that the Bible is the Word of God, it can't be. If God is omnipotent and all-wise, I would EXPECT Him to do a PERFECT book and protect it PERFECTLY. No contradictions, not even seeming contradictions. No different versions (Septuagint VS. Masoretic), no losing the originals and relying on imperfect copies to know what the book said... no failed prophecies, no nothing... no errors. Infallible should mean exactly that... no mistakes at all... The EVIDENCE is that the Bible's text was NOT protected at all... I don't know at what point it became a book used to control people, but it did.

  About Evolution: I am a Chemical Engineer, with officially tested IQ's over 130, so I DO understand complicated things. BRING IT ON... I am open-minded and will accept things if they can be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

  It seems logical to me to separate Evolution and Abiogenesis, as they are two different topics altogether. A lot of churches and faiths have gone completely on the "we accept Evolution, but not Abiogenesis" bandwagon. "Evolution," the way I understand it, is just changes and changes and changes until one species becomes another species...

  Abiogenesis deals with the origin of life. I enjoyed reading the article on Wikipedia on it. Very easy introduction to the topic. I knew from school that Pasteur had killed the "spontaneous generation" theory. Sneaky JW's and their Creation books/articles only mentioned this side of things. It makes sense now with the current scientific knowledge that life does not generate spontaneously. No spontaneous generation means that life came from previous life.... therefore a Creator... simple enough... but it makes an infinite regress... again, being a JW, it was an easy answer for me: God is from forever, no beginning nor end. Now I know that this is black-and-white thinking. A little thinking outside the JW box, a little bit of Googling, and the scientific explanation makes sense for me: different time, different atmosphere... just the perfect situation AT THAT MOMENT for the generation of self-replicating molecules, or whatever the precursor of life was. There are a lot of holes in the theories, but just like physics, or any branch of science, investigation will yield something, eventually. CERN, for example, may yield incredible breakthroughs in Physics. Perhaps one day we'll have a "theory of everything". Perhaps one day those holes to the origin of life theories may be closed. But there is sufficient evidence for the POSSIBILITY of abiogenesis. Much better, in my humble opinion, than believing in a God who had no beginning, to close the infinite regress.

  Evolution sounds logical. Adaptation has already been proven over and over. However, I see holes in the theory, and I haven't had time to investigate or I have not seen a clear answer to them:

  1. If evolution says that only the best survive, and we humble humans, self-named Homo Sapiens Sapiens, are the most intelligent species on this planet, why aren't we the ONLY species? My understanding right now is that the survival of the fittest refers to the survival within the species itself. I.E. monkeys that are affected by a disease and survive it may pass their genes to the next generation of monkeys, and maybe they will be immune to that disease and have an even better chance of survival, than the monkeys who weren't strong to survive it.

  2. What's next, after humans?

  3. Has actual evolution, i.e. the changes accumulating sufficiently to make ANOTHER species, been observed? If so, where? I would think that the smaller the species/the faster time to reproduce, the better chances to actually observe this.

  Thanks for reading my really long rant...

  Thanks and have a good night!

  ILTTATT
• 

  cofty

  1. If evolution says that only the best survive, and we humble humans, self-named Homo Sapiens Sapiens, are the most intelligent species on this planet, why aren't we the ONLY species?

  Great questions.

  Very briefly because I'm off to bed, our bodies are built by genes that have been very successful at building Homo sapiens that are adept at living long enough to breed.

  The very same can be said for the genes that build all the other millions of species on the planet. Our genes are rubbish at building bodies that succeed at making a living feeding on the tears of Hippos but there is a worm that is built from genes that are brilliantly evolved to do just that.

  Once you see the world from the perspective of selfish genes it all makes perfect sense and squashes human hubris.

  Good night.
• 

  andysmiles

  2. Apes
  
  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2103281/?ref_=vi_tt_t

  Sorry, I don't have a better answer.
• 

  Giordano

  Remember this as a questioning fading JW, when you stare headlong into the mind-paralyzing void of non belief........ the inky black nothingness of that existence, the hellish yawning maw of the abyss – know that it's pretty damn dark at first......... so give it a few minutes for your eyes to adjust.
• 

  prologos

  Well, good observations all. but if you trace the comforting world that we live in now,

  not the terrible last day, worse - than - ever times of wt doctrine,--

  back to the beginning, there is not a black no-thing-ness but the brightest light you can imagine,

  an expanding matter- forming energetic white hole singularity.

  In other words there is light at the end of the tunnel, not darkness.
• 

  Perry

  Has actual evolution, i.e. the changes accumulating sufficiently to make ANOTHER species, been observed? If so, where? I would think that the smaller the species/the faster time to reproduce, the better chances to actually observe this.

  I'd like to 2nd that question.
• 

  Tiktaalik

  Thanks for asking such insightful questions. Here's a few points to help you with your search for some answers:

  1. Humans are just one of 10 million or so other species. All species are totally reliant on a suite of other species for their survival. Other species provide us with the necessary goods and services for the continuation of life. For example, you are totally reliant on the colonies of bacteria that live within your gut, and you need other species of bacteria to dispose of all the wastes that you produce, and you need to take in energy by eating various other species. Humans are just one part of a complex web that links all species to all other species.

  The concept of "survival of the fittest" is widely misunderstood. In evolutionary terms it relates to the likelihood of any individual passing its genes on to the next generation. It is a mathematical model, where the "fittest" individuals have a greater chance to pass on more of their DNA than do their conspecifics. Fitness, thus defined, refers to how well an individual animal is able to obtain and utilise the resources available to it from its environment. It is a measure of how well it is adapted to its environment. It has little to do with physical fitness (although it can mean that in some instances).

  2. Humans are not the current pinnacle of evolution. Evolution is a genetic response to environment conditions. How evolution proceeds in the future is totally dependent on environmental forcings. A meteor could slam into the Earth next month and wipe out every animal bigger than a mouse. Only the animals and plants who are fortunate enough to have the right genotypes to enable them to survive in that new environment will survive, all the others will join the overflowing ranks of the extinct. Just such a scenario has happened at least 5 times in Earth's history. The species alive today represent the tiniest fraction of all the species who have ever lived. It is the fate of every species to suffer extinction. And humans will be no different. It is hubristic to think otherwise.

  3. Evolution is a continuum. Every organism alive today is a another link in the long unbroken chain that stretches back through 3.5 billion years of history to the first life form. Every organism is slightly different to its parents, and it's offspring differs slightly to it. The fossil record preserves snapshots of various stages along that unbroken chain. If every organism became fossilised at death than this "family album" would show all these changes. You wouldn't spot the differences between individuals only a few generations apart but as more generations went by the changes would become noticeable. Fossils are a record of the process of evolution in action.

  You are correct in assuming that evolution is observable in small, short-lived species. In large animals and plants, evolution can be observed by its effects, but in bacteria it can be observed in action. Laboratory experiments have developed new species of bacteria in a matter of months. In bacteria, this time frame represents thousands of generations and allows the accumulation of genetic differences to allow speciation to occur.
• 

  adamah

  Hi IluvTTATT,

  Good questions!

  IluvTTATT said- I am a fading JW who has become Agnostic... I still believe in "God" and "Jesus," but I simply cannot explain to people why I believe in them. I just do.

  Hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but according to the accepted definitions for describing belief in deities, if you self-identify as someone who still believes in God, you're a theist (and agnostic would say they don't know, since there's not enough evidence on which to make a decision). Your inability to explain the basis of your belief has NOTHING to do with it, only what you report that you believe....

  You're raising some good objections about God's existence, but I'm skipping them to get to the evo stuff...

  IluvTTATT said- It seems logical to me to separate Evolution and Abiogenesis, as they are two different topics altogether. A lot of churches and faiths have gone completely on the "we accept Evolution, but not Abiogenesis" bandwagon. "Evolution," the way I understand it, is just changes and changes and changes until one species becomes another species...

  Actually, evo is defined as changes in the gene pool over time; you don't even have to get a new species (a process called 'speciation') for evolution to occur. In fact, you could have individuals with an identical ourward appearance (phenotype), and as long as one has a slightly-different set of genes, you have evolution. You can often see evidence for evolution in humans with your very own eyes, with different outward appearances of humanity causing the outward expressions of their different genotypes.

  IluvTTATT said- 1. If evolution says that only the best survive, and we humble humans, self-named Homo Sapiens Sapiens, are the most intelligent species on this planet, why aren't we the ONLY species?

  Yeah, evo doesn't say only the best survive (AKA survival of the fittest): that's a popular saying, but it's completely misleading. Instead, evo says that only those who are sufficiently adapted to survive in their environment survive! It's much less challeging than people think.

  Fact is, even the terribly-maladapted who somehow manage to hang on for dear life to survive to pass on their genes to offspring do so, since that lends the genetic variability upon which natural selection may select from within the gene pool. Why does there need to be variability in the gene pool? Conditions change in the environment, and perhaps a trait that was a burden for the organism and actually had negative survival value under a certain condition might code for a trait that would provide the organism (and hence, the species) a survival benefit after a change in the environment occurs.

  IluvTTATT said- 2. What's next, after humans?

  We ARE the dominant species on the planet at the moment, and as we learn more about evo and genetics, we have the ability to effect its course (and already do, via medicine).

  Of course, we think small mammals filled a niche that was vacated by extinction of large dinosaurs millions of years ago (after a meteor struck the Yucatan), allowing for homo sapiens to emerge as the dominant species on the Planet. And provided we don't wipe ourselves out via our stupidity via nuke proliferation and war, who knows where homo sapiens will end up?

  (And if we do commit hari-kari via nuke war, I'm putting my $$$ on the cockroaches being poised to take over control, since they're resiliant to radiation poisoning).

  IluvTTATT said- 3. Has actual evolution, i.e. the changes accumulating sufficiently to make ANOTHER species, been observed? If so, where? I would think that the smaller the species/the faster time to reproduce, the better chances to actually observe this.

  You're right that it takes a REALLY long time for speciation to occur (over many generations), and hence why researchers use fruit flies and even better, bacteria.

  Of the top of my head, we can see speciation in the process by looking at say, dogs (via artificial selection), eg a chihuahua and a great dane are essentially reproductively isolated from each other (due to their great size differential, and the difficulty in mating!) and a result of having their gene pools reproductively separated from the other, in essence they're unlikely to successfully reproduce "in the wild" (if allowed a chance).

  Horses, donkeys, and mules also the result of splitting apart, where sterile offspring often result. Speciation has been observed in some species of insects like mosquitos over the past century and a half, eg:

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_mosquito

  Adam
• 

  adamah

  Giordino said-

  Remember this as a questioning fading JW, when you stare headlong into the mind-paralyzing void of non belief........ the inky black nothingness of that existence, the hellish yawning maw of the abyss – know that it's pretty damn dark at first......... so give it a few minutes for your eyes to adjust.

  Are you referring to the inky black of ignorance of believing in children's fairy tale? Studying the details of reality via science fills me with more excitement and awe than studying the Bible ever did, EVEN when I was a kid... Maybe it's because I was inquisitive as a kid, but studying the Bible only raised questions that no one could answer UNTIL I went to school, studied biology and my "eyes were opened"

  You want "new light"? Study biology, as I can guarantee you it ain't coming from Brooklyn, LOL!
• 

  Giordano

  Agreed Adamah. My tongue in cheek point was it all seems so dark and hopeless when leaving the 'truth'. So give yourself a little time to adjust and you will see what's really there.