Denial of evolution II

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Hercules Rockefeller, Mar 9, 2009.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,053
    I've read it ....and as to the finches, it was nothing but wild speculation on what might have happened thousands of years ago. He didn't know, and neither do you. And yet you accept that wild speculation that any judge would throw out of court.

    Baron Max
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Max:

    Any judge worth his salt would look at the evidence presented to him and draw the obvious conclusion.

    I note that you have no real response to most of what I wrote. As usual, you're just playing games and wasting my time.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,053
    Yes I did, James. Your post was filled with wild speculation for which you have no evidence. You talk of things that happened thousands, perhaps millions, of years ago ......as if you were right there, or that there's a video of it on YouTube!!

    You, not anyone else, knows what happened millions of years ago. To claim that you do is the height of arrogance. But, of course, anyone who would post an entire thread to ridicule a whole group of people is already an arrogant sumbitch, huh?

    Baron Max
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Meursalt Comatose Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    395
    Answer my bloody question, people.

    I want to know who knows anything around here, and who is just farting.
     
  8. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    What makes you think people are interested in your question?

    You have not given anybody the benefit of your wisdom, so why demand that they give your theirs?
     
  9. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Baron Max:

    Yes I do.

    The past sometimes leaves clear marks on things that can be read at later times, as long as you know what you're looking at.

    This is what science does.
     
  10. Meursalt Comatose Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    395
    In other words, you haven't a clue.
     
  11. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Meh. Whatever. Run along, Meursalt.
     
  12. Meursalt Comatose Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    395
    Ok.

    It was a valid question, you know. One used often as an example by anti-evolutionists as proof of Darwin's faulty reasoning.

    Pity your "open mindedness" doesn't cater for that sort of thing.

    As you wish, though.
     
  13. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,198
    I am glad you asked. Too often, IMHO, is discussion of evolution focused on the selection of the fittest when probably the elimination of the less fit occurs more often and drives the changes in the gene pool more than the selection of some slight advantage. Often even if that slight advantage does result in an extra off spring in the next generation (that would not have happened without the slight advantage in the genetic change) the change will usually soon get lost in a large gene pool.

    For example, all humans have come down from only one woman, Mitochondria Eve, but she lived only a short time span back in evolutionary history of humans. This means that the genes on many other women got lost. Some may have had survived for 1000 generations before they disappeared from the gene pool of humanoids.

    I.e. selecting OUT of the gene pool by being too inclined to drown in a pile of shit is probably the main means used to modify the gene pool with time - more effective than, for example, having genes that give the dung beetle extra sensitive chemo-sensors to smell the shit a few meter farther ways than the typical dung beetle can.

    Because of this line of thought, I am somewhat concerned with "humanistic /moral" trends to save the weaker people born today in modern societies. Probably it will work out OK for the human species in the end as we will (already are to some extent in several countries) increasingly testing fertilized eggs in vitro (after they have divided to at least 8 cells, one of which is removed for genetic evaluations) prior to implant in the womb for genetic pre-dispositions to various diseases and more than compensate for the growing tendency to some disease in the gene pool, such as diabetics to increase due the "humanistic /moral" compassion. Jewish couples who know they both carry the gene for Tea Sacks (not spelled right) disease have been adopting or not having children for a few generations. etc. (not only high tech science is compensating for the "humanistic /moral" compassion, but not enough is being done, yet. - I.e. the gene pool is getting more dependent on artificial means of keeping people alive.

    Certainly, the gene pool has been significantly disadvantaged by "humanistic /moral" compassion in the last 50 years in the US and EU. It may seem cruel and heartless to say, but only if you take a short term POV, the synthesis of insulin, etc. were terrible events for human kind. Selecting out is very important.

    I think the annual Darwin Awards express this idea / understanding well. Anyone have a link to 2008's winners?

    My favorite from a few years back was the German Zoo attendant who was giving his very constipated elephant (more than 10 days without a BM) an oil enema. When the elephant cut loose, the blast knocked the attendant backwards. His head hit the ground so hard that he lost consciousness and then soon suffocated under a pile of shit.
    (Must be true. - You can't make shit like that up.)

    PS - you complained that your question was ignored. My post 83 has been too. - It is clear proof of the formation of a new species by environmental selection pressure. There is another - a controlled experiment done in Brazil with some fish which naturally lived below a waterfall with predators - that caused them to have small number of eggs early in their life before they got eaten. The scientist moved some above the water fall and in remarkably few years (10 or 15, I forget) these fish grew much larger (not too surprising as they live longer) and delayed their fertility more than a year to lay many more eggs. - Not yet a new species - but clear evolution selection at work with the dramatically changed environment.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Mar 26, 2009
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    So you knew the answer already, then?
     
  15. sniffy Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,945
    Oh you are being funny. Archeologists don't peer at bones paleontologists peer at bones and they talk to geologists who look at the earth and what they would expect to find are transitional species, located in a particular strata of the earth which would indicate a period of time in between, say, the fossil of a particular dinosuar and the emergence of a particular bird. They would expect to see a fossil that looked a bit like a bird which had some feather-like features. Not too difficult or wildly speculative I would say.

    On Evidence:
    After a century of hypotheses without conclusive evidence, especially well-preserved (and legitimate) fossils of feathered dinosaurs were discovered during the 1990s, and more continue to be found. The fossils were preserved in a Lagerstätte — a sedimentary deposit exhibiting remarkable richness and completeness in its fossils — in Liaoning, China. The area had repeatedly been smothered in volcanic ash produced by eruptions in Inner Mongolia 124 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous Period. The fine-grained ash preserved the living organisms that it buried in fine detail. The area was teeming with life, with millions of leaves, angiosperms (the oldest known), insects, fish, frogs, salamanders, mammals, turtles, lizards and crocodilians discovered to date.

    Source: forgive me it's wiki:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feathered_dinosaurs


    Anyway, let me ask this Baron? Did your great grand-parents just 'turn into' you or was there something in-between you and your grand-parents? Or were there no great-grand parents at all it was just god that did it whilst sipping on her mint juleps, you know just to rattle the sciforum folks a bit some time in the distant future?

    Soooo as you can see a fish wouldn't just 'turn into' something else. If, for the sake of conjecture, you think a particular fish may be an ancestor of a cape buffalo then you would have to trace back along the ancestral line of the cape buffalo to locate it's distant ancestors. The further back you go on the evolutionary tree of life the simpler the creatures are in comparison to their descendants. That's the way it goes.

    We don't need the fossils so much now though do we becuase we have biochemists and genetecists to do the donkey work for us....amino acids: 22 of them found in all living creatures, so they say. I think that's correct. If I want to know for sure I'll ask to see the evidence.


    One bone can't possibly turn into another bone; unless you're fond of whittling.

    Not every transitional creature over every period of time has a fossil to represent it. However there are enough fossils in the fossil record to illustrate a progressive species and also extinction of other species which can be cross-referenced by the geological record.


    Now stop being satyrical. Never, would be the answer unless the particular evolutionist had omnipotent theistic powers, that is.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!





    The speculations of Darwin and others was not 'wild'. It was informed, speculation based on decades of direct observation and research. Developments since Darwin's time have coroborated most of his claims, indeed they have added greater weight to them.

    Observation> Speculation> Prediction> Experimentation>Evidence. The evidence for evolution would certainly stand up in a court of law. There's literally tons of it much is listed here as I said before:

    http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

    Funny how the earliest paleontologists (before they were known as such and before dinosaur fossils had even been identified as such) were orthodox christians with firm beliefs in literal interpretations of the bible. Their intention was to find evidence for the garden of eden and the timeline of creation as written in the bible.

    Oops.
     
  16. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,888
    Satyrical?
    Is that a typing cock-up

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    Satirical, please.
     
  17. sniffy Banned Banned

    Messages:
    2,945
    No it's not a cock up; it's deliberate. Satyr like..... geddit?

    Anyway is that the only comment you can make in response to my posts? :shrug:
     
  18. Oli Heute der Enteteich... Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,888
    Of course I got, hence the "cock"-up remark.

    Yup, I leave the icky biology stuff those who enjoy it.
    I'm a physics and engineering type. :blbl:
     
  19. Liebling Doesn't Need to be Spoonfed. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,532
    The common misconception is that evolve means mutate when we are talking about Evolution. That we can see and follow the mutation somehow, but it's an incorrect interpretation of the Theory of Evolution.

    Darwin posited that it wasn't that specific species were changing or adapting to their environment as they went, but that the stronger specimens of the species were more likely to live longer and propagate more often in their lifetime, thereby creating a large number of the stronger genetic species at the top.

    We didn't lose our tails, or lose an extra finger, or even develop opposable thumbs... it's just that the development of the opposable thumb in one of the species, caused that particular genetic specimen to provide food for himself a little better than his friend without the opposable thumb, and when food became scarce and the specimens had to climb high trees and pluck the fruit from the limbs, one specimen was better equipped to handle it and the other might have died from starvation, thus eliminating his breeding line. Species become extinct, and are replaced by stronger species all the time.

    Evolutionist don't claim that we have mutated, only that the strongest of the species survives. The population of the earth evolves into the stronger of all the species, not the individual species itself. The problem is in the misconception.
     
  20. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,053
    Can you or anyone prove that there was only one species of finches? Maybe there were already two(or more)?

    How? How were they "populated"?

    How do you know all this? How did Darwin know it? Or is it just wild speculation?

    No contact? How do you know that?

    How do you know that there wasn't two or more different species of finches in the first place?

    What's to say that they weren't two completely different finches in the first place? Perhaps the different finches came over to the islands, had a civil war and one group chased off the others to the other island. Different species all the time, from beginning to the end. Do you have any proof otherwise?

    I would suggest that they were different from the very first. Can you prove otherwise?

    Different creatures? Can you prove any of that wild speculation?

    Well, James, it's not that I can't imagine it, it's just that, like many fairy tales, they're wonderful and fun and enjoyable, but that don't make 'em true. Comprehending the fairy tales is one thing, James, but believing that they're true and factual takes something more substantial than just retelling the fairy tale.

    Your entire tale of the Galapagos finches rests on the assumption that there was only one type of finches to begin with. If that assumption is shot down or is not true, then all of the rest of the fairy tale becomes suspect. James, prove to me that there was only one type of finch that came to the islands in the first place ......and that no further finches ever intruded later.

    Baron Max

    PS - For the neglected Billy T, I voice the same concerns and requests for proof of his cute little monkey friends on that island in his post.
     
  21. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,198
    Me too but that never stopped me.
     
  22. Baron Max Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,053
    Perhaps. But where did all those "replacement" species come from? Did they just rise out of the primordial soup as full-blown new species?

    Baron Max
     
  23. Liebling Doesn't Need to be Spoonfed. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,532
    They aren't replacements, Baron. They are the survivors of a species who's genes were strong enough to survive when others couldn't. Thereby creating a stronger species, and when enough of the gene was different from the last, it became a new species because of that strength.

    What came out of the primordial soup, were single cell organisms which over billions of years evolved into the strongest possible survivors not because of mutation or the organism itself but the genetic code made up of individual strands of DNA with the organism. Those who failed to adapt, failed to thrive and it's not because of the organism as a whole, but the individual makeup (the DNA) of each individual organism. There are so many possible combinations to each strand of DNA, environmental factors could cause a different chemical reaction and bonds between each strand and those minor mutations caused each individual member of that species to either thrive or fail to thrive. The ones that did thrive had a greater chance to pass down their mutated strand of DNA. Just like individual genetic traits are more dominant than the others, DNA is subject to that same pass/fail dynamic.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page