A helpful analogy to help people Creationists (or others) better understand how evolution works: Language.
A parent language will be split up into various dialects of the same language as populations of the speakers disperse. Pretty soon each population will have words that the others do not. Eventually the languages will become recognizably similar but too different to really be understood by the other population (eg> French and Spanish) but at a certain point the daughter languages are so different from the parent language and each other that they are all but unrecognizable as sharing a heritage (Eg> English and whatever the hell they speak in Boston).
All this to say that there are small changes over time and accelerated in isolated populations. These small changes compound to the point that the segregated population is dramatically and unequivocally distinct from the ancestral population.
So if the creationist can accept and recognize the concept that small, compounded changes result in dramatic, virtually unrecognizable change...what is causing them to reject this self-evident and proven principle as it applies to biological diversification?
Except that there's no DNA or genetic adaptation in human language. The analogy illustrates incremental changes, but then language use is arbitrary, and natural evolution is not dictated by conscious choices.
@IamCuriousBabe Sorry for the delay in answering. With your comment on education I´m now more clear about the frame of your posts. With no objection to your views in that specific context, let me add some other considerations.
Education if related to Science and Science itself share important stuff. One of them is to be related to knowledge. But....... Knowledge haves a different role and weight in each activity and concept.
While education about Science haves more than one goal (to provide a certain attitude, to teach some skills and intellectual tools and to transfer knowledge) the results of it focus in people and it´s ABOUT is knowledge. That is knowledge that use to be new for the students but is already there for humanity as a whole. So such knowledge had the benefit of some polishing and also some consensus about it.
Science...... Contrary of what is a folk believe, knowledge is not what Science is about. Yes, knowledge is a goal and a result of scientific practice. And some background knowledge is ussually a decisive tool to get it. But Science ABOUT are things in itselves, so if known or not. Moreover the very defining core of Science is research. That by definition works on what is not or not enough known. That makes less eassy to have a concise word based corpus and concensus over the frame of explanation to communicate what is new. Oh yes, true, research papers use to be FAR from verbosity and they frequently almost bare of words. So much bare bones that wouln´t be of use for educational purposes at least if not within the sceintific community and advanced students.
But........a part of scientific theories is what is known as explanandum. And some of them had shaked so much our previous understanding that the old words were still more precise but since then unfit (like with Relativity and Quantum Physics).
Others also shaked the waters of the public opinion. Like Evolution. And debate is also the symptom of both the lack of a common frame and the mask of agendas alien to Science.
And back to the begining.......there is where @Pikachu analogy is interesting.
@ElRengo Thanks for taking the time to explain this. The choice of language will ultimately depend on who you are communicating with. In the realm of scholars, academicians, and scientists, so much time is spent on elaborating and explaining concepts.
Now, to go back to my response to the original post, however, let me connect what I just said here. If Creationists are made to understand how evolution works, the evolution of language does not suffice. A simple analogy will not satisfy an enquiring mind that dwells on observations. So ai said, it's best to stick to science. What you said about science ACTUALLY supports this.
The purpose of having an analogy is to simplify things, but there can also be weak analogies.
[quote]The purpose of having an analogy is to simplify things[/quote]
I think that's why this analogy is so good! People have trouble understanding how one sort of animal "becomes" a different kind of animal, especially if they have a certain sort of religious worldview. But the fact that languages have sprung from very different languages is uncontentious and the mechanism by which it happens is analogous to one used in biological evolution.
I don't think anyone can deny the mecanism descibed by the theory of evolution, they are undisputable and observable, I think that they argue that other factors, mainly God, is the reason for life and the diversity of it and they downplay the mecanisms of evolution and the range of change that they can cause. for example they don't believe such mecanisms could lead to new species, that they leave to god only. on the other hand evolutionists believe that the mecanisms of evolution are responsible for all life and that all life comes from a primordial lifeforme that through evolution mutated and created all life on earth and that there is no need for any other factor to explain the diversity of life , wheather it is godsor aliens.
That's why i like this analogy. No one argues about how much a language can or cannot change given numerous, incremental modifications over sufficient time. And the principle remains the same for biological evolution.
[quote]So if the creationist can accept and recognize the concept that small, compounded changes result in dramatic, virtually unrecognizable change...what is causing them to reject this self-evident and proven principle as it applies to biological diversification?[/quote]
A few things. Language is designed, it simplifies over time and even if your evaluation of language were correct it wouldn't mean that it would necessarily apply to theoretical evolution in a similar way. Biology and language aren't the same.
@Pikachu [quote]I think you misunderstand science. Science always makes a provisional conclusion based on current evidence and pending future evidence.[/quote]
Right. Like poodle skirts and leg warmers. Always wrong in hind sight. Except for the racist control mechanism.
[quote]I can give you some links to discussions if you want or you can google ancient languages being simpler without only seeking out sources from YEC publications.[/quote]
That's so kind of you. I'm not really interested in YEC, though. It's stupid.
[quote]See what people have to say. See if the subject is as simple as the couple sentences you pulled from Watchtower.[/quote]
I think it makes more sense than the racist propaganda they peddle these days. I guess I'm old school. The stuff they taught me in school was better than this modern stuff, I think.
[quote]Small, incremental changes over time result in massive divergence.[/quote]
Still going on about those lava lamps.
[quote]And that's why you struggle to understand. You say "This is what i see before me. If i cannot see it before me then it isn't true".[/quote]
How myopic you must think me. To think I believe everything I can see? Optical illusions, hallucinations, camera tricks, magic, eyewitness testimony, posts about evolution vs. creation on social networking forums.
[quote]You're like a judge who rejects forensic evidence because you can't see it happening before your eyes.[/quote]
Like fingerprint reading, fire patterns, and lie detector machines? All failed science resulting in the imprisonment and capital punishment of - well - nonwhites, mostly. You don't talk about those though do you.
[quote]Without rancor or intent to offend, you're not a person i can convince with evidence because you're both ignorant of the evidence for evolution and dismissive of the means by which that evidence is achieved. Do you disagree? Genetics? Taphonomy? Geology? Ontogeny? You reject it all not because you understand it and find reason to reject the evolutionary conclusions but because you begin from a position where you cannot accept the synthesis of data. There's no way forward from there.[/quote]
Kind of like you going to a Bible study? Why do you post on forums, then? Always challenging so-called believers with your archaic uninformed theology and the suitable alternative of theoretical evolution? Ideological fixation?
[quote]Nevertheless, here is my challenge to you:
Describe and justify the point at which small, compounding changes can produce no further change in either a language or an organism. And do please answer this directly because if you do not, i will ignore all responses until you do so.
The ball's in your court✌️[/quote]
Well, I think that you are much more afraid to seriously discuss the Bible than I am science.
[quote] Like poodle skirts and leg warmers. Always wrong in hind sight. Except for the racist control mechanism.[/quote]
So...like heliocentrism is going to turn out to be wrong? A globe earth is just a fad? Both are racist mechanisms of control? Or does that only apply to science that bucks against your worldview? You're just raging against science but you're only raging against it where it contradicts your unjustified faith-based position. Like a said: You're not a person i can convince with evidence because you're both ignorant of the evidence for evolution and dismissive of the means by which that evidence is achieved, though you cannot justify that dismissal.
[quote]I think that you are much more afraid to seriously discuss the Bible than I am science.[/quote]
I have in the past made many threads wherein i am focused on discussing the Bible. So when i enter a thread you've made on Bible study and refuse to answer a simple question the way you've done here then you might have a leg to stand on. But i've asked you a straight question and you refuse for reasons best known to yourself to give me a straight answer.
@Pikachu [quote]You're just raging against science but you're only raging against it where it contradicts your unjustified faith-based position.[/quote]
Come to the wrong conclusion again, science boy. If you pay attention to me you will notice that I don't rage against science or God and even religion. I rage, or more accurately, explore and acknowledge the damage people have done to science, religion and God.
[quote]Like a said: You're not a person i can convince with evidence because you're both ignorant of the evidence for evolution and dismissive of the means by which that evidence is achieved, though you cannot justify that dismissal.[/quote]
No, I said that about you.
[quote]I have in the past made many threads wherein i am focused on discussing the Bible. So when i enter a thread you've made on Bible study and refuse to answer a simple question the way you've done here then you might have a leg to stand on. But i've asked you a straight question and you refuse for reasons best known to yourself to give me a straight answer. [/quote]
No, you've tried to use academia and intellectualism to shame me into confirming your "scientific" propaganda. You think anyone that can do that is - I don't know - liberated in some sense from religious lobotomy? You are very much like a religious zealot.
[quote]You've made your choice.[/quote]
We've both made our choices. You would go a great deal further with me if you could respect that rather than to change only one side of it as if the other were superior when the twain shall never meet. You can't do that though, because you are ideologically fixated. You are, in fact, a religious zealot.
Do you see? Asking me to explain your complex ideology without acknowledging its very real weaknesses - dogmatic, overconfident, racist - as if to do so would better me? Is insulting and stupid. Like religion. Like God.
@Pikachu I agree that yours is a good attitude and that you are right to give it a try. Not sure anyhow that pointing to the intellectual understanding of the mechanism will work. May be the divide is in a deeper level. What they need to invoke is (beyond their faith in a God that others share without being anti Science creationists) an a priori inmaterial knowledge-like force / principle / essence for each natural behaviour. A bit like "Life" for the old Vitalism in Biology. The "raggioni" of the Scholastics instead of causes. There is also another convergent drive, a social one. But the later deserves a thread of it´s own.
Maybe it can help, maybe not. But i have personally spoken to people who balk at evolution because they can't understand how one sort of animal could become a very different sort.
