The Sparrow and the Crow

"A young sparrow is hatched into a noisy world where it selectively learns the songs typically only his father or neighbors sing. The young hear and memorize these songs and practice them by comparing what they hear to what they remember during a sensitive hearing period. a full formed "crystallized" song emerges the following breeding season and remains fixed for life in most songbird species. Some birds, like crows, ravens, magpies, catbirds, and mockingbirds add to their collection of songs and modify them throughout their lives. They do not have a fixed critical learning period but continue to soak up new sounds from their environment, remember them and reproduce them. But the ways in which birds learn new sounds—whether they be sounds of crickets, screams of hawks, or mutterings of people—involve the same neural pathways."
Gifts of the Crows, John Marzluff and Tony Angell, p53.

Humans have always come from humans, but humans have changed over the years. You have changed from what your father was. There is no faith involved in what I know. It is based on evidence available. You read the bible and believe what can't be proved. I read books which show and explain the evidence for what can be proved. What little science I myself can carry out has never been contradicted by what real scientists have found.

Evidence is based on cause and effect. A declaration of something does not make it true. Saying your god made the earth does not make it true. Muslims say Allah made the earth, so why do you reject what Muslims have to say? I know that their Koran is derivative but so is your Bible. You probably reject what Hindus say about the beginning of Earth. Believing that something is true does not necessarily make it true.

Just saying that the Earth is proof of God is not a valid argument. You could just as easily say (and believe) the the existence of the Earth proves that there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster. But a belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster does not prove it exists. There is no more proof of God than there is of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Someone could believe in either on faith and still be wrong. I could say my belly button lint is proof of the existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and have a claim as valid as yours. Claims and beliefs are not evidence.

On the other hand, cause and effect can be studied under scientific conditions. Darwin spent time looking for and recording what was in the fossil record. He did not make anything up. He just recorded the evidence as he found it, as it lay in the strata. Then he formulated a theory that encompassed what he had observed.

The scientific method sometimes requires a hypothesis which can later turn into a theory if there is evidence to support it. The hypothesis or theory can change with the available evidence. Darwin did not know about DNA, but his theory accommodates it. A scientific theory admits to change and new evidence, a belief does not. People believe things even when faced with natural world evidence that contradicts the belief. A scientific theory lives as long as physical evidence supports the hypothesis.

Every living thing today came from "parents" before it. You can trace the DNA. You look like a combination of your parents and a study of your DNA could demonstrate why. DNA is something many people do not know about. Not knowing about DNA and embryology allows people to make wild and unprovable claims which cannot be disproved because they believe in supernaturalism which is not subject to proof in a natural world.

If you go back a few generations you will find relatives who do not look much like you because every new generation repeats with variation based on chromosomes of the parent couple. You don't look much like your relatives of 1000 years ago, and you are very different from whomever your relatives were 100,000 years ago. Yes, DNA can trace human DNA way back.

If you read the reports of those who study DNA you find that criminals can be traced from the scene of their crime with a simple DNA test. Family members have similar DNA. If a brother rapes someone then his brother could be picked up and tests would need to be done to see which brother did the deed... but it could be done. Now here is the fun part, despite the differences in DNA between close family members, the DNA for the whole human race has been traced back over 150,000 years to Africa... we have similar DNA to humans who lived a long time ago in Africa. Before whomever Adam was 6000 years ago.

DNA studies show that waves of migration came out of Africa. About 50,000 years ago a group made it to Australia, for instance. DNA studies can even pinpoint the spawn of Genghis Khan as he spread his seed along the steppes of Asia toward Europe.

DNA studies are a game changer, and any creation theory that ignores DNA is in error. Darwin did not know about DNA but his theory has a place for it. Does Intelligent Design have a place for DNA? When all of plant and animal life can be traced back to a microbe, do we really need a creator stepping in and and making species? The tree of life is not complete but just because we do not know how to explain everything do we have to resort to supernatural explanations for what we are no sure of yet?

It is amazing the we have found so many fossils at all since they only exist in sedimentary rocks laid down very soon after the death of the animal or the time of the footprints. But the sedimentary rocks have a way of piling up, with the older fossils near the bottom of the column of strata. No mammals are found in the age of fishes, but fishes did come out of the water and an animal between a fish and an amphibian left its fossil behind.

As it turns out our DNA is similar to all animals and even plants. The most simple microbe today has similar DNA with the most complicated organism. It is the small differences that over time have given Earth its variety. This is all basic science now. THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, by Richard Dawkins, is a good place to start understanding the science behind the claims.

At no time in the fossil record has a rabbit skeleton been found in the geologic strata below a fish skeleton. Fish came before mammals no matter how you want to say they arrived. But fish and bunnies have similar DNA. The embryos of a fish, a bunny and a human are indistinguishable at the early stage of each. The human embryo goes through a fish stage before coming to the mammal and then human stage. Does that creep you out? Similar DNA, similar life development. All you would have to do to show that evolution is bunk is show where in the geologic strata mammal fossils were found laid down before fish fossils. It has not happened so far.

The fossil record shows that change comes over time. First fish do not look like fish of today. But the fossil record showed one scientist that there was a gap between fish that swam and the amphibians that both swam and crawled on land. He looked at the fossil record and guessed about where the missing fossil would appear in the strata. He determined where he was likely to see that age of rock exposed and if he guessed correctly he would find the fossil of an animal that was between fish and amphibians. It took him six years, but he found it on Ellesmere Island. If you want more evidence for the truth of this great adventure, please read YOUR INNER FISH by Neil Shubin. He found the animal, named Tiktaalik, right where Darwin's theory predicted it would be in the geologic record.

This is just one example of many that are ready for you to study as you try to see what the fossil record shows. I assume your mind is not made up as long as there is some evidence you have not considered.

The mere existence of Earth is not evidence of a creator. To claim so is circular reasoning. That is like saying "It is because it is."

99% of all species that have ever lived are already extinct. If he existed, Noah did not take dinosaurs on his ark, they were long dead before the first Flood story was promulgated, in the story of Gilgamesh, long before the Noah story was written. Some evidence indicates dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago.

The DNA of present species can be traced back in such a way as to reveal a reverse time sequence to the fossil record. The DNA and the fossil record show plants and animals changing over time and new forms of plants and animals coming along over the millions of years. Each animal looks almost like its parent but may not look like its ancestor of millions years ago.

And yes, if you postulate that the Bible is true and then quote a verse from the Bible to prove it, then that is circular reasoning and an example of fallacious logic.

About three yeas ago Mom told me in a moment of candor that her old pastor Wm. E. Booth-Clibborn confided in her that he no longer believed in a real fire and brimstone Hell any longer. This so shocked her that he took it back and he told her not to tell anyone. We were having a discussion on the topic and I felt happy as Mom finally admitted something was not right about the belief in eternal punishment for non believers. Then she too bit her tongue and wished she had not told me. But there is no natural evidence for a "place" called Hell. Why Christians can accept the teaching is beyond me. Billions and billions of humans burning in Hell forever... a death philosophy.

Hell is one of those beliefs that Christians hold that has no support in the natural world and there is a range of Christian interpretations of what it is. The range is exacerbated by the many verses one can choose from in the Bible so that even bible scholars have a hard time agreeing. Hence the difference between Protestants and Catholics and, later, Mormons.

So it is no wonder Booth-Clibborn was having trouble with it.

I am not the best at explaining questions of science, but I do rely upon well written books, books that are written by people who honestly try to match what they say with what can be shown to be true in the natural world.

A book by Lawrence M. Krauss, A UNIVERSE FROM NOTHING, is good on the subject of when and how and why it all began.

NONSENSE ON STILTS by Massimo Pigliucci is a good one to help you tell science from bunk.

YOU ARE HERE is a portable history of the universe, written by Christopher Potter.

And if you think you understand the theory of evolution, then this next book will help you realize that you could not even correctly define it, let alone understand it: WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE, by Jerry A. Coyne.

Criticisms of evolution by people who do not understand it are like hearing a dog bark after some great music has just been played.

A sparrow is born with a brain that allows it to hear its father sing and then it learns to mimic the tweet. A crow also learns the sounds of its father, but its brain allows it to keep listening and keep learning. Thus crows learn not only to caw, but they learn to say words that we can understand. Unlike sparrows, crows never stop learning, according to those who study them. GIFTS OF THE CROW, by Marzluff and Angell

Well, enough for now. I will get to the other emails soon.
I try not to make anything up and can support all my statements with a reference to a peer-accepted scientific source.

Ancil