Seasons

Yes, it's the randomness of the mutations which just doesn't wash with me. It seems to me evolving anything of use takes too long if it occurs randomly. The systems of any lifeform are complex beyond belief, and most work in tandem with other parts. If they aren't all there and working at the same time the creature dies.

SirRahz: Yes, winters are pretty mild. From memory, Melbourne (which is a long way south) is as far below the equator as New York is above it. We have had snow once in my lifetime. It was 1982, and there was probably just enough that fell across the whole city to fill a wading pool. It does get below freezing sometimes, but only at night.

Another thought occurs on reading previous posts regarding the infinite/finite universe argument. Say the universe is finite. The suggestion is that it would be surrounded by nothing. What exactly is that nothing? Empty space? That's pretty much what the universe already is, excepting the occasional star or nebula or comet. How would you define where that nothing ended and the universe proper begins?

Well, there's intelligent speculation that what we call "empty space" isn't actually nothing. But do you understand the four-dimensional surface idea?

Yes; all that suggests genes can be informed, and that genetic changes can be responsive to an environment, rather than purely random. We're still looking for the mechanisms by which genes are informed. We do have some clues, though, and are particularly advanced in the areas of post-conception genetic switches.

Right, it's not that there's empty space out there, it's that there is nothing out there because there *is* no out there. I think Eugene was about to mention things that potentially take place outside of this closed universe, but I don't think including those changes the question or the solution.

It's not the randomness that bothers me. If you make the universe old enough, there's enought time for anything to happen if it's actually possible. But I don't believe evolution is possible.

Eh? Explain yourself. You don't think it's possible, say, that lions and tigers share a common ancestor?

Lions and tigers, probably. Lions and bears, no. Horizontal evolution happens. Vertical evolution is a myth.

Still, I'm confused. If lions and tigers, why not lions and bears?

Your theory would seem to require that either life sprang into being from non-life many, many times at many different points in time and with a huge degree of initial complexity, or that life never sprang into being from non-life at all.

Lions and tigers are both cats. Bears aren't.

Actually, I believe that life was created from non-life during a six day period just after the creation of the earth. You can read all about it in the beginning of Genesis.

But the only things that make lions and tigers both cats are similarities we observe and the fact that we draw the line somewhere and call it "felis". Lions and bears are also in a same classification, just not genus. Bears share a great many things in common with lions, nearly as many as tigers do.

I would understand if you believed that idea of creation as a religious tenet (i.e. on faith) but not if you said it had more explanatory power than the theories of evolution.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Seriously though, I think I've mentioned before that some scientists these days take a kind of middle ground stance. On the one hand they don't dismiss evolution, on the other they suggest that it must in some way be guided to produce the kinds of results it does. Whether by God or something else, it's hard to see how an animal can get from having one skin cell which is sensitive to light evolve that into an eye unless someone had the notion that the end result would be useful, because the beginning cell would not have been.