₦airaland Forum

^^
Being a God is a divine status, hence Sango, Obatala and Esu are divine beings, not mortals albeit lower than Olorun in hierarchy. Idols are merely earthly representations of the Gods.

The problem with you is that you are trying to infuse your Islamic God into the yoruba mythology, Yorubas don't have a problem with Gods having sex and procreating, not one problem.

Where is your evidence that those Gods are personified/animated objects??

. . .

Deep Sight: Lol, Evolutionists are really in a huge mess on this issue. . . . .



http://www.evolutionary-philosophy.net/sex.html

It's just pathetic to see the extent to which this cardinal issue has the ToE quite completely lost, and even more pathetic to see how the speculated answers ALL commence with assumptions of a process already in place driving towards replication. . . which is absurd, because such assumptions then cannot explain the existence of the already existing process . . . .

The diverse sub theories is the problem?! I don't see that as a problem, even Science sees the truth as provisional, our perspective makes other opaque.
Probably you were expecting a religiously authoritative answer. What counts is consistency with the theory. A theory is more or less an outlook, and must be consistent within. All the links you proffered, all tried to explain sexual reproduction as an advantageous course in competition, and the explanations conformed to the principles of ToE.

Double

Deep Sight: Atheists who dogmatically accept the theory hook, line and sinker and insist that all answers are to be found in it's principles - including answers that have yet to be found there - must indeed be tasked to explain sore points that indicate the reverse.

That's a different circumstance, more like a misinformed religion. In this thread, you are attacking ToE itself.

Deep Sight: Well if you say that the development of sexes and sexxual reproduction has nothing to do with the ToE, then that is a wholesale concession to my point. Thank you.

No, I was referring only to Posers 1 and 2 just as you asked.

^^
Because it seems there is a direct competition between ToE and Christian Creationism. Although ToE is of natural metholdogy, I don't think atheists should be burdened with explaining its fine details.

Also, deepsight is staging an attack on the credibility of ToE on an area that has nothing to do with ToE. Everyone is an interested party.

harbiola1: ^^ You can tell me what made them to be equal with Olodumare, when they were created by Olodumare.

THEY WERE CREATED OF THEY CREATE THEMSELVES?

No, they are Gods, yet lower in hierarchy to Olodumare. No one is saying they are equal to Olorun. Also, they are sons of Olorun and that seems difficult for you to swallow, yet in Yoruba mythology Gods can procreate, same with Roman and Greek mythologies.

davidylan: and this addresses the OP how again?

It was in reply to your post.

You never made an appealing argument.

That's irrelevant.

^^
Yes they are all Gods!

^^
In yoruba mythology, Gods are those of divine nature. So I don't see where you going by saying Olodumare is the sole God, when there are a plethora of Gods!

^^ and in furtherance of wiegraf's post above

Poser 1 and 2 are irrelevant and moot in respect to the theory of evolution. It is similar to approaching a lawyer for a medical surgery.

@davidlyan, although I strongly believe the Creation Story was originally intended as a myth, yet with religious fervour conflicts with scientific views on the same questions.

1. Origin of man

2. The origin of the Universe

Herein Science undermines Christianity and its "truths"

^^

I'm literally begging him, we discuss the credibility of his story which will either strengthen or weaken his case. I'm not pushing my views too.

Some times conviction is like a virus. You are too unwilling to look beyond your perspective and convictions.

Because you have "seen" Satan before?! Or rather you are relying on hearsay, feeding us bits you were fed.

davidylan: What sort of advantage?

I posted an excerpt from a deepsight link, if you don't mind go through them.

@truthlight your posts are misconceived

The ten commandments is not written in mine!!

The draftsman obviously lacks legal experience while writing thou shalt not kill, without any regard for exemptions.

^^
So before time, right?!

@joshthefirst

"How shalt not kill" is an absolute rule which bars even self defence ( a legitimate self preservation), the draftsman lacked the foresight to exempt the necessary/lawful killings.

I can tell you for sure, no such commandment is written in my heart.

@oladegbu

So you agree sperm cells and eggs carry half of this vital crucial indispensable life, isn't it logically to campaign for the preservation of sperms and eggs?!

Besides your picture just explained the process of fertilization, it didn't justify that life (that special breath) starts from conception.

^^^
I have explained that numerous times, and even in my last post.

I cringe whenever I "hear" first cause.

The problems thereof, which you don't seem to see: first cause reveals a linear time, without with the idea of first cause falls apart. Which now begs the question when was time caused?

OLAADEGBU: Human life starts at conception, if you know what that means.

How do you justify that claim??!!!??!!

Joshthefirst: there are many ways, but none should involve killing. Our freewill should not be used to commit evil. THOU SHALT NOT KILL

Whoever drafted the 10 commandments, did not go to law school.

Deep Sight: The reason I think it is a glaring sore thumb, and the genuine source of the controversies: is the fact that these phenomena are in reality completely outside the purview of the principles girding the Theory of Evolution! Natural selection and mutation of the sort advanced by the Theory of Evolution actually have no bearing whatsoever on these phenomena: and that is the real reason that evolutionists struggle in such wild confusion to force these phenomena under the trappings of evolutionary theory even when the principles of evolution have no bearing on them!

For your deep thinking please:

1. Why were the first unicellular organisms (which supposedly arose spontaenously from some pre biotic soup - [proposition not within ToE]) self replicating organisms at all?

2. If they were not self-replicating organisms, what factor led them to evolve the faculties of self replication at all.

Without reproduction, there can be no evolution as under the theory of natural selection. Also note that one of the major characteristics of life is reproduction.

That being said, an explanation of posers 1 and 2 cannot be derived with the principles of ToE, however a theory (for the emergence of life) should overlap with ToE, just as scientific theories interconnect to create a larger coherent picture.

@ds

I have read your links

Here is a favourable valid scientific explanation/subtheory from just one of the links you posted

Why, Then, Is Sexual Reproduction So Common?
The aforementioned points might lead one to conclude that sex is a losing enterprise. However, sex is incredibly common. Furthermore, even though asexual lineages do arise, they rarely persist for long periods of evolutionary time. Among flowering plants, for example, predominantly asexual lineages have arisen over 300 times, yet none of these lineages is very old. Furthermore, many species can reproduce both sexually and asexually, without the frequency of asexuality increasing and eliminating sexual reproduction altogether. What, then, prevents the spread of asexual reproduction?

The first generation of mathematical models examining the evolution of sex made several simplifying assumptions—namely, that selection is constant over time and space, that all individuals engage in sex at the same rate, and that populations are infinitely large. With such simplifying assumptions, selection remains the main evolutionary force at work, and sex and recombination serve mainly to break down the genetic associations built up by selection. So, it is perhaps no wonder that this early generation of models concluded that sex would evolve only under very restrictive conditions.

Subsequent models have relaxed these assumptions in a number of ways, attempting to better capture many of the complexities involved in real-world evolution. The results of these second-generation models are briefly summarized in the following sections.

Sex Evolves When Selection Changes Over Time
Current models indicate that sex evolves more readily when a species' environment changes rapidly. When the genetic associations built up by past selection are no longer favorable, sex and recombination can improve the fitness of offspring, thereby turning the recombination load into an advantage. One important source of environmental change is a shift in the community of interacting species, especially host and parasite species. This is the so-called "Red Queen" hypothesis for the evolution of sex, which refers to the need for a species to evolve as fast as it can just to keep apace of coevolving species. (The name of this hypothesis comes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass, in which Alice must run as fast as she can "just to stay in place." Increased allocation to sexual reproduction can evolve because of "Red Queen" interactions, but only if selection is strong enough to cause rapid switches in which gene combinations are favorable.

Sex Evolves When Selection Changes Over Space
Sex can also be favored when selection varies over space, as long as the genetic associations created by migration are locally disadvantageous. Whether this requirement is common in nature remains an open question.

Sex Evolves When Organisms Are Less Adapted to Their Environment
Organisms that reproduce both sexually and asexually tend to switch to sex under stressful conditions. Mathematical models have revealed that it is much easier for sex to evolve if individuals that are adapted to their environment reproduce asexually and less fit individuals reproduce sexually. In this way, well-adapted genotypes are not broken apart by recombination, but poorly adapted genotypes can be recombined to create new combinations in offspring.

Sex Evolves When Populations Are Finite


Figure 2
Figure Detail
Models that account for the fact that population sizes are finite have found that sex and recombination evolve much more readily. With a limited number of individuals in a population, selection erodes easily accessible variation, leaving only hidden variation (Figure 2). Recombination can then reveal this hidden variation, improving the response to selection. By improving the response to selection, genes that increase the frequency of sex become associated with fitter genotypes, which rise in frequency alongside them. Interestingly, the requirement that fitness surfaces exhibit weak and negative curvature is relaxed in populations of finite size; here, fitness surfaces may be uncurved or positively curved and still favor sex.
This last result is particularly interesting, because it suggests that August Weismann might have been right all along in arguing that sex evolved to generate variation. Modeling Weismann's hypothesis with infinitely large populations failed because variation is too easily generated by mutation and too easily maintained by selection within these populations. Altering this size-related assumption by modeling selection among a finite number of individuals reveals just how important sex and recombination are as processes that allow genes residing in different individuals to be brought together, thereby producing new genotypic combinations upon which selection can act.

There lies the advantages!

Joshthefirst: there is an aim to evolution then? There is a drive? What is this aim? Who is behind it? How is it achieved even in the most basic components of life forms?

I hope you know this aim contradicts your "everything is by chance" thinking?

"Who is behind it" one of the most biased questions possible.

Organisms are said to be primed with the instinct to survive, that instinct coupled with the environment (includes predators and landscape) form a mechanism through which the fittest survive.

The fittest organisms beat poorer ones in this grand competition, to battle for scarce resources and reproduce. Every biological advantage possible is used, and mutation provides this ammunition.

Who said anything about chance :/

^^
Since the physical is an inherent manifestation of the transcedental, then the physical is as eternal as the transcedental.

Josh, I don't agree with you. The resulting implication is absurd and ridiculous and an attempt to reconcile stark conflicting substances (physical vs. Transcedence)

Besides what is timeless, spaceless, unbound is negatively defined and we know nothing about such a subject but what its not. Similar to describing a car by what not it is. We actually get nowhere.

The use of "transcendental" is not merely saying "not physical" but a substance antithetical to physical, totally different. So when you said the physical was a manifestation of the transcedental, I was hopelessly shocked.

Deep Sight: In a prior thread about evolutionary questions, I had raised this as one of the significant posers against the Theory of Evolution. However I raised about 12 posers so this poser did not receive the attention I believe it merits.

I think it is absolutely cardinal and a most decisive point.

Evolution cannot explain the appearance of the sexes and is particularly dead on se.xual reproduction.

For thought -

The evolution of the mammary gland is difficult to explain; this is because mammary glands are typically required by mammals to feed their young. There are many theories on how mammary glands evolved, for example, it is believed that the mammary gland is a transformed sweat gland, more closely related to apocrine sweat glands. Since mammary glands do not fossilize well, supporting such theories with fossil evidence is difficult. Many of the current theories are based on comparisons between lines of living mammals – monotremes, marsupials and eutherians. One theory proposes that mammary glands evolved from glands that were used to keep the eggs of early mammals moist and free from infection (monotremes still lay eggs). Other theories suggest that early secretions were used directly by hatched young, or that the secretions were used by young to help them orient to their mothers.

Lactation is assumed to have developed long before the evolution of the mammary gland and mammals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammary_gland#Evolution

The evolution of se.xual reproduction is a major puzzle. The first fossilized evidence of se.xual reproduction in eukaryotes is from the Stenian period, about 1 to 1.2 billion years ago. There are two main processes during sexual reproduction in eukaryotes: meiosis, involving the halving of the number of chromosomes; and fertilization, involving the fusion of two gametes and the restoration of the original number of chromosomes. During meiosis, the chromosomes of each pair usually exchange genetic information to achieve homologous recombination. Evolutionary thought proposes several explanations for why sexual reproduction developed and why it is maintained. These reasons include fighting the accumulation of deleterious mutations, increasing rate of adaptation to changing environments (see the red queen hypothesis), dealing with competition (see the tangled bank hypothesis) or as an adaptation for repairing DNA damage and masking deleterious mutations. The maintenance of sexual reproduction has been explained by theories that work at several different levels of selection, though some of these models remain controversial. New models presented in recent years, however, suggest a basic advantage for sexual reproduction in slowly reproducing, complex organisms, exhibiting characteristics that depend on the specific environment that the given species inhabit, and the particular survival strategies that they employ.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_reproduction

I SAY - THAT - the evolution of sexuality in the appearance of the male and female forms and their sexually complimentary attributes particularly in the matter of reproduction, cannot be addressed by evolution, is a major flaw in the theory of evolution, and points to a code of existential forms which governs the appearance and existence of such forms as male and female.

Deepsight, you are jumping the gun here.

Those explanations and theoretical models are scientifically valid, and bear consistency with the overall theory of evolution and diversity of life. The evolution of sexes must have been an advantage, and to ward against deletrious mutations.

Same as the flexibility and frequency of sex change amongst some species. Some species go as far parthenogenesis. The aim is the same, furtherance of life.

The Christian God should be taken as he is seen. He didn't create the Universe, nor the black holes, nor the diverse galaxies with the plethora of planets. The Christian God is said to create entites within earth and not even earth itself.

He is quite a small God.

To be blunt, these are pipe dreams and false promises. Look at the biggger picture.

striktlymi: Okay, cool!

Our development as humans starts from what you prefer to call a "cell".

Next question:

Does the body parts of a 'fully developed' human make him/her any more human than the less developed 'body parts' of an 'under-developed' human?

If "yes" kindly explain a bit so I understand your thoughts on this.

Another mistake you still consider a zygote as an underdeveloped human.

From what I have gathered from your arguments, you actually seem to believe that the early formative stages are indispensable for the fully functional being, hence be protected.

I believe the human is necessarily a conscious being, there cannot be an intelligble argument that obtains that essential ingredient. That's the beauty of being human (personhood: legal appreciation). Hence the foetus must reach a stage wherein it becomes conscious that terminating it would naturally invoke empathy and unjust.

So far in this thread, we are probing in the dark, making the most arbitrary and sentiment conjectures about biology, and misuse of language.