Yet another twattish survey attempts to claim that it is Dawkins fault that nobody believes in evolution

[LadyGlencoraPalliser]

or so it would appear

No. Its becos they are fick.

That's what science is about, being open minded and willing to accept that we don't know everything

Absolutely right! Of course we don't know everything yet. Maybe we never will. But we carry on asking the questions in better ways, and using valid methodologies to fill in as much understanding as our little minds are capable of.

It sure beats the heck out of the alternative of finding a gap in our knowledge and falling back on the supernatural to dodge explaining it.

As an evolutionary biologist I have no probs with people putting God behind it all if they want to. Indeed my boss does it all the time... .

However, those of us who prefer an evidence-based approach to life, do kind of like finding out how to explain biodiversity without putting god behind it all. Evolution by natural selection (a lot of it happening at the level of neural changes in DNA, and in some rare cases, positive seection on DNA, inheritance of acquired RNA/ immune characteristics, mutation, saltation, etc etc) is by far the best mechanism anyone's come up with.

As long as people don't have a "god of the gaps" where everything we can't yet explain has to be created by god (which basically diminishes god's relevance over time)... "irreducible complexity" - particularly the totally spurious examples used by the advocates of intelligent design - is just silly.

nothing stopping some of us believe in evolution and nautural selection with a God behind it all

Yeah, I used to put God behind it. And back then I was 'thankful' for creation. And - to use an extraordinarily bad-taste metaphor - turn a blind eye to the existence of parasitic worms and so forth.

Or as rather beautifully said, in the equally beautiful novel "Knowledge of Angels", God in explaining everything, explains nothing.

Svalbary, I wholeheartedly believe in and have a good understanding of the theory of evolution, but I think you will find that even it's leading proponents still alnowledge that it is a theory. We accept it as an established, reliable and extremely well supported theory, but a theory non the less. The theory of gravity is also a theory - doesn't mean there's much room for doubt, but calling it FACT is simply not going to get the argument anywhere.

Ah, well, Grimma, the parasitic worm thingy takes us into the old 'problem of suffering' thing, which is much wider in scope than simply being interested in nature/creation/however you choose to put it.

erm.... is electromagnetic radiation fact or theory?

what about DNA?

not one of the leading proponents of evolution that I know would call it a theory, except in the most strictly epistemological sense...

Belgo, I'm wondering what strikes you as questionable or a "missing link" - maybe if we understand where your doubts lie we can clarify some of the issues for you?
Fossil lines are incredible in thier constant addition to the evidence for evolution, but probably the most telling evidence of recent times has come from DNA research.
Other than the obvious issue surrounding the starting point (Big Bang Theory?) I'm hard pressed to think of many holes left in the theory.

A theory supported and not (as yet) contradicted by fact is as good as it gets.

What's the problem with that? What more do you want?

Svalbardy, There was a programme on recently (can't remember the name of it) on exactly this subject and included the court case in the USA where the teachers were being forced to teach intelligent design along side Darwin's theory. They had the US's leading experts testifying and each agreed that it was a theory - only in the same way that gravity as a theory (that was actually the point made by one of the scientists) but yes, a theory. It is a theory with no justifiable alternate theory, but surely it's not scientific to describe it as fact?

Grimma, that is absolutely my point.

Sorry, I know I'm just nit picking.

Kay - there is no 'problem of suffering' if you don't believe in a loving God.

Suffering is unfortunately a fact of life, which we should as thinking, compassionate beings do our best to alleviate and not contribute to.

Its only when you try to square the circle of how a loving all-powerful god could have created some of what exists, that a 'problem' emerges.

sorry, ok, yes I agree with you Grimma/Bubbaluv, but calling it a theory (along with gravity, electromagnetism, DNA etc) does appreciable damage in that a lot of people don't get the distinction between "it's the best model we've got and we have no evidence against it, i.e. someone less philosophically sophisticated would call it a fact", and "it's one theory and there are other theories that are equally good".

In this country, that damage is pretty much a non-issue, but I have several collaborators in North America who get hate mail, death threats, high-level requests for their sacking from universities, etc, JUST because they teach evolution to the first year undergrads! Try telling them that it doesn't matter what people think....

svalbardy - could you explain evolution without in any way suggesting or saying that there are some things we have yet to discover or don't understand?

Well, actually I think the 'problem of suffering' exists for the non-theist/theist-free (how does UQD put it? I can't recall), it just exists in a different form, but like I say, beyond the scope of this thread which has got far too scientifically technical for a thickie like me.

Beanibe,
What issues do feel still need to be addressed or gaps filled?

Some things we don't yet understand

that kind of depends on what level of explnation you want, but um...
evolution is change over time in a population, via descent with modification. An example would be that the golden staph bugs in your hospital go from being killed off by methicillin, to being resistant to it, over the time it takes for an outbreak of golden staph infections to happen in the hospital.

It's pretty obvious that this kind of descent with modification happens - look at bugs/drugs, dog breeding, pigeon breeding, agriculture (try getting a loaf of bread out of the original form of wheat...).

How that modification occurs, is where natural selection comes in. Darwin and Wallace reckoned that in any given population, you will have variation. So for example, some of the golden staph bugs living on the taps/door handles/ bed rails in your hospital ward will be resistant to methicillin, some won't. This resistance comes from accidents in transcribing DNA, or damage to DNA that is not subsequently repaired (for example UV light causes DNA to break). All of the bugs, resistant and susceptible, end up in (probably several) patients. The ones susceptible to methicillin get killed off, but the ones risistant to it survive. in this context, those ones are the "fittest" (ie the "best") and they survive to breed, and pass on their characteristics.

So in this case the selection was for methicillin-resistance.

DNA is pretty simple stuff - it's very easy to make mistakes when it's being copied (when you're about to make a new cell), or to break it and mis-repair it. the key to understanding just how things change, is to remember the enormous timescales involved. Animals go back at least 550 million years, probably (depending on which evidence you believe) a billion years. One other thing that is important is that it's not a simply linear set of steps from DNA -> protein -> big organs. There are regulatory genes that switch whole sets of others on and off at different times in your development - so for example if you lost PAX-6 you would still have all the proteins that make up eye tissue, but you wouldn't make an eye out of them.

The issue of the fossil record having lots of gaps is that the fossil record IS just that... stuff getting preserved in rock, and then getting dug up again... it's vanishingly unlikely that any given individual worm from 525 million years ago will be preserved in nice soft mud, not eaten, not squished by an elephant standing in the mud, not cooked out of all recognition in some geological event, come to the surface again, not get jackhammered to dust for next door's swimming pool, AND get found by someone who knows what to look for and identifies it as a cambrian annelid....

Does that help?

sorry I should've said the elephant is definitely an anachronism

Great explanation svalbardy.

thanks thunderduck!

um I missed out that the methicillin gets fed to the patients who are harbouring bugs (both non resistant and resistant ones). Then methicillin kills off susceptible ones only. Patients are still infected with MRSA "superbugs".... which are bloody hard to get rid of...

Thus GPs not wanting to prescribe antibiotics any more! blame it on natural selection...

I'll admit to calling evolution a theory, though I believe it whole heartedly and use it in the appropriate context.
However I agree it does make it easier for the general population to take it seriously if it isn't referred to as such.

has a DNA connection ever been found between a humand and Primates? Sorry if this is a stupid question.