Mayr on Evolution

EVIDENCE OF COMMON ANCESTORY AND GAIA PROGRAMMING?
"... This interaction sometimes results in such a balanced steady state that some authors have proposed a Gaia hypothesis, according to which the Earth's inanimate and living worlds together form a well-balanced and programmed system."


"... seven competing theories for the origin of life have been proposed. Although no fully satisfactory theory has yet emerged, the problem no longer seems as formidable as at the beginning of the twentieth century. One is justified to claim that there are now a number of feasible scenarios of how life could have originated from inanimate matter. To understand these various theories requires a good deal of technical knowledge of biochemistry. To avoid burdening this volume with such detail, I refer the reader to the special literature dealing with the origin of life (Schopf 1999; Brack 1999; Oparin 1938; Zubbay 2000)".


"...the same reason why all terrestrial vertebrates (tetrapods) develop gill arches at a certain stage in their ontogeny. These gill-like structures are never used for breathing, but instead are drastically restructured during the later ontogeny and give rise to many structures in the neck region of reptiles, birds, and mammals. The evident explanation is that the genetic developmental program has no way of eliminating the ancestral stages of development and is forced to modify them during the subsequent steps of development in order to make them suitable for the new life-form of the organism. The anlage of the ancestral organ now serves as a somatic program for the ensuing development of the restructured organ (Mayr 1994). What is recapitulated are always particular structures, but never the whole adult form of the ancestor.


Vestigial Structures. Many organisms have structures that are not fully functional or not functional at all. The human caecal appendix is an example (sometimes has to be removed from acute appendicitis) and so are the teeth in baleen whale embryos and the eyes in many cave animals. Such vestigial structures are the remnants of structures that had been fully functional in their ancestors but are now ready reduced owing to a change in niche utilization. When these structures lose their function owing to a shift in lifestyle, they are no longer protected by natural selection and are gradually deconstructed. They are informative by showing the previous course of evolution.
These three phenomena: embryonic similarities, recapitulation, and vestigial structures raise insurmountable difficulties for a creationist explanation, but are fully compatible with an evolutionary explanation based on common descent, variation, and selection."




"Biogeography. Evolution also helped to explain another great puzzle of biology, namely, the reasons for the geographic distribution of animals and plants. Why are the faunas of Europe and North America on both sides of the North Atlantic so relatively similar, whereas those of Africa and South America on both sides of the South Atlantic are so very different? Why is the fauna of Australia so strikingly different from that of all other continents?


Why are there normally no mammals on oceanic islands? Could these seemingly capricious patterns of distribution be explained as the product of creation? Not easily. Darwin, however, showed that the present distribution of animals and plants is due to the history of their dispersal from their original points of origin. The longer that two continents were isolated from each other, the more different their biota became."


... the reasons for the similarity of the fauna of Europe and of North America were not fully understood until it was discovered that in the early Tertiary (40 million years ago) there was a broad land connection across the north Atlantic between the two now-separated continents. This permitted an active faunal exchange. By contrast, Africa and South America were separated by continental drift 80 million years ago and their biota diverged greatly during their long isolation. Again and again, puzzling distribution patterns can be explained as the result of common descent and sometimes subsequent extinction. Thus evolution continues to provide the answer to many previously puzzling observations."
For a creationist there is no rational explanation for distributional irregularities, but they are completely compatible with a historical evolutionary explanation."


... "different kinds of molecules have different rates of evolutionary change. Some change very rapidly, like the fibrinopeptides, and others change very slowly, like the histones. Even though the lineages of man and chimpanzee separated at least 6 million years ago, the highly complex molecules of the hemoglobins of these two species are still virtually identical. What is gratifying is the fact that when a phylogeny based on morphological or behavioral characteristics is established, it is usually found to be essentially the same as a phylogeny based exclusively on molecular characteristics. The extremely close relationship of man to the chimpanzee and to the other anthropoid  apes is as convincingly documented by molecular as by structural characters."


Taken from: Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, 2001

The People's Pope

“The Pope welcomes everyone: people who are disfigured or sick, people who are young and old. Pope Francis is able to express joy and radiate compassion and empathy for others. This may be due to his experiences of pain and weariness. He rose quickly within the ranks of the Society of Jesus and this caused tensions which caused enough Jesuits to despise his leadership. As a result, when he was just 50 years old, his Jesuit community stripped him of all responsibility and he was exiled to Cordoba, Argentina. That experience was humiliating and also humbling. It eventually made him more merciful and kind as he experienced what is sometimes called a “dark night of the soul.” Because he knows deep pain and despair too well, Pope Francis is able to emulate and embody the compassion and love that Jesus showed. We are all broken and in need of compassion, understanding and love. This draws thousands to listen to and meet the Pope as he stands in solidarity with those who suffer and are in need of hope, mercy and grace." The People’s Pope: Our Attraction and Fascination with the Pope ☀

Love Your Muslim Neighbors'

“Bottom line – if “Muslims” are your enemies, it’s clear what Jesus calls us to do with enemies.  And if these “Muslims” are your neighbors (and many of them are), it’s clear what Jesus asks us to do with neighbors.  Either way I think you’re stuck. You gotta love em." An Open Letter to Franklin Graham ☀

Theory and Observations

"Seems like a lot of people are a lot more theoretical than practical. I mean it's neat to think about the theory and the logical and intellectual ramifications, but without practical and accurate observations your theory can get pretty detached from the reality of the situation." Friend Sam Strelitz

Christians

I honestly believe that the solution to the problems in the inner city has more to do with Christians being willing to go there and less to do with any program (political or religious) that comes from the outside. The inner city needs the increased presence of the Holy Spirit and the best and most effective way that can happen is by Christians carrying it there. We are the temple and where we go is holy ground, so why are we not in the inner city saying, like Christ did before us, this is my Father’s house and it will be a house of prayer? Not once or twice, but each and every day. Why is it so hard for us to see that we don’t need more soup kitchens, we need more Christians feeding people out of their kitchens. Why can’t we see that we need less homeless shelters and more homeless men, women and children sleeping on Christian couches finding the way to God and to Hope? Why can’t we see that while it is always good and right to pray that God changes situations, it is more effective to pray that God uses us to change situations? Why can’t we see that the problems in the inner cities are not the people that are there, but the people who are not? The problem of {insert favorite inner city here} ☀

Proving Darwin... The Fossil Record

"The fossil record is incredibly sparse. There were probably billions of species that are now extinct or evolved, but we have fossils for only about 250,000 unique species.
 You cannot use the fossil record for inferrring very much about abrupt changes, as just about everything in the fossil record is an abrupt change.


 The fossil record is like a series of snapshots of different countries from a vacation trip through Europe, where there are less than one snapshot per country." DC via FB

"The Bible is not a self-help book. While it contains a lot of advice about life it isn’t primarily a book designed to help people live well or be healthy. Plenty of the advice is terrible, like when it’s acceptable to sell your daughter into slavery. Some of the advice only works in certain contexts and the vast majority of it is not aimed at individuals, but at communities." What the Bible is NOT ☀

“Rather Jesus represented the way of non-violence and even anti-violence. He represented the way of love – not of force or brute power. He opposed the Myth of Redemptive Violence and turned it on its head. In his death, he was not satisfying the demands of a vengeful God for a violent sacrifice to restore order. Rather he was taking upon himself all the violence of the world system, of us, in order that it and we might be healed, redeemed, saved from the otherwise endless cycle of violence and revenge."The cross of Christ and the Myth of Redemptive Violence ☀

'A lot of interpretive decisions were made for you before you picked up Romans. Ignoring verse divisions, chapter divisions, and paragraph breaks created by committees is one way to begin taking Romans back. Trying, as best we can, to read Romans as its original recipients would is the key. Knowing a bit about Greek style in writing rhetoric is indispensable. Forgetting caricatures of Judaism drawn from unbalanced reading of Jesus’ criticisms of some Pharisees in his time should be a prerequisite. And it might be worth supposing, from what we know of Gentile god-fearers in the first century, that the Gentile readers of the letter to the Romans respected Jewish teaching. It might be further worth supposing that Paul saw himself as a better Jewish teacher than any they might be getting advice from.”
—   How Your Bible Christianizes Paul, via azspot.net as well

Manifest Destiny Is Unbiblical, Unjust

“Manifest Destiny became a commonly held ideology in the early 19th century and was the belief that the United States had a God-given right to aggressively spread values of white civilization across the land mass of the North American continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. It wreaked havoc on creation and entire communities of indigenous Americans including the Five Civilized Tribes, who were forcibly removed or annihilated based on the assumption that they were an impediment to God’s purposes being realized. Manifest Destiny justified the conquering of the indigenous peoples of Texas, New Mexico, California, and other parts of the Southwest; and the inclusion of the Oregon territory in the United States. Christians must confess the many ways we have contributed to this tragic history by acknowledging and repenting of our sins. We need to repent of our attitudes about the divine right of conquest, white supremacy, ethnic superiority, Manifest Destiny, the pursuit of wealth, and the brutalization, domination, and murder of thousands of Native people who have lived before us." Mae Elise Cannon ☀

America Is Not A Christian Nation

“Instead of preaching a gospel of self-sacrifice and generosity, right-wing Christians support the mega-wealthy who yearn to stifle democracy and move us further toward plutocracy: Keep the riffraff from voting. Keep alternative views out. Live in the bubble of like-minded people, not the marketplace of ideas and diversity where Jesus lived. Instead of proclaiming confidence in God’s care, they push fear: fear of immigrants, fear of the dark-skinned, fear of Islam, fear of Ebola, fear of education, fear of honesty, fear of the poor, fear of gays and lesbians, fear of women, fear of the gospel that Jesus actually proclaimed."


America Isn’t a ‘Christian Nation,’ and Never Has Been ☀