It's only specieism that lets us say that we domesticated the cow rather than that the cow domesticated us.

To posit that intelligently designed selective breeding for traits desired by the intelligent entity is "natural selection" trivializes the language involved. Sure, cave men were the environment of the fathers of the fathers of modern dogs, and the cave men's selection of favored dogs was "natural" and "random" vis-a-vis the dogs themselves--a sort of environmental pressure, like a shift in climate.

Silly, isn't it?

What's the problem, exactly?

Jared Diamond, among many others, put forward the notion that some animals exhibit traits that make them more amenable to domestication. This doesn't seem terribly farfetched. Presuming the results of this study are accurate, and further presuming that they can be extended to other species (a fox isn't that far from the ancestral wolves that gave rise to modern dogs), this will merely prove to be a testable hypothesis that turned out to be wrong. To call it inane is to reveal a bias against the method; to call it inane now is premature, given what we still don't know.

Evolutionary biologists will occasionally assert that animal breeding can illustrate principles at work in evolution by natural selection; by definition, breeding is not "natural" selection, but if the culling/selective breeding practiced by purpose-driven humans is replaced by natural forces, it's not any sort of stretch to see how certain traits can and will be favored in the same way. The difference between Darwinists and Intelligent Design advocates is that the former are willing to entertain the notion that those natural forces at least appear purposeless, while the latter are not. And, of course, you seem opposed to the idea that major morphological changes (turn a squirrel into a bat, instead of another squirrel) can be accomplished by anything short of divine intervention.

Lou:

You can't trivialize it--the theory is inherently silly.

M:

It's inane precisely because it was so obviously going to prove false. If all Europe had was bison they'd give milk like Jerset cows.

On your other point you stumble into profundity: "if the culling/selective breeding practiced by purpose-driven humans is replaced by natural forces" gives up the game.

The difference is that ID proposes some unknown, supernatural designer who made us all *poof* appear out of nowhere. Even if true, it is not a scientific theory unless this designer can be produced.

Who is he/she?
Where does he/she live?
What is he/she designing now?
What might he/she design tomorrow?

The sheer futility in answering these questions puts paid to ID as any type of real inquiry.

Mr. Lange:

That isn't a difference, but a similarity. The Designer is as evident as Natural Selection.

David:

Ah, the cow as Intelligent Designer. Isn't that Hinduism?

It's inane to argue that any species that can be domesticated will be domesticated. Otherwise why were Europeans so stupid as to not domesticate the fox? Those silly Europeans.

One of the prime criteria that Diamond uses is whether domesticating a species is worthwhile on a cost-benefit analysis. Elephants are capable of being domesticated, but weren't because they consume so much to get them to adulthood that the benefits are not worth the cost of feeding them. Much easier to simply seize adult elephants in the wild and tame them, if they are needed at all. That's the Diamond example if I remember correctly.

Presumably, that's the same rational choice the Plains Indians made. Why domesticate the bison when you can hunt the herd for their meat and hides and be just as well off? The Indians don't need bison milk either. American Indians, like the rest of humanity outside of Europe, are mainly lactose intolerant.

OJ:

What is your definition of evolution? You say you accept that it has happened, but what do you mean by it? What does it mean to say that something has 'evolved', to you?

And can you give an example of something that has evolved, and what that change involved, to a particular organism or group of organisms? To avoid this domestication issue, can you give a pre-human example?

Brit:

Species have changed over time. The horse was once an eohippus or whatever. Man a hominid.

"It's inane precisely because it was so obviously going to prove false"

Hasn't been proved false yet. Inane to claim otherwise.

"On your other point you stumble into profundity: "if the culling/selective breeding practiced by purpose-driven humans is replaced by natural forces" gives up the game."

You have a number of interesting things to say in the evolutionary debates that pop up here, even when I don't agree with them - the limits of rational inquiry, the moral complicity of many of the more radical proponents of Darwinism with eugenics and even genocide, etc. - and it's entertaining these days, when Harry and Jeff and co. have the time and patience to badger you over it, to watch you cling to your last remaining tendril of objection to Darwinian evolution (the aforementioned major morphological changes seen in the fossil record, and the supposed impossibility of anything other than an Intelligent Designer to accomplish them). But this "game" stuff, the contention that natural selection is a faith and not a well-tested scientific hypothesis, and whatnot, are simply boring. Once you enter this mode, all further discussions are pointless.

Ok. Eohippus is the first known 'horse'. So my question is: how do you think it evolved?

What were the processes? Was there a sudden change, with the last eohippus giving birth to the first orohippus, and so on down the line until we get to the modern horse?

Did God change an eohippus into an orohippus? How did this change happen? Did God change just one, or a whole population at once?

Brit:

We have no idea. We think there was change but since we have no clue how it occurred we posit various mechanisms based on our personal philosophies: God, Natural Selection, Lamarckianism, aliens, Intelligent Design, etc.

M:

The undomesticable fox was domesticated. sic transit Diamond.

Yes, an argument between faiths is usually unfruitful. But you'll grow out of yours.

Well, ok OJ. But when you posit the belief that: "Species have changed over time. The horse was once an eohippus or whatever. Man a hominid", you must mean something by that.

What reason do you have for believing that horses "were once" eohippi?

We know that there are eohippus fossils. And orohippus fossils, dated later. But why do you beleive that one changed into the other? How do you envisage that change happening?

Why do you accept it as a fact? Where did you get that belief, or who told you, in such a way that you believe them?

There are no horses when there are eohippi, no men when there are australopithecines. It seems logical to assume they evolved, though not necessary by any means. But even the Bible says that God crafted the flora and fauna from the earth and made Eve out of Adam. Even if just as allegory it's right about so many things that there seems no reason not to accept it on evolution.

The mechanism by which evolution is effected will be interesting to discover but isn't important to the big questions in our lives.

I'm not aware that the Bible mentions anything about eohippus changing (via orohippus, mesohippus, miohippus (then branching into the kalobatippus and parahippus), merychippus (branching into the hipparion - ancestor of the zebra and ass - protohippus and pliohippus), plesippus, equus stenonis, equus scotti) to equus caballus - the modern horse, over a period of 60 million years.

But assuming it does, why do you accept this version of events, rather than the version that God made the horse, along with all the other animals, in a day?

Aren't they both equally valid, non-scientific Faiths then?

Brit:

Yes. That's always been my point.

So why do you buy the eohippus story?

It would seem inefficient for the slate to have been wiped clean periodically and a creator to start over from scratch. Far easier to just jigger with Creation periodically. Likewise, it seems possible that occassional interventions by extra-terrestrial forces--gamma rays or whatever (not aliens, though that can't be ruled out either)--might have caused sudden radical mutation and speciation. The only thing that seems unlikely, from observation and experimen tation is that Natural Selection would ever have done it.

No further questions.

OJ have you ever read Louis Agassiz?

Chris;

They'd already domesticated wolves.

carter:

No, just seen references to him.

Orrin,

"The mechanism by which evolution is effected will be interesting to discover but isn't important to the big questions in our lives."

So are God and evolution incompatible or not?

creeper:

Evolution can not be both a purely Natural process, as you guys argue, and merely one of the tools in God's kit (or any other designer's for that matter).

Orrin,

"Evolution can not be both a purely Natural process, as you guys argue, and merely one of the tools in God's kit (or any other designer's for that matter)."

I have made that point a few times.

The latter, however, is not creationism.

creeper:

Of course it is. God Creates.

10 PRINT "I BELIEVE IT BECAUSE"
20 PRINT "IT IS TRUE BECAUSE"
30 GOTO 10

RUN

creeper:

Yes, that's the Design.

A few things now fall into place, but not surprisingly so.

I still don't understand how one can knowingly choose to be obtuse, but I'll work on it.

creeper:

I think I've explained it rather clearly. All we have is such faith:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/1344/